Just a few days ago, the 2026 NFL Draft ended. Every player who was drafted will begin on their rookie contracts, which last 4 years for most draftees, with the exception of 1st round draft picks who sign a 5th year extension. When those cheap, inexpensive contracts expire, teams must decide whether or not their draftee will be one of the 53.
Teams draft based on value, meaning the elite players tend to leave in the first round; however, what is the correlation between draft position and future NFL pay?
To assess this, the 2020 draft was selected to identify a player pool. Since all of the players drafted in 2020 would not be playing on their rookie contracts, this year was chosen. The draft selections (1-255) were identified using ESPN records. The current pay of the 2019 draftees was determined with overthecap.com, using the “Average Per Year” (APY) metric.
The independent variable in this study was the draft position of a given player, and the dependent variable was the amount of money the player is set to be paid in the 2026-2027 season. For players that are free agents, are playing in a different football league, or are retired, their 2026-2027 APY was listed as 0 for the purposes of this study.
All seven rounds of the 2020 draft were analyzed holistically:
A correlation of r=-0.43 was found, indicating a negative, moderate relationship. The negative correlation indicates that as draft number increases, 2026-2027 APY decreases. Since the relationship is moderate, it is clear that while having a higher draft number points towards greater fiscal success, there is no guarantee. An r value of 18.5% was found, meaning that 81.5% of the factors that go into APY do not include draft number.
The first round of the 2020 draft was analyzed individually:
A correlation of r=-0.20 was found, indicating a negative, weak relationship. The negative correlation indicates that as draft number increases, 2026-2027 APY decreases. Since the relationship is weak, while there seems to be a greater chance of getting paid more when being a top-5 or top-10 pick, there is still great variance.
The second round of the 2020 draft was analyzed individually:
A correlation of r=-0.25 was found, indicating a negative, weak relationship. The negative correlation indicates that as draft number increases, 2026-2027 APY decreases; however, since the relationship is weak, this information is irrelevant. Draft pick No. 53 Jalen Hurts drastically changed the data collected.
1 55000000
2 17000000
3 0
4 23500000
5 1215000
6 52500000
7 24000000
8 1402500
9 1192500
10 1215000
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12 0
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18 7000000
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25 30000000
26 55000000
27 8750000
28 13666666
29 0
30 1810000
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36 16750000
37 1402500
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44 12000000
45 21025000
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58 8000000
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61 10000000
62 1402500
63 1402500
64 8129000
65 0
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69 13250000
70 6666667
71 24500000
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73 11500000
74 17000000
75 14833333
76 0
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78 1402500
79 0
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83 1402500
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85 2535000
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87 1402500
88 4000000
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91 0
92 1850000
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102 17000000
103 0
104 1402500
105 5666667
106 1215000
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108 1215000
109 10000000
110 1215000
111 0
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114 0
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116 1215000
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118 1215000
119 1402500
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135 16000000
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153 15000000
154 0
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158 0
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170 5250000
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191 3500000
192 10000000
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195 0
196 0
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198 0
199 0
200 0
201 0
202 0
203 3166667
204 0
205 12000000
206 0
207 1240000
208 0
209 0
210 0
211 5522500
212 0
213 0
214 0
215 0
216 12000000
217 0
218 0
219 1402500
220 0
221 0
222 0
223 0
224 0
225 0
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230 0
231 0
232 0
233 0
234 0
235 0
236 0
237 0
238 0
239 0
240 0
241 0
242 1145000
243 0
244 0
245 0
246 0
247 0
248 0
249 0
250 0
251 0
252 0
253 2875000
254 0
255 0
