Comments on Advanced NFL Stats: Draft Success by Team

I like it, but it's too long. The average pla...

2010-01-06T17:58:19.605-05:00

I like it, but it's too long. The average player has a short career. Many front offices are burdened by previously inept adminstrations.

All pro-bowls for any team.

2009-12-18T07:10:11.786-05:00

All pro-bowls for any team.

i was wondering are the pro bowls counted for that...

2009-12-17T22:06:16.481-05:00

i was wondering are the pro bowls counted for that team that drafted them? what happens when a teams first rounder is a bust through 4 years gets picked up by another team and make 4 probowls over the next 6 years of his contract with a new team in that case the team drafted well jus didnt coach well or visa versa with player in later rounds who do well then leave that teams system and is never heard from again

Wow, that is really interesting. Just proves that ...

2009-11-23T13:09:23.889-05:00

Wow, that is really interesting. Just proves that teams that draft well win Super Bowls.

Hi Brian, Great stuff you've got here. I ran acr...

2009-05-04T12:14:00.000-04:00

Hi Brian,

Great stuff you've got here. I ran across your site while doing research for an article I just published. I've cited your data in the post. You can find it here:
http://thesportsdick.com/2009/05/04/analysis-of-a-disaster-a-look-at-the-lions-draft-performance/

I subscribed to your feed and I look forward to more high quality posts!!

Thanks

Mike

In addition to draft slot, position would affect t...

2009-04-27T14:25:00.000-04:00

In addition to draft slot, position would affect the expected career length and years spent as a starter.

'Shake-n-bake' of the StampedeBlue.com Colts blog ...

2009-04-26T11:59:00.000-04:00

'Shake-n-bake' of the StampedeBlue.com Colts blog pointed me to this PFR post from about a year ago. Instead of straight pro bowls or start years, PFR uses an 'Approximate Value' stat which I think is very cool.

Grading Ten Years of NFL Drafts: From 1996-2005

Nice chart, good catch. Green Bay and Dallas both...

2009-04-26T03:47:00.000-04:00

Nice chart, good catch.

Green Bay and Dallas both traded down more times than the Pats -- though being stat-heady about it, the Pats' trade down-to-up ratio was the highest of all (by a tad).

That doesn't look like enough to explain anything like four Super Bowl appearances. But it may reflect a skill at cap management that does.

Team-by-team table of draft trades (up, down, tota...

2009-04-26T03:17:00.000-04:00

Team-by-team table of draft trades (up, down, total) in the last five years:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/peter_king/04/20/draft/2.html

No discernible pattern. Somewhat interesting, though.

An after-after thought, from looking at today's dr...

2009-04-26T01:25:00.000-04:00

An after-after thought, from looking at today's draft proceedings and your rankings.

IF it is true that the value of all picks draft has been more or less equalized *net of cap cost*...

AND it is also true that the value of picks to teams today thus is mainly that it provides players at a discount to free agent cost, thus saving cap expense per player...

THEN -- if no one specific player you *really* need is available at the moment -- it seems the optimal "default" draft day strategy would be: always trade down to get two or more picks for one, whenever you can.

To the extent that the value of all picks net of cap cost has been equalized, this costs nothing in terms of the value you get in the draft; and to the extent just-drafted players come at at cap-price discout, you gain more room under the cap to build your team generally.

So it looks like a winning strategy -- even though, paradoxically, it reduces your chances of getting a good player on any given pick, and may make it look like you are drafting poorly, since you'll draft fewer good players per pick than other teams in absolute terms.

This pops to mind at the moment because once again Belichik just spent all day trading down, as he's done for years -- and it squares the circle of the Pats being at the top of the W-L tables while being at the bottom of the draft success tables.

This may be a "just so" story, with only entertainment value to me, I can't prove it ... but Belichick was an economics major and would understand this kind of thinking.

And to the extent there is anything to it, Belichick would gain that much of an edge over near every other team in the league, since none of them think this way about the draft systematically, as far as I know. They're usually plotting to trade up -- to (gamble on) that "special player", make a statement, please the fans with brave action -- and when they trade down it's usually sort of anecdotal "the guy we wanted is gone, might as well"...

I dunno. Just thinking out loud. FWIW.

All good points, Jim. By the way, I realized that...

2009-04-26T00:05:00.000-04:00

All good points, Jim.

By the way, I realized that even though I accounted for the Browns' and Texans' fewer years in the league, they might still be underestimated here. Theoretically, if they had picks from before they entered the league, they might still be going to Pro Bowls and starting for teams today. I doubt the effect is large, particularly for the Browns, but there is a bias due to the relative youth of their groups of picks.

An after thought. Looking at Oakland near the ver...

2009-04-25T23:32:00.000-04:00

An after thought.

Looking at Oakland near the very top of the list, and teams like Chicago, San Francisco, the Jets and Cincy spread through the top half, with New England down at #27, I wonder what the objective correlation between drafting well/poorly and winning/losing is these days.

Even if the draft is totally irrelevant to winning, and cap management accounts 100% for team success, I'd expect there to be some correlation, because just plain inept management that produces bad cap management would produce bad drafts too, I'd think. And looking at that list, Detroit, Cleveland and Houston are at the very bottom, so that looks like there's some.

But from just eyeballing the whole list, it doesn't look like there's very much.

It's interesting to see how low the Pats rank on t...

2009-04-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

It's interesting to see how low the Pats rank on the lists, #27 on the last one, considering their record since 1996: double-digit win seasons 9 times, plus two 9-win seasons, and only one losing season, plus the Super Bowls, of course.

I take this as more evidence that free agency and the salary cap have dramatically reduced the importance of the draft to building teams.
What matters now is cap management -- getting value per dollar of cap space.

Before the FA/cap era, while the reserve clause ruled, teams could keep their players forever, so simply getting the best players was the key, with cost no problem if the team could afford it. Top teams with deep pockets could stockpile good players three deep. Bill Walsh could have Steve Young sitting on the bench behind Joe Montana.

In that world the draft was the #1 way of getting players and the higher the pick the more valuable it was because it was more likely to secure a better player. A #1 pick in the draft could be traded for a slew of other picks and/or players.

But in today's world each draft pick comes with a salary cap cost, with the cost rising by pick position, and the studies say that value of picks net of salary cap cost is pretty much equalized all the way through. Last year we saw teams loudly complaining that picks at the top of the first round weren't even worth their cost and were untradable.

The main value of the draft to individual teams today seems to provide players at a discount to FA cost, helping with the cap. But even that benefit is fleeting, because after the first contract the player is either gone as a FA or being paid as one. And if the player proves really good, even before his first contract is up he threatens to leave at the end of it, and if the team wants to keep him it bumps him up early to FA market cost in exchange for an extension.

It seems to me that if the entire draft was abolished today, and all the kids coming out of college today were treated as free agents, not much would change -- the teams that are best at managing the cap would stay the winners and the teams worst at it would stay the losers. In contrast, if the draft had been abolished in the 1970s it would have been the NFL's version of the French Revolution.

Yet ironically, as the draft has become ever less important in substance, it has become more important to the fans and media and as a marketing device for the NFL. I can remember when it was "not much", you just read the results in the paper the next day. Now it's a cable TV special event with mock drafts and draft analysis everywhere.

The main value of the draft today isn't to teams, it's to the league -- as the NFL's #1 way of maintaining fan interest in the off-season, and a nice source of some extra revenue too.

So any draft fans out there who think I'm all wrong about this don't have to worry about the draft ever being abolished, it won't be.

I know there's been discussion as to what outcome ...

2009-04-25T12:09:00.000-04:00

I know there's been discussion as to what outcome should be measured to determine whether a draft pick was "successful", with Pro Bowl selections and "years starting" as the leading choices. What about some measure of career earnings, which we would expect to reflect both the longevity and quality of the player? Maybe you'd have to wait until after the first few years or so, since initial salaries would probably be more dependent on draft position than player quality.

I would love to see the luck and skill values for ...

2009-04-25T11:29:00.000-04:00

I would love to see the luck and skill values for Bill Polian. Certainly you cannot attribute his success every year to luck. I think he is far and away the best GM at drafting in the NFL

A quick note to emphasize the last table takes int...

2009-04-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

A quick note to emphasize the last table takes into account the number of picks each team had at all slots in the draft. This means that CLE and HOU being at the bottom of the rankings accounts for the fact they haven't been in the league the entire time period.