But here's the thing: despite years of data, most NFL teams still have no idea how to work the draft most effectively.
It's not their imperfect player evaluation, but something more basic — their refusal to follow the principle of risk diversification. That's the conclusion economists Cade Massey and Richard Thaler came to after analyzingfifteen years of draft data in a
series of
papers — and it's still true, despite recent changes to the wages rookies are paid.
Draft picks can be traded, and the success of any one player picked is highly uncertain. Because of that, their data says that in the current trade market, teams are
always better off trading down — that is, trading one high pick for multiple lower ones — but many teams become overconfident in their evaluation of one particular player and do the exact opposite: package several low picks for the right to take one player very early.
"There are one or two teams out there that philosophically follow this idea," says Massey, who serves as a draft consultant with several NFL teams that he can't disclose. "But in my experience, teams always say they're on board with it in January. Then when April rolls around, and they've been preparing for the draft for a long time, they fall in love with players, get more and more confident in their analysis, and fall back into the same patterns."
