Specific Qualities the Titans Want in Draftees by Position

By ZACH LYONS, STACKING THE INBOX

The last two drafts, I have taken my love for historical data and trends from contracts and applied them to the draft. Specifically, what does a team look for in a prospect at a certain position group. A team may say they want one thing: “Fast players” for example but draft guys who are much slower than their peers.

Two years ago, I started with looking at strictly the physical and athletic measurables of what Jon Robinson had traditionally drafted. Treylon Burks was the guy most likely to be drafted by the Titans and it turns out, that was 100% correct.

Last year, I expanded into bringing in traditional wide receiver stats that have predicted success at the next level and factored in the data of Ran Carthon’s various stops as a personnel guy and what the Titans has done under Mike Vrabel. While the Titans didn’t draft a wide receiver in the first six rounds based on how their board fell, the formula I used, would’ve had Colton Dowell as the seventh-most likely to be a Titan if he had been on my radar before the draft. Unfortunately, I wasn’t even aware of Dowell as a draft prospect, but if I had I would’ve written about him.

While it isn’t a perfect predictor as I either don’t know of all the prospects and/or have all of the data, it does shed light on what the Titans typically value in their prospects in three key areas:

1. Physical Traits
2. Athletic Traits
3. On-The-Field Traits

This year, I have evolved this even further. Thanks to learning more about programming languages, data analysis and football in general, I have been able to apply my refined methodology to other positions of need for the Titans, not just wide receivers. So far, I have been able to collect data for WR, OT, OG, LB, CB and RB. We won’t get too heavily into some of these positions because the Titans' needs have shifted. I will also be adding S, DL and EDGE soon.

Next Thursday, PaulKuharsky.com paid subscribers will follow along the journey to find the most likely draft prospects and what they bring to the team. They’ll also get access to a data tool that they can play along with as well. So, if you want access to all of this information you have to subscribe to PK.com and StackingTheInbox.com, because there will be site-exclusive information for each!

Now, I am going to give a brief rundown of how the aforementioned position groups are scored and what data is being used. I am also going to give you examples of how to use/interpret this data for the various positions. This will require some common sense and nuance on your part, but I have faith you all can handle that.