For decades, the best college football players left school after three years, as soon as the NFL would take them. That’s changing. Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta doesn’t see it as a good thing.
The NCAA now allows players to make money off lucrative name, image and likeness deals, and the NCAA has also become more lax about granting players extra years of eligibility. That means players are waiting to turn pro, and DeCosta says he sees more older players who have less room for growth in the NFL.
“There is a changing dynamic we’ve seen with the draft,” DeCosta said. “Players are older. The average age of the players is not necessarily older but there are older players in the draft. We’re seeing more 24 and 25-year-old players. That’s because of covid initially, and now because of NIL, guys are getting paid to stay in. That’s problematic for us because if guys are coming in older they’ve probably got less upside. They’re not three-contract players in some cases, they’re two-contract players. And in some cases they’ve got more injuries. They’ve been playing college football longer so they’ve taken on more injuries.”
DeCosta, who has been with the Ravens for 30 years, says the team has more players who will turn 25 as rookies than ever before.
“We’re trying to get a handle on that,” DeCosta said. “It’s tough for us to assess what that means. It’s something we’ve seen over the last three years, this will be the third year, 2024, 2025 and 2026. We might have had 4 percent of our players on the draft board 24 1/2 or older prior to 2024, now that number is up to 18 percent. So we’ve seen a 14 percent increase in older players on the draft board. That’s something that we don’t really understand fully what that means. I don’t think it’s a good thing, certainly. Historically we’ve tried to draft younger players when we can. That’s something we feel strongly. But now we’ve got 18 percent of the draft board that’s over 24 years old. So that’s going to change the way we target players.”
College football players are now professionals, making money and choosing their own career paths in a way they never had before. It’s a changing landscape in college football, and that changes the NFL as well.
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