Roster Breakdowns of RAS

From a Twitter thread on 2/27/23

Now that I’ve finally got the NFL rosters loaded into #RAS, I can finally reveal something I’ve suspected to be true for a long time, but can finally prove.

There are 1,920 players on NFL rosters currently who posted a #RAS. Of those, 81.35% are rated 5.00 or above, with only 18.65% rated below average. A whopping 45.21% are above 8.00, in that elite range for athletic ability when compared to their peers.

So if anyone ever asks “Does that stuff even matter?” in regards to athletic testing, the answer is a deafening, booming cry of “YES, OBVIOUSLY”

The average #RAS for a player on an NFL roster is 7.16. Teams value this stuff. It should never be the entirety of your evaluation process, but frankly if you’re omitting it entirely from your evaluations you’re making a massive, entirely avoidable mistake.

So here’s some surprising stuff when I break it down by position…

Not surprisingly, LB and DE have the highest percentage of elite athletes on rosters. That makes sense. Third place? Center. The least correlative position to NFL success, but teams go out of their way to get the top athletes. More than 50% of NFL centers are elite athletes!

Also not surprising, QB has the lowest percentage of elite tier athletes on rosters. But second lowest percentage? Tight End. Yes, the position with one of the highest correlations to NFL success.

Tight End ALSO has the HIGHEST percentage of below avg athletes on rosters. This is despite literally zero tight ends in the last couple decades having big impact in the passing game while also having below avg RAS at TE (and no injury at time of testing).

That one is an absolute stunner to me.

Only 13% of NFL linebackers are below average for #RAS. Really puts a fine point on players like Nick Bolton when looking at just how rare a player of his caliber is with the type of numbers he put up.

Here’s a chart. You guys like charts, right? Does a good job of illustrating the kind of numbers we’re talking about. If testing didn’t matter, that red would be right about 50% all the way across.

This is the breakdown of RAS by position across the NFL, which was used to create the above chart.

Here is a breakdown of RAS by position and team.