Rookie Hit Rates 2021 Edition

Hello Heat Seekers, welcome to episode 135 of Sully’s 2 Cents Fantasy Football Podcast.  I am you host; I am Rob Sullivan.  The Sully’s 2 Cents Fantasy Football Podcast is a proud member of the RotoHeat family of podcasts.

Today is Sunday April 11, 2021 and the 2021 NFL draft is only 18 days away.  There has never been a better time for you to visit rookiedraftguide.com.

The team has grinded thru hours, and hours of rookie tape. At last count we have watched film on 108 draft eligible rookies on offense alone. The reason for all this hard work you ask? Well, its all to create our player evaluations for rookiedraftguide.com.  I’d really appreciate it if you would head on over and check it out.

When you get there, you’ll find all our rookie player reviews for both 2021 Offensive and Defensive prospect breakdowns. Become a VIP for only $6/month to view all eight category rankings, view the strengths and weaknesses our team has identified for each player, as well as the draft slots. All of our evaluators on the team have laid out the range that they are comfortable drafting these rookies in every scoring format imaginable.  The bonus of this $6 spend is access to our player rankings on rotoheat.com and all of our ADP information. 

Don’t think of it as a $6 spend, think of it as a $6 investment in you. Investing $6 in yourself is well worth it and will give you a leg up on the other managers in your leagues. 

Back in episodes 75-78 of this podcast, I went thru each position and detailed the hit rates of all skilled players drafted between 2010-2018.  Today, in episode 135, I’m revisiting the hit rates and taking a look at all skilled players once again including the 2019 and 2020 seasons.  I, will touch on draft capital and how that impacts the hit rates and have a look at the upcoming 2021 draft class and what to expect from them based on the historical data we have.

In order to review Hit rates, its important to define what qualifies as a hit.  I define at hit as any quarterback that has delivered a top-12 season at any point in their career. For the running backs, its any back that has recorded a top-12 or top-24 season during their career and the wide receivers it anyone with a WR1, WR2, or WR3 campaign.  Lastly the tight Ends are a hit if they deliver you a top-12 season at any point in their careers. In addition to hit rates, I look at players that have multiple hit seasons as well as players that achieved hit status in their rookie seasons. 

Dynasty Fantasy Managers tend to have a serious case of rookie fever at this time of the offseason, and it intensifies after the NFL draft.  We tend to like rookies a lot at this stage of the game, but once we know where they are playing, we tend to go a little overboard, myself included. With that in mind let’s jump into it.

Quarterbacks

Rookie Hit Rates 2021 Edition

Since the 2010 NFL Entry draft there have been 862 skill position players selected. Of those 862, 130 have been quarterbacks.

Of those 130 selected QBs, 23 of them or 18% have recorded a top-12 season, 15 of them have had multiple hit seasons and 8 of them have been a top-12 QB in their rookie season.  Those numbers might seem low, because frankly they are low. The amount of QBs drafted that will never produce a top-12 season are staggering.  The kicker is that most of them were pretty darn good in college and entered the draft as solid NFL prospects. The reality is NFL teams make mistakes when drafting QBs and as a result so do fantasy managers.

When you dissect the position by round you quickly id...