Top-30 Visits for NFL Draft Prospects: A Decade’s Worth of Data

Your timeline has likely been inundated over the last week with mentions of “top-30 visits” for NFL teams.

We got curious… what does this actually mean in terms of NFL Draft capital?

On Wednesday’s Fantasy Footballers Dynasty Podcast, we discussed some of the data over the last decade and the implications for a few teams looking for RBs in the 2025 NFL Draft.

This article is a chance to unpack the data and give you a few thresholds to consider before the NFL Draft.

The Decade of Visiting Data

Think of this like a dating game. We are trying to play matchmaker between NFL teams and their prospects and the top-30 visit piece of information is simply another way for us to connect the dots. I was interested in the following questions being answered:

• How often do top-30 visits/workouts correlate with teams picking that player? (An exact match!)
• If a team uses multiple top-30 visits on QB/RB/WR, how likely are they to take that position in the draft?
• Do NFL teams use a tier-based system knowing their is an opportunity cost at every pick selection spot?

The database I used was from former Footballers writer Kent Weyrauch. He created a dashboard for NFL Draft visits cataloguing them all the way back to 2015. In other words, we get a decade’s worth of data. We’re talking 1,756 total top-30 visits considered and 533 private workouts. This doesn’t include TEs or any other positions which would’ve added another 4,703 top-30 visits and 1,120 more workouts to consider!

I do need to give a few cautionary thoughts before we dive into the data.

I strictly looked at “visits” labeled as top-30 or a private workout.

While we can categorize teams “meeting” with a player in a number of different ways, I wanted to hone in on the most specific of meetings. In other words, given a team has a limited supply of visits (30) and that private workouts are generally low in number every year, this data set felt (on the outset) the easiest to begin to grapple with.

Other meetings such as the Senior Bowl, Combine, virtual interviews and Pro Day visits were not considered in this study. Given that every team has some type of representation at most of these events, it is hard to distinguish their level of interest regardless of what puff piece your local beat writer or talk radio personality wants to drub up.

I do need to also mention that 2020 provides a bit of a blip on the radar of this data set. With top-30 visits and private workouts being postponed and the draft going virtual due to COVID, it is tough to truly gauge that year. The contribution looks fairly low that year considering high-impact, 1st round picks barely show up in the set. For example, CeeDee Lamb is listed as having just one top-30 visit that year… and it was with the Jets. None of the 1st round QBs from that year (Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert and Jordan Love) have any private workouts listed either.

Not every top-30 visit is the same.

After combing through hundreds and hundred of prospects, there were a couple of common themes worth mentioning on a 10,000-foot high-level type of view.

The raw number of top-30 visits + workouts is not at all an indicator of draft capital.

Louisville QB Tyler Shough received a ton of media buzz within the last week based on the parade of top-30 visits he participated in: NYG, CLE, SEA, PIT, IND, NYJ, LV, and NO. Whew. The oldest QB in the class (25.6) sounds like a popular man right now but this isn’t at all something out of the ordinary.

Looking back over the last decade, here are some other QBs who went Round 3 or later who had similar raw visit totals:

• 14- James Morgan (4.125)
• 12- Hendon Hooker (3.68)
• 7- Malik Willis (3.86)
• 6- Bryce Petty (4.103), Clayton Tune (5.139), Connor Cook (4.100), Dak Prescott (4.135), Davis Webb (3.87), Dorian Thompson-Robinson (5.140), Michael Hiers(?) UDFA

In fact, it actually intuitively makes more sense that a player projected to go later in the draft would have more teams interested given there are more opportunities to take him on late Day 2 or Day 3.

I’m not buying this late Round 1 surge of interest with Shough. Teams don’t suddenly adjust their boards but rather solidify their evaluations. In fact, here are the 1st round QBs with the lowest final NFL Mock Draft Database Big Board rank since 2016. Shough’s is currently at 84.

Some positions see more top-30 visits than others and QBs who likely will not be taken as starters are one of those positions.

A top-30 visit can be a smokescreen but we aren’t on the inside. It’s fun to speculate and even after the draft you could try to write that narrative but each team views this differently. We know the Rams historically have punted top-30 visits and it’s clear new Jaguars GM James Gladstone is taking similar approach.

To visit or not to visit? That is NOT the question to be asked.

Keep in mind that this visitation process is not handled the same way. We can’t always make 1-to-1 comparisons among position groups.

Jonathan Taylor had one reported top-30 visit, and it wasn’t with the Colts. Drake London had 4 top-30 visits (KC, WAS, DAL, NYJ) and yet none of them were with the team that selected him 8th overall: ATL. JSN had 9(!) and none were with the Seahawks.

Does that mean we abandon all hope?

Let me give you a visual. I randomly scrolled down to the “Ts” in the RB dataset simply because my son (Truman) asked me too. I thought this would help give some credence to the point. For someone like Todd Gurley, he had more opportunities to “match” with an appropriate team than Tony Pollard or Travis Etienne who each had just one official top-30 visit.

You might conclude “oh well, Gurley went top-10 in the draft” so he was a hot commodity. Yet, the Rams are conspicuously not among those teams that brought him in for a top-30 visit. Etienne, on the other hand, brings up another important point: not the player but the team utilizing their top-30 visits for that specific position is actually more important among RBs and WRs.

In 2021, the Steelers used five top-30 visits on RB that year seemingly zeroing in on a few players who might be available at pick 24. They selected Najee Harris but it seems Etienne was at least on their radar along with a few other backs projected to go later based on their final MockDraftDatabase number. The Jaguars also brought in Kenneth Gainwell and Jermar Jefferson, who both were Day 3 picks.

I will go further into the implications for RBs and WRs as their visits are often indicators of a high likelihood they will spend Day 1 or Day 2 draft capital on that position.

The QB Data

I decided to narrow in on QBs taken in the 1st round of the NFL Draft since 2015. We have 35 QBs from Jameis Winston all the way to Bo Nix last year. What do they all have in common?

Every 1st Round QB* over the last decade had a publicly known top-30 visit OR workout with the NFL team that drafted them.

The lone exception* was Tua Tagovailoa, who taped his private workout and distributed it to all 32 teams “in order to follow health and safety guidelines set forth during the coronavirus pandemic” in 2020.

Usually, I caution anyone from using historical data to justify future predictions. Statistics are often descriptive of what has happened in the past, not necessarily prescriptive of what will happen in the future. However, a 100% hit rate is certainly impressive and dismisses the notion that NFL teams have thrown smokescreens during the pre-draft process of which QB they will select. I’d argue that it is essential in connecting the dots to specific teams.

For the 2025 class, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders might have the widest range of opinions of any player in the draft. I wrote up his Rookie Profile on the site if you want to see my opinions (both for fantasy and NFL purposes) based on his production and film. But if we take out the noise of “what should the NFL do with Sanders” and “this is what we think will happen”, we are left with only a handful of teams based on that 100% hit rate top-30 visit + workout formula above.

The glaring omission here is the New Orleans Saints, who are the current betting favorite to take Sanders. There are a couple of other  scenarios if you are willing to sit with this data long enough.

• If Shedeur is NOT a 1st rounder, who cares about that hit rate?
• A team could trade up into the 1st round and blow up this precious data! Aha!
• “There is a first time for everything, Kyle!”

I get it. This data is not meant to say “I told you so!” but rather give you a menu to start from as we inch closer to the NFL Draft.

The RB Data

Since 2015, I looked at 57 total RBs who went on Day 1 or Day 2 of the NFL Draft.

If you’re trying to read the tea leaves and connect the dots between top-30 visits and prospects, here is the “direct match” hit rate over the last decade. By direct match, I mean this team used a top-30 or workout on that prospect and selected them in the draft.

For 1st round, 50% is actually a solid hit rate given all the chaos that ensues in the NFL Draft given trades. However, it is a relatively small sample size to work with knowing we’ve had just 12 1st round RBs drafted since 2015.

Teams With Multiple Visits

Perhaps the more important is what the teams will do IF they use multiple top-30 visits for the RB position.

That hit rate skyrockets as we move to 3+ visits giving us a team-based signal rather than honing in on player and a specific landing spot. We want to play matchmaker for teams based on top-30 visits but perhaps the better task to undertake is assessing the tiers available for a team that looks like they will be taking a RB.

This might look like gibberish to you but here are some teams who used multiple visits on the RB position prior to the NFL Draft. You can see the domino affect of teams who met with players assessing who would be available at their next pick. Despite the fact Washington met with Sony Michel, he could not match with them given the fact New England selected him at Pick 13. They did the same with Ronald Jones, whom Tampa Bay took at Pick 38. Yet Derrius Guice (remember him?!) was available and they took him at 59th overall.

The takeaway for me isn’t necessarily this is who they met with but the intentions of the team to take someone in that early window of Day 2.

We talked up the 2025 Steelers on the show because it seems that they are showing their cards at the RB position. Using our NFL Draft Picks page in the Dynasty Pass, here is what the Steelers have available

9(!) top-30 visits for RBs is the most I have found since 2015 and the varying “tiers” of prospects they brought in also might tip their hand based on their draft capital.

• Pick 21– Hampton or Henderson?
• No 2nd Round Pick
• Pick 83– If they didn’t take a RB in 1st, there seem to be a number of guys on their board.
• Pick 123– If they didn’t take a RB in 3rd, there seem to be a number of guys on their board.

Now this also doesn’t mean these are the only RBs on the menu for the Steelers to choose from. It is just hard connecting the dots based on what we haven’t seen. Perhaps my easiest takeaway is that, based on history, the Steelers have an 80+ percent chance of taking a RB within the first four rounds despite only have three picks.

Player-Adjacent Intel

The last piece of information I’m calling “player-adjacent intel”. If a RB receives a good amount of top-30 visits (4 or more), I found that it often signaled that the teams who used a top-30 visit on the player were on the hunt.

Take for instance Tevin Coleman. His MockDraftDatabase final number is not available to use but he was seen as someone who consistently was being mocked as a Day 2 pick.

Six of the 7  teams who had him in for a top-30 visit ended up selecting a RB in the draft. Five of them were in the first four rounds of the draft. Obviously the Chargers would not select Coleman after taking Melvin Gordon with the 15th overall pick. But it signals that they could’ve been doing some scouting and tier-based drafting along the way. Coleman was taken before David Johnson and yet the Cardinals signaled that they wanted to take a RB. (Man, I miss peak David Johnson.)

The WR Data

Since 2015, I looked at 137 total WRs who went on Day 1 or Day 2 of the NFL Draft.

If you’re trying to play super sleuth with WRs, good luck. The hit rates of exact matches have been much lower than RBs.

44% is still quite indicative and if we laser-focus on top-10 WRs, we only have 3 guys (Amari Cooper, Drake London, and Mike Williams) as non-matches. This year’s class doesn’t currently have anyone projected to go in the top-10 (if you don’t count Travis Hunter) so using the direct match data might seem tough for WRs.

Teams With Multiple Visits

This is what I find most intriguing about the WRs. Teams use more total top-30 visits for the position given the fact you are looking at a wide array of skillsets and positions (outside, slot, nine-route specialists, specials teams) to fit your teams needs. Thus, it was common for teams to use 3 or more top-30 visits for the WR position.

Hitting above 60+ percent for teams with 4 or more visits certainly is something worth writing down. We want WRs who are seeing Day 1 or Day 2 draft capital and it seems NFL teams are intending to use earlier picks on these WRs if that amount of top-30 visits are utilized. However, we do need to recognize the varying “tiers” teams are working with.

The Bears seemed in on Courtland Sutton YET he wasn’t available by the time they were on the clock at pick 51. What did they do? They took Memphis WR Anthony Miller. He’s not on this list but the signal from the data above said they were likely to take a WR within the 1st 3 rounds of the draft.

Let’s use the 2025 Steelers as another example. Currently, they have 4 reported top-30 visits in my data set. Based on the MockDraftDatabase number, you can also start to piece together the puzzle that they want to take a WR in the first three rounds. However, Pittsburgh does not have a 2nd round pick making this a much more difficult team to assess.

Based on this data, it seems they are zeroing in on a Day 2/3 WR. With DK Metcalf on board, it seems like they won’t force the issue given their lack of draft capital and the signal they want to take a RB as well early.

Washington State WR Kyle Williams (hey my uncle is actually named that!) has been another name screaming up draft boards. The seven top-30 visits might give you the impression someone is going to take him “earlier than expected”. Instead, I’d rather view this as multiple teams see him fitting in the tier of being a late Day 2 pick. Rememeber, raw top-30 visits do not exactly correlate with draft capital. Malachi Corley had 9 last year, 2021 7th round pick Mike Strachan had 10, and Xavier Legette had 14(!) last year.