fleetus wrote:yupchagee wrote:fleetus wrote:Interesting stat tp put the importance of UFA's into perspective:
What percentage of last years (2009) NFL starters were UFA's compared to drafted players?
Former 1st Rounders - 20%
Undrafted Free Agents - 17%
Former 2nd Rounders - 15%
Former 3rd Rounders - 13%
Former 4th Rounders - 10%As amazing as this stat is, then consider that in most cases former 1st and 2nd rounders are being payed quite a bit more than UFA's, so the team has a certain amount of pressure to play the drafted players and give them every opportunity to fail. Yet, UFA's STILL make up almost as many of the NFL starters as 1st rounders!!!

Bottom line, UFA's are crucial to a teams' success.
Keep in mind that there are only 32 1st & 32 2nd round picks every year. There are hundreds of undrafted players out there.
That doesn't really change the fact that UFA's, despite not being selected in the top 250 players each year, still win way more than their fair share of jobs. Think about this, in a 5 year period, the NFL drafts over 1,250 players, yet UFA's end up starting more games than 60% of those players!
Your math is still bad... The sheer number really matters. Lets say this is out of 704 starters in the league (I don't know what special teamers they're counting, and if they are counting everyone who started a single game, or whatever... but 22 starters x 32 teams=704)
This year there have been 472 undrafted free agents signed... lets say that's high... lets say it's only 400 normally.
Lets also say the NFL represents 10 years of draft classes (I know there are older guys out there, but there are also a lot of younger guys who have retired -- and the math will come out even anyway).
That's 320 1st rounders, 320 second rounders, 330 3rd rounders, 330 4th rounders, 1240 late round guys and 4000 UDFAs.
Last year, 141 first rounders starters (20% of 704)... 106 2nd rounders, 91 3rd rounders, and 70 4th rounders, 176 late round guys and 120 Undrafted Free Agents.
So about 44% of the guys drafted in the 1st round in the last 10 years were starting last year. 33% of the 2nd round, 28% of the 3rd round, 22% of the 4th round, 14% of the late rounders, but only 3% of the UDFAs.
Those percentages are a little off because the league really represents more draft years and they might be counting a whole lot more starters than I am, but they should be off uniformly.
Any way you cut it, the 1st rounders are almost 15 times more likely to be starting. The late rounders are almost 5 times more likely to be starting.
Put it another way: out of those 12 UDFAs the Skins are bringing into camp, chances are only 1 is ever going to make it as a starter (we don't actually have the information to know the number of people who EVER start, but it shouldn't be more than 1 in 12 based on what we do know).