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, how much of a correlation does draft position have with future NFL pay?
To assess this, the 2019 draft was selected to identify a player pool. Since all of the players drafted in 2019 would not be playing on their rookie contracts, this year was chosen. The draft selections (1-254) 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 2019 draft were analyzed holistically:
A correlation of r=-0.39 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 ___ value of 15% was found, meaning that 85% of the factors that go into APY do not include draft number.
The first round of the 2019 draft was analyzed individually:
A similar correlation of r=-0.38 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 being a top-5 or top-10 pick points toward greater fiscal success, there is no guarantee.
The second round of the 2019 draft was analyzed individually:
A correlation of r=0.06 was found, indicating a positive, weak relationship. The positive correlation indicates that as draft number increases, 2026-2027 APY increases; however, since the relationship is weak, this information is irrelevant. Only a handful of second round draft picks pan out, and the picks of AJ Brown (51) and DK Metcalf (64) were outliers in this case.
Rounds 3-7 posed similar information, suggesting that the optimal place to find talent is in the first round.
1 1300000
2 34000000
3 24000000
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245 0
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253 0
254 0
