Third round reversal, "Banzai" and the pick value calculator (1 Viewer)

[Mr. Fusion]

The league I have been in for years is changing to a 3rd round reversal or, more appropriately, the "banzai" method discussed HERE (the person going last in Round 1 gets to go first in Rounds 2, 3 and 4). In this article, the pick value calculator is used to determine that the banzai method is the fairest draft method. There is also an article from 2007 HERE which makes the same conclusion and our decision to change to this format started because of this article. What strikes me as odd is that the values are unchanged from 2007. In my humble opinion, the pick value would change from year to year based on draft trends and "drop-off" points between positions. If the pick values remain the same from year to year, draft strategies would not have and you would still see 10 of the 12 owners picking RB/RB with their first two picks (for example).

Can anyone explain to me how pick value is determined?

Would it not be better to assign VBD based on projections or averages and then rank those values 1-168 (or wherever you want the cutoff to be) and then correlate that with the pick equivalent? For example, if the 12th best player has a VBD of 65 the 12th pick would be worth 65 points. I know that at some point you are looking at backups who would have a negative number but the player scoring the higher points would still be more valuable (a negative number closer to zero).

I definitely am not trying to discount any work that the Footballguys staff has done, I just want to better understand so that everyone in our league believes that this draft method is more fair than another (some of us are leaning to the 3rd round reversal (number 2 in the 2011 article) where the 3rd round is flipped and then the draft continues to snake.

Thank you for reading and responding.

 

[Jeff Pasquino]

The league I have been in for years is changing to a 3rd round reversal or, more appropriately, the "banzai" method discussed HERE (the person going last in Round 1 gets to go first in Rounds 2, 3 and 4). In this article, the pick value calculator is used to determine that the banzai method is the fairest draft method. There is also an article from 2007 HERE which makes the same conclusion and our decision to change to this format started because of this article. What strikes me as odd is that the values are unchanged from 2007. In my humble opinion, the pick value would change from year to year based on draft trends and "drop-off" points between positions. If the pick values remain the same from year to year, draft strategies would not have and you would still see 10 of the 12 owners picking RB/RB with their first two picks (for example).

Can anyone explain to me how pick value is determined?

Would it not be better to assign VBD based on projections or averages and then rank those values 1-168 (or wherever you want the cutoff to be) and then correlate that with the pick equivalent? For example, if the 12th best player has a VBD of 65 the 12th pick would be worth 65 points. I know that at some point you are looking at backups who would have a negative number but the player scoring the higher points would still be more valuable (a negative number closer to zero).

I definitely am not trying to discount any work that the Footballguys staff has done, I just want to better understand so that everyone in our league believes that this draft method is more fair than another (some of us are leaning to the 3rd round reversal (number 2 in the 2011 article) where the 3rd round is flipped and then the draft continues to snake.

Thank you for reading and responding.

Because every year tiers drop off differently, a pick calculator is often used as a baseline since that calculator has taken historical averages into account (much like Dallas' / Jimmy Johnson's NFL Pick Value Chart became the standard). Feel free to email or PM me with any other questions regarding my articles and analysis as that gets the fastest responses.