ACCORDING TO AN NFL club that shared its data with ESPN, two of 336 players (0.6%) in the 2018 scouting combine transferred to a higher level of college football (NAIA to D-II, FCS to FBS, for example) from a non-FBS program. This year, 28 of the 330 players (8.5%) invited to the scouting combine have transferred up at least once from a non-FBS program -- 14 times the number of players who transferred up seven years ago. A total of 126 of this year's 330 (38.2%) transferred from any level of college football at least once, with the majority of those players moving to a school at the same level. Only 18 of 336 (5.4%) at the 2018 combine transferred at any point from any level.
"The hardest thing to do in scouting, in my opinion, is normalizing competition," one NFL analytics staffer said. "It's why it makes SEC players often easier to project -- you know they're also going against elite players."
"Seeing them at a big program against real NFL talent is very helpful," one veteran NFL area scout said. "I've thought a few times this year, 'I bet this dude would've tricked someone into drafting him if he would've stayed where he was.'"
That last paragraph kind of makes me wonder if he's talking about our Stanford TE. Many people had him in their top 10 TEs for this year's draft at the start of the 2025 season.
The whole article is a good read.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id...prospects-fcs-division-ii-transfer-portal-nil
One more quote: "What percentage of players are playing more versus less, or producing more versus less, as they're moving up in a level," he said. "I haven't seen any real research done on any of these transfer-type analytics. It would add a lot of value if you knew about certain positions that translate better from level to level, or certain leading indicators that you could use that would give you more confidence in portal success."
"The hardest thing to do in scouting, in my opinion, is normalizing competition," one NFL analytics staffer said. "It's why it makes SEC players often easier to project -- you know they're also going against elite players."
"Seeing them at a big program against real NFL talent is very helpful," one veteran NFL area scout said. "I've thought a few times this year, 'I bet this dude would've tricked someone into drafting him if he would've stayed where he was.'"
That last paragraph kind of makes me wonder if he's talking about our Stanford TE. Many people had him in their top 10 TEs for this year's draft at the start of the 2025 season.
The whole article is a good read.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id...prospects-fcs-division-ii-transfer-portal-nil
One more quote: "What percentage of players are playing more versus less, or producing more versus less, as they're moving up in a level," he said. "I haven't seen any real research done on any of these transfer-type analytics. It would add a lot of value if you knew about certain positions that translate better from level to level, or certain leading indicators that you could use that would give you more confidence in portal success."
Last edited:
