SPARQ: OL and DL
Monday, March 23, 2015
http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/cfb/52989/466/implementing-draft-metrics
Ranking the Top Combine Performers: OL & DL
With the NFL Combine and a few weeks of pro days completed, the overall draft class has begun to take shape. We can now get an idea of each player’s overall place in the NFL athleticism spectrum with the help of SPARQ.
SPARQ is a formula developed by Nike which measures player athleticism through the output of a single composite score. I gave a simple breakdown of the stat in my last Rotoworld article. If you have any further questions about SPARQ, you can refer to the FAQ at my blog.
As SPARQ is not a publicly-available formula, I’ve back-calculated my own version, called pSPARQ. Note that the “NFL perc.” I refer to in the following tables represents each player’s athletic standing relative to the pool of NFL players at their position. If a player is in the 50th percentile, they rate as a perfectly average NFL athlete. As the average draft prospect is less athletic than the average NFL player, this percentile may look considerably different than that of a metric which gauges athleticism relative to their draft peers.
There are a few pro day results included here. I will post full SPARQ rankings for non-Combine performers on my blog when the test results are published. Combine SPARQ rankings for WR, RB, TE, OL, and DL are available are published on this page.
Disclaimer: pSPARQ is not perfect and will not yield a perfect representation of any player’s athletic profile. It is meant to give us an idea of where a given player stands athletically relative to the NFL level.
Offensive Line
Defensive Line (Interior)