- Interior offensive linemen are draft-day gold: No position more consistently outperforms expectations in both Rounds 1 and 2.
- Are teams too aggressive at premium positions? Edge rushers and cornerbacks come with high upside—but also the NFL’s lowest first-round hit rates.
- 2025 NFL Draft season is here: Try PFF's best-in-class Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2025's top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.
Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
With the 2025 NFL Draft roughly one month away, we’re entering the heart of draft season — the time when big boards are finalized, mock drafts are fine-tuned and front offices make their final evaluations.
It’s also the perfect time to step back and examine historical draft trends, specifically how different positions have translated to NFL success in recent years. So, let's explore which positions have offered the best return on investment. This not only informs how teams may approach the 2025 draft but also how fans and analysts can evaluate this year’s top talent.
And if you’re looking to dive deeper into this year’s class, make sure to check out:
- The PFF Big Board: Our latest draft rankings are updated regularly with insights from our scouting department.
- PFF’s Mock Draft Simulator: Build your own draft strategy and see how different scenarios play out across all seven rounds.
- Position Rankings: See where this year’s quarterbacks, tackles, edge defenders and more stack up based on PFF’s grades and tape analysis.
- Draft Profiles: Every top-300 prospect comes with a full scouting report, key stats and breakdowns of their strengths and weaknesses to help you get the edge on draft night.
Defining a draft hit
When evaluating draft success, a key question arises: How should we measure it? In this article, we rely on a relatively objective metric: snaps played. The premise is simple—if a team puts a drafted player on the field, they likely believe in his ability.
This analysis focuses solely on offensive and defensive snaps, excluding special teams. We’re primarily concerned with picks from the first three days of the draft, as those selections are generally expected to contribute meaningfully on offense or defense.
More specifically, we examine the percentage of team offensive or defensive snaps a drafted player participated in during his first four NFL seasons. Since this study spans multiple positions, it’s important to establish distinct baselines. For example, starting offensive linemen typically play nearly every snap, while interior defenders or running backs often rotate, even in starting roles.
To establish these baselines, we calculated the average snap percentage for the top 32 players at each position leaguewide. With 32 NFL teams, this serves as a proxy for the average No. 1 player at each position.
These averages are determined season-by-season, meaning injuries can lower the numbers. That’s intentional — durability is a key factor in determining whether a draft pick ultimately becomes a success or a bust.
The following table outlines the snap baselines by position and aligns with expectations: offensive linemen rarely leave the field, while pass rushers, tight ends and running backs often share snaps — even if they are starters with their teams.
| Position | Snap count of average No.1 player |
| iOL | 99.6% |
| OT | 97.4% |
| S | 95.2% |
| LB | 92.3% |
| CB | 92.3% |
| WR | 85.3% |
| QB | 83.0% |
| ED | 81.1% |
| DI | 71.7% |
| TE | 71.3% |
| HB | 56.4% |
Naturally, we don't want to evaluate rookies against the top players at each position on every team, so we provide some leeway. A drafted player is considered a “hit” if his snap percentage over the first four seasons reaches at least two-thirds of the baseline for a full-time starter at his position. This adjustment accounts for the common reality that rookies often face a learning curve in Year 1.
Draft success at various positions
With a clear definition of a draft hit in place, we can examine the leaguewide draft curve—specifically, the hit rate by draft selection across all positions. Notably, adjusting the threshold slightly (e.g., using 60% or 75% of the baseline instead of two-thirds) shifts the curve up or down but retains the same overall shape. This indicates that the analysis isn’t overly sensitive to the exact threshold as long as it loosely reflects what we’d consider a starting-caliber player.
In the following positional analysis, we examine not only the raw hit rate for each position but also how that hit rate compares to expectations based on draft position. Certain positions carry very different expectations in the first round due to how early they are typically selected. For instance, the average first-round tight end has come off the board at pick No. 19.7 since 2006, compared to No. 14.5 for offensive tackles and just No. 9.3 for quarterbacks.
By comparing a position’s actual hit rate to the expected hit rate derived from the position-agnostic draft curve above, we can assess how frequently players at that position exceed or fall short of expectations based on where they were selected.
The following table shows the results for Round 1 of the draft.
| Position | No. of picks | Day 1 hit rate | Relative to pick expectation |
| TE | 15 | 73.3% | +14.2% |
| iOL | 30 | 70.0% | +11.1% |
| S | 28 | 71.4% | +10.4% |
| T | 63 | 73.0% | +9.4% |
| DI | 57 | 63.2% | +1.6% |
| HB | 33 | 60.6% | +0.1% |
| LB | 38 | 57.9% | -3.6% |
| WR | 58 | 56.9% | -3.8% |
| QB | 49 | 63.3% | -5.1% |
| CB | 64 | 50.0% | -9.6% |
| ED | 75 | 49.3% | -13.3% |
The results are particularly revealing, as they may reflect team behavior more than their actual ability to evaluate talent at specific positions. Across the board, there is a negative correlation between the draft capital spent on a position and its corresponding hit rate.
For premium positions — such as edge rusher or wide receiver — teams appear more willing to take risks on high-upside prospects, even if those players come with clear flaws. The potential value of hitting on a player at one of these spots often justifies the gamble. However, this approach also leads to teams moving on more quickly when those players fail to produce at a high level. In the case of edge rushers, another contributing factor to their lower hit rate is that teams will often select them based purely on talent or upside — even without an immediate positional need — leading to fewer available snaps during their rookie contracts.
For positions like tight end, safety and interior offensive line, the trend is reversed. Teams typically select players at these spots in the first round only when there’s a clear need and the prospect is viewed as a blue-chip talent. As a result, there’s often more internal pressure to make the pick work, which can lead to underperforming players still seeing significant playing time. That doesn’t necessarily mean the picks were good; it's just that teams may be more reluctant to pull the plug early.
Another contributing factor to the higher hit rates among offensive linemen—both interior and tackle—could be that it’s simply harder to change a starting offensive line than it is to rotate pass rushers or swap out cornerbacks. Offensive line continuity is crucial, and that unit is deeply tied to the quarterback’s success, so teams tend to stick with their initial investments.
Even so, these findings offer early insight into positional value and team strategy. It’s notable that premium positions—and especially cornerback, a classic “weak-link” position—show lower hit rates in the first round. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The ideal outcome of the draft isn’t uniform hit rates across all positions. Instead, it makes sense that more valuable positions warrant more frequent swings, even at the cost of a lower success rate. The same logic applies to weak-link positions like cornerback. Since teams need three or four capable cornerbacks to handle the full range of opposing matchups, it’s rational to take more chances at the position in the draft.
Another notable takeaway is that, despite the relatively low draft capital spent on linebackers in Round 1, their hit rate has remained underwhelming compared to other positions with similar investments. This highlights a rough recent stretch for first-round linebackers.
For comparison, the table below shows the same analysis applied to Day 2 of the draft. As expected, the raw hit rates drop across the board, but the overall positional ordering remains fairly consistent—with a few interesting exceptions.
Day 2 running backs have been relatively more successful than their first-round counterparts. On the other end of the spectrum, interior defensive linemen and quarterbacks selected on Day 2 have produced notably poor results compared to those taken in Round 1. That’s particularly unsurprising for quarterbacks, as most Day 2 signal-callers rarely get extended opportunities to start, and when they do, they're often expected to succeed immediately or risk being replaced before they’ve had a chance to develop.
The drop-off in hit rate for interior defensive linemen from Day 1 to Day 2 suggests that teams have effectively identified top-tier talent at the position early. As a result, the remaining options on Day 2 are typically players with more glaring limitations—making it harder for them to earn substantial snaps over their rookie contracts.
| Position | No. of picks | Day 2 hit rate | Relative to pick expectation |
| iOL | 107 | 48.6% | +19.4% |
| S | 89 | 43.8% | +13.1% |
| HB | 85 | 35.3% | +6.4% |
| TE | 68 | 32.6% | +4.8% |
| T | 74 | 33.8% | +4.6% |
| LB | 109 | 30.3% | +1.2% |
| WR | 152 | 26.3% | -3.1% |
| CB | 133 | 24.1% | -4.7% |
| DI | 116 | 20.7% | -7.7% |
| ED | 110 | 18.2% | -11.0% |
| QB | 39 | 12.8% | -16.8% |
Conclusion
By using snap counts to define draft success, we uncovered several noteworthy positional trends — such as the strong hit rate for interior defenders in Round 1 compared to a much lower rate on Day 2. More broadly, our findings confirm that the NFL draft, at a macro level, is reasonably well-aligned. Premium positions and weak-link positions — those at which teams need multiple capable players — tend to have lower hit rates. In contrast, lower-value positions, those that teams typically draft based on immediate need and in smaller volume, show higher hit rates.
One key takeaway is that it would be misguided to conclude teams should simply draft more players at positions with historically higher hit rates. Doing so would almost certainly lower the success rate at those positions while potentially boosting it at others. This shift would flatten out the positional differences, but the ideal equilibrium in the draft involves a lower hit rate for premium and weak-link positions.
To build a deeper understanding of how well teams identify talent at each position, further research is needed — particularly using more nuanced measures of draft success beyond raw snap counts. That next step will help isolate true talent evaluation from circumstantial playing time and organizational decisions.
© 2025 PFF - all rights reserved.