I closed my last piece, The 100 Stat Salute to Derrius Guice, by looking at Derrius Guice’s age and how he had a chance to become one of the youngest players to achieve a number of statistical accomplishments.
While researching this topic, I noticed that many of the players who produced at very young ages, specifically 21 and under, have gone on to have highly successful NFL careers. This got me thinking more and more about how much emphasis teams should be placing on the ages of players in the draft.
I read several studies done on draft age and subsequent career production, and their conclusions were that lower/younger draft age does, in fact, appear to have a relationship with superior career output.