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Oklahoma State Named Top 10 Over-Performing NFL Producer

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The NFL Draft starts this Thursday, and Oklahoma State has some guys who hope their number (or name) is called early. And if it is, you can bet there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to lead to a successful NFL career.

ESPN recently did a study on which schools produce the most underperforming and over-performing NFL players. The formula is a little bit convoluted so I’ll let them explain.

Methodology: We pulled data from Pro-Football-Reference.com on the 3,831 players drafted since 2002 and broke them into eight position groups. Special teams are excluded since many of those players are acquired as undrafted free agents.

Draft value: Picks are weighted by overall pick number, so early first-round picks carry more weight than late first-rounders.

NFL performance: The formula for this factors in career Approximate Value, along with percentage of seasons as an All Pro/Pro Bowler/starter. The goal was to account for players like J.J. Watt who have been dominant over shorter stretches.

Anyway, it essentially measures how good players are in the pro ranks against how many players a school puts there. The thinking being that the more pros you put in the NFL, the more All-Pros and/or elite starters you should hit on.

Those who hit on fewer than what was expected scored low. Those who hit on more scored high. Oklahoma State was one of the 10 who hit on more. Here is the top 10.

So basically Oklahoma State’s pros performed at a level that makes you think they got almost twice as many guys drafted as they actually did which is pretty great. Even with the Justin Gilbert flameout!

“I watched [cornerback] Justin Gilbert play in the Big 12 for three years,” Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller told The Ringer. “He’s this 6-foot-tall, 200-pound corner that ran a 4.37, his three cone was sub-seven seconds, he was strong, and, athletically, he was everything you want. But Joe Thomas said it on Twitter. This is what happens when you don’t love football. It doesn’t matter how athletic you are, if you don’t love football, you’re not going to succeed.”

Also Oklahoma State has had an absurd number of players that were drafted go on to make Pro Bowls.

This includes Dez Bryant, Antonio Smith, Russell Okung, Kevin Williams and Dan Bailey. You can see the full list here (although ESPN only looked at the last 15 NFL Drafts).

All of this is great of course, but I personally more about seeing a higher number of NFL Draft selections than I do the percentage of those who pan out on the pro level. That’s a selfish conceit, though, because I care more about Oklahoma State than I do about the Packers or 49ers or Bears.

This data is less a indicator of which teams have performed well in college and more look at which colleges have gotten the right guys drafted. You would almost expect a school like OSU to score high here because, as the thinking goes, if somebody gets drafted out of Stillwater, they must really be good.

Such is the perception, right or wrong, in college football and beyond.

Still, it’s impressive that OSU has churned out so many high-quality players at the next level from a (relatively) small pool of candidates. Hopefully they can continue to increase both percentages as the Gundy era rolls on.

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