FanPost

PSU v. Clemson Drafted Pro Talent

The discusion on the recent FanPost that nobody read on the commitment of Nkemdiche to Clemson got me to thinking of writing another FanPost that nobody will read on the comparison of PSU players drafted versus the Tiger pro players.


Now as a Penn Stater I am well aware that we value a high GPA and graduation rate on our team compared to a NFL draft rate, however, I find it hard not to be a bit curious as to the success of our coaching staff to recruit and develop players that can succeed at the next level compared to other schools. (Now that I have a sentence complete what can it mean?....

...NEW PARAGRAPH!)

There are a lot of factors that go into a HS kid choosing his college overlords, but one such thing as fans that we like to mention is 'we've had this many draft picks he's gotta come to us', or 'look at Poz's supersized neck when he's topless on a beach!' So I decided to check a few available numbers from pro football reference's website and come up with an analytical way of evaluating fans' claims of 'we produce more NFL draft picks' or 'we produce more nfl starz'.

I decided to start with the 1999 draft class since their rookie year in the NFL would have been the 2000 season and that's a nice even number. Also, I only looked into drafted players, so this means I would exclude unrestricted free agents that had productive seasons, why? Because it's midnight and I'm 10 beers into this people.

Players Drafted/Defense: PSU -51/28 Clemson -43/32

So clearly our defensive reputation is evident by the...WHAT THE HELL? Der Tiggers got more defensive players drafted then us? Well, dem is da facts. While we do maintain the edge in total number of players which is obviously due to our @consistently awesome offensive output@ the past 12 years. More seriously, what is the quality of the actual players drafted? Fortunately there is a measurement out there to help with that called Adjusted Value (AV). It is by no means perfect, but it's a great first attempt to assign objective value to players, especially at unit positions like offensive line.

Total AV: PSU -716 Clemson -273

Average AV: PSU -15.23 Clemson -6.66

Players with < 5AV: PSU -15 Clemson -23

So what we can see here is that PSU has a decided advantage in total value, however, we do have more players. When this number is divided by total players drafted minus 2012 draftees and kickers, we still have a more than 2:1 advantage in value. If a school were to have a large edge in recent draftees that would sway the numbers, however since 2009, the draft nubmers are PSU 12, Clemson 15.

Conclusion: No matter how you try to look at it, the last 12 years PSU has been producing more and better NFL players compared to Clemson.

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