Most athletic Senior Bowl 2024 NFL Draft prospects on offense via on-field player tracking data

The advent of advanced on-field player tracking data has changed how we interact with the game of football forever. It has allowed teams, coaches, scouts, media, and fans to access an understanding of just how athletic football players are as they're playing the game. And now, thanks to Zebra Technologies, we can measure the on-field […]

Travis May — College Football Managing Editor
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The advent of advanced on-field player tracking data has changed how we interact with the game of football forever. It has allowed teams, coaches, scouts, media, and fans to access an understanding of just how athletic football players are as they're playing the game. And now, thanks to Zebra Technologies, we can measure the on-field athleticism of all the top offensive players at the Senior Bowl too.

Zebra Technologies has actually been an official partner with the Senior Bowl since 2018, and thus we have player tracking data dating back to that year, which gives us a large sample to assess the on-field athleticism of future NFL Draft prospects. Zebra provides data for speed, acceleration, deceleration, explosive efforts, throw velocity, throw spin rate, and more.

"But how can we take that information and convert it into something useful?"

By scaling and combining speed, acceleration, and deceleration data to create our own custom On-Field Athleticism Score for every player and position group. That allows us to create fairly straight forward on-field athleticism ranking with players possessing a score between 0 and 100.

For quarterbacks we do something similar, but slightly different because they aren't typically engaging in full athletic efforts during Senior Bowl practice. We create a QB Speed & Spin Score using velocity, spin rate, and air yardage data to essentially provide an objective measure of raw arm talent put on display.

Before we dive into the results from this year's Senior Bowl, it's important to note that these scores aren't a perfect representation of a player's overall athleticism. However, on average these measures do explain more than 30% of variance in both forty-yard dash times and agility scores at the NFL Combine, which is a fairly significant impact.

So, without further ado, here are the results that should tell us exactly who the most athletic offensive players at the 2024 Senior Bowl were when it comes to the On-Field Athleticism Score and QB Speed & Spin Score.

Quarterbacks Speed & Spin Score

  1. Joe Milton, Tennessee – 87.4
  2. Michael Pratt, Tulane.- 74.3
  3. Michael Penix Jr., Washington – 60.8
  4. Carter Bradley, South Alabama – 58.36
  5. Bo Nix, Oregon – 49.8
  6. Sam Hartman, Notre Dame – 44.4
  7. Spencer Rattler, South Carolina – 27.9

It's no surprise that Joe Milton has the best arm. If only he could be accurate with it. The Speed & Spin Score is anchored around 50, so only one quarterback at this year's Senior Bowl tested very far below average among QBs dating back to 2018.

Running Back On-Field Athleticism Score

  1. Dylan Laube, New Hampshire – 64.2
  2. MarShawn Lloyd, USC – 62.4
  3. Cody Schrader, Missouri – 49.3
  4. Kimani Vidal, Troy – 45.9
  5. Emani Bailey, TCU – 44.6
  6. Michael Wiley, Arizona – 44.1
  7. Daijun Edwards, Georgia – 41.0
  8. Isaiah Davis, South Dakota State – 32.9
  9. Ray Davis, Kentucky – 28.9
  10. Rasheen Ali, Marshall – 25.7

Dylan Laube was a surprise to some, but he led his team in rushing, receiving, kick return, and punt return yards. He's a playmaker. MarShawn Lloyd was the only other above historical averages for Senior Bowl running backs.

Wide Receivers

  1. Luke McCaffrey, Rice – 69.3
  2. Javon Baker, UCF – 69.2
  3. Brenden Rice, USC – 67.0
  4. Devontez Walker, UNC – 64.4
  5. Jamari Thrash, Louisville – 57.8
  6. Ricky Pearsall, Florida – 57.8
  7. Jha'Quan Jackson, Tulane – 56.3
  8. Malachi Corley, Western Kentucky – 50.6
  9. Ladd McConkey, Georgia – 46.4
  10. Ryan Flournoy, SEMO – 43.9

McCaffrey makes sense given that his brothers is Christian McCaffrey. And Baker was the most efficient deep threat in college football last season. None of the other wide receivers beyond this top ten registered marks above the 40th percentile.

Tight Ends

  1. Theo Johnson, Penn State – 57.3
  2. Ben Sinnott, Kansas State – 54.2
  3. Brevyn Spann-Ford, Minnesota – 48.7
  4. Jared Wiley, TCU – 43.5
  5. AJ Barner, Michigan – 38.4
  6. Jaheim Bell – 35.7

This wasn't a very athletic tight end group overall, perhaps because they're all massive with one exception. Bell clearly added weight and didn't maintain the same elite level athetlicism.

Offensive Linemen

  1. Kingsley Eguakun, Florida – 73.3
  2. Andrew Raym, Oklahoma – 61.5
  3. Christian Haynes, UConn – 58.5
  4. Patrick Paul, Houston – 55.9
  5. Brandon Coleman, TCU – 55.7
  6. Charles Turner III, LSU – 54.5
  7. Kingsley Suamataia, BYU – 53.2
  8. Jackson Powers-Johnson, Oregon – 49.8
  9. Layden Robinson, Texas A&M – 49.4
  10. Christian Jones, Texas – 47.9

There were several more offensive linemen that measured rather terrible on the field, but these top ten options were all near average.

Be looking for more content like this all throughout NFL Draft season from the A to Z team. If you have any questions or comments feel free to reach out to me directly @FF_TravisM on X.

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