Redesigning the NFL Draft

With the NFL draft functioning as a centralized labour market for college football players aiming to play professionally, there exists a potential for the redesign of the existing draft procedure. The current process is unstable by design (in order to increase the competitiveness of weaker teams) and may also be viewed inefficient due to teams grossly overvaluing pick at the top of the draft. An analysis of draft data from 1967 to 2023 indicates teams' potential difficulties at assessing players and predicting their future performance. It becomes especially more concerning given a shift in what playing positions get drafted high with teams selecting more and more players at the top of the draft who play positions that are harder to evaluate. There exist teams who consistently draft early and draft poorly not being able to escape mediocrity. Moreover, over the years there have been a number of players refusing to play for the team that selected them. From 1967 to 2023, 6270 (35.54%) players ended up not playing for the team that drafted them. 1533 of them did not play for the team that selected them but played for some other team(s). And other 4737 players were drafted but never played in the league at all. Hence, a different approach to selecting players, for instance, deferred acceptance algorithm yielding stable matches might alleviate some of the issues.