NFL Drafting Efficiency, 2010-2019

[JAF-N72EX]

Let me preface by saying that over the years I have seen fans from almost every team make claims such as; "our HC is terrible", "X player is terrible", and the pick of the litter is "our GM is terrible or below average" and when asked why they think this, the first reason they usually say is "they are terrible at drafting players".  

This always bothers me because the first question that comes to my mind when I read things like this is always..."so you think they're terrible? Have you actually taken the time to compare them to their counterparts before claiming they are one of the worst?". 

These questions always come to mind because I understand that most fans do not watch other teams, or pay close enough attention to them and so they essentially have nothing to base it on other than their very own instant gratification.  

So before throwing out claims like these, do the research first and you may be surprised. 

A user on FO posted this a couple days ago. It's an attempt to gauge how well each team has drafted over the last 5-10 years and also trying to find out how much of drafting is skill or luck. He uses PFR's "weighted career average" and Chase's draft value chart (PFR) for each player as basis---both are flawed but I don't know of a better way to rate each player either.  

It's a good read. I did something similar not too long ago here using only PFR's average WCAV but I didn't get into it as much as he does.

I have spent the majority of today trying to expand on his idea by going back to 1970 (including supplemental picks) and using his same method to see if I can find any different correlations myself. That idea was killed after couple hours when I realized a flaw in PFR's query that had omitted some players, for some strange reason, and ofcourse threw off all of the data and ultimately made anything I had don completely useless. *sigh*.

Anyhow here is the link.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2020/nfl-drafting-efficiency-2010-2019

Draft Capital

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The following table shows each team's percentage of draft capital in each of the last 10 years, as well as the totals of the last decade and the last five years. In short, the teams at the top of the table should have found the most talent in these drafts. Values shown in gold are in the top 1%, while those in green are in the top 10%. Those in red are in the bottom 10% and those in grey are in the bottom 1%.

Cleveland utterly dominates the competition for draft capital, with the two top drafts overall (6.05% in 2017 and 7.18% in 2018, which are actually the top two for the last 20 years) and six drafts in the top 10%, while only having two below-average drafts. (The average is 3.125%, which is exactly 1/32nd of 100%). That means that from 2015 to 2018, Cleveland effectively had three extra entire drafts.

It helps to be bad for a long time if you want a lot of draft capital, but how you finish the season doesn't determine everything. Teams that trade away picks for players will lose draft capital, but that's not a bad thing if those players are worth it. Teams like Seattle and New England still got a moderate amount of draft capital (23rd and 24th), despite never getting high (or even middle) picks because they continually traded down for multiple lower picks to increase their total draft capital. Chicago's 2019 draft is the lowest amount of draft capital in the last 20 years, while the Raiders' 2019 draft was the third-highest in the last decade. I'm sure these facts are related somehow.

The Browns are followed in total draft share by the 49ers and Buccaneers. If you only look at the last five years, the top three teams stay the same, and Cleveland becomes even more dominant. They had as much draft capital as the bottom two teams (Philadelphia and Kansas City) combined.

Over the last 5 years, Pace is tied with the 15th highest draft capital. Cleveland is 1st.

Notice how the Bears had the lowest draft capital in years 2009 and 2019. These are direct results of the Cutler and Mack trades.  There is literally only a 0.32% difference between the two. 

Draft Return

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How much return has each team gotten from its draft capital, though? We can answer that by calculating the percentage of total CarAV in each draft class that was produced by each player. Add up all those values for the players a team drafted, and then you have the total draft return for that team (and year). Note that this is not relative to how much draft capital the team had (that step comes next), but is relative to the overall quality of the year being looked at. This is necessary, because not very much CarAV has been generated by players from the last couple of years yet, and we don't want to think that drafts from years ago were better just because the players have been around longer.

Pace is 15th. Close to Seattle. Cleveland is still 1st.

 

Return vs. Capital

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So now we come to the true test of drafting ability. How much return did each team get relative to the draft capital it had? We can find out by dividing each team's draft return by its draft capital in each year, then expressing that as a percentage. A score of 100% means that teams got the talent they were expected to get given how much draft capital they had. That's a league-average GM in drafting ability.

After adjusting for the amount of draft capital used, the Seahawks remain in the No. 1 position. By a mile. At a 135% average over the last decade, they are 15% higher than the next two teams, Green Bay and Dallas. Schneider wins! (Although Carroll deserves some credit for developing those players, of course.) The Seahawks have the two best drafts of the last decade (2011 and, of course, 2012). Even if you only look at the last five years, they are still doing well at tenth in the league (Kansas City and Minnesota are now on top, while Dallas remains in third). No, 2019 wasn't good at 74%, but when Marquis Blair, L.J. Collier, and Travis Homer all become starters, it will start looking much better, right?

If you look at the top teams on this list, you see a lot of well-run organizations with a lot of stability: Seattle, Green Bay, Dallas, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Baltimore, Kansas City, New England. It seems like Dallas has done a great job of drafting, but they haven't really had the success these other teams had. Maybe their coaching wasn't that good? We can also see how badly New England has drafted in the last three years. It doesn't look quite as bad as the raw numbers, but it's still very bad, easily the worst in that time. But over the last five years, they are right about at average, so maybe things aren't that bad?

At the bottom of the list you have Tampa Bay (86%), Cleveland (78%), and the Jets (74%). Jets fans are not surprised, I'm sure, with only two above-average drafts in the last decade but three in the bottom 10%. They are at the bottom of the list for the last five years as well. Tampa Bay has struggled in the draft, not getting what they should have out of their third-best draft capital, while Cleveland has squandered the best draft capital of the decade. At least the 2019 draft is looking good for Cleveland, but that's only because they had very little draft capital (very unusual for them). The actual raw return is still below average. The factory of sadness is still open for business.

Pace is 13th. Tied with the Steelers and slightly higher than the Patriots. 

Worth quoting:(I really wanna test this out next week when I get back home.)

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Consistency and Variance To be safe, we can run the ANOVA test using the medians (of each team, along with the overall data set) instead of the means when calculating the variances at each step. Again, doing this somewhat neutralizes the effects of outliers, particularly when the outliers are biased in a particular direction. We when do this, we get a p-value of 0.000072, which corresponds to over a 1-in-13,000 chance that the variation between teams is entirely due to randomness. This is pretty close as we could ever expect to get to a smoking gun telling us that there is real skill in drafting.

 

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What this all tells me is that drafting well is a lot of luck, mixed with some skill and an extra layer of a random "jackpot" on top (the one or two later-round picks each draft that become unexpected Hall of Famers). This would explain the data we see (including the outliers) pretty well. The Seahawks are probably pretty good at drafting, but also had some crazy luck in hitting three jackpots in a row (Wilson, Wagner, and Richard Sherman). What this should tell NFL teams is that you need to roll the dice as many times as you can (trading down for additional value whenever possible), get the best GM you can possibly find, and get the top coaches in the league to develop the talent you draft -- which is what we already see consistently good teams generally do.

 

 

 

[dll2000]

Man you have to wade through a lot of links to see methodologies for each term. 

[Heinz D.]

10 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

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What this all tells me is that drafting well is a lot of luck, mixed with some skill and an extra layer of a random "jackpot" on top (the one or two later-round picks each draft that become unexpected Hall of Famers). This would explain the data we see (including the outliers) pretty well. The Seahawks are probably pretty good at drafting, but also had some crazy luck in hitting three jackpots in a row (Wilson, Wagner, and Richard Sherman). What this should tell NFL teams is that you need to roll the dice as many times as you can (trading down for additional value whenever possible), get the best GM you can possibly find, and get the top coaches in the league to develop the talent you draft -- which is what we already see consistently good teams generally do.

 

Their arguments support their claims about GMs and coaching--but that's no-brainer stuff, anyway. Any sports fan could tell you you're better off with a good coaching staff and a good GM. Claiming that what a team needs to do is trade down all the time is a reach, though. I mean...you could certainly present a very compelling case in favor of trading down, but they simply don't do that, and the whole "as many times as you can" claim is utterly ridiculous. A team could trade down and down, and end up with a staggering amount of picks in the later rounds, but that clearly wouldn't be very smart. 

[dll2000]

To me the keys to successful team building are simpler and I can’t make my argument by stats, but I make it from a lifetime of coaching, reading books, clinics, talking to winning coaches and watching football and programs develop over time.

1) Program, program, program.  

Every team will catch lightening in a bottle every 20 years or so.  But the biggest key to winning is program building.  This is true in little league all the way through the NFL.

Now the NFL is by far the hardest to sustain, because it is only level of football that is designed for parody giving draft advantage in every round to losing teams.   Waiver advantage as well.  Also because of impatience of owners and fans to allow a proper program to be built.

Easy to say build a program.  Very hard to do.  Very hard.  It is a combination of a charismatic, knowledgeable  and program oriented building coach and patient leadership (college pres, board, ownership, whoever is ultimately in charge) and cooperation at all facets to pull in same direction as goal of program builder.    Human nature wants to win now and damn the future.  So it is hard to get things into place and then just as hard to keep things in place and to adjust as needed.

I can give you a little league example of how human nature thwarts program building.  I coached in Chicago burbs and league went to an elite team/developmental team split.  So you had an A team and however many B teams you could make.  The first year they had it, I made an outline for a local org. Of how to use it to build a program.   Example: So for 9 and 10 yr olds division, you should identify every top athlete 9 year old kid that could be a QB and make him a QB of a B team.  So when he is 10 and playing for A team he is in his 2nd year at QB, not his first.  

Well the A team coaches are down to win and win now and they can give 2 craps about program building  So they take 20 best athletes regardless of building a program.  So you have a 9 year old that could be an awesome future QB for program, but isn’t as good as a 10 year old and you make him a corner or whatever on the A team.  And he pretty much never plays QB again.   

Another example of program building is Prairie Ridge HS in Illinois - they are not far from me and I witnessed the building of this program first hand and predicted it when it happened because I saw the same thing growing up in Belvidere, IL.  

PR runs a DW option system at HS level.  Their little league feeder program was part of 1 giant program that fed 3 large high schools including two of their conference rivals.   Well their HC decided to build a program and got cooperation of little league.  He split his kids off from big program and he had them run his DW option all the way through the program as well as their basic defense.  He did this about 10 - 15 years ago or so.  Result has been 3 state titles and a runner up.  

Only Patriots and Steelers off top of my head have an NFL program mentality.  They train coaches and scouts and promote within, little turn over at top, maintain same terminology, etc.   And their sustained success over decades is no coincidence.

/1

 

[dll2000]

2) Good HC and good ACs. 

Coaching matters more in football than any other sport by far.  This is due to relatively complex rules and high number of players.  In basketball you have 5 guys on court.  So each player on court is 20% of people, in football it is just 9%.   A huge difference.

It is not enough to have a good HC and bad ACs.  You need almost every guy to be good and on same page.  I have seen amazing HCs have sucky teams because all their ACs suck.  Conversely I have seen great ACs carry a sucky HC or be thwarted by him.

A coaching staff is most important single factor to winning after program.  

/2

 

Edited June 14, 2020 by dll2000
Typo

[dll2000]

3) Talent identification and acquisition

Just after coaching is the obvious factor talent and acquisition of same.  At lower levels it is about getting kids out and recruiting.  At NFL level it is draft and FA.

You say, Dan, how can you put talent number 3?!?  It should be number one you big nosed fool!   Players win games!   I have seen good coaches and good programs beat superior talent in football my entire life.  Examples I could give are so numerous I won’t even bother.  What’s more is good coaches and good programs will begin to draw in more and more and better talent as well.  So the two will go hand in hand over time.  Also programs and coaches can always develop worse talent into better talent than non programs and worse coaches.  

So above article and also PFF says draft is a lot of luck.   I think you can make a very good data argument that that is the case.  A very good one.  But that being said, I don’t think it is true.  You say that is ego talking and you can also make a very good case for that.

I will say there is a luck factor to draft.  A large one.  You can’t always predict injuries accurately or what a player will do given massive changing circumstances of his life.   

I think you can hedge bets though.  When I select kids for an A team I ask their former coaches about kid the AND their families.  I ask coaches in other sports about them.  You have to filter that through what kind of guy person you are asking is as well.   And then factor in their biases and reliability of their info.   I talk to kids too.   All informally.    

I can tell you that you don’t want problems on a football team.  That is true at every level.  The old sayings about cancer are 100% true and they can ruin your team and your program and sometimes your life.    At lower levels it is often the parent who is the person you want to avoid way more than the kid, but unfortunately you have to avoid the kid to avoid the parent.

If an NFL player is all of a sudden all business in draft process, but is a gangster or a punk or disinterested or doing bare minimum up to that point than you are taking a giant risk.  

The ideal player personality from a football talent scout perspective is Peyton Manning.  He is smart, works hard and is obsessed with football above all other pursuits.   Right or wrong, and it is wrong honestly, that is what you want.    As close to Manning scale as you can get.   Farther you get from Manning personality scale, more talented the player has to be to make up for risk.

[JAF-N72EX]

On 6/14/2020 at 12:29 PM, Heinz D. said:

Their arguments support their claims about GMs and coaching--but that's no-brainer stuff, anyway. Any sports fan could tell you you're better off with a good coaching staff and a good GM. Claiming that what a team needs to do is trade down all the time is a reach, though. I mean...you could certainly present a very compelling case in favor of trading down, but they simply don't do that, and the whole "as many times as you can" claim is utterly ridiculous. A team could trade down and down, and end up with a staggering amount of picks in the later rounds, but that clearly wouldn't be very smart. 

I don't think the argument is that every GM should trade down all the time. The argument is more about how much of a lotto the draft really is and having more picks raises your chances of hitting. But at the same time you need a solid training staff for this to work. That's the hard part.

Schneider and Belichick are perfect examples of this method. Two teams who have been consistently good every year and always have a low amount of draft capital versus the field because of it but they constantly trade down every year. 

On 6/14/2020 at 12:12 PM, dll2000 said:

Man you have to wade through a lot of links to see methodologies for each term. 

Yes, it would be a pretty big undertaking to analyze each draft chosen by each GM term. 

I started to do something similar a while back and it became too much because I also wanted to add more context and clarity by including info about; how the team was built prior to the GM,  how it was it built while they were there,  and how the team fared after their departure. 

That **** ain't easy.  It's way too time consuming for one person to do.  There's far too many factors that go into each decision to quantify it objectively. It would take a team to accomplish something like that.  How do you gauge the GM's who follow the likes of Fisher or Ortmeyer for the Rams, or the Bears under empty suit Emery? Conversely, how do you gauge the Steelers transition to Tomlin?

It would take alot of work. 

On 6/14/2020 at 1:21 PM, dll2000 said:

To me the keys to successful team building are simpler and I can’t make my argument by stats, but I make it from a lifetime of coaching, reading books, clinics, talking to winning coaches and watching football and programs develop over time.

...

Not going to quote all of your posts here but I get what your saying and I agree with most of it.  Luck is a big factor, but it does come down to how well the staff is built and how much the GM/coach staff TRUST the advice of those scouts. 

To me, building a team for the long haul is like a building a basic house where structure support is key, and that support all starts from the foundation (owners/VP/etc) and how strong it is internally.  From there, you need floors (GM/assistants) and then you need walls (coaching staff/scouting). 

Forget the roof that provides long-term protection at this point (players) because It all starts with structure and nobody cares how well conditioned your roof looks if the rest of your house is falling apart.

To follow this same analogy, this is why teams never reach their full potential like; the mid-80's Bears, or mid-2000's CHargers, or the early 2010's Packers.  Those teams were good, no doubt, they had a well built roof and had all of the potential in the world to be GREAT but they were held back because of lack of structure. 

[dll2000]

8 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

 

To follow this same analogy, this is why teams never reach their full potential like; the mid-80's Bears, or mid-2000's CHargers, or the early 2010's Packers.  Those teams were good, no doubt, they had a well built roof and had all of the potential in the world to be GREAT but they were held back because of lack of structure. 

Because Lombardi built a program with Packers, Noll built one with Steelers in 70s, Walsh with 49ers in 80s and Belichick with Patriots in 2000s.

Most everyone else is lightening in a bottle.  Great group of talent that can win for a short time before it implodes.  

You still need talent of course, but programs will draw talent even at pro level.  

Program isn’t any one thing.  It is the whole organization, but almost always it is led by a coach with a vision and his boss who buys in.  Then it becomes not just one person, but everyone doing really well at their jobs.

Funny enough even though it becomes much more than one person, loss of one or sometimes two key persons and the whole thing usually falls apart.   And it is hard to reproduce at a second location.

 

[Heinz D.]

On 6/21/2020 at 1:33 AM, JustAnotherFan said:

I don't think the argument is that every GM should trade down all the time. The argument is more about how much of a lotto the draft really is and having more picks raises your chances of hitting. But at the same time you need a solid training staff for this to work. That's the hard part.

Well...while I doubt that's what the writer truly meant, that's literally what he said, without any sort of explanation or qualification at all...

[JAF-N72EX]

6 hours ago, Heinz D. said:

Well...while I doubt that's what the writer truly meant, that's literally what he said, without any sort of explanation or qualification at all...

Read the whole article man. 

On 6/21/2020 at 10:59 AM, dll2000 said:

Because Lombardi built a program with Packers, Noll built one with Steelers in 70s, Walsh with 49ers in 80s and Belichick with Patriots in 2000s.

Most everyone else is lightening in a bottle.  Great group of talent that can win for a short time before it implodes.  

You still need talent of course, but programs will draw talent even at pro level.  

Program isn’t any one thing.  It is the whole organization, but almost always it is led by a coach with a vision and his boss who buys in.  Then it becomes not just one person, but everyone doing really well at their jobs.

Funny enough even though it becomes much more than one person, loss of one or sometimes two key persons and the whole thing usually falls apart.   And it is hard to reproduce at a second location.

 

Yep. This why people say the NFL is one of the most team oriented sports in the world.  It takes a strong effort from all parties involved and that all starts with fully buying into the system and everyone staying on the same page. And that's hard to accomplish when you have so many moving parts in the system with different egos, personalities, and ideas. 

And now with the new CBA rules, we're going to start to see even more coaching transitions with good teams losing even more of their staff every year.