As I noted on Wednesday, the 2018 NFL Draft was a very weak one for wide receivers. The first common NFL Draft between the AFL and NFL was in 1967, which means the 2018 Draft marked the 52nd draft in the common era. In 47 of the first 51 drafts, at least one wide receiver went in the top 23, but it wasn’t until the 24th pick in the ’18 Draft that a wide receiver — Maryland’s D.J. Moore to Carolina — was selected. The graph below shows where the first wide receiver was taken in each draft:

Just because it’s a weak wide receiver class, though, doesn’t mean this will be a bad class. And the fact that Moore lasted so long isn’t a bad sign, either. There have been 7 other times that the first wide receiver went with the 7th pick or later, and those wide receivers were Haywood Jeffires, Lynn Swann, Demaryius Thomas, Stanley Morgan, Santonio Holmes, Alexander Wright, and Donnie Avery.

The graph below shows the draft value, The graph shows the amount of draft value spent on wide receivers in each draft from 1967 to 2018.  As you can see, with 2018 excepted, the amount of draft capital being spent on wide receivers is up significantly over the last five decades, in stark contrast to the situation at running back:

In fact, let’s compare running backs (in red) and wide receivers (in blue) in the same graph.  The red line shows the draft capital spent on running backs in each draft from ’67 to ’18, with the dotted red line being the trend line (down).   The blue line shows the same for wide receivers, with the dotted blue line showing the trend line.  Side by side, it’s a pretty interesting graph:

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.

You will not be surprised to learn that Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia were the three schools that dominated the 2018 NFL Draft. Players from the Crimson Tide were taken using draft slots worth 83.9 points of value, the most of any school; second was Ohio State with 70.4 points of value, followed by Georgia (68.7), USC (55.7), and Penn State (54.5).

On the other hand, with the exception of the number one overall pick, the Big 12 has a pretty shaky draft. In fact, after Baker Mayfield, the next player selected from the Big 12 was Texas guard Connor Williams.  The graph below shows the AV used to select players from each conference in the 2018 Draft:

You probably aren’t surprised to see the SEC finished first among all conferences in draft value spent on its players. The ACC was second, thanks not to the current conference overlord in Clemson, but to…. North Carolina State, Louisville, and Virginia Tech!

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Which positions did NFL teams focus on in the 2018 NFL Draft? We can use the Football Perspective Draft Value Chart to answer that question pretty easily for the first 224 picks (all picks after that have been excluded, since they have a draft value of zero). For example, here is how much Draft Value was spent on each quarterback taken:

Now, in the abstract that may not mean much: is 132.8 points a lot or a little? So we need to compare quarterbacks to all other positions. Longtime readers may recall that I crunched these numbers in 2016 and last year, but decided to switch the position designations this time around. For defense, I am combining 4-3 defensive ends and 3-4 outside linebackers — basically anyone whose primary job is to be a pass rusher — into “Edge” players. I am also then combining DTs, NTs, and 3-4 DEs — i.e., all interior defenders — into the label “DT/DE” which excludes 4-3 defensive ends. For linebackers, I decided to just group all linebackers together, since 3-4 OLBs are already labeled as “Edge” players, and the differences between 3-4 ILBs, 4-3 OLBs, and MLBs is not worth separating. The graph below shows the amount of draft capital spent on all positions in the 2018 Draft: [continue reading…]

As we expected, five quarterbacks were selected in the first round of the 2018 Draft.

• Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma (College Stats), went 1st to the Browns.
• Sam Darnold, Southern California (College Stats), went 3rd to the Jets.
• Josh Allen, Wyoming (College Stats), went 7th to the Bills.
• Josh Rosen, UCLA (College Stats), went 10th to the Cardinals.
• Lamar Jackson, Louisville (College Stats), went 32nd to the Ravens.

Where does the first QB go in the average draft? What about the fifth? Let’s investigate, by looking at all drafts since the first modern draft in 1967.

The first quarterback, on average, was selected with the 9th overall pick from 1967 to 2017.  But that’s heavily skewed: the median selection from ’67 to ’17 was the 3rd overall pick, and the modal selection was the first overall pick (22 times, and now 23).

The graph below shows where the first quarterback was drafted in each draft since 1967:

[continue reading…]

As I did last season, here is a recap of the trades from the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft.

1)

Bucs trade: 7th overall, 255th overall
Bills trade: 12th overall, 53rd, and 56th

This was not a cheap trade for the Bills: Buffalo traded 127 cents on the dollar on the JJ Chart and 167 cents on the dollar on the FP chart.  Buffalo traded up for a QB, of course: Wyoming’s Josh Allen (College Stats). The Bills paid a premium to get their quarterback, but this was no surprise.  Buffalo entered the draft with a ton of draft capital, and it was no secret that the Bills wanted a quarterback.  This trade made sense from that perspective, but it doesn’t mean Buffalo didn’t pay a lot to get their man (particularly given the next trade).

2)

Raiders trade: 10th overall
Cardinals trade: 15th overall, 79th overall, 152nd overall

Arizona wanted a quarterback, and Rosen might have been the best quarterback in the entire draft.  The Cardinals were surely ecstatic to see Rosen fall to 10, and pounced on him.  Even better, Arizona didn’t pay much in the way of premiums: the Cardinals paid less than 100 cents on the dollar (98, to be exact) on the JJ chart, and 135 on my chart, to move up for Rosen.

3)

Packers trade: 14th overall
Saints trade: 27th overall, 147th overall, and 2019 1st round pick

New Orleans moves up 13 spots and sends… a fifth round pick and a future first! If you value the future first round pick as equivalent to say, the 24th overall pick (and don’t have a time value of money discount), the Saints paid 132 cents on the dollar on the JJ chart, and 173 cents on the dollar on my chart.  If you value the future first as the 16th overall pick (and don’t have a time value of money discount), they spent 156 cents on the dollar on the JJ chart and 187 cents on the dollar on the Football Perspective chart.

Thought of another way, using my chart, if we value the 2019 1st round pick as equal to the 26th overall pick, the Saints gave up the equivalent of the 2nd overall pick! That was quite a lot to draft UTSA defensive end Marcus Davenport, who you may recall from his performance in the 40-yard dash.  The Saints are clearly in win-now mode, and are willing to pay a premium to squeeze out every ounce of talent on the 2018 team. [continue reading…]

There is no such thing as safe quarterback prospect, at least in this year’s draft.  There are five marquee prospects, with scouts and draftniks coming away with very different views on them. They are, of course

• Sam Darnold, Southern California (College Stats)
• Josh Rosen, UCLA (College Stats)
• Lamar Jackson, Louisville (College Stats)
• Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma (College Stats)
• Josh Allen, Wyoming (College Stats)

For months, it seemed like Darnold and Rosen were the top two prospects, Allen (huge size, great arm, poor accuracy) and Mayfield (great stats, efficient, but undersized and a B12 QB) were the wildcards, and Jackson was the real wildcard (Heisman Trophy winner, great stats, unmatched athleticism, but questions about his pro QB ability).

And now, with the draft hours away, we still don’t know much. Jackson probably will be the fifth quarterback taken. Allen, who as recently as a week ago was becoming the favorite to go first overall, will probably be the third or fourth man taken. Allen, on most boards on #DraftTwitter, is the worst of the group, but it’s always been impossible to tell what NFL scouts actually think of him (not to mention NFL non-scouts). Darnold and Allen almost seem cut from a video game: they are your prototypical successful Pac-12 QBs who are smart with good arms and size. They also don’t seem to excite too many people, although the upside is certainly there with Darnold (still just 20 years old) and Rosen (probably the smartest of the bunch).

And then you have Mayfield.

[continue reading…]

The broad jump isn’t the sexiest of drills, but it is another good way to measure a player’s all-around athletic ability. As a rule of thumb, the drill is biased in favor of lighter players (who can jump farther since they weigh less), but it’s also biased towards taller players, who have longer legs. Therefore, to adjust for weight and height, we use the following formula:

Broad Jump = 84.14 + 1.0766 * Height (Inches) – 0.1940 * Weight (Pounds)

Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds is expected to be a high first round pick, but his brother Terrell — a safety with the Hokies — was the combine champion at this event.  Standing 6’2, 220 pounds, Edmunds has prototypical safety size and is an elite athlete.  He had the 5th-best weight adjusted vertical, as he jumped a combine-high 41.5 inches.  In the broad jump, he would be expected to leap 121.1 inches based on his height and weight; in reality, he jumped 134 inches, or 12.9 inches above expectation.  That was the best mark at the 2018 combine.

The full results, below: [continue reading…]

The 2013 Draft was not supposed to be a very good one. All you need to know: an offensive tackle from a MAC school, Eric Fisher, was the number one pick in a draft that was considered weak at the top.  You might think that pick was a bust, but… by 2013 standards, it was not.  Fisher has been a five-year starter and sneaks into the top 10 in AV from players in that draft!  That in itself is pretty remarkable, as Fisher hasn’t sniffed a Pro Bowl, but in a weak class, being a five-year starter at an important position let him rack up the AV.

The top player from that draft has been RB Le’Veon Bell, with two OL (David Bakhtiari and Travis Frederick) and a player about to join his third team (Sheldon Richardson) the next three players by AV.

How does the 2013 Draft compare to other drafts through five years? Because of the different number of picks in each draft, I decided to only examine the first 32 picks in each draft. The graph below shows the cumulative AV (through 5 seasons, regardless of whether they switched teams) provided by all players selected in the top 32 of each draft. [continue reading…]

You know who the best player was in the 2000 Draft: Tom Brady, who has a career AV of 171. Brian Urlacher (118) is the only other player with a career AV of over 100.

I looked at the 46 drafts from 1967 (the first AFL-NFL common draft) through 2012 (there’s no clear cut-off of when to stop, but 2012 is about as late as you can push it). Of those 46 drafts, the top overall pick had the most AV in 6 drafts, and in another 7 drafts, the top AV came from the 2nd or 3rd overall pick. In half of these drafts, the top AV came from a top-15 pick, while in four of 46 drafts, it came from a player outside of the top 100.

The graph below shows, for each year, the draft pick that produced the most career AV.

And here’s the full list in table form: [continue reading…]

An interesting article from Pro Football Weekly this week discusses that running backs are becoming more valuable in the draft, now that teams are going younger and cheaper at the position. After all, if you want a stud running back for cheap, you can only do it in the draft: we saw Ezekiel Elliott and Leonard Fournette each go fourth overall in the past two years, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Penn State RB Saquon Barkley go in that same position this year.

In addition, the article correctly points out that there were 30 running backs drafted last year, the most in any season since 1996.

In my mind, there are three essential components driving this turnaround: teams want to use running backs when they’re younger and still relatively fresh, they want them when they’re cheaper, and most importantly, with more teams employing some semblance of a strategic committee approach to their backfield hierarchy, they need more players at the position to ensure very little drop-off in performance from one back to the next.

However, that’s about where the argument ends. For starters, let’s look at draft capital spent on running backs during the common draft era: [continue reading…]

The Seahawks dominated the 2012 NFL Draft. Seattle drafted the best player, Russell Wilson, in the third round. The second most valuable pick of the draft was, by almost any measure, linebacker Bobby Wagner, a Hall of Fame candidate selected in the second round. The Seahawks even had one of the two or three best picks of the seventh round, in J.R. Sweezy.

And yet with its first pick in the draft, Seattle swung and missed on edge rusher Bruce Irvin, who played and started fewer games with the Seahawks than Sweezy.

The Redskins and Bucs had similar stories. Washington rolled snake eyes when it drafted RG3, although one could argue (depending on why you think he failed in D.C.) that his disappointing tenure with the Redskins wasn’t a fault of scouting. But the Redskins drafted Kirk Cousins in the 4th round and Alfred Morris in the 6th round — it was an extremely impressive draft once you forget the team’s first pick. Tampa Bay drafted a man without a position, safety/linebacker Mark Barron, with the seventh overall pick, and he lasted just 37 games with the team before being traded for 4th and 6th round picks. But the Bucs selected Doug Martin and Lavonte David with the team’s next two picks, and safety Keith Tandy was a good find (mostly on special teams) in the sixth round.

On the other side, you have the Panthers and Steelers. Carolina hit a home run with Luke Kuechly in the first round, but the Panthers next three picks have started just 37 games. The Panthers non-Kuechly portion of the draft was saved with Josh Norman in the sixth round, but even he only had one great year in Carolina.

Pittsburgh drafted an All-Pro in guard David DeCastro late in the first round, but the team’s next seven picks were disappointments. The Steelers final pick was OT Kelvin Beachum, a successful late round pick who started for two years in Pittsburgh. [continue reading…]

In 2017, there were seven former number one overall picks who were their team’s main quarterback: Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, Alex Smith, Cam Newton, Jared Goff, Jameis Winston, and Carson Palmer. An eighth, Sam Bradford, was going to be the Vikings starter, but he was injured early in the season.

Three more starting QBs were second overall picks: Marcus Mariota, Carson Wentz, and Mitch Trubisky. And another three were top five picks (Matt Ryan, Blake Bortles, and Philip Rivers).

Had former 24th overall pick Aaron Rodgers played a full season, it’s likely that half of all passes thrown in 2017 would have come from players drafted 24th overall or earlier. With the Rodgers injury, the next passer (in terms of draft status) was Paxton Lynch (26th pick), who only threw 45 passes. Players drafted 26th or earlier were responsible for 49% of all passes in 2017. To cross the 50% mark, you need to drop down to 32nd overall, which brings in Drew Brees. Players drafted 32nd overall or earlier were responsible for 52% of all passes in 2017.

That number is down slightly from 2016, in large part because Sam Bradford and Andrew Luck combined for over 1,000 attempts in 2016 and just 43 last year. The NFL also lost over 500 combined attempts from Robert Griffin and Ryan Tannehill — as a result, in 2016, quarterbacks drafted 18th overall (Joe Flacco) or earlier were responsible for 52% of all passing attempts.

The Flacco line was also the line of demarcation in 2015, which was boosted by having Peyton Manning, Luck, Bradford, and Tannehill as starters relative to 2017. Depending on how this year’s draft goes and how early those quarterbacks start, there’s a good chance that the Flacco line is once again the median mark.

In fact, 2018 could have the 12th overall pick as the median mark, assuming good health (which, of course, is a terrible thing to assume).  But let’s assume that three out of Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen, and Baker Mayfield wind up as top 12 picks and starting quarterbacks, and let’s place them on the Browns, Jets, and Bills.   That would mean 18 of 32 starters would be top 12 picks.  We would also see 22 of the league’s 32 starters be top-18 draft picks, up from 16 a year ago.

How do we get there? [continue reading…]

Last season, Mitch Trubisky was the second overall pick, Patrick Mahomes went 10th overall, and Deshaun Watson was taken with the 12th selection.  It didn’t take long for Watson to start: after Tom Savage was the Texans week 1 starter, Watson replaced him after halftime and started the following week.

Trubisky sat behind Mike Glennon, who had just signed a contract with $18.5M of guaranteed money.  Glennon started for four games, and Trubisky sat the rest of the way.  Glennon has since been released, earning $18.5M while averaging 4.12 ANY/A in four starts.

As for Mahomes, he sat on the bench behind Alex Smith the entire season. Well, almost the entire year: Mahomes started the meaningless week 17 finale. But there was a good reason for his benching: Smith led the NFL in passer rating in 2017, although he’s since been traded to the Redskins.

Watson wasn’t a top-10 pick, of course, but with three (or four?) quarterbacks likely to go early in the top 10 of the 2018 draft — Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen, and Baker Mayfield — I wanted to see how early we should expect those quarterbacks to first start a game.

In the table below, I looked at all quarterbacks selected in the top 10 of the common draft (since 1967) and how many team games (treating all seasons as 16-game seasons) it took until their first start. [continue reading…]

When picking a quarterback in the first round, what sort of career should you expect? What’s the median expectation? How many are above the line where you would consider him a good pick (which may be a different question)?

I looked at 25 years of drafting, from 1990 to 2014 (it’s too early to grade quarterbacks drafted since then, and maybe even too early to grade two of the three from the first round of 2014). There were 60 quarterbacks selected in the first rounds of those drafts. I took a stab at ordering them from best to worst, but don’t worry too much about some of the rankings. You can feel free to re-order them in your own way. ^[1]For example, I had Bryan Frye look at these, and he had Alex Smith, Trent Dilfer, Teddy Bridgewater, and JaMarcus Russell all 5+ spots lower, and Jeff George, Tommy Maddox, Vince Young, and Drew … Continue reading

But take a look at this list and decide where your cut-off is for drafting a first round quarterback. Where is the cutoff if you have a top-5 pick where you feel like it was a worthwhile investment? For me, it’s probably around somewhere between QB15 and QB20. Those odds aren’t too great: it means only about 30% of first round quarterbacks are really players you would be happy to build your team around. But your mileage may vary: [continue reading…]

Over the last week, the Browns have made four trades, putting a small dent in the team’s historic draft capital. Cleveland traded away the first pick in the third round, #65 overall, to Buffalo for QB Tyrod Taylor, and sent the 123rd pick (Carolina’s 4th round pick, acquired two years ago for punter Andy Lee) and a 2019 7th rounder to Miami for WR Jarvis Landry. Cleveland also sent rookie QB DeShone Kizer — fresh off the third 15-loss season in NFL history — to the Packers for CB Damarious Randall, while swapping 4th and 5th round picks (Cleveland sent the first picks in the 4th and 5th rounds, #101 and #138, in exchange for #114 and #150). And finally, the Browns sent DT Danny Shelton and the 159th pick (Kansas City’s 5th round pick, acquired when Cleveland sent the Chiefs OL Cameron Erving) to the Patriots for a 2019 3rd round choice.

Cleveland still holds the first pick in rounds 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the 2018 Draft, along with the Texans first round pick (#4 overall, courtesy of the Deshaun Watson trade), Texans second round pick (#35 overall, from the Brock Osweiler trade), the Eagles second round pick (#64, Carson Wentz), and lower picks in the fourth and fifth round after the Green Bay trade. [continue reading…]

From 1994 to 2013, there were 37 quarterbacks drafted in the first round of the NFL draft who were *not* selected with the first overall pick. Why am I looking at those quarterbacks? Well, passers selected with the first overall pick are a special case, distinct from all other quarterbacks. The odds of success are much higher there than elsewhere, as you will soon find out.

And why those years? Well, it’s too early to grade the recent draft classes, and that arguably includes the 2014 class. But if we were to include the 2014 class, I suspect we would have three picks that go down as bad ones: Blake Bortles at #3, Johnny Manziel at #22, and Teddy Bridgewater at #32. We know that Manziel was a terrible pick, and the balance of the evidence suggests that Bortles (21-40 career record) and Bridgewater (28 starts in four years) have failed to live up to expectations. But to avoid debating those guys, I decided to look at the 20-year period ending just before the class of 2014.

How did those 37 quarterbacks fare?  A whopping 16 of them won fewer than 20 games in the NFL:

Jim Druckenmiller
Akili Smith
Cade McNown
Ryan Leaf
Brady Quinn
Brandon Weeden
EJ Manuel
Heath Shuler
Matt Leinart
Tim Tebow
Jake Locker
J.P. Losman
Patrick Ramsey
Blaine Gabbert
Christian Ponder
Robert Griffin

Another three — Joey Harrington, 26-50 (-24), Jason Campbell, 32-47 (-15), and Josh Freeman, 25-36 (-11) — lost at least ten more games than they won and never made a Pro Bowl. Another three — Vince Young, Kyle Boller, and Rex Grossman — had more interceptions than touchdowns and started for four or fewer seasons. Those three were busts, too, giving us 22 out of 37 picks that go down as clearly disappointing (59%).

There are seven quarterbacks (19%) who were clear hits, winning 20 more games than they lost:

Ben Roethlisberger, 135-63 (72)
Aaron Rodgers, 94-48 (46)
Donovan McNabb, 98-62 (36)
Matt Ryan, 95-63 (32)
Joe Flacco, 92-62 (30)
Steve McNair, 91-62 (29)
Philip Rivers, 106-86 (20)

That leaves eight quarterbacks. Byron Leftwich, Mark Sanchez, and Trent Dilfer could charitably be described as better than your average first round (non-first overall) quarterback, although Leftwich was a starter for just 3 seasons and Sanchez and Dilfer own two of the worst era-adjusted passer ratings of all time. If you include those three as disappointments, that brings the miss rate to just over two-thirds of all passers (25 out of 37).

So with 25 disappointments and 7 hits, that leaves a middle ground of 5 passers. Chad Pennington is your #8 quarterback: he’s the best of the rest, although he finished with a 44-37 record that keeps him far short of the +20 win club. After that, it’s dealer’s choice how you want to rank Ryan Tannehill, Daunte Culpepper, Kerry Collins, and Jay Cutler. But just know that two of those guys are in the top 10 of the 37 non-first overall first round quarterbacks from this 20-year sample.  The median expectation might be a guy like Campbell, while even the 67th percentile result could land you a Tannehill.

In short: if the quarterback isn’t the first overall pick, the odds are still pretty poor of landing a star.   The hit rate is about 20%.

The Cleveland Browns own the #1 and #4 selections in the 2017 Draft. Assuming the Browns don’t trade down, it means the franchise would be the first team to own two top-5 picks in the Draft since…. well, do you know?

[continue reading…]

As regular readers know, Football Perspective created a draft value chart that mirrors the actual average production by players selected for each draft pick.

In 2015, Cleveland had the most draft value as measured by the Football Perspective Draft Value Chart with 68.4 points. In theory, that could have set the Browns and 2nd-year GM Ray Farmer up for long-term success.  Instead? The Browns mostly missed on those picks.

Shelton saw the field on 44% of Browns defensive snaps this season, Erving is now in Kansas City, and Orchard has just 5 sacks in three seasons.  Johnson has been a very good 3rd round pick, but Cooper is now off the team, and none of the players drafted in the 4th through 7th rounds have made any material impact.  In short, it was a disappointing draft (and this was after an extraordinarly disappointing draft in 2014 that saw the Browns and Farmer select Justin Gilbert and Johnny Manziel in the first round.

In 2016, the Browns and new GM Sashi Brown had even more draft capital: 75.3 points, again the most in the NFL. The early returns are mixed:

Coleman has been a disappointment through two seasons, and sealed the team’s 0-16 fate by dropping an easy first down catch on 4th-and-2 on the Browns final drive. He has just 56 receptions in two years. Ogbah flashed as a rookie, but missed most of the second half of the 2017 season as a rookie: between him and Nassib (8 quarterback hits and 3 sacks while playing about 60% of the team’s snaps), the Browns probably have at least one solid pass rusher.  Coleman and Drango have turned into starters on the line, and Schobert played every snap for the Browns on defense this season, but how much is there to be said for being a starter on an 0-16 team? Schobert, perhaps unsurprisingly, led all defensive players in both tackles (58) and assists (41) on run plays, but he had just three tackles for a loss. The skill position players, including Kessler, have not panned out through two seasons.

Then, in 2017, the Browns led the NFL with a whopping 86.9 points of draft value!  The Saints were second with 63.5 points, showing the massive margin the Browns had on the rest of the NFL.

It’s hard to grade the 2017 class, but again… 0-16 doesn’t help matters. Garrett had 7.0 sacks and 18 quarterback hits despite playing on just 48% of all Browns snaps; he looks like the real deal, and there’s every expectation that he will turn into a consistent double digit sack player. Peppers was on the field for 75% of snaps, and Njoku flashed the athleticism that made him a first round pick.  Those three still have bright potential.  Kizer? Well, he was a disaster, but Jared Goff showed us that a bad rookie season doesn’t necessarily mean much for how year two will go (of course, it seems likely that Kizer won’t be the team’s starter in 2018).

But guess what: the Browns aren’t just back at it for a fourth year in a row and with a third GM in John Dorsey. If this was a movie, the 2018 Draft would be The Browns and The Draft Part IV: This Time More Brownsier. The Jets have the 2nd most draft value of any team this year, thanks to the 6th overall pick and an extra 2nd round pick from Seattle as part of the Sheldon Richardson trade.  The Jets have 66 points of draft value, and the Giants (who own the 2nd overall pick) have 62.5 points.

The Browns have a projected 119.9 points of draft value.

***One Hundred And Nineteen Point Nine Points.***

Cleveland owns the 1st, 4th (from the Deshaun Watson trade), 33rd, 35th (Brock Osweiler trade), a late 2nd (~63rd overall) from the Eagles as part of the Carson Wentz trade, and the 65th picks in the 2018 Draft.  By virtue of having the 1st pick in every round, and top-5 picks in the 1st and 2nd rounds from the Texans, along with Carolina’s 4th round pick, and Pittsburgh’s 6th round pick, the Browns are absolutely loaded with 2018 Draft Capital — just like we knew they would be. But when I wrote that article, I didn’t realize (1) the Browns would have the first pick every round, and (2) the two Houston picks would be top four picks in the first two rounds.  So as rosy as the outlook was before, it’s even more remarkable now.

Cleveland is going to be the first team since the 2000 Jets with four picks in the first 40 selections.  The Browns, if they keep their selections, would become just the sixth team since the common draft (1967) with two top-5 picks:

• Buffalo drafted Tom Cousineau (who never played for the team) with the first pick in the 1979 Draft (received from San Francisco in the O.J. Simpson trade), and then WR Jerry Butler with the fifth pick that same year.
• In 1982, the Baltimore Colts drafted LB Johnnie Cooks with the 2nd overall pick, and then QB Art Schlichter with the fourth pick (from the Rams in the Bert Jones trade).
• Ten years later, the now Indianapolis Colts had the first two picks in the Draft (from Tampa Bay in the Chris Chandler trade), and chose Washington DE Steve Emtman and Texas A&M LB Quentin Coryatt.
• In 1994, the Indianapolis Colts yet again had two top five picks, drafting RB Marshall Faulk with the second overall pick and then Nebraska LB Trev Alberts with the fifth pick (the Colts acquired the 7th pick from the Falcons as part of the Jeff George trade, and then sent a third round pick to the Rams to move up from 7 to 5)
• In 2000, the Redskins had the second and third picks and selected Penn State LB LaVar Arrington and Alabama T Chris Samuels. The Arrington pick was part of the Ricky Williams trade, while Samuels was a tradeup involving Washington’s original 24th pick plus the 12th pick they received from the Panthers for Sean Gilbert).

In terms of overall draft value, the Browns are at near-record proportions.  As a technical matter, the final draft value will depend on where the Eagles, Steelers, and Panthers, but for now, we can get a pretty close estimate.  Assuming no trades (unlikely), the Browns will become just the 15th team since 1967 with at least 100 points of value according to the Football Perspective chart.  Even more impressive: the Browns 119.9 point haul would rank as the third best ever.

On one hand, it’s easy to just say the Browns will mess this up. On the other, Dorsey is so well-positioned to turn things around that the expectation for Cleveland should be to make the playoffs by 2019, and be competitive this season. Cleveland has a historically high level of draft capital, over 100 million dollars of free agent money available, and has one of the youngest teams in the NFL. And while the Browns were 0-16 in 2017, the team had 3.3 Pythagorean wins against a neutral schedule. Dorsey has the ability to turn things around very quickly… just like all Browns GMs before him.

Before the 2017 NFL Draft, Bill Barnwell wrote about the incredible amount of draft value accumulated by the Browns. At the time, Cleveland’s 2017 draft picks equaled 96.7 points of draft value, but because of some trades – particularly involving Houston’s trade up for QB DeShaun Watson (which hurt the Browns 2017 Draft but added a 2018 1st round pick), along with a pair of trade-ups by the Browns that cost the team some value – Cleveland wound up using 86.9 points of draft value. That was still, by a good measure, the largest amount of draft value for any team in 2017.

In the last 20 years, only two teams had even 85 points of draft value — the expansion Texans (85.2 points) and 2008 Chiefs (86.6 points). As a result, the 2017 Browns had more draft value than any team since the 1993 Patriots (88.4 points)! Meanwhile, the current iteration of the Patriots had very, very little draft value: New England started behind the 8-ball with the last pick in each round, and things only got worse after trading a 1st round pick for Brandin Cooks, a 2nd round pick for Kony Ealy, and a 4th round pick for Dwayne Allen and a 6th rounder. That’s the lowest in the last five years, topping the 2014 Colts (17.3 points of value), and the fewest since the 2012 Raiders, who had just 14.9 points. [continue reading…]

Longtime commenter Jason Winter has chimed in with today’s guest post. Jason is a part-time video game journalist and full-time sports fan. You can follow him on twitter at @winterinformal.

As always, we thank Jason for contributing.

---

Two years ago, I started a little experiment. I saw that many NFL prognosticators were posting mock drafts for 2016 just a few days after the 2015 draft concluded. I found as many as I could and, when the 2016 draft rolled around, rated all of them on their predictive prowess.  Regular readers may recall that last year’s article was posted here at Football Perspective.

I did the same for the 2017 draft, recording the same people’s drafts – along with a couple others – right after the 2016 draft, so it’s time to see how they did this year. Were the same people good (or bad) at predicting the draft a year out? Or was it an exercise in guesswork and randomness?

This year, I had 12 different sources to draw from – the same 10 from last year, along with a pair of new entries: Steve Palazzolo from Pro Football Focus and Todd McShay from ESPN. To recap my scoring methods:

I applied two different scoring systems to each mock draft. The first, which I call the “Strict” method, better rewards exact or very close hits: 10 points for getting a pick’s position exactly right; 8 points for being 1 pick off; 6 for being 2 off; 4 for being 3-4 off; 3 for being 5-8 off; 2 for being 9-16 off; and 1 for being 17-32 off. [continue reading…]

The 2004 Draft was a remarkable one for first round quarterbacks. Eli Manning was the first overall pick — to the Chargers — while Philip Rivers went fourth overall to the Giants. Shortly thereafter, the teams completed an epic trade that landed Manning and Rivers on opposite coasts, where they still are 13 years later. With the 11th pick in the first round, Ben Roethlisberger went to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he’s still there, too. One other quarterback went in the first round, and he was the subject of a trade, too: the Bills sent a future first round pick to the Cowboys for the right to draft J.P. Losman.

That 2004 first round may have marked a turning point in the league’s perception when it comes to “getting your guy.” The fact that Manning, Rivers, and Roethlisberger have become long-time starters with national recognition has likely had an impact when decisionmakers think about trading for a first round quarterback.

Since then, there have been 16 times over the last 13 drafts that a team “traded up” in the 1st round to get a quarterback. ^[1]Note that this does not include Jason Campbell, whom the Redskins selected in 2005. Washington did trade up for the pick, but they did so before the draft, not knowing that Campbell would be … Continue reading On average, those teams have paid about 149 cents on the dollar (according to the Football Perspective Pick Value Calculator) to move up in the draft to get their quarterback. But let’s put aside the cost for now, because there’s a theory that “if you think you have found your franchise quarterback, it doesn’t matter what it cost to get him.” So we have 16 cases where teams were really sure they found a quarterback that they had to get, and traded up to grab him. How did those quarterbacks fare?

While it’s too early to trade the last six quarterbacks selected in the previous two drafts, it’s not too early to grade the first 10. Seven of the 10 were busts, even if I am unfortunately labeling Teddy Bridgewater as such. An 8th was Mark Sanchez, and while he’s a pretty clear bust (he has the 9th worst era-adjusted passer rating in history among players with 1500 pass attempts), he won 33 regular season games and 4 playoff games with the Jets. It was a trade the Jets would have been better off not making, but he at least reached some level of success. The two “successes” were Jay Cutler and Joe Flacco, and neither could be called an unmitigated success. ^[2]Flacco, for his career, has a below-average passer rating. Cutler lasted only three years with the Broncos, before the team traded him … albeit for two first round picks.

Now, let’s get back to the cost.  As I did yesterday, I am valuing all drafts picks in the current draft using the Draft Pick Value Calculator I created.  For future picks, I used the middle of each round and applied a 10% discount rate; so a Year N+1 2nd round pick was worth 90% of whatever the draft value calculator says the 48th pick is worth.

Look at the first trade on the list.  This shows the Texans, who in 2017, traded up for Deshaun Watson by dealing with the Browns.  Houston sent the 25th pick and a 2018 1st, while the Browns sent back the 12th pick.  The pick equivalent on the Houston side is therefore 25 and 16 (projected 2018 1st round pick), and the pick equivalent on the Cleveland side is just 12.  The value given up shows the value my pick value calculator assigns: 14.1 for the 25th pick, and 15.2 for the 16th pick in next year’s draft (i.e., this represents 90% of the value of the 16th pick in this year’s draft).  The value received is just the value of the 12th pick, or 18.8.  The return is 156% — the Browns gained 156 cents on the dollar, with a raw difference of 10.5 points of draft value, by consummating this trade. [continue reading…]

As a junior in college, Mitchell Trubisky produced impressive, if not dominant, passing stats. Here were the 2016 leading passers in the ACC:

While Trubisky had a very good year, both the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association and the ACC coaches only named him to the third team in the conference, behind Lamar Jackson and Deshaun Watson. [continue reading…]

Over the last 15 years, NFL teams have put less emphasis on drafting running backs. The amount of draft capital used on the position had been on a steady decline, although there was a notable reversal this year. In fact, 2017 falls behind only 2005 (where Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson, and Cadillac Williams went in the top 5, and Frank Gore, Brandon Jacobs, Marion Barber and Darren Sproles went in the later rounds) and 2008 (Darren McFadden, Jonathan Stewart, Felix Jones, Rashard Mendenhall, and Chris Johnson all went in the first round, and Matt Forte, Jamaal Charles, Ray Rice, and Justin Forsett went in the later rounds) in terms of draft capital used on running backs and fullbacks.

Take a look: while there is obviously a general decline over the last four decades, the 2017 Draft was a great one for running backs: [continue reading…]

Which positions were the most valued in the 2017 Draft? Well, using my draft value chart, it’s very easy to answer such a question:

[continue reading…]

One of the stories from the first round of the 2017 Draft: what happened to all the Alabama players? Through the first 15 picks, there were zero Crimson Tide selections, surprising mock drafters across the country. TE O.J. Howard was heavily linked to the Jets at 6 to the Jets, DE Jonathan Allen was viewed as a top 10 pick rumored to go as high as 3rd overall, and LB Reuben Foster and Marlon Humphrey were regularly mocked as top 15 picks.

Well, after the top 15, things went much better for Alabama.  Humphrey went 16th to the Ravens, Allen went 17 to the Redskins, and Howard went 19th to the Bucs. By the end of the night, Foster had gone, too, being selected 31st by the 49ers.  Three more players from Alabama went in round 2, two more went in round 3, and a 10th Crimson Tide star went in the fifth round.

Only Michigan had more players drafted (11), and no other school had more than eight draftees.  But while the Wolverines had more drafted players, only three players from Michigan were drafted in the first 80 picks — compared to nine for Alabama. I calculated the draft value — using my draft value chart — for each college in the 2017 Draft. [continue reading…]

There were 19 defensive players selected in the first round of the 2017 Draft. That’s a lot: from ’02 to ’17, there were an average of 16.6 defensive players taken in the first 32 picks, with a minimum of 13 (2004) and a maximum of 19 (’06, and ’17). And it wasn’t just low picks: the first selection in the draft was DE Myles Garrett, and the 49ers drafted DE Solomon Thomas with the third pick.

Defensive backs Jamal Adams and Marshon Lattimore went 5th and 11th, respectively, before six straight defensive players went, beginning with the 13th pick: Haason Reddick, Derek Barnett, Malik Hooker, Marlon Humphrey, Jonathan Allen, and Adoree’ Jackson. And from 21 to 31, 9 of the 11 players taken were defenders: Jarrad Davis, Charles Harris, Gareon Conley, Jabrill Peppers, Takkarist McKinley, Tre’Davious White, Taco Charlton, T.J. Watt, and Reuben Foster.

All told, the 19 defensive players drafted in round 1 were selected with picks holding 333 points of value on my chart. Since 1992, only one year — the ’06 draft — saw more draft value spent on defensive players in the first 32 picks.
[continue reading…]

There were six trades in the first round of the 2017 Draft, so let’s do some quick analysis of those moves. To do so, I will be using two draft calculators used: the one I created and the traditional one referenced as the Jimmy Johnson chart.

Football Perspective calculator
Traditional calculator

1)
49ers trade: 2nd overall
Bears trade: 3rd overall, 67th, 111th, and 2018 3rd round pick

Chicago traded up for UNC quarterback Mitch Trubisky. The 49ers moved down 1 spot and still grabbed Solomon Thomas, the player most expected San Francisco to take at #2.

If you value a 2018 3rd round pick as equivalent to the 100th overall pick, The 49ers traded 30.2 points of value, and received 45.3 points of value, meaning San Francisco received 150 cents on the dollar. On the traditional chart, SF traded 2600 points for 2627 points, making it a nearly perfectly even trade. If you valued a 2018 3rd as equivalent to the 110th pick, it’s a perfectly even trade.

In other words, this is a sign that teams used the traditional chart.  But we know that on average, the FP chart will provide a more accurate representation of player value. As a result, this was an outstanding trade for the 49ers, and a very, very risky one for the Bears.  If Trubisky doesn’t turn into a star, this is going to be a bad trade for Chicago.

Good analysis available here from Bill Barnwell. [continue reading…]

As it turns out, drafting Mark Sanchez brings with it a form of Draft PTSD. Since selecting the USC quarterback with the 5th overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, the Jets have used 8 consecutive picks on defensive players.  That includes four busts (Wilson, Coples, Milliner), two hits (Wilkerson, Richardson), and three players where it’s probably still too early to evaluate.  Richardson has been great at times, but has also been frustrating on and off the field; in any event, his tenure with the team is likely coming to an end soon.  Pryor and Lee are still works in process, so it’s been mostly a mixed bag for the Jets over the last seven years:

Will that streak end tonight? If not, the Jets will set a record by becoming the first team to use 9 consecutive draft picks on players on one side of the ball. Right now, New York shares the distinction with three other franchises who have used eight consecutive first round picks in the NFL draft on efforts to rebuild one side of the ball. [continue reading…]

The Jets have drafted a quarterback in each of the last four drafts, and six quarterbacks since the 2009 draft. And yet the Jets still — unless they already do have their guy in Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg — are trying to solve the quarterback riddle.

Let’s be clear: this sort of analysis is mostly trivia in nature.  That’s because past draft picks are simply sunk costs, although that’s generally only clear after a team has reached an evaluation on a player.  The Jets drafted Mark Sanchez in 2009, and that didn’t work out.  Four years later, the team selected Geno Smith in the second round, and that didn’t work out, either. In between, the Jets spent a 7th round pick on Greg McElroy, but spending much time lamenting the use of a 7th round pick is not productive.  Similarly, a year after drafting Smith, the Jets selected Clemson’s Tajh Boyd in the 6th round. New York then upped the ante by grabbing Bryce Petty in the fourth round in 2015, a move which seems unlikely to pay off.

And while those picks may not have been good, they were old made under an old regime. General manager Mike Maccagnan came on board in 2015, and while he didn’t draft a quarterback that year, he did trade a 7th round pick for Ryan Fitzpatrick, a moved that was heralded as a steal last December.  So far, the only quarterbacks drafted by Maccagnan were Petty in ’15 and the second round pick used on Christian Hackenberg last year.  Petty has underwhelmed in limited action, while there has been no ability to grade the Hackenberg pick so far, as he (intentionally) did not see the field last year.

So yeah, the Jets have drafted a lot of quarterbacks.  And for the most part, those picks have been bad.  But that doesn’t mean the Jets should stop drafting quarterbacks or that drafting quarterbacks is a bad idea. It just means the team hasn’t found its quarterback yet — unless, again, they already have in Hackenberg (or perhaps Petty).

Two years ago, I looked at the draft capital spent on quarterbacks from 2000 to 2014.   Today I want to do the same thing but from 2009 (when the Jets drafted Sanchez) to 2016.  Again, I’ll be assigning draft picks value based on the Draft Pick Value Calculator, which comes from the values derived here and shown here. If we assign each draft pick its proper value, and then sum the values used to select quarterbacks by each team over the last eight years, we can see which teams have devoted the most draft capital on quarterbacks.

And while the Jets have used six picks on quarterbacks over that time period, New York isn’t alone. The Broncos have, too, and Denver may not be much closer than the Jets are when it comes to finding their franchise quarterback of the future. The table below is sorted by total value, and the Jets rank “only” 4th in that regard, behind the Rams (who have spent two number one picks on passers during this time frame), the Bucs (a #1 and another first) and the Titans (a #2 and a #8). I hvae also listed each quarterback selected by each team during this time frame, from most valuable pick used to least. Take a look: [continue reading…]