Introduction

While many crave all the NFL Draft Team Grades that publications put out the day after the draft, including us on both accounts, there are a lot of unknowns at that point. Of course, we all have our own NFL Draft prospect rankings heading into that weekend, but those players have yet to play a snap in the NFL. So, how can we really grade a team’s draft class if those players haven’t yet stepped onto an NFL field?

It usually takes at least three years to see how well a draft class turned out. While said publications, including us, don’t want to wait three years before putting out their grades on a draft class, we’re a group that does so. This is the time that teams must decide on 5th-year options for their first-round picks. Additionally, this gives these players a rookie season and two full years after that to get settled in and playing time under their belt.

After the 2023 NFL Draft, we, just as many others, posted our NFL Draft Team Grades, which can be seen here. It’s worth noting we don’t give out letter grades like most. We rank the teams from 1 to 32 in terms of how much talent they got as an entire class based on our pre-draft player grades.

Just as I did last year, in the article you can see here, I’ve developed a system to evaluate the draft classes using Total Points relative to position as the foundation. Three seasons have now gone by since the 2023 NFL Draft. So, let’s use that to truly see how each team did with getting value from its selections and draft class as a whole.

Our TLDR Top Things to Know

1) We ranked the Panthers No. 1 in our 2023 post-draft ranking. Three years later, the Texans rank No. 1 according to our stat for assessing it, Total Points Score (TP Score), followed by the Falcons, Lions, Eagles, and Steelers.

2) The Rams, Texans, and Lions accrued the most raw Total Points from their draft classes.

3) C.J. Stroud, Puka Nacua, and Bryce Young were the top three players in Total Points across the past three seasons.

4) Of the top 11 players in Total Points (top 10 plus ties), 9 were our No. 1 or No. 2 ranked players at their position according to our pre-draft rankings.

How much value did teams get?

Let’s look at how we ranked teams after the 2023 NFL Draft and then who got the most and least value. See the Appendix at the bottom to see how all 32 teams ranked in our 2023 rankings and in TP Score.

Here are the teams we ranked at the top immediately following the draft back in 2023. To see our scouting grading scale, check out our NFL Draft site.

Top 5 Teams in 2023 Post-Draft Rankings
Team	Rank	Grade
Panthers	1	6.58
Eagles	2	6.46
Texans	3	6.39
Steelers	4	6.33
Titans	5	6.32

TP Score will be defined below, but here are the top 5 teams based on how much value they received from their draft class.

Top 5 Teams in TP Score
Team	TP Rank	TP Score
Texans	1	99
Falcons	2	89
Lions	3	88
Eagles	4	82
Steelers	5	76

The No. 1 class belongs to the Texans, which makes sense, given C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson Jr. have had really strong careers thus far. We thought they had a good draft back in 2023, ranking them third, but they even exceeded our high expectations. Their 99 TP Score is the third-highest in the five years we’ve been doing these lookbacks. They trail only the 2020 Chargers and 2020 Bengals, who both got their quarterbacks of the future as well in Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow.

We also had the Eagles and Steelers in our top 5, and they both ended up there three years later. Philadelphia hit on nearly every pick it had in 2023, led by Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith in the first round. Additionally, the Steelers had four players accumulate at least 50 Total Points over the past three seasons.

As for the Falcons, they came in at No. 2, while we had them ranked No. 16 post-draft. We were obviously extremely high on Bijan Robinson, as he was our No. 3 player overall. However, of their other five picks, none were graded higher than a 6.3 (versatile backup). While Robinson’s 154 Total Points nearly equaled that of his other five drafted teammates (165), Matthew Bergeron (SIS No. 10 OT) and Clark Phillips III (SIS No. 17 CB) have had strong careers thus far.

The Lions ranked No. 3 in TP Score, and we had them ranked No. 8 post-draft. They absolutely knocked their first four picks out of the park. Many were down on their first-round selections of Jahmyr Gibbs (SIS No. 2 RB) and Jack Campbell (SIS No. 3 MLB), yet they both ranked in the top 7 among all players in the draft class in Total Points. Not to mention, Sam LaPorta (SIS No. 5 TE) and Brian Branch (SIS No. 1 S) in the second round were home runs as well. However, of their eight selections, those four accumulated 466 of their 469 Total Points.

The Panthers and Titans, who ranked No. 1 and No. 5, respectively, post-draft, ended up No. 9 and No. 18 in TP Score.

Conversely, here are the bottom 5 teams from our 2023 rankings.

Bottom 5 Teams in 2023 Post-Draft Rankings
Team	Rank	Grade
Chiefs	28	6.09
Packers	29	6.06
Patriots	30	5.98
Jaguars	31	5.95
49ers	32	5.92

Based on TP Score, here are the worst teams in terms of getting value from their 2023 draft picks.

Bottom 5 Teams in TP Score
Team	TP Rank	TP Score
Vikings	28	23
Colts	29	21
49ers	30	19
Browns	31	15
Cowboys	32	7

Our big hit here was the 49ers. We ranked them last after the draft, and they came in at No. 30. We were very high on Ji’Ayir Brown (SIS No. 3 S), and he provided 76 of the group’s 138 Total Points. However, we thought that none of their other eight picks would be starting-level players, with the highest being graded a 6.2 in Dee Winters (SIS No. 6 WLB), who had the 2nd-most Total Points of the class with 31. The other seven combined also had 31.

We were fairly high on the Vikings and Colts post-draft, ranking them No. 9 and No. 11, respectively. We were a little closer on the Browns (18th) and Cowboys (20th), but still further off than we’d like.

The Vikings got 87 Total Points from their first two selections, Jordan Addison (SIS No. 5 WR) and Mekhi Blackmon (SIS No. 22 CB), but only 16 from their other four picks. The Colts had 12 picks in the draft and really only hit on three of them. Anthony Richardson (SIS No. 3 QB) is the big miss here, and for most, only garnering 34 Total Points from the quarterback spot.

Other Key Takeaways

– The Eagles were the only team to hit on at least 75% of their picks in 2023, hitting on 6 of 7 picks, and just missing out on sweeping the class with Tanner McKee’s 24 Total Points falling just short of the 37 average for quarterbacks. This is the second straight season Philadelphia hit on at least 75%. Additionally, the Packers hit on 7 of 13, the Rams 7 of 14, the Seahawks 6 of 10, and the Steelers 5 of 7.

– The Packers ranked 12th in TP Score, mainly because they had so many picks, but hitting on 15 of them over the past two seasons has gotten them back into contention in the NFC. However, the Rams also had a bunch of picks and hit on 7 of them, but they ranked 7th in TP Score. The big kicker here is that they had four players earn 83 or more Total Points, led by Puka Nacua’s 184.

– The only team for whom their first-round pick wasn’t a hit was the Cowboys and their selection of Mazi Smith. Only 4 Total Points from a first-round pick is well below average, while that and only having 1 hit in 8 selections played a large part in the Cowboys ranking last. Additionally, the Panthers hit on only 1 in their 5 picks, albeit it was Bryce Young at No. 1 overall. Furthermore, in addition to Dallas, the Browns (Cedric Tillman), Colts (Anthony Richardson), and Dolphins (Cam Smith) were the only teams whose first draft selection wasn’t an above-average player.

– The three teams with the most raw Total Points are the Rams (593), Texans (572), and Lions (469). The Seahawks ranked just outside the top 3 with 427 Total Points to go with their No. 1 ranking and 414 Total Points from the 2022 class. With that, it’s easy to see why they were Super Bowl Champions this past season. The aforementioned Rams ranked 7th, despite the most raw points due to the sheer amount of picks they had. Their first three picks of Steve Avila (SIS No. 4 OG), Byron Young (SIS No. 8 ED), and Kobie Turner (SIS No. 9 DT) combined for 283 Total Points. Not to mention Puka Nacua (SIS No. 14 WR) with his 184 in the 5th round.

– The Cowboys (47), Browns (84), and Dolphins (97) totaled the least amount of Total Points in their draft class. Cleveland’s only hits were Dawand Jones (SIS No. 6 OT) and Isaiah McGuire (SIS No. 37 ED), both in the 4th round, who combined for 58 Total Points. Additionally, Miami did have a 50% hit rate, getting 101 Total Points from De’Von Achane (SIS No. 3 RB) and Elijah Higgins (SIS No. 35 WR), but Cam Smith (SIS No. 5 CB) received -4 while Ryan Hayes (SIS No. 13 OT) rounded out their class playing in just one game on special teams. Six Total Points from the 2022 class plus 97 from this one makes for a tough two-year stretch for the Dolphins.

Determining Total Points Score

In case you missed previous articles, let’s explain the process of creating each team’s TP Score. When looking back to see how good or bad a specific draft class was, there are two main points to detect:

1) How productive were the draft picks on the field?

2) How much talent did the team draft relative to the amount of picks they made? 

As in: Did they hit on one player or did they hit on multiple players?

To determine the value of the draft classes, I used Total Points, our flagship player value stat, from across the last three seasons. However, for those of you who are familiar with Total Points, it gives a lot of extra weight to quarterbacks. With that said, Bryce Young alone would have had the 21st-best draft class with his 180 Total Points if we just used raw Total Points.

While there is a reason we weigh quarterbacks so much more compared to other positions (they are pretty important), using that raw number in this sense isn’t going to make for a perfect match. While getting your franchise quarterback is a huge win, especially with the last pick of the draft, it doesn’t automatically give you a top class. As we’ve discussed, Carolina ended up 9th in TP Score, and I think most would agree they had a pretty brutal class aside from Young.

Answering question 2 takes into account how well a team drafted throughout the entirety of the draft class. I found the average Total Points per player from the 2023 class at each position, including UDFAs who have taken at least one offensive or defensive snap, since they were also available to be selected.

The positional averages are shown in the table below.

Pos	TP per Player
QB	36.8
RB	25.7
WR	19.0
TE	21.6
OL	27.1
DE	18.1
DT	21.2
LB	24.0
CB	22.9
S	22.9

The TP Score, as referenced earlier, is what’s used to rank the teams. It is calculated as follows:

1) Add up the Total Points from the entire team’s draft class

2) Divide that number by the number of selections the team had

3) Multiply that number by the percentage of draft picks that were above the average Total Points for their given position

4) Add that to the original Total Points per draft pick

In these 4 steps, we are essentially answering how productive the draft class was and how many picks were “hits”. Let’s run through an example using our No. 4 team, the Philadelphia Eagles.

Here is their draft class:

Pos	Player	Total Points
DT	Jalen Carter	98
LB	Nolan Smith	46
OL	Tyler Steen	42
S	Sydney Brown	26
CB	Kelee Ringo	32
QB	Tanner McKee	24
DT	Moro Ojomo	40

1) Add up the Total Points from the entire team’s draft class

308

2) Divide that number by the number of selections the team had

308 Total Points divided by 7 selections equals 44.00.

3) Multiply that number by the percentage of draft picks that were above the average Total Points for their given position

Carter, Smith, Steen, Brown, Ringo, and Ojomo all accumulated a Total Points number that was above average compared to their position groups.

44.00 times 85.7% (6 out of 7) equals 37.71.

4) Add that to the original Total Points per draft pick

44.00 plus 37.71 equals 81.71, which is their TP Score.

So, to summarize, we took the team’s Total Points gained from these players, dispersed it throughout the entire class and then gave a bump based on how many above-average players they drafted.

Now that we know how the teams ranked and how the TP Score is calculated, let’s dive into some of the other aspects of this.

How do our Initial Grades Compare?

62.5% (20/32) of our initial ranks were in the correct half, meaning a team we ranked between 1 and 16 or 17 and 32 was ultimately in that tier, which is a slight downtick compared to last season, but strong nonetheless. Not only did we get two direct hits, 10 teams were within three spots and 17 teams were only a single-digit difference from post-draft to now.

The biggest differences in our initial grades and these final rankings were the Vikings (19 spots), Colts (18 spots), Packers (17 spots), and Patriots (17 spots). As mentioned before, we were way too high on Minnesota and Indianapolis post-draft. Additionally, we were way too low on Green Bay and New England.

A team who has yet to be mentioned is the Patriots. Of their 12 picks, they hit on five of them, including one of the best players in the draft in Christian Gonzalez (SIS No. 2 CB). His 126 Total Points ranks 8th among the class. Keon White (SIS No. 5 ED), Jake Andrews (SIS No. 7 OC), Kayshon Boutte (SIS No. 9 WR), and Demario Douglas (SIS No. 36 WR) were their other hits.

Some players we unfortunately omitted from the site were RB Jaleel McLaughlin and LB Dondrea Tillman, who were both undrafted and accumulated 42 Total Points, good enough for top 75 in the class.

What were some of our biggest misses elsewhere? Puka Nacua has outproduced just about everyone’s rankings, including ours. Also, Kobie Turner (94 Total Points), Chamarri Conner (93), and Yaya Diaby (92) all rank in the top 20 of the class, but we didn’t feature any of them in our Top 100.

Let’s take a look at some of our biggest wins.

Our top undrafted player was Ivan Pace Jr. (SIS No. 1 MLB), who ranked No. 51 on our Big Board. His 71 Total Points have him 37th in the class. Additionally, he made our All-Rookie Team following his 2023 season.

Our top 4 running backs pre-draft ended up top 4 in Total Points at the position, in exact order.

Of the top 100 players from this draft class in Total Points over the last three seasons, we had 55 of them in our pre-draft top 100. Also, 9 of the top 10 in our pre-draft rankings rank in the top 24 in Total Points, with Nolan Smith being the odd man out at No. 63 (pre-draft No. 6).

The first non-specialists that we didn’t feature on the site came in Round 5 with Sean Clifford and Colby Sorsdal. Clifford put up only 2 Total Points in 3 games played, and Sorsdal only 3 Total Points in 20 games.

Isaiah Foskey was our 23rd-ranked EDGE and was drafted in the 2nd round, but has only 4 Total Points in 35 games. Also, Brodric Martin was drafted in the 3rd round and had 0 Total Points in just 6 games for Detroit. He was ranked as our No. 9 NT at a 5.8 final grade and at least our No. 27 defensive tackle overall with 17 DTs ranked 5.9 or higher.

The table below shows the top Total Points earners across the past three seasons from the draft class and how we graded and ranked them on our site pre-draft.

Rank	Position	Player	Total Points	SIS Grade	SIS Pos Rank
1	QB	C.J. Stroud	238	6.9	2
2	WR	Puka Nacua	184	6.4	14
3	QB	Bryce Young	180	6.9	1
T4	RB	Bijan Robinson	154	7.0	1
T4	ED	Will Anderson Jr.	154	7.2	1
6	RB	Jahmyr Gibbs	136	6.8	2
7	LB	Jack Campbell	130	6.5	3 (MLB)
8	CB	Christian Gonzalez	126	6.8	2
9	G	O’Cyrus Torrence	119	6.6	1
T10	S	Brian Branch	111	6.8	1
T10	CB	Devon Witherspoon	111	6.8	1

Of these top 11, nine were ranked in the top 2 at the position in our pre-draft rankings, with six of them being our top ranked player. Other than Nacua being outside our top 10 and just missing our top 100, we had a strong pre-draft ranking at the top of our position groups.

Looking at this list, it’s easy to see why the Texans and Lions rank so high on our list. Stroud and Anderson both rank in the top 5 overall, while Gibbs, Campbell, and Branch all make it on the list for Detroit.

Overall TP Score Ranks

The top average TP Score over our five seasons doing this remains unchanged with the Chiefs and their 58.47 average, though that’s nearly a six-point drop from last year. The Lions work their way from No. 3 to No. 2 with their strong 2023 draft, sitting just 0.02 points behind at 58.45.

The Rams had been in the cellar, but after ranking No. 7 in 2023, they jumped to 30th (31.48), with the Patriots and Vikings now below them. Minnesota also now owns the lowest average TP Score ranking per season, at nearly 26th. It wasn’t a surprise to see Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah fired given the drafts he’s had over the past few seasons.

How do we compare to the consensus?

Rene Bugner, @RNBWCV on X, puts out a consensus report card based on many of the post-draft grades each year to find a consensus ranking of the teams. His post for the 2023 draft class grades can be found here. Using this, we can determine how our post-draft rankings compared to the consensus three years later based on TP Score.

If we compare ourselves against the consensus for the 2023 draft class, we were closer on 12 of the teams, the consensus was closer on 16, and both either had the same consensus ranking or tied in terms of differential for the remaining four teams.

This is slightly worse for us than last year. Our biggest misses that the consensus hit on were the Patriots, Packers, and Bengals. Consensus had New England at No. 14 post-draft, much closer to their No. 13 TP Score ranking than our No. 30. We were 17 spots off on Green Bay, compared to the consensus only being 3. Finally, we were 16 spots off for Cincinnati compared to just 2 for the consensus.

Our post-draft ranking agreed with the consensus for the Browns (No. 18), Saints (No. 22), Jets (No. 24), and 49ers (No. 32).

However, we hit on some big ones then consensus didn’t. While we had the Lions at No. 8 post-draft, the consensus felt like they ranked No. 25, way off from their No. 3 TP Score spot. The Giants ranked 26th, and our No. 25 ranking was much closer than No. 6 from the consensus. Finally, the Cardinals ranked 22nd, with our ranking of No. 26 being much closer than the consensus ranking of No. 5.

To see how the rankings changed from a year ago, check out last year’s article here.

Conclusion

Nobody really knows how a draft class is going to turn out immediately after the draft, yet it still makes sense to grade and/or rank the teams based on player grades for an initial reaction. 

Post-draft grades are great in a sense, but they should be taken with a grain of salt. Once three years go by and we’ve seen what these players have done in the NFL, we can get a better sense of how well the team drafted.

These rankings are all about finding which teams drafted the best draft class as a whole, not just who got the best player. While there are some players who didn’t play for the team that drafted them for the entirety of the past three seasons, that wasn’t taken into account since those decisions came after the initial drafting of these players, which is what this is based on.

An example of that from this class is Elijah Higgins. Previously, I mentioned he was one of the Dolphins’ hits in their small draft class, but he never actually played for them. All 45 of his games played, including 60+ receptions, 600+ yards, and 3 touchdowns, have come with the Cardinals. Again, the Dolphins selected a player in Higgins who was technically a hit, but a post-draft decision to cut him is a separate point this article isn’t addressing.

Our way is not a perfect science, but it does a good job at pulling player value and seeing how well teams drafted as a whole class relative to the amount of selections they were afforded.

Three years later, the comparison between our initial rankings and these rankings are still strong and getting stronger (in both our grading and our scouting process). Considering this was the second year of our new website and first with a larger scouting department, we were afforded more time during the draft process and had a chance to get a broader look across the entire draft class.

We hope this article next year continues to show the growth we made in Year 3 of our website and Year 6 overall. As with everything we do here, we hope this improves year over year and can look back and say we kept getting better every day.

Appendix

2023 SIS Post-Draft Rankings based on the SIS NFL Draft site

Book Rank	Team	Grade
1	Panthers	6.58
2	Eagles	6.46
3	Texans	6.39
4	Steelers	6.33
5	Titans	6.32
6	Dolphins	6.30
7	Seahawks	6.29
8	Lions	6.29
9	Vikings	6.27
10	Buccaneers	6.24
11	Colts	6.23
12	Commanders	6.23
13	Bears	6.20
14	Raiders	6.20
15	Chargers	6.20
16	Falcons	6.20
17	Broncos	6.20
18	Browns	6.17
19	Bills	6.17
20	Cowboys	6.16
21	Ravens	6.15
22	Saints	6.14
23	Rams	6.11
24	Jets	6.10
25	Giants	6.10
26	Cardinals	6.09
27	Bengals	6.09
28	Chiefs	6.09
29	Packers	6.06
30	Patriots	5.98
31	Jaguars	5.95
32	49ers	5.92

TP Rank based on TP Score and how much value each team got from their draft picks over the last three seasons

TP Rank	Team	TP Score
1	Texans	99
2	Falcons	89
3	Lions	88
4	Eagles	82
5	Steelers	76
6	Seahawks	68
7	Rams	64
8	Bills	56
9	Panthers	49
10	Ravens	46
11	Bengals	44
12	Packers	42
13	Patriots	42
14	Buccaneers	41
15	Bears	41
16	Chargers	39
17	Broncos	38
18	Titans	38
19	Dolphins	36
20	Chiefs	35
21	Jaguars	34
22	Cardinals	34
23	Raiders	30
24	Jets	28
25	Commanders	26
26	Giants	23
27	Saints	23
28	Vikings	23
29	Colts	21
30	49ers	19
31	Browns	15
32	Cowboys	7

Average TP Score and ranking across all five seasons (the 2019-2023 draft classes each after their first three seasons in 2021-2025)

Avg TP Rank	Team	Avg TP Score
1	Chiefs	58.47
2	Lions	58.45
3	Jaguars	50.14
4	Falcons	48.59
5	Texans	48.45
6	Seahawks	46.31
7	Bills	45.98
8	Chargers	45.24
9	Eagles	45.23
10	Bengals	45.14
11	Broncos	45.03
12	Steelers	44.19
13	Buccaneers	44.01
14	Bears	43.21
15	Saints	42.95
16	Jets	41.72
17	49ers	41.43
18	Packers	41.05
19	Dolphins	40.18
20	Ravens	38.76
21	Titans	38.46
22	Commanders	36.86
23	Cowboys	36.78
24	Cardinals	35.90
25	Raiders	34.29
26	Colts	33.34
27	Giants	33.34
28	Panthers	32.26
29	Browns	31.70
30	Rams	31.48
31	Patriots	30.66
32	Vikings	23.42