It has been established that Wolf Sports knows how to evaluate the quarterback position better than NFL franchises (and certainly the media)—being higher than all of Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, Brock Purdy, and Bo Nix in the pre-draft process as the top non-consensus hits in recent years.
As we dig into the numbers even more using Pro Football Reference’s career wAV (weighted approximate value) metric to evaluate classes over the years, the success is frankly just as eye-opening when it comes to identifying future superstars.
Based on the top player by career wAV in each draft class from 2017 through 2024, Wolf Sports was highest—compared to their actual draft slot and all media rankings—on an unbelievable six-out-of-eight prospects:
2017: Patrick Mahomes (115 career wAV)
2018: Josh Allen (111 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
2019: A.J. Brown (73 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
2020: Jalen Hurts (79 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
2021: Micah Parsons (67 career wAV)
2022: Brock Purdy (44 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
2023: Jahmyr Gibbs (40 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
2024: Caleb Williams (26 career wAV) — Wolf Sports highest
For 2017, we should note that Patrick Mahomes is a player we labeled as having “very high ceiling” (though obviously should be considered a miss as a Round 1-2 prospect compared to being the No. 10 pick by Kansas City). After him, we were highest on four of the top 10 players in the class: Myles Garrett (though it was a tie with basically everyone as the consensus No. 1 prospect), Christian McCaffrey, Dion Dawkins, and Ryan Ramczyk.
For 2018, the focus here is Josh Allen, but he narrowly edges out Lamar Jackson (110 career wAV)—who also would have been considered a “win” for Wolf Sports as our No. 9 overall prospect in the class.
In 2019, A.J. Brown was inexplicably drafted outside the top 50 with almost every media board having him ranked in the 30-50 range, so it was a decisive advantage for Wolf Sports as a top-10 prospect for us. Jalen Hurts was our No. 25 overall prospect a year later—and he also was drafted outside the top 50, while some “mainstream” analysts didn’t even have him in their top 100.
A loaded 2021 class was a miss for Wolf Sports in terms of having Micah Parsons too low (No. 14 overall), but the NFL drafted him at No. 12—and it was followed up by easily being highest among anyone on Brock Purdy (No. 131, drafted No. 262 and unranked by most in the media), hitting on Jahmyr Gibbs (No. 11, drafted No. 12 and ranked in the 20-35 range by most media rankings), and then being with the consensus on Caleb Williams as the top quarterback in 2025.
Even if we take away the “tie” for Williams, that’s still five out of seven classes where Wolf Sports was highest on the “most valuable” player in the class based on career wAV—including five of the past six classes among those with at least three seasons played in the league.