One of the main reasons we expanded (significantly) our NFL Draft coverage for 2012 (in addition to having the good fortune to work with Matt Richner) is that this specific article (and the projections analysis we have already done to supplement it) is my favorite article of the year every year. It shows off just about everything we can do with our technology, from generating inputs for new players, to predicting playing time, health and coaching styles, to playing through entire seasons 50,000 times. It also signifies the beginning of football season. From late March, when we first started publishing analysis on the draft, through January, 2013, football will be a priority. I spent much of the last six weeks preparing the analysis in this NFL Draft section and will continue to work on analysis and build tools for the NFL and college football seasons until they begin. And now we know where these new players are going.

Here are last two years' articles: Ranking the 2011 Rookies, Ranking the Draft Classes 2011, Ranking the 2010 Rookies and Ranking the Draft Classes 2010. It's hard to argue against Andy Dalton, Aldon Smith, Marcel Dareus and A.J. Green or Ndamukong Suh, Sam Bradford and Eric Berry as some of the most positively impactful rookies in 2011 and 2010 respectively. Furthermore, like Detroit, Tampa Bay and Kansas City in 2010, Cincinnati, Detroit, Denver and the New York Giants definitely benefited from their rookie classes to make big leaps as well. There are some hits and misses after those players and teams, but that's what makes this fun.

Player rankings below be based on positive impact from output of the upcoming season played 50,000 times. How the players translate to the 2012 season as rookies and how the fit on their new teams are crucial. In a sense, this is essentially a fantasy football draft of every rookie, where contribution of non-skill position players can also be measured (and for actual fantasy football drafts, consider this an early look at the skill position players who will be of value as rookies).

Obviously, playing time, role and opportunity matter. For instance, our top player in 2011, Andy Dalton, appeared at the time to be the most likely quarterback to start from Week 1. In 2012, three quarterbacks who have a great chance of starting early in the season rank in our top nine overall - Robert Griffin III (#1), Andrew Luck (#3) and Brandon Weeden (#9).

How Do We This?
To come up with statistical inputs for rookies, we run a very complex set of algorithms that factor college stats, previous utilization and strength of competition, combine measurables, role and expected utilization of the player's NFL team, previous performance of a similar player in that role for this coaching staff and previous performance of similar rookies at that position in general. This allows us to predict both the player's projected ratio stats such as yards-per-carry, percentage of tackles made while on the field and passing completion percentage, as well as his forecasted usage for the upcoming NFL season. Then we can compare all rookies based on who we think will make the biggest positive impact for his NFL team in his first year. It's a system that I have applied to the previous three drafts and with great success. These projections have highlighted the likely success of Andy Dalton (#1 overall last year), A.J. Green, Von Miller, Aldon Smith, J.J. Watt, DeMarco Murray, Percy Harvin, Jerod Mayo, Louis Delmas, Sean Smith, Ryan Clady, Eric Berry, Sean Weatherspoon and even Super Bowl hero Tracy Porter, while suggesting that Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder, Delone Carter, Jonathan Baldwin, Glenn Dorsey, Vernon Gholston, Everette Brown and even Matt Ryan were/are overrated.

We also take this analysis and apply it to teams to rank the impact of the rookie classes of all 32 teams. See our NFL Rookie Class Rankings 2012 for more.

2012 NFL Rookie Rankings