Looking at the 2025 UDFA Class

This article was originally published on Over The Cap.

With the regular season now a few days away and rosters mainly set I wanted to take a look at how the undrafted free agent process played out this year and what we can gather, if anything, from the guarantees they received. These are based on the rosters that were in place on the morning of September 1^st and does not include any changes that may have happened later that day.

First let’s look at the rate of players who are still on their original UDFA contract for their original team. This includes players on IR.

The Vikings lead the NFL with nearly 44% of their UDFA signings making the team this year, which is pretty impressive. The Vikings are a team that is cap strapped in the future and this may have played a role in seeing the need to develop younger cheap players to fill in the depth over the next two seasons. The Bucs come in second with 42% of their undrafted players still there. This is a team that has really shifted to keeping homegrown players over the last few years and developing undrafted talent is one of the ways you do that. Finally the Browns kept 35% of their players. The Browns, like the Vikings, have some future cap troubles.

Dallas and the Raiders had a total whiff, not keeping, at least initially, any of their players. That’s not a great look for either team, but especially Vegas considering they signed 20 players this offseason. Nine teams only kept one player and the Titans being on that list is really surprising to me.

When we bring Practice Squads into account we can see the differences for some teams as they clearly are seeing this as a chance to develop without taking up a roster spot at least at the start of the season.

The Commanders made it a priority to find ways to keep working with a good chunk of their signings this year. A few teams with small undrafted classes show up here along with the Vikings and Bucs. The Jets also had a pretty high rate following a similar path as the Commanders by using the practice squad as a tool to further evaluate their undrafted players.

The Titans are the big lose here with only 22% of the UDFAs on their team. That to me is wild considering how bad the team was last year. The same goes for the Giants with only 29% making the roster in some form.

Now let’s look at what we can learn from the salary guarantee ranges for the undrafted players.

Not surprisingly the big guaranteed salary led to the highest retention rates. Only 23% of the players with $200,000 or more of a guarantee are out of the NFL. The guarantees for a majority of these contracts are offset by practice squad salaries if the players are released so the teams are more likely to keep those players since it is already a sunk cost. When we get between $150K and $200K we only have 32% out of the NFL and that goes up to 37% when looking at a $100K guarantee.

The oddball number is the $75K to $100K group that saw 60% flame out of the NFL already but they did have a rather high percentage make the 53 man. I guess it was a hit or miss category, but this year it is a pretty small sample of players so I would chalk it more up to that.

Once we get below $50K the numbers spike dramatically. Generally, it hovers right around the 60% mark for being out of the NFL and the percentages making the active rosters really drops. That is probably a signal that if you are being offered guarantees in these ranges it is probably best to really focus on the team you sign with. Probably better to sign with a team like the Bucs, Vikings or Commanders, who have a high roster rate, even if the guarantee is slightly less than coming from a team like the Titans. The guarantee doesn’t offer you enough protection to slip to the practice squad.