Analyzing Players (1 Viewer)

[moderated]

2) Given the more balanced distribution of talent at the college level (especially small schools & div II), NFL teams can get talented players later in the draft.

It really doesn't work that way. The number of viable players entering the NFL is no greater than it was thirty years ago. And most of those guys are still coming from BCS programs and being taken in the first three rounds.

EBF, I think you're wrong here. College coaches and programs at every level are doing a much better job of preparing kids for the pros than they used to. The complexity of the systems and quality of the coaches gets better every year, and will continue to get better. You are right that most of the elite players are coming from BCS programs and the first three rounds, but that majority shrinks every year.Look at the pro bowl rosters through the lens of your two criteria - half of the QBs were 6th round/undrafted (Romo, Hasselbeck, Brady), and Romo went to a small school, at RB half fall into one or the other - you have a 3rd rounder from Villanova (Westbrook), a 4th rounder (Barber), and undrafted (Parker), at WR, its 3 out of 8 - you have a small school 7th (Driver), a small school 3rd (Owens), and a 7th rounder (Housh)

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's the exception and not the rule. I don't think that's changed at all in the past few years and I don't see it changing at all moving forward. The overwhelming majority of starting NFL RBs went to BCS schools and were taken in the first three rounds of the draft. I only count a handful of starters who don't fit both of those criteria (Rudi, Westbrook, Barber, Grant, Parker, and maybe Graham if you want to count him). All in all, that's a pretty small percentage. There seem to more late round/small school starters at WR than at RB, but the pattern still holds true. 15 of the top 20 WRs in my PPR league were first day draft picks. Some of those guys went to small schools (Owens, Curtis, Jennings), but they were early picks all the same. QB is a slightly different beast since it's a harder position to project and the bust rate is a little bit higher. I'm a little more open-minded towards late round QBs than I am WRs and RBs because the NFL seems to have a harder time evaluating QBs than they do WRs and RBs. Neverthless, for every Romo and Brady there are guys like Peyton, Roethlisberger, McNabb, and Palmer. 24 of 32 opening day starters were first day draft picks. It's the same story at TE. Gonzo, Witten, Shockey, Heap, Crumpler, Cooley, and Winslow were all first day draft picks. Gates is the only elite TE to "come out of nowhere." There are always going to be guys like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton coming out small schools. But for the most part, the prospect talent pool is monopolized by division one schools from BCS conferences. As long as those schools continue to have their pick of the litter, they're going to produce more pro players than their competitors. Most of those players who go on to successful careers will be taken on the first day of the draft.

:( The general public would be shocked at the resources the NFL scouting dept/front offices/etc have nowadays.If anything draft position is more indicative of future NFL success than it was even 5 years ago. More information = more informed decisions.

 

[DinkinFlicka]

The problem with using draft position to determine value is that you have to know who is picking the guy and what makes him tick in addition to what makes the actual player tick. Busts happen all the time, and sleepers awaken as well. Some teams will draft a guy based on roster needs, other teams will take a guy that plays a position they have filled because he's the best talent out there and/or the players available at position of need are evaluated to be bad players. There is some merit to using draft position to guide you, teams are going to take a guy and pay him a bundle if they don't plan on using him. Note the contract and how the money is allocated, because they can cut guys at anytime and the base and bonus numbers make a huge difference. That can help you gauge if they really believe in a guy or just want to believe. It still comes down to proper evaluation and NFL teams mess up all the time. So to play this game you really have to establish a baseline and see what teams are evaluating players well and which aren't. It can come down to some teams can predict one position well and another horribly. ie - Ravens can draft anything except QB. That's an overly simple example, but the idea is there. There are situations that arise like the Lions taking Calvin Johnson despite other needs. For one thing he graded out to be an elite talent. Another aspect to consider is that the Lions feel Roy's heart is still in Texas and he'll be leaving the Lions as soon as he can, so the Calvin Johnson pick was made with that in mind despite the draft busts of Rogers and M. Williams. It's not hard to tell that CJ has real potential, I'm just putting the idea out there that many things play into decisions that may look odd at first glance because you don't always know where the heads in that war room are at.

A few thoughts:1. The thing about draft position is this:It's an indisputable fact that the higher a player is chosen, the better his odds of succeeding.Studies have shown that players chosen in the following draft rounds have a success rate along the lines of:First Round - 50-60%Second Round - 30-35%Third Round - 20-30%Fourth Round - 5-10%Everyone remembers that Marques Colston was a 7th round pick. But you know what? Andre Johnson, Torry Holt, Randy Moss, Braylon Edwards, and Larry Fitzgerald were all 1st round picks. Higher picks succeed more often than lower picks. Just because it doesn't make an interesting pre-game story on the NFL morning shows doesn't mean it isn't true. So if it's late in your dynasty draft and there are a handful of unproven prospects available, you might be wise to take whichever one was chosen highest by the NFL. That strategy would probably serve you pretty well in the long run. 2. I definitely think you're on to something when you mention that certain teams are better at scouting talent than others. I put more stock in a player if a good front office like Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, or New England drafts him than if a bad front office like Oakland, St. Louis, or Cincinnati drafts him. But there's a problem with making rules like "avoid Baltimore QBs" and "avoid Browns RBs." Each player is a unique event and should be treated accordingly. Once upon a time we had the following rules:- Avoid Chargers RBs. - Avoid Steelers QBs. - Avoid Patriots WRs. You see where I'm going with this? Just because a team like Chicago has a poor track record with offensive talent doesn't mean they aren't going to land the next elite RB and WR in the 2008 draft. You just can't get too caught up in a team's past. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes and one lucky draft pick can help change a team's fortunes completely (the Patriots have done a great job in the draft, but getting Brady in the 6th was a lucky break). Also, front offices are always in flux. A few years ago Cleveland was one of the worst drafting teams in the league. They've been doing better the last few seasons now that they have a new regime. My unwillingness to place heavy emphasis on a team's scouting performance as a predictor of prospect success might seem like a contradiction compared with my willingness to place heavy emphasis on draft position as a predictor of prospect success. It's not. There's an important distinction here:In any given draft in any given year, teams will always try to take the best players first. This is static. It's always been this way and it will always be this way. So I have no problem using draft position data to predict the future. The best players will, on average, always be drafted early. However...The Chicago Bears front office is not a static entity. Just because they sucked at picking offensive talent from 2000-2007 doesn't mean they'll always suck at picking offensive talent. For all we know this might be the year when they finally turn the corner and start building an offensive juggernaut. So basically we can use draft position to predict prospect success because the best players will always be taken early, but we should be more reluctant to use front office quality as a predictor of prospect success because the quality of a team's front office is flexible and cannot be relied on in the long-term.

1. What studies? Link? How is success rate defined? It seems like a logical step to assume that first round picks will be more successful as a whole than later picks. They usually come with a better pedigree and track record against better competition on top of being more gifted physically. Even if the 60% number is right, that still leaves 4 out of every 10 picks that bust in the first round. If you use this as the deciding factor between 2 marginal players you are making a mistake. This is the difference between getting TJ Duckett and Clinton Portis for your dynasty team basically. You say yourself "Each player is a unique event and should be treated accordingly." I agree, that's why you have to look at so many factors that are more important than playing some subjective percentages that are going to be skewed by the nature of the easily evaluated talent. There are always plenty of first round picks who are very safe bets to be productive pros and they make those first round numbers higher naturally, but a 40% bust rate is significant as well. There are other things to account for when you look at the way that teams draft round to round. Some positions are avoided early because teams don't want to pay big bucks to certain positions unless they are very sure they are getting a real stud, while other positions get overvalued because of lack of depth in the draft and league overall. ie - Dewayne Robertson2. I'm not saying that if the Ravens take a QB he will suck. I'm saying that you need to look at what made him an attractive pick? In Boller's case, I guess throwing the ball from one knee at the 50 through the uprights made some people believe he had what it takes to be a franchise QB. Perhaps the physical ability allowed them to overlook other important aspects of being a QB in the NFL. Have they learned from that kind of thinking? Who knows. Phil Savage had a lot to do with the Ravens success in the draft and now he is doing a similar job in Cleveland and it's showing.I totally disagree that the quality of the scouting and front office don't matter as much as draft position. There is a general consensus of where players rank, but individual picks will usually come down to a team having to decide between a few players. Sometimes they will get lucky, sometimes they will be wrong, and sometimes they will be right. You can only measure and weigh these players and time 40s and all that so many times. Physically NFL prospects are all very talented.In addition to game film, workouts and combine stats you have interviews and non physical tests. This is where a lot of ground can be made up, and not all scouts are equal when it comes to reading people and translating that to the likelihood of future success for their ball club. You will see some teams continue to ignore red flags and take guys with character issues that don't pan out, while at the same time you will see "classy" teams take a guy with character issues and he turns into a model citizen. For the most part all these draft prospects are schooled on what to say in interviews about their past issues, so what matters is who can see through it and some organizations have shown patterns of this ability or lack there of. Another aspect that I think is much more important in today's NFL is being able to gauge how a 22 year old is going to handle the kind of money he is going to get. Even more important than that is being able to judge how much desire a player has. The fact is that most NFL prospects have dominated sports since they were kids, even big time college football in a lot of cases. When they get to the NFL they get a rude awakening when it becomes clear that everyone is extremely good. Expectations play into this as well, some guys want to be the man and can't deal with not being the man, others can't deal with having that pressure put on them. You have to be confident that you are spending a high draft pick on a guy who has the desire to spend the better part of the next decade taking physical punishment while at the same time always pushing himself to get better. I think the Patriots have a good handle on this type of behavior. So while you may think that scouting and evaluating X and O fundamentals and measureables is a science where everyone is on the same level, teams are obviously not on the same level in regards to evaluating intangibles. Some front offices are trend setters and innovators in this regards, while others are copycats that try to hire guys away who have knowledge of war room discussions, and other groups are just stubborn and think there way is the right way. So it pays to know and understand who the innovators and being aware of the risk/reward that is reflected in their picks. Just because a front office has a bad track record doesn't mean they are doomed to repeat themselves, but some organizations do. The problem is that once you realize it they are gone, so keeping up on this kind of stuff takes a lot of research. I recommend Pro Football Weekly, they do a nice job of reporting on people behind the scenes in the NFL. Even if you don't want to buy there product, you can still check out the Whispers section. It's usually on the last page or close to it and takes under 2 minutes to read. If your local grocery store doesn't carry it try another store, it's with the newspapers in most stores.Like I said it comes down to understanding what makes the evaluators tick as well as what makes the players tick, this is a lot to keep track of and there is still going to be some luck involved that can give you discouraging results. If you aren't cut out for this type of analysis, then you can stick to rules of thumb like the higher pick is usually better but you are really going to be limited by the pitfalls of that system. It can really help you out when you realize that team X tends to fall in love with speed or college "winners". They are good baselines usually, but they are also a recipe for big blunders that you aren't going to correct unless you start looking deeper and being more innovative in your evaluation process. One more point about blindly following the notion that the higher pick is usually better.... Like I said teams are usually choosing between a hand full of players with marginal differences and the team picking earlier usually have a worst record if you are breaking picks down by round and a group of 4 CBs aren't always going to be picked within a pick of each other, you can go half a round before that group of players is chosen from again because of the teams in between those picks not having a need for that position, so if a player goes 15th and a comparable player goes 27th that doesn't always mean they are that far apart talent wise. When a player slips like that it's interesting to note who trades up for him, that can usually indicate a big picture decision for down the road which I would take into consideration because a move is being made for them.I always try to take note of players that are seen as reaches in the draft, the Bills took McCargo and Whitner a couple years back and it surprised some people. I still think they need more games to see how things turn out. Ginn was a reach in the eyes of a lot of people as well, it'll be interesting to see how he turns out and what Parcells thinks of him although drafting him is not on Parcells at all. You can usually get information as to who was involved in the pick and where they are now and if they have exhibit a tendency to covet speed and/or return ability for instance. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[BusMan]

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