A Look at Ten Years of NFL Drafting and Associated Tier Commonalities

A little over a decade ago Seattle won the Super Bowl with a trend reversal strong running game and a dominant defense. Come the 2025 season and things have come full circle. Many “overnight successes” are actually the result of a decade of quiet work. The days are long but the decades are short. 

“Identified by the psychologist John Hayes in 1989 and soon endorsed by other psychologists, the 10 year rule states that a person must persevere with learning and practising a craft or discipline for about 10 years before he or she can make a breakthrough. Remarkably few breakthroughs have been achieved in less than this time. The initial scientific evidence for the rule came from studies in the 1960s and 1970s of chess-players, who take 10 years and more to become masters of the game. Then it was found to apply to Olympic swimmers and concert pianists. Subsequent studies of scientists and mathematicians, composers, painters, and poets—living and deceased—further supported the rule.”¹

The Seahawks have the same General Manager, John Schneider, that they had a decade ago. They only recently changed their head coach in 2024 after going 14 years with Pete Carroll. Here was an interesting post on head coaches since 2000. 

Seven teams have the same General Manager that they had a decade ago. If you go back only nine years that number is eleven teams. The last seven Super Bowls were won by one of those eleven teams. Considering the ten year rule there is a lot to say for maintaining stability.  

Since the next big event on the NFL radar is the draft, lets take a look at how your team has performed in the draft over the last decade. To do this I used the Pro Football Reference metric of Approximate Value (AV). Approximate Value (AV) is a proprietary metric developed by Pro Football Reference founder Doug Drinen to assign a single numerical value to every player-season in NFL history (since 1960). It is designed to estimate a player’s overall contribution to their team, allowing for broad comparisons across different eras and positions. 

I scrubbed teams draft pick AVs and re-scrubbed them to arrive at a list of players for each team that were close or better than an 8+ AV for their total seasons. An AV of eight would equate to a solid contributor. I tried to discount seasons in which the player had played substantially less games perhaps due to injury. For those play havoc on his average AV. Here is the list of teams. The Number Tops column is the number of players the team had over that ten year span with the average AV of 8+. The AV total is the total sum of AV for all players drafted. The Last year column shows the last year the team had drafted a player that made the Tops.  The table is sorted by the Number Tops and then by last year, followed by Total AV.

1.  Perspiration, inspiration, and the 10-year rule, Robinson, Andrew, The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9751, 1458 – 1459 ↩︎

I have separated the table into five tiers. Eight of the eleven teams that had the same GM the last 9 years are in the top two teirs and none of teams were in the bottom two tiers.

Tier 1 – Physical, Air it out football

BUF, BAL, JAX, PHI, GNB, 

The tier 1 teams all had 10 or more top players selected in the last ten seasons with the last one selected being no earlier than 2023. There teams are the Bills, Ravens, Jaguars, Eagles and Packers. All five qualified for either the 2024 or 2025 season playoffs. In 2025 all five were in the top half of the league in NY/A, ANY/A, passer rating, TD%  and Rushing TDs. All but the Ravens were in the top 13 in both defensive points and yards allowed. The Ravens were in the top ten for both in 2024. Over the 2024-2025 season these five teams ranked in the top eleven in passing yards per completion with three being in the top four. In post season play for either the 2024 or 2025 seasons these five teams ranked in the top 11 out of 28 for offensive yards per game. With the exception of the Jaguars all other four teams for the period of 2016-2025 rank in the top five in rushing yards per attempt. Buffalo, Baltimore and Philadelphia rank as the top three in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.

Tier 2 – Passing Strength

TAM, CIN, LAR, DET, SFO, LAC, DEN, HOU, DAL, KAN

The next tier had 8-9 selections over the last ten seasons that made an average AV of 8 or better. Looking at this group the thing that stood out was their passing ability. Seven of the ten teams were the top eight teams in passing first downs over the combined 2024 and 2025 seasons. Six teams were in the top seven in passing yards for that span. Their quarterbacks are Matthew Stafford, Brock Purdy, Jared Goff, Justin Herbert, Dak Prescott, Baker Mayfield, C.J. Stroud, Joe Burrow, Bo Nix and Patrick Mahomes. Eight of the ten quarterbacks were drafted by the team they are on and have an average AV above 11.

Tier 3 – Changes

CLE, NWE, CAR, SEA, CHI, IND, NOR, ATL, NYJ

This group which has bee middle of the pack for chossing AV rich draft picks is a mixed bag of success. We have the two Super Bowl contenders alongside division leaders and division last place teams. This data dive only looked at team draft picks while they stayed on the team and did not look at any free agent acquisitions. One common factor for these teams is over the last two-three seasons there has been significant instability or change. Here is a list of the churn.

Tier 4 – A Poor Bottom Line

NYG, WAS, MIA, TEN, LVR

The tier 4 group share the fact that over the combined 2024-2025 seasons they all had a negative point differential. All five teams ranked in the bottom half of the league in points allowed over that timeframe. All five teams were in the top twelve for most blowout losses (17 pts+) over that timeframe. All were in the bottom half of the league in win percentage with three of the teams being the bottom three.

Tier 5 – Go Deep

ARI, MIN, PIT

One of the key features of these teams is the ability to complete the deep pass. They have talented receivers that stand out in this regard. Arizona has Marvin Harrison Jr. who has had the last two seasons with a yards per reception above 14. Micahel Wilson has the two past seasons above 11. Finally the tight end Trey McBride has the last two sesasons above 9 and witha reception success rate of over 50%. Minnesota has Justin Jefferson with the past two seasons above 12 and Jordan Addison with two above 13. Their tight end, T.J. Hockenson, has one season above 11. Pittsburgh has landed D.K. Metcalf with his 2025 season abve 14. Following the 2024 season PFF ranked D.K. Metcalf as one of five top receivers for deep targets of 20+ yards downfield. They ranked tight ends Trey McBride and T.J. Hockenson as the 3rd and 6th top tight ends following the 2024 season.

Bonus Data

Here is a spreadsheet showing all the team’s top AV draft picks for the last ten years all teams ten yrs draft

Feature image: Marianne O’Leary, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons