Did transferring from Temple help NFL draft prospects? Nope. | Mike Jensen
Quincy Roche was drafted in the sixth round after transferring from Temple to Miami. Kenny Yeboah, transfer from Temple to Mississippi, went undrafted.
Let’s start with a simple premise from this 2021 NFL draft: Transferring from Temple does not improve your draft position.
The evidence: edge rusher Quincy Roche, transfer from Temple to Miami, sixth-round selection, Pittsburgh Steelers; tight end Kenny Yeboah, transfer from Temple to Mississippi, undrafted.
More evidence: All the non-Power 5 draftees, and the limited number of drafted transfers up to Power 5 schools, showing how the NFL, as always, doesn’t care where you came from as long as you’ve got the goods. Also, the NFL drafts on potential as much as production. Roche moving to the Hurricanes and Yeboah to the Ole Miss Rebels didn’t change that.
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Roche, in particular, is an intriguing case since he was the American Athletic Conference defensive player of the year in 2019, before he decided to transfer, rather than declare for last year’s draft, which also had been a consideration.
Roche was in no way a failure at Miami. He got on the field, was third-team all-Atlantic Coast Conference, contributed 14.5 tackles for loss. He got invited to the Senior Bowl, reportedly had some impressive practices.
So why the sixth round instead of a couple of rounds earlier as some mock drafts had projected? Hard to say except that, for all his high-motor production, Roche, a tick under 6-foot-3 and 243 pounds, isn’t the type of edge rusher deemed a high-end athlete. A jump up to the ACC with even a slight dip in production doesn’t suggest a jump up again in deeper NFL waters.
Yeboah, on the other hand, had been determined to transfer and was looking for a place that would feature a tight end a bit more, and he found it at Mississippi, catching 27 passes in seven games after he had 19 in 10 games the season before for the Owls. So, while transferring didn’t hurt Yeboah, it just didn’t help his draft position since he went undrafted. (Maybe it got him a better free-agent contract. Yeboah immediately signed a guaranteed $200,000 deal with the Jets.)
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The question here, though, is whether transferring up was worth it. Looking at the bios of all the drafted players, no draftees in the first three rounds were transfers up to Power 5 schools from other four-year schools. In those same rounds, 13 draftees were from non-Power 5 schools, including three first-rounders, two from the AAC. Also, there were several third-round transfers down from the Power 5 to the AAC, from Alabama to Central Florida, and UCLA to SMU.
The AAC had players drafted in every round: two in the first (Tulsa, Houston); one in the second (UCF); two in the third (UCF, SMU); five in the fourth (Cincinnati, Tulane, SMU, East Carolina, UCF); two in the fifth (Memphis, Cincinnati); two in the sixth (Houston, UCF); and five in the seventh (Tulane, UCF, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Houston.)
We understand that the NFL drafts on projecting the future. Winning awards doesn’t guarantee you a future. Still, it was startling to see seven AAC defensive players drafted ahead of the 2019 AAC defensive player of the year.
Obviously, there are far fewer transfers up to the Power 5 than the pool of potential draftees outside of the Power 5. It should be noted that up transfers resulted in only four draftees: North Dakota State to LSU in the fourth round, New Mexico State to Arizona in the sixth round, Roche in the sixth, and Arkansas State to Baylor in the seventh.
The best evidence that you are what you are to the NFL regardless of where you’re playing: The Denver Broncos took a guard from Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater in the third round, while interior offensive linemen from Georgia and Alabama went in the sixth round.
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We’re not knocking Quincy Roche here, or suggesting he might have hurt his long-term future. Great guy, tough football player, a thoughtful decision-maker and team leader. Intangibles, off the charts. And if Roche wanted a Power 5 experience, he got one for a season, playing for famed ex-Temple coach Manny Diaz. But if the goal was to move up in the draft, it didn’t happen. Evidence suggests staying put, continuing to dominate in the AAC, would have been the safer play and maybe even the smarter one.
We can’t know that Roche would have been better off staying at Temple, but he wouldn’t have been worse off.