The previous article in this series had a look at the number of “elite” players taken at a small set of pick numbers spanning the first three rounds of the NFL draft over the last 41 years. My original intentions were to evaluate fans’ expectations regarding the likelihood of drafting an elite player against the historical outcomes, and to get a sense of how the probability of drafting an elite player differs as we get further into day one and day two of the draft. But along the way, I made an interesting discovery.
For purely illustrative purposes, I chose to look at the Redskins’ #2 pick and Miami’s first seven picks which might be involved in a trade and nicely span the first three rounds.