Texans trade 23rd pick to Vikings for 42nd, 188th, and 2025 2nd

[PossibleCabbage]

Like the basic issue is that when you're trying to do a draft chart based on historical data, that's useful information but when you're actually talking about a specific draft with specific players with a known draft order and known team targets in it you're not going to defer to the chart over all that additional information.

I think the Texans trading 23 for a 2 this year and a 2 next year is probably defensible if they're not especially enamoured with who they have just outside of their top 20.

[minutemancl]

Just now, PossibleCabbage said:

Like the basic issue is that when you're trying to do a draft chart based on historical data, that's useful information but when you're actually talking about a specific draft with specific players with a known draft order and known team targets in it you're not going to defer to the chart over all that additional information.

I think the Texans trading 23 for a 2 this year and a 2 next year is probably defensible if they're not especially enamoured with who they have just outside of their top 20.

I created a whole thread on this last year when I saw the Spielberger one getting mentioned during night 1 of the draft.

 

[ramssuperbowl99]

4 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

That's not as bad as Ben Baldwin's chart.

Open Source Football: NFL Draft Value Chart

According to his chart, the most valuable picks in the draft are 12, 14, and 16 overall. A fair trade using this model would be picks 1 and 90 in exchange for 16. Trading pick 1 straight up for pick 58 would be an even trade.

I understand there is a lot of work that goes into some of these, but at a certain point, you need to step back and evaluate. Maybe the data isn't telling you what you think it is telling you if your result is something this ridiculous.

Ha you can almost see this watching the draft.

Every damn year there are 3 or 4 reaches in the top 10, and then the Ravens/Eagles/Steelers take the BPA halfway through the first round and we all rant about how they keep getting away with it. Turns out then the nerds like exactly those picks.

I feel so validated.

[incognito_man]

1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

A less than 12-fold difference between the 7th round and 1st overall pick doesn't pass the smell test.

That may be how the value shook out based on the 4 year sample of rookie deals they were evaluating, but no team would trade Caleb Williams for half the 7th round and therefore that chart doesn't work as a rubric. It's an interesting observation that the 7th rounders performed as well as they did, but that's like someone asking, "I bought a house, think I got a good deal?" and you responding "Technically you could stack 12 cardboard boxes together for the same effect". Even if you're right, that's not the question.

That's not how anyone, including myself, would or should use it. 

As @PossibleCabbage noted above, it's a smearing of results and teams typically don't own back to back to back picks that people come up with in their "gotcha" counter examples.

The chart is illustrative of (generally speaking) how high picks are overvalued, and that "more shots" is generally a better approach (diversify) than one big one.

If it doesn't pass a smell test, I'd suggest familiarizing yourself with the data to get more comfortable with it. Because standard TVCs don't pass the smell test of someone who's looked at the historical results and data.

All this being said, there's more that goes into VERY high picks than on-the-field results. A new star QB, whether theyre good or not, makes an owner money because they bring in more excitement. So QBs and other potential "face of the franchise" prospects are outliers as well.

[Nabbs4u]

2 hours ago, Saosin said:

Value alone for the 11th and 23rd pick would be around the 3rd overall pick. Its actually higher. So i dont see a need to give up anything more than those two picks. 

Patriots know they have all the leverage, so the Vikings will have to over pay or they stay pat and take QB. Assuming of course Maye or Daniels is their target, not JJ.

Edited March 15 by Nabbs4u

[ramssuperbowl99]

6 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

The chart is illustrative of (generally speaking) how high picks are overvalued, and that "more shots" is generally a better approach (diversify) than one big one.

This is why you can't just use data, you have to think through the reality of executing what that data says. Could you theoretically get value out of 15 7th rounders like a 1st rounder? Sure. But one team can't play that many guys, so they won't ever see 100% of that value.

That's the downside of a chart that looks at it from a league wide perspective, but from a team perspective concentration of value into specific spots is both important and not at all included.

 

The lesson from the chart should be "try to take more shots and trade down when you can, up to a practical limit", not "7th round picks are 8% as valuable as the 1st overall pick".

Edited March 15 by ramssuperbowl99

[PossibleCabbage]

Like I think the issue of "how valuable are the top picks" is muddled by the fact that the highest picks is where the top QB prospects go.  The upper echelons of the draft is where you see guys like Zach Wilson, Daniel Jones, Trey Lance, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Justin Fields, Dwayne Haskins, Blake Bortles, etc. get drafted and those are guys who don't end up with huge second contracts, which devalues those picks in the view of the empirical chart based on contract value.  You can try to smooth the data by looking at "picks in a range"  since maybe you didn't pick Zach Wilson or Sam Darnold, maybe you picked Justin Herbert or Josh Allen.  It's just that big swings at QB are kind of "all or nothing"  in that the Texans are set to give C.J. Stroud basically anything that he wants and the Jets might have to give up assets to get rid of Zach Wilson.

Basically there are more complete whiffs at QB high in the draft than you find elsewhere. 

Edited March 15 by PossibleCabbage

[Saosin]

6 minutes ago, Nabbs4u said:

Patriots know they have all the leverage, so the Vikings will have over pay or they stay pat and take QB. Assuming of course Maye or Daniels is their target, not JJ.

Yeah I understand leverage, I'm just optimistic. I know its probably going to take next years first for it. I just dont know if I want Drake Maye for 3 firsts.... 

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

This is why you can't just use data, you have to think through the reality of executing what that data says. Could you theoretically get value out of 15 7th rounders like a 1st rounder? Sure. But one team can't play that many guys, so they won't ever see 100% of that value.

That's the downside of a chart that looks at it from a league wide perspective, but from a team perspective concentration of value into specific spots is both important and not at all included.

 

The lesson from the chart should be "try to take more shots and trade down when you can, up to a practical limit", not "7th round picks are 8% as valuable as the 1st overall pick".

that is the takeaway. But I 100% disagree with "can't just use the data". The problem is that a TVC cannot possibly summarize ALL the data. Especially year over year.

Every draft class requires a different TVC for every team.

This is one that relies on actual data - however limited. Which I find to be more valuable than TVC that rely on no organized data whatsoever.

[minutemancl]

Just now, incognito_man said:

that is the takeaway. But I 100% disagree with "can't just use the data". The problem is that a TVC cannot possibly summarize ALL the data. Especially year over year.

Every draft class requires a different TVC for every team.

This is one that relies on actual data - however limited. Which I find to be more valuable than TVC that rely on no organized data whatsoever.

What tool should be used then when you are GM trying to orchestrate a trade with another team and come to a compromise, based on shared, common data? That's what the initial charts, like Jimmy Johnson's, attempted to do and I feel like some of these newer ones stray so far from that.

I feel so dirty even talking about these. This level of nerd should not be infiltrating football. It's disgusting.

[incognito_man]

The biggest takeaway in this particular instance should be "hm, maybe everyone clamoring that the Texans got 'hosed' based on some arbitrary, opinion-centered, data-less, ancient TVC is not the best takeaway. Perhaps the Houston FO isn't stupid and/or doesn't use that aforementioned TVC whatsoever."

[Teen Girl Squad]

Just now, minutemancl said:

What tool should be used then when you are GM trying to orchestrate a trade with another team and come to a compromise, based on shared, common data? That's what the initial charts, like Jimmy Johnson's, attempted to do and I feel like some of these newer ones stray so far from that.

I feel so dirty even talking about these. This level of nerd should not be infiltrating football. It's disgusting.

Thats being very dramatic. Trade values are still very useful tools, but like most data, its informative and part of a bigger picture. FOs understand this well.

[incognito_man]

3 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

What tool should be used then when you are GM trying to orchestrate a trade with another team and come to a compromise, based on shared, common data? That's what the initial charts, like Jimmy Johnson's, attempted to do and I feel like some of these newer ones stray so far from that.

I feel so dirty even talking about these. This level of nerd should not be infiltrating football. It's disgusting.

If I'm a FO, I do the following:

generate our own custom TVC based on all the manageable data we can meaningful incorporate into a tool/model and then use that in conjunction with our best estimations of what other teams are using in order to find the biggest arbitrage opportunities for every given year

and, as a multi-billion dollar organization, I prioritize this primary mode of asset accumulation A WHOLE FRIGGIN LOT

Edited March 15 by incognito_man

[PossibleCabbage]

The reason you can never lean on a trade chart as predictive is that teams (ideally) by this point in the process understand in which parts of the draft they want to be picking in light of the players that are available, the players on their roster, etc.  So a trade value chart can never really be predictive, if a team wants to pick where they're picking no amount of "chart" will convince them not to- the vast majority of picks are not traded!

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

that is the takeaway. But I 100% disagree with "can't just use the data". The problem is that a TVC cannot possibly summarize ALL the data. Especially year over year.

I 100% agree with the root problem being the TVC can't summarize everything, which is, to me, more or less just restating that we can't just use the data. The dataset that goes into the TVC isn't an all-encompassing record of how to team build, it's just a list of player draft picks and contracts with a line drawn through it.

2 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Every draft class requires a different TVC for every team.

This is one that relies on actual data - however limited. Which I find to be more valuable than TVC that rely on no organized data whatsoever.

More valuable for what?

We should be using charts that are fit for purpose. And if the goal of the exercise here is to evaluate how each GM did relative to the established trade market, the TVC should be optimized to what NFL teams think picks are worth, not what the data says they are worth. If the goal changes to which GM we may think is smartest, then I think the data TVC would be more appropriate.

My personal opinion for anything with multiple answers like this is run it each way and see how it shakes out, so even then I still find value in the Jimmy Johnson chart or other old ones, if nothing else to get an idea of the magnitude of change over the years.