2020 NFL Draft Discussion

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, one of the core appeals of hiring LaFleur was that his coaching pedigree has a history of manufacturing effective running games with minimal investment in the position (something the Packers have historically done.)  It seems completely backasswards to hire him then turn around and take an RB in the first.

[pacman5252]

9 minutes ago, PossibleCabbage said:

I mean, one of the core appeals of hiring LaFleur was that his coaching pedigree has a history of manufacturing effective running games with minimal investment in the position (something the Packers have historically done.)  It seems completely backasswards to hire him then turn around and take an RB in the first.

Is that completely true? In Tenn he had Henry and they spent on D Lewis. In LA he had Gurely. In ATL he had 2 quality backs who were 3rd/4th r picks. MLFs thing is more of an emphasis of using the run and different looks to set up shot plays passes.

 

 

[AlexGreen#20]

28 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Weren't we like a top 3 offense with Jones on the field and 29th without him last year? I remember seeing a split like that at one point.

That's kinda what happens when you pull a guy off the field for 3rd and long downs. 

[Rainmaker90]

1 hour ago, {Family Ghost} said:

I love that guy, but I doubt the Packers do.

That was my worry as well. I hope he is strongly considered because that guy is going to make any offense he joins better on day 1.

[MacReady]

Just now, pacman5252 said:

Is that completely true? In Tenn he had Henry and they spent on D Lewis. In LA he had Gurely. In ATL he had 2 quality backs who were 3rd/4th r picks. MLFs thing is more of an emphasis of using the run and different looks to set up shot plays passes.

Derrick Henry - 2nd round pick, 490 yards, 744 yards before LaFleur.
Dion Lewis - Clearly signed as receiving option.  59 receptions under LaFleur was a career high by 23 receptions.  That production dropped 34 receptions once LaFleur left.

Gurley - drafted two years before LaFleur was hired by the Rams.  Career high in rushing yards under LaFleur, career high in receptions and 2.5 yards more per reception than second best receiving season.

2015/2016 - Freeman and Coleman both had their best seasons in the receiving game under LaFleur.

Devonta Freeman's only two 1,000 yard seasons came while LaFleur was on the staff, too. 

Then there's Aaron Jones who doubled his receiving totals from the previous year. 

LaFleur gets a lot out of his running backs.  He got Aaron damn Rodgers to complete 88 passes to his top two running backs for over 700 yards.  Career high for Aaron Rodgers. 

Previous high for receptions by a running back with Rodgers as the starter was Ty Montgomery in the 2016 season and Montgomery started that year as a WR and he had 20 receptions in 2 games. 

44 receptions for Montgomery in a year he converted from WR to RB

to

49 receptions to Jones. 

One thing you can count on from a LaFleur offense is that the running backs will be involved in the passing game.  The only question is whether or not the quarterback will throw to them. 

[Shanedorf]

19 minutes ago, PossibleCabbage said:

I mean, one of the core appeals of hiring LaFleur was that his coaching pedigree has a history of manufacturing effective running games with minimal investment in the position (something the Packers have historically done.)  It seems completely backasswards to hire him then turn around and take an RB in the first.

Its an interesting dilemma, especially for a coach that values the production and an aging QB who may need to rely more on running game

"Don't pay RBs and don't draft them high"  But the flip side of that is that the Packers and other teams have not been able to produce the results that Aaron Jones has very often. When I was debating the issue with PackerRaymond, he said that's because the Packers haven't invested much draft capital at RB

So that suggests IF the Packers want Aaron Jones production, they'll have to use a higher pick than the 4,5,6,7 they've invested in the past
Which brings us back to "you don't pay RBs and you don't draft them high"

SF has done it by committee recently, keeping extra RBs on the roster. But they also paid Jerrick McKinnon too - so its not like Shanahan Jr is fully on board with his fathers' mantra of just grab another one.

AG posted a list of the top performing RBs in 2019 and that list was filled with 1st and 2nd rounders, a few of them top 10 picks - that too suggests the idea of just plug in another late rounder doesn't hold water in the real world. RBs in general are easy to find, talented ones are more rare than most will concede.

[incognito_man]

31 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

That's kinda what happens when you pull a guy off the field for 3rd and long downs. 

Pretty sure that it was DVOA (or similar) that would account for situation. Also, 3rd and longs with and without Jones were likely a drop in the bucket for total sample size.

[AlexGreen#20]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

Pretty sure that it was DVOA (or similar) that would account for situation. Also, 3rd and longs with and without Jones were likely a drop in the bucket for total sample size.

DVOA is significantly impacted by high leverage downs, like 3rd and long. That's like their thing?

[incognito_man]

31 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

DVOA is significantly impacted by high leverage downs, like 3rd and long. That's like their thing?

but it's still a comparison against every other team in the same situation(s)?

[Shanedorf]

Here's an in- depth article on what NFL teams know vs what we know and how they started gathering info all the way back in HS
Its well- done by Andy Herman, an upstanding member of our beloved media-moron crew

https://247sports.com/nfl/green-bay-packers/Article/NFL-Draft-What-NFL-teams-know-that-we-dont-145778057/

background, scheme fit, analytics, locker room, positional depth, 2021 draft strengths, injury history, draft philosophy and thresholds

[AlexGreen#20]

21 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

but it's still a comparison against every other team in the same situation(s)?

But if you compare player against player.

Williams is in the game on 3rd and long because he's a superior blocker.

3rd and long is a high leverage down, consequently rated heavily by DVOA.

3rd and long has a very low success rate, (all 3rd downs not converted are rated a failure by DVOA).

So Williams takes the hard DVOA hit as punishment for being a better blocker. 

[Jaegybomb]

All dvoa metrics are normalized against the league average for that down and distance.

[AlexGreen#20]

6 minutes ago, Jaegybomb said:

All dvoa metrics are normalized against the league average for that down and distance.

But would a player to player comparison see that same factorization?

[MrBobGray]

5 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

Its an interesting dilemma, especially for a coach that values the production and an aging QB who may need to rely more on running game

"Don't pay RBs and don't draft them high"  But the flip side of that is that the Packers and other teams have not been able to produce the results that Aaron Jones has very often. When I was debating the issue with PackerRaymond, he said that's because the Packers haven't invested much draft capital at RB

So that suggests IF the Packers want Aaron Jones production, they'll have to use a higher pick than the 4,5,6,7 they've invested in the past
Which brings us back to "you don't pay RBs and you don't draft them high"

SF has done it by committee recently, keeping extra RBs on the roster. But they also paid Jerrick McKinnon too - so its not like Shanahan Jr is fully on board with his fathers' mantra of just grab another one.

AG posted a list of the top performing RBs in 2019 and that list was filled with 1st and 2nd rounders, a few of them top 10 picks - that too suggests the idea of just plug in another late rounder doesn't hold water in the real world. RBs in general are easy to find, talented ones are more rare than most will concede.

So, the thing with this is, that's in no small part because highly drafted RBs actually get carries.  If you look at the list of RBs who played in 2019, 30 RBs got at least 100 carries.  19 of those were drafted in the first three rounds.  Among players with 200+ carries?  20 RBs, 16 drafted in the top 3 rounds.  Now granted, it could simply be that the more talented RBs demand more carries, even in today's pass happy NFL, but then you look at what the actual production you get from the position:

In 2019, there were 15 RBs that rushed for over 1000 yards.  Their YPC ranged from 5.08 at the high end (Derrick Henry) to 4.1 at the low end (Joe Mixon).  So even from the very best 1000 yard rusher to the very worst on a per carry basis, there was a grand total of 1 YPC difference over the course of the season.  Granted, it's over several hundred carries, but even with that for Joe Mixon to hit Derrick Henry's numbers, he would have needed about another 75 carries on top of what Henry got, which averages out to....about 5 extra carries a game.  Running the ball with Derrick Henry 20 times a game is roughly equivalent to running it with Mixon 25 times, on a yardage basis.  On top of that, Derrick Henry rushed for 20+ yards 9 times over his 303 carries, or 3% of his total carries.  Mixon managed 6 in 279 carries, or 2.2% of his carries.  Jamaal Williams had 1 in 107 carries.  Aaron Jones managed 5 in 236.  Ezekiel Elliot had a down year, only having 4 in 303 carries. Over hundreds of carries in 16 games, there's a difference of about 4-5 20+ yard plays or 1-2% of their carries no matter which RB you're looking at.

Meanwhile, Allen Lazard managed 7 20+ yard plays in 2019.  Davante Adams had 12.  Michael Thomas had 17.  

The NFL has changed.  The constant rule changes to facilitate passing have resulted in a league where there's just simply very little value in running the ball.  I understand people will point to teams like the 49ers, but there's a reason they didn't spend a damn thing on any of their RB stable despite being a primarily run-based team.  If you have a good passing game, teams will give you the run game until you give them a reason not to.  You don't need an elite RB to hurt a team with a light box, and the right way to punish a heavy box is passing the ball, not spending a 1st on a RB, and this is where we need to talk about Derrick Henry one more time.  I've used him above as the comparison guy for good reason; he had the best all around season by a RB in 2019 by any metric, and in fact was an outlier as compared to the rest of the league.  He had ~10 YPG more than the guy in 2nd place this year; 102.7 YPG vs 93.4 for Nick Chubb.  He scored 16 rushing TDs, averaged 5.1 YPC, and led his team to a 10-6 record and the AFC Championship game.  Right?

You know where I'm going with this, but let's do it anyway!  In his first 9 games this season, Derrick Henry rushed for >100 yards 1 time.  Once, in 9 tries.  He also averaged over 5 YPC once in his first 9 games.  He rushed for <3.0 YPC twice.  9 games in, he had 164 carries for 644 yards (3.92 YPC) and 6 TDs.  He was on pace for a 292/1142/11 season.  As the passing game improved under Tannehill, so did his production.  An elite RB isn't going to produce like an elite RB when you run him into the teeth of the defense every snap.  Neither is an average one, and that's the point: even the best RB in the league made little difference to his team's overall W-L record.  They were 2-4 with Derrick Henry and Mariota as the starter, and 8-2 with Henry and Tannehill.  With Tannehill as the starter Henry never had < 4.0 YPC; with Mariota 66% of his games were fell below 4.0 YPC. 

Then there's Kansas City.  Kareem Hunt was one of the most productive RBs in football; many people viewed him as a crucial piece of that offense.  Then they lost him and replaced him with D. Williams and won the Superbowl.  The Steelers lost LeVeon Bell and they actually scored more points the next season, and Roethlisberger's passer rating actually went up.  

I didn't really mean to get into this to this degree, but whatever I did.  The point is, RB production is often more a factor of everything else around the RB first and foremost, and even elite RBs don't really have a ton of impact on their teams W/L record.  There's just not a reason to spend real capital on a position where it can only truly affect the game if everything else is working as intended.  Then there's the discussion about receiving yards for RBs, and these sort of swiss army knife players who can hurt you from anywhere.  Well McCaffrey is the poster child for these guys, and someone a lot of people wanted in MVP talks. His team won 5 games this year.  They won 7 in 2018.  Bell and Hunt both fit this group, and both weren't anywhere close to productive on their new teams in 2019 and both their teams had awful years.  If you want someone to catch the ball, get a receiver.  

For me it comes down to this: if you have poor production running the ball, fix your OL and your QB first.  They have more impact on the run game than the actual RB does.

 

[CWood21]

15 hours ago, Shanedorf said:

Here's the Packers draft capital vs the rest of the league.

GB comes in at # 24 in total points, after a few trades
can you name the players we traded to Buff, LV, Bal and Tenn for picks ?

http://www.tankathon.com/nfl/power_rankings

Trevor Davis (Raiders), Reggie Gilbert (Titans), Ray Montgomery (Ravens), and Justin McCray (via Buffalo).