With Dante Moore making the decision to go back to college for his senior year I wanted to just look at what the risks could be with making that decision.

Making it in the NFL is difficult. It doesn’t matter who drafts you, how great you were in college, how great your combine or pro day numbers were. It is really hard to make it in the NFL. Every year we see countless “can’t miss” prospects completely miss in the NFL. The big benefit for those who miss is if they increase their draft stock they land relatively lucrative fully guaranteed rookie contracts and receive more and more opportunities to either start for the team who drafted them or salvage their career with another team who thinks better coaching will get the job done.

Risking draft positioning is never a good thing if you feel you have it secured near the top. The threat of playing poorly in a final year in college exists. The threat of injury exists. NIL money is a big improvement for the college athlete but it still pales in comparison to what you will earn as a top pick in the NFL draft. Because the draft is slotted there isn’t much you can do to really improve your earnings with a great year the way you could pre 2011 all you really can do is hold your draft contract when you are already projected to go highly.

How much does draft positioning help a QB? Here is a look at the median earnings, inflated by the salary cap, for all QBs taken in the NFL between 2011 and 2019 sorted by round.

These numbers are skewed by small samples and numbers can be lower if a round is dominated by players selected mainly from 2017 to 2019, but you can certainly see the trends here. Being selected high is generally a golden ticket. The worst performers were Jake Locker and Josh Rosen both slightly over $28 million. The next worst was Blaine Gabbert, generally considered a bust who was able to use the draft status to get up to about $52 million. RGIII was at $68M while Mitchell Trubisky is $74 million.

My guess is the average of the rest of round 1 and the entire round 2 numbers are the real numbers for the non top 10 status. The bottom here was Johnny Manziel at $11 million and he didn’t even earn his guaranteed rookie contract because he was immature. Paxton Lynch is next at $15 million. Round 2 had Christian Hackenberg at $4.3 million and DeShone Kizer at $6.3 million.

Round 3 sees us drop over $18 million and then $5.4 million for round 4. Round 5 had a little bounce to nearly $8 million while round 6 and 7 did not have a lot of success. UDFA’s are often quickly in and out.

This doesnt mean that where you are drafted defines your upside. Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins are the top two earners among all of the QBs in this timeframe and were not picked anywhere near round 1 but they were the exceptions. Like I said above. Making it in the NFL is tough but that rookie contract locks in nearly $50 million for those top picks and basically covers a lot of financial ground. The soft factor of getting to hang around to bring out that potential for top picks is also a real thing.

Now maybe Moore was not going to be selected in the top 5. He may have been advised that teams were not as hot for him as the draft experts currently are. That is a totally different scenario if it is the case, but if he was a lock to go somewhere in the top 5 this is a real risky financial decision on his end. Hopefully it works out for him and he gets selected near the top of the draft next year, but this is a big risk and to play it off like it isn’t because he might get drafted by the Raiders or Jets just isn’t based on any historical evidence or any real idea of how contracts have worked out in the NFL.