BTB: Rethinking The Draft Value Chart

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Rethinking The Draft Value Chart
by rabblerousr on Mar 2, 2011 3:30 PM EST in


http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2011/3/2/2025088/dallas-cowboys-draft-value-chart#storyjump



What positive impact might Jason Garrett have in the Cowboys warroom? This week's top FanPost suggests a good place to start would be to tear up the draft value chart.

For this week's FanPost of the Week column, I have but one nominee. This is not because there aren't other deserving candidates, but because I thought that the post in question provided an excellent jumping off place for a discussion about the Cowboys' first round draft strategy. More specifically, it addresses the question of whether its better to stay put at the ninth pick, trade up to get a top player or trade back and acquire more picks.

But I get ahead of myself. This weeks FPOTW was authored by the fantastically named PhilipKDick. As you know, for fun, I like to shorten the names of my fave FanPosters: Fan in Thick and Thin is dubbed "Thick"; ChiaCrack becomes "Crack". With this week's poster, I'll have to tread lightly; I think "Phil" is the wisest choice. At any rate, Phil enters FanPost Valhalla with his consideration of the famous "draft value chart" developed by the Cowboys in the early 1990s. As Phil points out, the chart was engineered at Jimmy Johnson's behest by then-Cowboys minority owner Mike McCoy as a way to negotiate draft-day trades more quickly and logically. As members of the Dallas coaching staff were given head coaching jobs elsewhere, they took the chart with them and it rapidly became a league-wide gold standard. Now, every amateur draft site has a copy posted; every amateur draftnik worth his salt refers to it repeatedly during draft weekend.

Phil wants all of us chart aficionados to tap the breaks a little. He refers us to a book titled "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played And Games Are Won," in which the authors, two behavioral economists, argue persuasively that NFL teams significantly overvalue the the talent disparity from round to round in general and top of the draft in particular:...
 

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