2020 NFL Draft Preview

February 5, 2020

By Mark Simon, Nate Cooper, and John Todd

Super Bowl LIV was great, but now it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming NFL Draft.

In recent years, SIS has tracked NFL and FBS games in a similarly-detailed manner to how it tracks baseball. That allows the company to cover the draft thoroughly.

This season, SIS Video Scouts combined to chart each FBS game a minimum of four times to track specifics such as formation, personnel, route type, and type of run. The compiled information was supplemented with observations of skills and other critical factors so that players could be evaluated at each position.

Draft-eligible players were graded by Video Scouts on a 1-to-9 scale both in individual skills and critical factors, and then overall among those at their position. If a player’s final grade is 6.5 or higher, he is generally a starting-level NFL player. If a player is graded 7.0 or higher, he is thought to have a Pro Bowl-caliber future. Each scouting report is written by a Video Scout and cross-checked by others in the scout group.

Five players graded at least a 7.0 in this set of rankings. Six other players just missed that rating, earning a 6.9. Here's a list of those who graded 6.9 or higher.

Top Graded Players by SIS - 2020 NFL Draft

Ohio State defensive end Chase Young earned the highest grade of any player, a 7.3. His scouting report said that “Young shows superlative athletic traits—including excellent length, explosion, balance, and hand quickness—that compare favorably to recent elite edge prospects Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney.”

Young led all evaluated edge rushers in SIS’s player value metric, Total Points. He had the highest sack rate (5.4%) and tied for the second-highest pressure rate (20%) among those players.

Two wide receivers – Jerry Jeudy from Alabama and CeeDee Lamb of Oklahoma – were the highest-graded offensive players.

“Jeudy’s twitch, acceleration, body control and detail make him a special route runner and separator who will make an immediate impact in the NFL,” reads his scouting report.

Lamb is described in similar glowing terms. He also ranked first among evaluated receivers in yards per target (14.3) and yards after catch per reception (11.2). Jeudy ranked 10th and fifth in those, respectively.

The likely No. 1 overall pick, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, received a 6.9 grade, as did another highly-regarded quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa. Burrow was described as having “the ability to be a true difference maker at the next level” and was the runaway leader in Total Points among quarterbacks. Tagovailoa is recovering from a serious hip injury. He finished first in SIS’s Independent Quarterback Rating, a stat similar to quarterback rating that accounts for things outside a quarterback’s control (such as dropped passes and dropped interceptions).

These grades and stats can be found in the 2020 SIS Football Rookie Handbook, which will be out in mid-February. More than 280 players are evaluated by the SIS scouting staff. You can soon learn more about the book at the ACTA Sports website.

Happy scouting!