Chase Stuart
Footballguy
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01...th-spare-parts/
Tables and rest of quote available here.If the high-powered Patriots win the Super Bowl, they’ll do it with the least-acclaimed skill position players of any champion based on draft status.
Tom Brady, the presumptive M.V.P. winner this year, was the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. The Patriots’ leading rusher, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, wasn’t drafted. Neither was their leading receiver, Wes Welker. Danny Woodhead ranks just behind Green-Ellis in yards from scrimmage but he wasn’t one of the 23 running backs selected in the 2008 draft. The rookie tight end Rob Gronkowski, who caught 10 touchdown passes, qualifies as a superstar by Patriots standards: he was the 42nd pick in last April’s draft. Of New England’s eight most productive offensive skill position players — Brady, Green-Ellis, Woodhead, Welker, Deion Branch, Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez and Brandon Tate — only Gronkowski was a top-60 draft pick.
Compare that with the Patriots’ opponent Sunday, the Jets. Mark Sanchez and LaDainian Tomlinson, the quarterback and the team leader in yards, were the fifth picks in their respective drafts. The leading receiver, Braylon Edwards, was the third pick in the ‘05 draft. Dustin Keller and Santonio Holmes, Sanchez’s favorite two targets during various stretches, were first-round picks. And with Nick Mangold, D’Brickashaw Ferguson and Damien Woody on the offensive line, the Jets can count three more offensive players with first-round pedigrees. The Patriots dominated the Jets in Foxborough in early December, and are the clear Goliath in the division-round showdown with the Jets this week. But based on draft slots, it’s New England’s offense that resembles David.
I was curious to see how New England’s offensive skill position players stacked up against the 44 Super Bowl champions with respect to draft pedigree. Here’s what I did:
* I went through every Super Bowl champion and gave each player an offensive grade by assigning one point for every passing, rushing or receiving yard, and 20 points for every passing touchdown, rushing touchdown and receiving touchdown. Then I calculated what percentage of his team’s total “points” each player scored. For example, Brett Favre (1996), Peyton Manning (2006) and Tom Brady (2003) each produced 42% of their team’s points using this system, the most among all players. Joe Namath accounted for 35% of the points scored by the ‘68 Jets while Plaxico Burress scored 12.5% of the “points” scored by the 2007 Giants (regular-season numbers, only). Now we have a rough measure of what percentage of the offense was produced by which player.
* Measuring draft value is a bit trickier. You can’t use actual draft slots, because draft value is non-linear. The difference between the first and the 10th picks is much larger than the difference between the 101st and 110th picks. I dealt with this problem three years ago by creating a draft value chart. The full explanation is available at the link, but my system measures the actual production by players at each slot for a 30-year period, then assigns value to each slot based on such production. This makes the 10th pick about twice as valuable as the 58th pick, and the 36th pick around twice as important as the 110th pick. This chart closely resembles how teams actually value draft picks.
* Then, for each player for each Super Bowl champion, I assigned the corresponding value relative to his actual draft slot, with a minimum value given to undrafted players. From there, the last step was to multiply each player’s percentage of team points by his draft value to get a grade for each team that represents how highly drafted its best players were. This gives a weighted value, based on production and draft slot, that measures precisely what we want to know.
The results aren’t surprising — nor should they be. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather come up with a more objective way to describe what generations of football fans have observed. For example, the ‘92 and ‘93 Cowboys’ skill players come in as the “most highly drafted” among Super Bowl champs, with the (weighted) average player essentially being equivalent to the eighth pick in the draft. The quarterback, Troy Aikman, was the first pick in the 1989 draft. The No. 1 receiver, Michael Irvin, was the 11th pick in the previous draft, while the #2 wideout (Alvin Harper) was taken by Dallas with the 12th pick in the ‘91 draft. The running back, Emmitt Smith, was chosen by the Cowboys with the 17th pick the year after Dallas took Aikman. Aikman, as quarterback, gets the most weight, and that’s what brings the Cowboys’ average up to the 8th slot.
The ‘06 Colts are third, with QB Peyton Manning (1st over all in 1998), two first-round wide receivers in Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, a first-round running back (Joseph Addai) and a first-round tight end (Dallas Clark). The ‘95 Cowboys come in fourth.
The least-acclaimed offenses belong to the ‘03 and ‘04 Patriots. Perhaps a bit more surprising? The 1991 Redskins, one of the most dominating teams in N.F.L. history, are also in the bottom three. Quarterback Mark Rypien was a sixth-round pick in the 1986 draft. The Redskins had two former first-round receivers in Art Monk and Ricky Sanders, but it was Gary Clark, the 55th pick in the 1984 supplemental draft, who led the team in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. Earnest Byner led the team in rushing yards, but he was the 280th selection in 1984.
The table below shows the full list of Super Bowl champions, along with which draft pick best corresponds to the weighted average (based on production) of the actual draft picks of the offensive skill position players:
Whole lot of good players on that list... About as good a track record as you could hope for as a fan.
Not to mention that most people underate the importance of both. That combined with the Brady pick kind of undercut the argument to a degree.
