IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jqsprt/v7y2011i3n12.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Quarterback Prediction Problem: Forecasting the Performance of College Quarterbacks Selected in the NFL Draft

Author

Listed:
  • Wolfson Julian

    (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

  • Addona Vittorio

    (Macalester College)

  • Schmicker Robert H

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

National Football League (NFL) teams spend substantial time and money trying to predict which college quarterbacks eligible to be drafted into the NFL will have successful professional careers. But despite this investment of resources, it is common for quarterbacks to perform much better or worse than anticipated. Prior work on this "quarterback prediction problem" has concluded that NFL teams are poor at determining which quarterbacks are likely to be successful based on information available prior to the draft. However, these analyses have generally focused only on quarterbacks who played in the NFL, ignoring those who were drafted but did not appear in a professional game. Using data on all quarterbacks drafted since 1997, we considered the problem of predicting NFL success as defined by two metrics (games played and Net Points), based on when a quarterback was drafted and his performances in college and at the NFL Combine. Our analyses suggest that college and combine statistics have little value for predicting whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL. Contrary to previous work, we conclude that NFL teams aggregate pre-draft information--including qualitative observations--quite effectively, and their inability to consistently identify college quarterbacks who will excel in the professional ranks is a consequence of random variability in future performance due to factors which are unlikely to be observable.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfson Julian & Addona Vittorio & Schmicker Robert H, 2011. "The Quarterback Prediction Problem: Forecasting the Performance of College Quarterbacks Selected in the NFL Draft," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-22, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:7:y:2011:i:3:n:12
    DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1302
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1559-0410.1302
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1559-0410.1302?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin G. Quinn & Melissa Geier & Anne Berkovitz, 2007. "Passing on Success? Productivity Outcomes for Quarterbacks Chosen in the 1999-2004 National Football League Player Entry Drafts," Working Papers 0711, International Association of Sports Economists;North American Association of Sports Economists.
    2. Kevin G. Quinn & Melissa Geier & Anne Berkovitz, 2007. "Passing on Success? Productivity Outcomes for Quarterbacks Chosen in the 1999-2004 National Football League Player Entry Drafts," IASE Conference Papers 0711, International Association of Sports Economists.
    3. David Berri & Rob Simmons, 2011. "Catching a draft: on the process of selecting quarterbacks in the National Football League amateur draft," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 37-49, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Russell Brook T. & Hogan Paul, 2018. "Analyzing dependence matrices to investigate relationships between national football league combine event performances," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 14(4), pages 201-212, December.
    2. Craig, J. Dean & Winchester, Niven, 2021. "Predicting the national football league potential of college quarterbacks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 295(2), pages 733-743.
    3. J.D. Pitts & B. Evans, 2018. "Evidence on the importance of cognitive ability tests for NFL quarterbacks: what are the relationships among Wonderlic scores, draft positions and NFL performance outcomes?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(27), pages 2957-2966, June.
    4. Jeremy Rosen & Alexandre Olbrecht, 2020. "Data‐Driven Drafting: Applying Econometrics To Employ Quarterbacks," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(2), pages 313-326, April.
    5. Joshua D. Pitts & Brent A. Evans, 2023. "New contracts and dismissal threats from highly drafted rookies: What motivates NFL quarterbacks?," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 4-16, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Craig, J. Dean & Winchester, Niven, 2021. "Predicting the national football league potential of college quarterbacks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 295(2), pages 733-743.
    2. Ichniowski, Casey & Preston, Anne, 2017. "Does March Madness lead to irrational exuberance in the NBA draft? High-value employee selection decisions and decision-making bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 105-119.
    3. Mulholland Jason & Jensen Shane T., 2014. "Predicting the draft and career success of tight ends in the National Football League," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(4), pages 381-396, December.
    4. J.D. Pitts & B. Evans, 2018. "Evidence on the importance of cognitive ability tests for NFL quarterbacks: what are the relationships among Wonderlic scores, draft positions and NFL performance outcomes?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(27), pages 2957-2966, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:7:y:2011:i:3:n:12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.