The Rise of the Undrafted Rookie: Agents new market to tap.

The Jewish New Year begins this week on Thursday and the NFL season starts Thursday as well. As Jew combining the two for me is the ultimate New Years. Sadly I cannot watch the game until after the Sabbath. This is just a side note I wanted to share with my followers.

            Lets talk about the recent change with NFL rookies making the 53-man roster of an NFL team. This change is affecting smaller NFL agents whether they choose to see it or not

            Most teams draft about 8-10 players every year.  It used to be that most of the drafted Rookies made the 53-man roster of the team that drafted them.  Not anymore. There has been a rise of undrafted rookies (UDR) making teams. Rookies drafted in rounds 4-7 are nolonger sure locks to make a team or their practice squad.

“Last year, 37 percent of the 622 undrafted rookies signed by the 32 franchises won Week One jobs, either on the practice squad (131) or the 53-man roster (98).” Per Profootballtalk.com

Flash forward to this year, and lets look at some of the teams that kept undrafted rookies over the drafted ones and veterans. The New England Patriots have 14 rookies ontheir team this year and half of them are undrafted. Six UDR’s made the New Orleans Saints roster. The Houston Texans had four make theirs. These are not lowly teams just trying to find a way to win. These teams are all predicted to make the playoffs this year and are among the most known teams in the NFL.

Here are some names of undrafted players that are in the Hall of fame, still playing or headed there. There is Arian Foster, Vontaz Burfict, Joshua Cribbs, Tony Romo, Jeff Saturday, and London Fletcher.

You can watch a great video of Arian Foster and why he is so amazing. (There is some music used and if its not your taste just mute it.)

Why is this so significant?

            Drafted players sign bigger contracts than undrafted players. Most of them sign about 2 million-dollar contracts for 5 years of their service. Undrafted players sign a league rookie minimum, which is around $375,000 a season. These deals are short term. These UDR’s receive little in signing bonus or guaranteed money; both were between $4000 and $6000. This is one of the contributing factors as to why drafted players made teams over them. A drafted player has way money guaranteed, so the organization rather keep the player they have to pay rather than cut that player and still have to pay him as well as the undrafted player.

            This recent change does not affect big name agents like Drew Rosenhause, but for smaller known agents who have maybe 5-30 clients this is a big deal. A lot of these smaller agents make money on their late round draft picks making the 53-man roster. If a drafted player signs a 2-5 million dollar contract over 3 years and then gets cut and goes to the practice squad the contract changes completely. A practice squad player makes around $5,700 a week. That is a huge drop off for an agent who can only take up to 3% off the top of each month’s salary. When an undrafted player makes the 53-man roster his contract is changed and he is given more money thus the agent benefits from this. There used to be a philosophy in the agents circles about only representing players that were for sure going to get drafted and after that might get drafted. Most undrafted rookies did not have an agent up until recently. Now suddenly the undrafted rookie market has become a new pool for smaller agents to tap into.