One of the biggest moves of the 2022 NFL offseason was Miami’s trade for star WR Tyreek Hill. Sending five draft picks to Kansas City for the diminutive wideout, Hill (and his new $30M-per-year contract) will join with rookie stud Jaylen Waddle and franchise-tagged Mike Gesicki to give Tua Tagovailoa and new HC Mike McDaniel […]
Getting Better: The 7 Clusters of NFL Offseason Additions
At the start of every offseason, the NFL becomes united in a common purpose: getting better. Of course, teams frequently disagree on how best to attack this goal. Teams such as the Packers prefer to build through the draft while others are willing to spend enormous amounts in free agency. At an even more granular […]
Why Are Special Teams Trick Plays Becoming More Effective?
Plays where a team is asking their punter or kicker to do anything but boot the ball may inherently feel like something that the rise of analytics would stomp out. It does not matter whether or not Johnny Hekker’s career passing efficiency is roughly in line with late-career Joe Flacco — the combination of teams […]
Are Explosive Plays Worth More Than the Yards they Create?
There’s a conundrum at play in football. On one side, coaches such as Dan Quinn and Doug Pederson swear by explosive plays as a key goal. On the other hand, offenses that pick up lots of yards will naturally have more chunk plays. So, is picking up 15 yards on one pass really more valuable […]
Who Will Win Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2022?
The Defensive Rookie of the Year (DROY) race can be uneventful, and while we’ve seen several mid-round players rise to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year, most recently Alvin Kamara and Dak Prescott, the defensive version hasn’t seen a winner outside of the top forty picks in an astounding 34 years. That’s 1988’s Jets […]
Statistical Analysis: Which Rookie Wide Receivers are Most Likely to Excel?
The 2022 NFL Draft saw several records broken, but the overwhelming story was the movement and investment at the wide receiver position. A record six WRs were selected in the first 20 selections, not to mention the A.J. Brown and Marquise Brown trades, and that trend continued throughout all three days. Eleven more receivers landed […]
Why the Fifth-Year Option is More and More Rare
The early results on the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft are in, and it’s the latest note in an intriguing trend. With the deadline for teams to exercise the fifth-year option on first-round picks passing, we now have information on which players were deemed worthy for an additional fully guaranteed year. In all, […]
Smart Teams Find Veteran Value After the NFL Draft
Understandably, once the opening of free agency dies down, all focus shifts to the NFL Draft. It’s an oft-repeated tenet that “successful teams build through the draft,” so this makes sense. Once the draft ends, that focus turns to the players who didn’t hear their name called. Again, this makes sense – there’s a lot […]
Which 5 Teams Won the NFL Draft?
With the picks officially made and the players en route to their new destinations (including some with contracts already signed), the review process begins on the 2022 NFL Draft. Using The 33rd Team’s Prospect Rankings, which teams were most successful in finding value on Thursday Night? Let’s set some ground rules. First, we’re evaluating which […]
10 Future Franchise Players Who Will Be Drafted Outside Round 1
Year after year, the draft cycle focuses on projected first-round picks, many of whom end up disappointing. Going back only six years to the 2016 NFL Draft, a full six players drafted in the first round are already out of the league. That’s almost one out of every five players. However, 2016 was also the […]
