by Chase Stuart
on July 30, 2016
Jadeveon Clowney was one of the most highly-touted non-quarterback prospects in recent draft history. Clowney, in fact, has been a highly-touted prospect for even longer than that: he was the number one recruit in the country for the 2011 class. And, #DisruptionIsProduction aside, Clowney’s now fallen short of sky-high expectations for three years in a row: after an uneven final year in South Carolina, Clowney was limited to just four games as a rookie in 2014. Last year, Clowney started 9 games and played in 13; he recorded 4.5 sacks and had 27 tackles.
Is 2016 the year of the Clowney breakout? It may be: he was a strong run defender last year and has shown flashes of the dominance we saw in college. That said, I thought it would be interesting to compare Clowney to other number one draft picks through two years. Clowney has played in 17 games through two years; that’s pretty low, as you expect, compared to other first overall picks. [continue reading…]
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by Chase Stuart
on February 28, 2014
Building on yesterday’s post, I decided to crown a combine MVP because it’s February and there’s nothing else to do. I looked at each player’s combine results, courtesy of the great NFLSavant.com, in four different tests.
40-yard dash
There were 268 players with 40-yard dash times posted at NFL Savant. I ran a regression using weight as the input and 40-yard time as the output, and the best-fit formula (R^2 of 0.75) was:
[math]Expected 40 Time = 3.433 + 0.00554 * Weight[/math]
Using this formula, Jadeveon Clowney, with a weight of 266 pounds, would be projected to run the 40 in 4.91 seconds. Since he actually ran the 40 in 4.53 seconds, he gets credited for finishing +0.38 seconds above expectation. That was the best of any player in Indianapolis this year. The table below shows, for each of the 268 players (the table, by default, displays only the top 10, but you can change that in the dropdown box), their weight, their actual 40 time, their expected 40 time, and the difference. Auburn tackle Greg Robinson hopes be a top-five pick, and his 40 time does a good job displaying his athleticism. Pittsburgh’s Aaron Donald comes in third, but there will be plenty of reasons to talk about him later. [continue reading…]
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Michael Sam
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by Chase Stuart
on February 27, 2014
The hype on Clowney is almost as wide as his wingspan.
ran the 40-yard dash in 4.53 seconds, which only confirmed that the South Carolina star is an incredible athlete. But how freakishly insane is that time? The 40-yard dash, like every other aspect of the combine, is only useful when placed in proper context. The dash is biased in favor of lighter players; one way to control for this drawback is to measure Clowney only against defensive ends and linebackers, although that doesn’t totally solve the weight issue. That’s one reason Football Outsiders has published a Speed Score for running back prospects, calculated as (Weight * 200)/(40 time^4).
The website NFLsavant.com is an excellent source of historical combine data going back to 1999. I looked at all the defensive ends and outside linebackers with 40-yard times over that period, and ran a few regressions to get a sense of the relationship between weight and speed. A simple one worked just as well as the more complicated ones, and that formula produced an R^2 of 0.30. That best-fit formula was 40-yard time = 3.609 + 0.00455*weight. So for Clowney, at a weight of 266 pounds, he would be projected to run the 40 in 4.82 seconds. Since Clowney actually ran it in 4.53 seconds, that means he was 0.29 seconds faster than we would expect.
That is really, really good, although you already knew that. Here’s some more context. NFLSavant.com has 706 defensive ends or outside linebackers since 1999 with 40-yard times. Clowney, by rating 0.29 seconds better than expected, comes in ahead of 700 of those players. The other five?
[continue reading…]
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