The undrafted free agent market is almost as hectic as the first day of NFL Free Agency. NFL teams do not even wait for the draft to end to start calling agents of players who are still available or could be once the draft concludes. There is 15 Hall of Famers who were undrafted and when 53-man rosters were named before Week 1 there were 486 players who were undrafted accounting for 29% of all players in the league.
While the high rounds are usually where the most touted talent is, undrafted players have to work nearly twice as hard just to get an opportunity on the field. The battle and an uphill climb that many undrafted free agents go through often prepares them to have very long successful careers.
With that being said, 29% of the NFL may be made up of undrafted free agents but only a small few undrafted free agents make it out of their first training camp. Some of the best general managers in the NFL can be successful not only in the draft but acquiring the players who were not selected during the seven rounds.
You cannot judge a front office on how they have failed with undrafted free agents because those players are all undrafted for a reason. It could be size, skill, off-the-field issues, college level, etc. Instead, the front office is judged on how many players they can find in the undrafted market who contribute one, two, or three years down the road. Brandon Beane has signed twenty-nine undrafted free agents as general manager for the Buffalo Bills. Here is how those signings panned out.