Green Bay's Valuations of Draft Picks and Christian Watson

[skibrett15]

7 minutes ago, squire12 said:

It sounds like you disagree with where GB had Watson ranked in terms of tier or overall and you disagree.  FYI, GB is not drafting based on your tiers or rankings, but their own.    They might be right, they might be wrong.  time will tell

Not at all.  No real opinion on Watson.  I have no tiers.  I'm referring only to the general sense of "tiers" that teams use.

 

Just think the draft value charts already bake in the error prone nature of the draft process, and saying "you can deviate from the value chart because of the tiers" is at the very least an arrogant approach as a decision maker.  You have to REALLY believe in your evaluation, and all the history of the draft is saying you shouldn't.  If the (modern) chart says the pick is worth 220 (as an example) it's not likely at all that the guy returns 220 points in value.  Much more likely is that he returns  a value of 5, or a value of 500.  The chart sees 2  big hits and 3 complete misses and averages out to 220.

 

So, at worst, spending 1.5x in value for the pick that gets you Watson, is simply expecting to get burned and hoping you don't. 

Some drafts are better than others, some are deeper than others, and some are more top heavy.  But trading up AND paying a premium for that trade up (which it was, by any measure) doesn't mean that you can't get a WR at 53 and 59 who would be better than Watson. 

 

Fitzgerald-Spielberger has GB receiving 1200 point in value for Giving up 1900 points.  

Chase Stuart has GB receiving 12.1 for 17.9

 

EVEN IF you ranked Watson a tier above, plenty of guys at that tier bust out, and having 2 guys a tier below is probably the better decision.  Because those 2 guys can be mis-evaluated the other way - they could be actually a tier or two above where you slotted them, and you get 2 cracks at it.

[Packerraymond]

I remember the last time we had a thread like this, we took a guy named Clay Matthews. There were no follow-up threads wondering if we made the right call.

[incognito_man]

9 minutes ago, skibrett15 said:

Not at all.  No real opinion on Watson.  I have no tiers.  I'm referring only to the general sense of "tiers" that teams use.

 

Just think the draft value charts already bake in the error prone nature of the draft process, and saying "you can deviate from the value chart because of the tiers" is at the very least an arrogant approach as a decision maker.  You have to REALLY believe in your evaluation, and all the history of the draft is saying you shouldn't.  If the (modern) chart says the pick is worth 220 (as an example) it's not likely at all that the guy returns 220 points in value.  Much more likely is that he returns  a value of 5, or a value of 500.  The chart sees 2  big hits and 3 complete misses and averages out to 220.

 

So, at worst, spending 1.5x in value for the pick that gets you Watson, is simply expecting to get burned and hoping you don't. 

Some drafts are better than others, some are deeper than others, and some are more top heavy.  But trading up AND paying a premium for that trade up (which it was, by any measure) doesn't mean that you can't get a WR at 53 and 59 who would be better than Watson. 

 

Fitzgerald-Spielberger has GB receiving 1200 point in value for Giving up 1900 points.  

Chase Stuart has GB receiving 12.1 for 17.9

 

EVEN IF you ranked Watson a tier above, plenty of guys at that tier bust out, and having 2 guys a tier below is probably the better decision.  Because those 2 guys can be mis-evaluated the other way - they could be actually a tier or two above where you slotted them, and you get 2 cracks at it.

Plug in pick 29 instead of 34 and recompute

[skibrett15]

2 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Plug in pick 29 instead of 34 and recompute

13.2 for 17.9

1294 for 1922

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, skibrett15 said:

13.2 for 17.9

1294 for 1922

Rich Hill chart:

Pick 29: 203

Picks 53 + 59: 197

(Pick 34: 175)

looks pretty even to me, with a slight premium for actual pick due to inter-division trade.

[squire12]

23 minutes ago, skibrett15 said:

Some drafts are better than others, some are deeper than others, and some are more top heavy.  But trading up AND paying a premium for that trade up (which it was, by any measure) doesn't mean that you can't get a WR at 53 and 59 who would be better than Watson. 

And that also doesn't mean that you can get a WR at 53 or 59 that will be 1/2 as good as Watson or any other player that a team traded up to get at 34

[Scoremore]

The New Orleans Saints paid a heavy price between their initial trade with the Philadelphia Eagles and their subsequent move from No. 16 to No. 11. In total, Ohio State receiver Chris Olave cost the Saints the 11th overall pick, the 98th and 120th overall pick this year, a 2023 first-round pick and 2024 second-round pick. Olave is an excellent receiver and the Saints desperately needed another stud playmaker, but the cost was exorbitant. 

Got this from Bleacher report.  Here we are discussing small discrepancies in trade value.  Look what NO gave up to draft Olave.  Posted in another thread but probably should have posted here.  Should make you feel a little better about it. Aren't you glad Gute is our GM?  

[cannondale]

Heard it more than once leading up to the draft that the Rich Hill trade chart has become the standard among NFL teams.

[skibrett15]

23 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Rich Hill chart:

Pick 29: 203

Picks 53 + 59: 197

(Pick 34: 175)

looks pretty even to me, with a slight premium for actual pick due to inter-division trade.

Yeah, that chart is based entirely previously completed trades - best used to predict what a team would actually accept for a specific pick.

It does not have anything to do with the historical success/failure or the contracts signed by the players at the specified draft slots.  Which is what the Stuart/Fitzgerald-Spielberger measures - i.e. the success rate of the picks at these slots.

[skibrett15]

20 minutes ago, squire12 said:

And that also doesn't mean that you can get a WR at 53 or 59 that will be 1/2 as good as Watson or any other player that a team traded up to get at 34

it means you're more likely to get value out of the two lower picks based on how those picks have performed historically.  Nothing is a guarantee.

[incognito_man]

1 minute ago, skibrett15 said:

it means you're more likely to get value out of the two lower picks based on how those picks have performed historically.  Nothing is a guarantee.

This is totally based on the assumption that individual teams boards are very close to league average. Which isn't a good assumption.

i.e. Watson could have been #15 on our board and if Quay and Wyatt were both gone by 22 we take him. 

[skibrett15]

9 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

This is totally based on the assumption that individual teams boards are very close to league average. Which isn't a good assumption.

i.e. Watson could have been #15 on our board and if Quay and Wyatt were both gone by 22 we take him. 

It has nothing to do with an individual team's board actually.  Just the historical performance of the players drafted at that slot.  The market determined value off the draft slot.

 

Positional needs and team-specific big boards, and teams trying to project the "demand" of individual players and game out probabilities of whether they might last until their next pick all affect why teams do certain things, make certain trades or select certain players.  And all of this data is stuff we will never truly know.

 

But unless your premise is that when teams trade up to draft a player who according to their big-board is HUGE VALUE, that player actually ends up hitting at a significantly higher rate than other picks at the same draft slot... then I'm not sure why it matters what GB's big board was from a draft pick value perspective.  It explains the decision to trade up, but it doesn't mean that the guy you traded up for will hit at any higher rate than previous players at that draft slot in different years.

 

If that were true, we would see that players who teams trade up for hit at a higher rate than players who aren't traded up for and are selected naturally by the teams at that slot.

Edited May 2, 2022 by skibrett15

[skibrett15]

Regardless, here is the quote from the creator of the draft chart, Rich Hill:

 

"

A limitation of draft value charts, Belichick adds, is that there isn’t a single chart that everyone uses. When there is a divergence in pick value among teams- if two parties value a pick differently- then they are less likely to strike a deal. Belichick does note that the divergence has disappeared in “the majority of the trades” in recent years.

Well, last year we tried to fix that limitation by creating a draft value chart that maps to how teams actually value picks. For the record, this answers an entirely different question than how teams should value picks- Chase Stuart has already answered that question and shows how team overvalue early picks and undervalue late picks. We’re simply showing what teams are actually spending on draft picks."

[incognito_man]

12 minutes ago, skibrett15 said:

It has nothing to do with an individual team's board actually.  Just the historical performance of the players drafted at that slot.  The market determined value off the draft slot.

 

Positional needs and team-specific big boards, and teams trying to project the "demand" of individual players and game out probabilities of whether they might last until their next pick all affect why teams do certain things, make certain trades or select certain players.  And all of this data is stuff we will never truly know.

 

But unless your premise is that when teams trade up to draft a player who according to their big-board is HUGE VALUE, that player actually ends up hitting at a significantly higher rate than other picks at the same draft slot... then I'm not sure why it matters what GB's big board was from a draft pick value perspective.  It explains the decision to trade up, but it doesn't mean that the guy you traded up for will hit at any higher rate than previous players at that draft slot in different years.

 

If that were true, we would see that players who teams trade up for hit at a higher rate than players who aren't traded up for and are selected naturally by the teams at that slot.

No I'm saying that GB trading up =|= Detroit trading up. Or, more generally, that any trade value chart is pretty meaningless when gauging well-run/good drafting teams who make trades.

Whatever information our front office has is far superior to a trade chart we have.

Edited May 2, 2022 by incognito_man

[skibrett15]

the trade was definitely in-line with previous trades in the NFL of this era.  It wasn't an "unfair deal" relative to trades that have been made in the past.

 

As I said on page 1, this isn't a trade that was made for value like the Jaire Alexander trade down, it was a trade that was made out of need and necessity and urgency.

 

But that also doesn't completely excuse the loss of draft capital by trading up here.