Eagles trade for RB D'Andre Swift

[incognito_man]

7 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

We had to beat Tom Brady and then a stacked 49ers team to get there. It's a clownish take. And I'm going to laugh at it. Rams have been to two Super Bowls in six years and won one. So yes, it is working quite well.

to get there

but not to win it

you got really, really lucky in the opponent you faced in the SB, do you agree?

Moreover, here's now the Rams have used their 1st round picks since 2016:

2016 - QB

2017 - QB (the same QB)

2018 - WR

2019 - repeatedly traded down until pick 61

2020 - CB

2021 - CB (the same CB)

They used their premium capital on premium positions. That was a smart use of capital so this whole point is dumb anyway.

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man

[incognito_man]

10 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

Are you arguing that career earnings are the best comparison for how good a player was over their career? Even if we're not accounting for each teams relative needs and depth at specific positions this seems asinine.

Not good. Valuable. Literally how much they are valued by the league.

10 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

Jimmy Garoppolo has made more than Jason Peters. Sure the NFL values QBs more than OTs, but does that mean that Jason Peters is a less valuable player over his career? As a foundational piece of a team, is there a world in which you draft Jimmy G over Jason Peters/Tyron Smith/DHop/?

If this were true, then yes. The league votes with their dollars. But Jason Peters has earned more in cap-adjusted career earnings than Jimmy G has, so it's not true. Everything has to be normalized to the cap, of course.

https://overthecap.com/career-earnings

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man

[nagahide13]

12 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Not good. Valuable. Literally how much they are valued by the league.

If this were true, then yes. The league votes with their dollars. But Jason Peters has earned more in cap-adjusted career earnings than Jimmy G has, so it's not true. Everything has to be normalized to the cap, of course.

https://overthecap.com/career-earnings

What is the relevance of "valued by the league" if it does not translate to wins on field? You were pretty clearly making a connection between the two. You would not draft a poor player that was "valued by the league" top 10 because it was "good value".

Jason peters adjusted aav is 9.96m while Jimmy G's is 15.1m, so that point still stands. He earns far more.

[jrry32]

26 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

to get there

but not to win it

you got really, really lucky in the opponent you faced in the SB, do you agree?

No. It's an absurd argument. The Bengals earned their way to the Super Bowl. A number of squads have won the Super Bowl over the past 20 years after getting hot at the right time. Ask Tom Brady. The Giants did it to him twice. The Bengals went through Patrick Mahomes to get there. They were no pushover.

Quote

 

Moreover, here's now the Rams have used their 1st round picks since 2016:

2016 - QB

2017 - QB (the same QB)

2018 - WR

2019 - repeatedly traded down until pick 61

2020 - CB

2021 - CB (the same CB)

They used their premium capital on premium positions. That was a smart use of capital so this whole point is dumb anyway.

 

The Rams traded their first round picks for veteran players, which most people thought was crazy. So you can stop with the misrepresentations. The Rams used the top draft capital they retained on HBs (Cam Akers), TEs (Gerald Everett), WRs (Van Jefferson and Tutu Atwell), interior OLs (Logan Bruss and Steve Avila), and safeties (Taylor Rapp). That's not exactly playing the positional value game. Joe Noteboom is the lone exception, as a LT.

Edited May 2, 2023 by jrry32

[incognito_man]

41 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

What is the relevance of "valued by the league" if it does not translate to wins on field? You were pretty clearly making a connection between the two. You would not draft a poor player that was "valued by the league" top 10 because it was "good value".

Jason peters adjusted aav is 9.96m while Jimmy G's is 15.1m, so that point still stands. He earns far more.

OTC literally dedicates an entire column to cap-adjusted career earnings because that's what is important. Look at that column and you'll see Jason Peters has earned more than Jimmy G. This means that Jason Peters was valued relatively more by the league over his career than Jimmy G was valued by the league during his own. In the same way that having $1,000 in 1908 made you a lot richer than having $1,000 today does.

I don't know what you're asking in your first question. The relevance of "valued by league" is that this is ultimately all about the money. To make money, you need to create a roster with the most surplus value (QB, by far. Followed by EDGE and then a significantly smaller gap until you get to the next tier of OT, WR, CB and IDL. ILB and IOL are on the next tier after a sizeable gap, then RB and then S and TE at the very bottom. I normalized the multipliers to EDGE (because I made it for easier viewing for GB fans as I knew EDGE would be a more valuable relative position to our roster because we have a lot more opportunity to playing EDGE over the next several years than starting QB), but here's how it breaks down for the top 50 earners at each position:

QB - 1.86

EDGE - 1.00

WR - 0.93

OT - 0.85

IDL - 0.85

CB - 0.83

ILB - 0.64

IOL - 0.62

RB - 0.60

S - 0.54

TE - 0.49

So, if you have equal opportunity on your roster (opening starting QB available and open starting TE available), you'd have to grade a TE (1.86/0.49) = 3.8x "better" than a QB to take them at the same spot in the draft. For another example, if you have the same opportunity for starting EDGE snaps as you do starting RB snaps, you'd have to grade out an EDGE as 1.6x worse than a RB to take the RB at the same spot. On a draft scale of 8, if you had Bijan graded as a 8.0, his value is equal to an EDGE graded at a 5.0 (10.0/6.0 = 1.6 = 8.0/5.0). Of course you get to diminishing returns at any one position, so you have to also compare the potential value improvement someone offers over their replacement. (i.e. the popular stat "wins over replacement" is always relative value to whatever they're replacing - it's not just their gross value). So, yes, every roster is different. But either the RB has to be graded 1.6x better than the EDGE, or the staff has to think there is 1.6x as much potential value addition in Gibbs be THE guy over every other option (especially later in the draft and UDFA) and their current roster vs an EDGE or a 1.4x over every CB not named Witherspoon in this draft (look at their depth chart there as well). So, you simultaneously need to think Gibbs is a perfect prospect (8.0) or think EVERY OTHER guy in the draft at the valuable positions (CB, IDL, OT, EDGE for Detroit, because they also have a starting QB) is below a 5.7. 

I can't see a way in which Detroit factored in actual value how the league determines it (their paycheck) and made this pick. Whatever reasons they had, looking at the best way to get a salary cap value advantage was not among them.

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man

[incognito_man]

30 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

No. It's an absurd argument. The Bengals earned their way to the Super Bowl. A number of squads have won the Super Bowl over the past 20 years after getting hot at the right time. Ask Tom Brady. The Giants did it to him twice. The Bengals went through Patrick Mahomes to get there. They were no pushover.

No, jrr32, it is not absurd to suggest that an EXTREME OUTLIER in the data is worthy of pointing out and defining.

30 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

The Rams traded their first round picks for veteran players, which most people thought was crazy. So you can stop with the misrepresentations.

I'm not misrepresenting anything. The point I'm making is that using the absolute premiumiest of picks is necessary to use to seek value at the most premiumist positions in order to have success. Those positions are listed above. The Rams used their most premiumiest of capital possible (1st overall pick they traded into) on a QB (coincidentally now on the Lions). They also used it on WR (didn't work out) and CB (really worked out). They did a really good job of extracting value at the premium positions and they got to and won a SB because of that. They absolutely did an unorthodox style. They thought "Hey, instead of trying to get 5x value (rookie contract) at QB but incur a 50% risk (could be a huge bust) let's try to get 1.1x value at 0.98% risk". But they focused on the premiumiest of positions again: QB, WR, CB.

Nothing in my posts have been an argument favoring the draft over free agency. I'm simply mapping the draft to the league monetary valuations. Free agency is a really, really, really important part of the whole picture that is a completely separate dataset. But the draft is literally an industry with 32 companies selecting the employees from the latest graduating class that they think will financially benefit their company the most. Free agency is the same way, but now everyone is picking from all the tenured employees who moved in the last year and have varying pedigrees. If you're an engineering firm, the QB is your principal engineer. It's critical to have a really, really valuable one, but you can't pay them everything and have the worst 50 engineers working under them. You can envision this like any other industry and then realize Detroit just took the 2nd best finite-element-model analyst in the class, while the 3rd best business development executive graduate student was available.

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man

[nagahide13]

12 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

OTC literally dedicates an entire column to cap-adjusted career earnings because that's what is important. Look at that column and you'll see Jason Peters has earned more than Jimmy G. This means that Jason Peters was valued relatively more by the league over his career than Jimmy G was valued by the league during his own. In the same way that having $1,000 in 1908 made you a lot richer than having $1,000 today does.

AAV = "Average annual value".

Jason Peters, $193,854,556 career earnings adjusted.
Jimmy Garoppolo, $151,553,110 career earnings adjusted.

Jason Peters has played for 20 years. 193,854,556 over 20 years is a little under 10 million aav.
Jimmy Garoppolo has played for 10 years. 151,553,110 over 10 years is a little over 15 million aav.

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

AAV = "Average annual value".

Jason Peters, $193,854,556 career earnings adjusted.
Jimmy Garoppolo, $151,553,110 career earnings adjusted.

Jason Peters has played for 20 years. 193,854,556 over 20 years is a little under 10 million aav.
Jimmy Garoppolo has played for 10 years. 151,553,110 over 10 years is a little over 15 million aav.

so Jamarcus Russell is the most valuable player of all time you think?

(AAV is not all that relevant when looking at most valuable. Additionally, the rookie cap marks a point where the data needs to viewed differently before and after. Jamarcus Russell being a good reason why. Since rookie scale, career-earnings is a much better marker of value than before it.)

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man

[nagahide13]

14 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

On a draft scale of 8, if you had Bijan graded as a 10.0, his value is equal to an EDGE graded at a 5.0 (10.0/6.0 = 1.6).

Do you think that a 5.0 EDGE is equal to a 10 RB in terms of wins?

[nagahide13]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

so Jamarcus Russell is the most valuable player of all time you think?

No, I am saying that the amount of money a player makes is not equivalent to how good of a player they are. Or better yet, a players contract does not determine how much value he brings to the team.

[incognito_man]

1 minute ago, nagahide13 said:

Do you think that a 5.0 EDGE is equal to a 10 RB in terms of wins?

i had some typos in there, thanks for directing me to that. To answer your question though (replacing it with my corrected numbers), I think the league values a 5.0 EDGE in equal to value as an 8.0 RB over the course of their entire careers. And I choose to use the bottom-line of the NFL: dollars, to use as the best proxy I can think of to map a draft class to. It's very literally the selection of employees you think can make you the most money. And I understand (especially at QB) that there's more that goes into making money for an owner other than just pure wins and on-the-field performance - but I can't think of a better proxy that compares across positions. Maybe pro football reference AV? I'd definitely take both those datasets and their takeaways over opinions not based on a better dataset, however.

[jrry32]

15 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

No, jrr32, it is not absurd to suggest that an EXTREME OUTLIER in the data is worthy of pointing out and defining.

You can keep doubling down on your absurd argument that the Rams' strategy didn't work out because they were "lucky" to play and beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl, but that's not going to change the ridiculousness of it. The undefeated Patriots played a Giants team that ranked 15th in team DVOA. Those Patriots sure were lucky, eh?

Quote

I'm not misrepresenting anything. The point I'm making is that using the absolute premiumiest of picks is necessary to use to seek value at the most premiumist positions in order to have success. Those positions are listed above. The Rams used their most premiumiest of capital possible (1st overall pick they traded into) on a QB (coincidentally now on the Lions). They also used it on WR (didn't work out) and CB (really worked out). They did a really good job of extracting value at the premium positions and they got to and won a SB because of that. They absolutely did an unorthodox style. They thought "Hey, instead of trying to get 5x value (rookie contract) at QB but incur a 50% risk (could be a huge bust) let's try to get 1.1x value at 0.98% risk". But they focused on the premiumiest of positions again: QB, WR, CB.

The Jared Goff trade happened before Sean McVay became HC. The Rams have zigged where others zagged. They opted to prioritize using picks for vets and then often spent their best capital in the draft on nonpremium positions. They have been successful because they didn't worry about what the conventional wisdom was.

Quote

Nothing in my posts have been an argument favoring the draft over free agency. I'm simply mapping the draft to the league monetary valuations. Free agency is a really, really, really important part of the whole picture that is a completely separate dataset. But the draft is literally an industry with 32 companies selecting the employees from the latest graduating class that they think will financially benefit their company the most. Free agency is the same way, but now everyone is picking from all the tenured employees who moved in the last year and have varying pedigrees. If you're an engineering firm, the QB is your principal engineer. It's critical to have a really, really valuable one, but you can't pay them everything and have the worst 50 engineers working under them. You can envision this like any other industry and then realize Detroit just took the 2nd best finite-element-model analyst in the class, while the 3rd best business development executive graduate student was available.

Detroit isn't worrying about conventional wisdom. They know what sort of squad they want to build and are building. We'll see if it works for them. But I respect a team that zigs when everybody else zags. It often allows you to exploit blindspots. I'd sure as hell rather have a great dual-threat at HB over a mediocre edge rusher or average CB.

Edited May 2, 2023 by jrry32

[nagahide13]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

i had some typos in there, thanks for directing me to that. To answer your question though (replacing it with my corrected numbers), I think the league values a 5.0 EDGE in equal to value as an 8.0 RB over the course of their entire careers. And I choose to use the bottom-line of the NFL: dollars, to use as the best proxy I can think of to map a draft class to. It's very literally the selection of employees you think can make you the most money. And I understand (especially at QB) that there's more that goes into making money for an owner other than just pure wins and on-the-field performance - but I can't think of a better proxy that compares across positions. Maybe pro football reference AV? I'd definitely take both those datasets and their takeaways over opinions not based on a better dataset, however.

I'd venture that the bolded is totally true.

As far as the rest, I guess it's just wildly difficult to come up with a do-it-all stat in football. Baseball is bad enough but at least has FIP and all the attempts at WAR.

[incognito_man]

5 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

No, I am saying that the amount of money a player makes is not equivalent to how good of a player they are. Or better yet, a players contract does not determine how much value he brings to the team.

what is a better measure across all players and all positions, then? How much more valuable is an EDGE rusher than a RB? We all agree they're more valuable. How much so? Trying to build a big board without applying some positional value is, of course, ludicrous. I'm suggesting that using NFL salary cap data is WAYYYYYYY better than any one person's (especially random-*** non-professional) "gut" feeling for every prospect. Like if there's an offensive guard prospect your staff LOVES and a DT prospect they LOVE just as much - how do you know which guy to take? How much MORE value does the OG prospect have to offer as potential than the DT? Potential to be a top 5 guy at his position vs a top 10 guy? And then, well, how do we measure top 5? Should we just look at the top 5 highest paid guys and ask ourselves "Can we turn this OG into someone like this in 2 years"? And then look at the top 4-9 DTs in the league and ask "Can we turn this DT into someone in this range in 2 yrs?". So yeah, I think following the money is by far the best way to compare positional value.

List out each prospect within their position and apply a standardized grade to them: i.e. 8.0 = 96% percentile of earners (can we see this guy becoming Emmitt Smith or Marshall Faulk, Adrian Peterson, Curtis Martin, LaDainian Tomlinson, Barry Sanders? 7.0 = 87% percentile of all earners (or is he a Jerome Bettis, Reggie Bush, Frank Gore, Steven Jackson, Marshawn Lynch, Clinton Portis, LeSean McCoy?) etc. etc. Some consistent mapping/comparison of their potential the top earners all time. Then apply a league-wide positional multiplier (mine above) for whatever range of salaries you want. If you're drafting a guy top 10, you'd probably want to look at the top 10-20 earners of all time to see how valuable a top QB is compared to a top EDGE. If you're drafting a guy in round 5, you'd probably want to look at the top 100-300 earners of all time to see how an average LB compares to an average OG all-time.

[incognito_man]

16 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

You can keep doubling down on your absurd argument that the Rams' strategy didn't work out because they were "lucky" to play and beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl, but that's not going to change the ridiculousness of it.

I'm not doubling down on it. You are not reading. You just need to be angry lol.

Go back and look, I said the original point (about the Rams lucking into a SB win - which they arguably did once they got to the SB) is irrelevant anyway because you were mistaken when you first started arguing. The Rams followed my strategy in the first place. They highly valued highly valuable positions (in free agency and trades). That's cool. I have no argument against using free agency and trades in lieu of the draft. That seems to be a fine strategy that worked for them. The Rams are not remotely an example of highly valuing low value positions (which is the ONLY point I've ever been making in this thread).

16 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

Detroit isn't worrying about conventional wisdom. They know what sort of squad they want to build and are building. We'll see if it works for them. But I respect a team that zigs when everybody else zags. It often allows you to exploit blindspots. I'd sure as hell rather have a great dual-threat at HB over a mediocre edge rusher or average CB.

Zigging and zagging is fine as long as you adhere to the basic underlying fundamentals of the system you're in. Just like you can't cheat physics when seeking an engineering edge, or you can violate Benjamin Grahams valuation measurements in economics - you can't gain an edge valuing RBs more than QBs. Until the fundamentals of the system change, the NFL is currently designed in a manner that values certain positions more. If you want to present a convincing argument on why you believe RBs and ILBs are the cutting edge valuations to win in today's NFL, I'll listen to your reasoning. Otherwise, what are you even arguing at this point?

Edited May 2, 2023 by incognito_man