5 mistakes the Denver Broncos must avoid in the 2022 NFL Draft
Denver Broncos mistake to avoid no. 4: Compromising on high RAS players
George Paton does a great job of keeping things pretty close to the vest.
He doesn’t give a lot away, but I think one thing we can tell about Paton’s preference pretty definitively is that he prefers players with high RAS scores.
We didn’t see it with 100 percent of his acquisitions last year, but it was pretty darn close.
Whether we were looking at free agent pickups, practice squad pickups, drafted players, undrafted players, in-season trade acquisitions — it didn’t matter.
Almost every one of them had a high RAS score.
What is RAS and why does it matter? RAS is “Relative Athletic Score” and a higher RAS means that the player tested very well in terms of height, weight, speed, explosiveness, quickness, etc.
The #Dolphins, #Ravens, #Panthers, and #Broncos 2021 draft classes (along with 30 other teams) had 6 elite #RAS athletes, tied for 13th all time(out of 1,076 draft classes). pic.twitter.com/Tl4wZaFIRp
— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) May 3, 2021
This was very clearly prioritized by Paton in last year’s draft and it carried over into regular season acquisitions.
Although it wasn’t unanimous, I think there’s a clear correlation there between the selections that “hit” for the Broncos and the ones that didn’t, at least immediately.
Again, Paton emphasized last year the need to improve team speed, and adding high RAS players certainly accomplishes that. The Broncos need to stick with high RAS guys and although RAS isn’t everything, it’s a pretty big one.