While conventional wisdom holds that a 7th-round pick has little to no value, one of the things I like to do is dive into the actual data and see if conventional wisdom resembles reality. As part of an ongoing project looking into all drafts from 2012-2017, I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of contributions were made by 7th-rounders. At the time I pulled the information, all 241 players in this pool had been given at least four years to prove themselves. What had they done?
More than I expected.
Nearly half of all 7th-round picks played in at least 15 games (46%) and more than a third played in at least 30 games (34%).