244 Top Prospects, Five Years Later
Decile 1 DMX rookies, 2001–2021 · October 30, 2026
I wanted to know what insights I could glean from looking at top rookie prospects and seeing who succeeded and who failed and why. I looked at 244 rookies drafted from 2001 through 2021. I stopped at 2021 so I can have five full years of data for every player. So, don’t come at me with “what about JSN? or Marvin Harrison Jr.? and all those recent picks,” because they don’t have 5 years of data available. The 244 players were Decile 1 players in my DMX metric. If you want to learn more about deciles or DMX, read here. But to quickly summarize, DMX is a prospect score that I built using draft capital, athletic testing and age-adjusted college production.
I count as a “hit” at least one season in the first five years that is starter quality, top 12 for QB and TE, top 30 for RB and WR. So, for example, Davante Adams was WR73 as a rookie, WR67 his sophomore year and WR9 his third year. True third year breakout, that’s the hit we are looking for, and he hit again the fourth and fifth years as WR14 and WR3. Using PPR scoring. So here’s the high level result:
| Position | Players | Hit at least once | When the first hit comes |
|---|---|---|---|
| RB | 71 | 79% | Usually as a rookie (41% hit in year 1) |
| TE | 48 | 73% | Years 2–3; only 8% hit as rookies |
| WR | 96 | 56% | Of WRs with no hit by year 3, only 9% hit later |
| QB | 29 | 52% | Years 1–2 (21% as rookies, 41% by year 2) |
This is interesting in its own right. RBs and TEs from Decile 1 DMX scores hit 79% and 73%, respectively, in the first five years. WRs and QBs are much lower, at only 56% and 52% respectively. Remember, there could be breakouts outside of the first 5 years. This is limiting the view just for the sake of understanding growth from the rookie year. Something to note for WRs that are decile 1, only 9% hit at all if they haven’t done so by year three. That’s a real takeaway for your roster development.
Digging deeper, I looked at things like health, passing offense and role to help identify some reasons for these results. Here are some nuggets to consider:
- WRs who spent no weeks on IR or reserve in years 1–3 hit 75% of the time. With 9 or more weeks on reserve, the number falls to 24%. This is intuitive on its face, but to see how starkly different those percentages are is the takeaway.
- RBs, WRs and TEs who end up in a top-third passing game hit 82% of the time, against 60% for everyone else. So a good passing offense is a helper, but not a killer if you’re not in one.
- And in the obvious column, any rookie who was in the top third for share of their team’s touches or targets tends to hit a lot, 90% of the time. But rookies in the bottom third share only hit 48% of the time, a large difference there too.
For WRs, usually the rookie year sets the foundation; for RBs it’s just the starting point. If a WR finishes top-36 his rookie year, he hits after that 88% of the time. If he finishes outside the top 60, he hits 34% of the time. If you can get a premium for a decile 1 player that finished outside the top 60 in their rookie year, that may be a dynasty sell window, though keep in mind my example above…Davante Adams was WR73 his rookie year, and you know the rest of that story. Btw, for RBs a quiet rookie year means much less, 70% still hit later.
I hope some of these statistics help you think about dynasty roster development. I’m going to keep digging into the data and take a look at decile 2 players next time, to see how the outcomes change, and how it can impact your dynasty rosters. Happy hunting!