Most of You Will Not Make The NFL

But You Will Have The Opportunity To Succeed and Play in College Increase Your Life Opportunities

As an NFL agent and owner for many years of a company that helps athletes get recruited, and of course as a coach for almost 20 years, there is one thing that is true. Most of you, in fact almost all of you will not make the NFL. This does not mean that you are not a good player or a great player or an elite player, what that means is that I hope you have figured out what you will do one day when you are not an athlete.

I am writing this article, because as someone who has helped fulfill many athletes dreams of going to college and also even helped many go onto the NFL, I have learned one true and important fact. Almost no one makes the NFL and of the ones that do, almost none last beyond 2 years. So let’s do a little math.

NFL Salary and Longevity

The NFL minimum salary is $495,000 for 2019 rookies and players with zero credited seasons. In 2020 there minimum salary is $510,000. So if you are active for every game for two years you will make $1,005,000. That is a great pay day and even better start for the rest of your life. You cannot retire on it. After taxes you will keep approximately $600,000, maybe close to $700,000 if you have some shelters. So let’s look at the odds. But before we do it…let’s look at the average height and size of NFL players.

Average NFL Players Size By Position

RB- Avg. Height: 70.73 in Avg. Weight: 214.48 lbs
QB- Avg. Height: 75.43 in Avg. Weight: 224.97 lbs
WR- Avg. Height: 72.40 in Avg. Weight: 200.32 lbs
TE- Avg. Height: 76.54 in Avg. Weight: 254.26 lbs
FB- Avg. Height: 72.33 in Avg. Weight: 244.43 lbs
OL- Avg. Height: 76.75 in Avg. Weight: 314.16 lbs
DB- Avg. Height: 71.69 in Avg. Weight: 200.10 lbs
LB- Avg. Height: 74.04 in Avg. Weight: 244.64 lbs
DE- Avg. Height: 75.82 in Avg. Weight: 278.99 lbs
DT- Avg. Height: 75.22 in Avg. Weight: 308.97 lbs
K- Avg. Height: 72.19 in Avg. Weight: 202.58 lbs
P- Avg. Height: 73.77 in Avg. Weight: 214.32 lbs
LS- Avg. Height: 74.48 in Avg. Weight: 243.76 lbs

Here are some Stats From The NFL Combines

So hopefully this gives you an idea of the measurables. The measurables are just the beginning If you are under 5’8 you have a .7% chance of making it… at .7% which is below 1% of the guys that are getting drafted.

What Percentage of Players From What College Level Make the NFL

Football Participants 73,557 Approximate # Draft Eligible 16,346 #Drafted 256 #Drafted This Past Year From NCAA 255 Percentage Drafted 1.6%

The number is actually lower is probably lower when you declare how many make it to the 53 Man Roster.

What Should We Understand

The percentage of players playing football and making college is 7.1% but we do not have statistics on the number of players actually interested in playing in college….So the stats of overall HS players getting drafted in the NFL when calculated for the total number of football players in high school is .02% ,which to give you perspective, is very low.

So where is the opportunity. The opportunity is for a great athlete and a great student to merge the two to get an opportunity to get to college and play football. With the money available in college, even with financial aid at the D3 level its important to understand that you can play at some level of college and if you are an elite athlete you can get a scholarship. When I tell athletes to dream big there are some very important things they must do in order to make there dreams a reality. Here is an example of what their goals wall should start with:

Lofty Goals Athletically and Academically With Actions

So below I listed both academic and athletic goals with actions. These are purely samples, but it gives you an idea of what you can do in high school and in college to achieve the things you want to achieve. This will help you develop simultaneous goals and actions that allow you to focus on being the best you can be in all facets. What this will do is when one door possibly closes, another will open and when you have an opportunity you will see it. You will also see the opportunity to do both avenues at the same time without adding extra time or pressure to accomplishing your goals. The mistake people and students make is that they:

Never Set Goals or set them improperly
Never Put Action Plans to accomplishing those goals

See below the examples of a very simple goal and action plan

As you can see these set the framework of what has to be done. I always so that these are fluid items that can be changed as often as you want, but it gives the true framework to start knocking down some goals. You can do this as subsets of goals and get as detailed as you want. You can set strength goals, testing goals and much much more, but it all starts with your high level framing. Once you do that you vastly increase simultaneous success in multiple but related areas and give you the ability to measure your actions verse your goals and create a much better outcome.

By David Schuman

David Schuman @nucfootball on twitter @daveschuman on instagram

@nuc_football on instagram

www.nucsports.com