Every position has an arc: a climb as young players learn the pro game, a plateau in the prime years, and a decline as athleticism fades. But the shape of that arc is different for a running back than for a quarterback, and different again for a receiver or tight end. These rules encode where the climbs and the cliffs actually sit, position by position.
Fires when a player reaches his position's decline age: running backs at 28, receivers and tight ends at 31, kickers at 40. Quarterbacks are handled separately (see below). Team defenses have no individual age and are excluded.
Aging is not uniform across positions, so a single age threshold would be wrong for almost everyone. Running backs, who absorb the most contact and lean hardest on explosiveness, fall off earliest — 28 is the well-known inflection point. Receivers and tight ends, whose games depend more on route craft and size than on raw burst, hold their value years longer, so their threshold sits at 31. Kickers can play accurately deep into their thirties; their line is 40. When a player crosses his position's age, the projection is trimmed 15%.
Quarterback aging is bimodal, so AutoTiers refuses to apply one flat age to the position. Dual-threat quarterbacks lean on a rushing floor that erodes as mid-twenties lower-body explosiveness fades, so they decline early. Pocket passers ride arm talent and a supporting cast and can sustain elite play into their late thirties and beyond. To tell them apart, the rule looks at prior-season rush attempts: a quarterback with 60 or more (about 3.5 a game — the point where rushing stops being incidental scramble yardage and becomes a real, legs-dependent part of his value) is treated as mobile and gets the earlier cliff at 31. Everyone else is treated as a pocket passer and gets the later cliff at 38. A quarterback whose rushing volume is unknown is assumed to be a pocket passer — the conservative choice, since it is better to under-penalize an unknown-mobility quarterback than to falsely age a durable pocket passer.
One deliberate interaction: for a running back 28 or older who also carried a monster workload last year, this penalty is designed to stack with the veteran band of the 370-touch rule. That combined haircut is intended and carefully bounded so the two penalties reinforce the same aging story without double-counting it.
Fires when a receiver or quarterback is in his second NFL season (one year of experience).
The second-year jump is one of the most dependable development patterns in football. Rookie receivers and quarterbacks are usually learning the playbook, the speed of the pro game, and their place in the offense all at once; year two is when the game slows down, the role expands, and the production catches up to the talent. AutoTiers adds 8% to second-year receivers and quarterbacks to price in the expected leap before the market fully does.
Fires when a tight end is in his third NFL season (two years of experience).
Tight end is the position where breakouts come late. Unlike receivers — whose leap peaks in year two — tight ends have to master blocking assignments and the route tree at the same time, and the position is notorious for taking three years to click. The pattern shows up in the hit-rate data: for tight ends drafted in the first two rounds, the rate of finishing as a weekly starter jumps from roughly 11% as rookies to about 17% in year two to about 38% in year three. This rule captures that year-3 surge with a 10% boost and, unlike some development rules, applies to all third-year tight ends rather than only high-draft-capital ones.