Keys to Understanding the NFL Draft

[sean10mm]

Keys to Understanding the NFL Draft

1. The “draft experts” on TV and the internet are generally either guys who got fired from NFL personnel jobs, or guys who never did them at all. Their rankings tell you little about how the teams are actually ranking draft prospects, or how good those prospects actually are.

a. It follows that you shouldn’t treat their rankings as anything but educated guesses, at best.

b. From that, it follows that trying to judge the “value” of a draft pick made by a team by comparing where they took a player to where the “draft experts” guessed the player would be taken is kind of dumb. Remember when Travis Frederick was decried as a "terrible value" because the Cowboys took a guy with a 2nd round grade at the end of the 1st round?

2. A large % of the players drafted will be complete busts, so the teams aren’t that great at ranking players, either. Even highly successful teams have many, many draft busts.

a. Literally nobody has any idea if that quarterback will be the next Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. The Cowboys just got on the good side of this equation by drafting someone who in hindsight should have went top 5 overall in the 4th round.

3. The NFL Combine will cause lots of people to get excited about things that don’t matter to NFL performance while forgetting about things that do.

a. The main value of the Combine is in the boring things like the teams interviewing the players and the medical evaluations. These will also get the least coverage unless someone literally finds out he has cancer (which has happened!) The interview results were the first clue that Dak was not the generic dumb spread option gimmick QB he was assumed to be by the media.

b. Some guy who can’t actually play but runs a fast 40 will be overvalued by everyone, even if they are terrible at their actual job on the field. This includes wide receivers who can’t catch, when catching balls is the entire point of their job. The Eagles drafted Nelson Algholor for a 4.37 40 without noticing that he couldn't catch in college, and ~surprisingly~ he turned into a drop machine in the pros.

c. Some guy whose job doesn’t even have anything to do with sprinting will be undervalued by everyone because their 40 time was slow, even if they are great at their actual job on the field. This includes obvious positions where this makes no sense, like centers and nose tackles. Travis Frederick's slow 40 time was treated as a big knock on him even though center 40 times have mattered exactly never in the history of everything.

There will probably be at least one tall schmuck who "looks like an NFL quarterback" and everyone gets excited about even though he’s dumb as a stump and can’t hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. Pretty sure this was Christian Hackenberg in 2016, a guy who looked like trash in college but was 6'4"and went in the 2nd round somehow.

Anything I missed?

 

[GhostOfPelluer]

Solid

 

[sean10mm]

4. Let's talk about draft grades, and what's really happening with them.

a. The draft "experts" mentioned above make guesses about what teams will do. Then they reward or punish those teams with grades based on how well what the team did matched their guesses. In other words, the teams that get bad grades are the ones that make the draft "experts" look bad, by implicitly showing that their ideas of player value do not line up with what actual NFL teams think of player value. The whole thing is based on a self-serving thought process that starts by assuming their guesses are correct, and reasoning backwards from there. If you want to know if a guy's grades have any credibility, see if they make any effort to understand why the team did something they didn't think they would.

b. Sometimes teams just do patently dumb stuff they should get ripped for, like take bad kickers in the second round, sure. But that's the exception rather than the rule.

c. Thus, if the Cowboys get As for draft grades, don't get too excited. If they get Fs don't get too ticked off.

5. Beware of player narratives that keep getting repeated over and over again.

a. This happens on the level of both draft "experts," and even NFL coaches and execs that should know better. Often a guy will get pigeon-holed into a category they don't belong, and it just keeps getting repeated over and over again until it sort of becomes accepted truth. Here we come back to Dak, who weirdly kept being compared to Tim Tebow of all people. This probably got started because his head coach in college was Tebow's OC. But here's the thing: even with what we only knew at the time of the draft, the comparison was total garbage. Dak wasn't a hulking linebacker-sized dude like Tebow, he wasn't nearly the running QB that Tebow was - and he was a radically more advanced passer with massively better throwing mechanics at the same point in their college careers. That leaves them with almost nothing in common as prospects!

b. So if you keep hearing "X is like Y" take a step back and decide for yourself if the comparison really makes sense, or is just lazy.

 

[CalPolyTechnique]

Good stuff.

I'd also add that when discussing the merits of a prospect with other posters, cutting and pasting "scouting reports" from endless internet draft websites is not a trump card. If you really follow and enjoy the draft process, watch some video and formulate your own opinions.

I can respect someone disagreeing with me if they see a prospect differently than me based on their own evaluation, but if you're just parroting someone else's take from something you've read and not seen yourself..no bueno.

 

[sean10mm]

For high profile players at least, you can often find videos of "every snap player X took in game Y" to review on youtube. The best examples are games against top competition.

 

[UncleOscar]

You might add that teams fall blindly in love with work out warriors who do well at the combine and really think the results of a standing broad jump prove the kid can play in the NFL.

 

[ghst187]

Ya great OP! I get a chuckle when people on this board tell me they trust our scouts or Kiper more than me when I criticize our picks or player rankings....the guys that get paid to do it aren't a whole lot better than most fans here. Frankly, I'm not sure there isn't a lot of folks here that would be better if we had the time and access to all the info they have. Sure, our scouts nailed this past draft, but we also had thirteen picks in 2009 and not a single player to show for it. If my opinion wasn't any more valuable than many of the paid scouts then guys like Brady would never have been a sixth rounder, Romo undrafted, while Jamarcus Russell and mandarich go in the top 2. Drafting is about half about luck. If our scouts honestly had any idea Dak was as good as he turned out, they would went after him much earlier rather than using him as a fall back plan after whiffing on the other 3 QBs they tried to get ahead of him.

 

[AsthmaField]

Keys to Understanding the NFL Draft

1. The “draft experts” on TV and the internet are generally either guys who got fired from NFL personnel jobs, or guys who never did them at all. Their rankings tell you little about how the teams are actually ranking draft prospects, or how good those prospects actually are.

a. It follows that you shouldn’t treat their rankings as anything but educated guesses, at best.

b. From that, it follows that trying to judge the “value” of a draft pick made by a team by comparing where they took a player to where the “draft experts” guessed the player would be taken is kind of dumb. Remember when Travis Frederick was decried as a "terrible value" because the Cowboys took a guy with a 2nd round grade at the end of the 1st round?

2. A large % of the players drafted will be complete busts, so the teams aren’t that great at ranking players, either. Even highly successful teams have many, many draft busts.

a. Literally nobody has any idea if that quarterback will be the next Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. The Cowboys just got on the good side of this equation by drafting someone who in hindsight should have went top 5 overall in the 4th round.

3. The NFL Combine will cause lots of people to get excited about things that don’t matter to NFL performance while forgetting about things that do.

a. The main value of the Combine is in the boring things like the teams interviewing the players and the medical evaluations. These will also get the least coverage unless someone literally finds out he has cancer (which has happened!) The interview results were the first clue that Dak was not the generic dumb spread option gimmick QB he was assumed to be by the media.

b. Some guy who can’t actually play but runs a fast 40 will be overvalued by everyone, even if they are terrible at their actual job on the field. This includes wide receivers who can’t catch, when catching balls is the entire point of their job. The Eagles drafted Nelson Algholor for a 4.37 40 without noticing that he couldn't catch in college, and ~surprisingly~ he turned into a drop machine in the pros.

c. Some guy whose job doesn’t even have anything to do with sprinting will be undervalued by everyone because their 40 time was slow, even if they are great at their actual job on the field. This includes obvious positions where this makes no sense, like centers and nose tackles. Travis Frederick's slow 40 time was treated as a big knock on him even though center 40 times have mattered exactly never in the history of everything.

There will probably be at least one tall schmuck who "looks like an NFL quarterback" and everyone gets excited about even though he’s dumb as a stump and can’t hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. Pretty sure this was Christian Hackenberg in 2016, a guy who looked like trash in college but was 6'4"and went in the 2nd round somehow.

Anything I missed?

All true. Nice job.

People put way, way too much emphasis on the physical attributes of prospects and not nearly enough on the mental aspect of the game. Some guys are just good football players and some aren't. Football is very important to some guys and to some it isn't. Some really work on their craft and some don't. There are players who just "get" football and instinctively know angles and leverage (like Aaron Donald) and some don't really care about football and are just great athletes who played in college because they're so far physically above most of the other players.

All of that is from the neck up and without it, a guy will never be a great player in the NFL. The players who don't love the game or care to master it, just want the accolades and attention (and money) that goes with being a football player, but they don't want to put in the time and work to become great.

This past draft for Dallas illustrates many of those traits and their importance in the NFL. Anyone who really looks at the players Dallas took should see the importance of smarts, heart, toughness, love of the game, etc.

What makes Ezekiel Elliott so great isn't that he can run fast (many college RB's do). It isn't that he's big (many RB's are). What sets him apart is how important football is to him. Not just now either. It has always been important to him and he has worked at it for years. He loves football and the competition that goes along with it. Losing a game is crushing to Elliott. He has great run instincts and vision that he's honed since Jr. High. He has heart and toughness and loves to hit. He's football smart and processes information very quickly.

All of these things are mental. Add those intangibles to his obvious physical talent and you have a can't miss prospect who became a great player as soon as he stepped on an NFL field.

However, take away the heart, love of the game, competitive nature, vision, etc. and you simply have another Christian Michael. Those guys are a dime-a-dozen. Players like Elliott are more generational players that only come along every now and then.

If you look at Dak, it's easy to see how important the intangibles are at the QB position. His team mates have been willing to run through a wall for him, even in his high school days. The massive amounts of work that he puts in to understand the offense he will be running. The calm under pressure. How quickly he processes information and makes decisions. As I wrote in another thread, he is a walking advertisement for the importance of smarts, toughness, leadership, etc. Literally, from the neck down, very little separates him from any of the other QB's in the NFL. What allowed him to rewrite all of the rookie record books is from the neck up.

He does have some physical talents too. His arm is strong enough and he's built to take the punishment NFL defenders dole out. But he isn't that fast although he is a good runner. What makes him so effective at running is his decision making and his innate understanding of angles. Again... that is all mental.

Dak shows that what makes a QB successful or not is between the ears and not anything that can be measured at the combine.

Compare Sean Lee to Bruce Carter. Literally polar opposites. Lee is all smarts and hard work while Carter was all athleticism and potential. One is great... the other is JAG.

Terrell Suggs compared to Vernon Gholston.

I could go on but my post is already long enough. This is a subject that I feel strongly about. I've seen enough Mike Mamula's and Nelson Agolar's to go along with the Dak Prescott's and Mike Singletary's of the NFL world to have a clear understanding of how important football acumen is and how unimportant running fast can be when looking at draft prospects.

 

[AdamJT13]

Keys to Understanding the NFL Draft

1. The “draft experts” on TV and the internet are generally either guys who got fired from NFL personnel jobs, or guys who never did them at all. Their rankings tell you little about how the teams are actually ranking draft prospects, or how good those prospects actually are.

a. It follows that you shouldn’t treat their rankings as anything but educated guesses, at best.

b. From that, it follows that trying to judge the “value” of a draft pick made by a team by comparing where they took a player to where the “draft experts” guessed the player would be taken is kind of dumb. Remember when Travis Frederick was decried as a "terrible value" because the Cowboys took a guy with a 2nd round grade at the end of the 1st round?

It's important to differentiate between guys who rank the players themselves and those who compile rankings based on their sources around the league. You're referring to the former. The latter are guys like Bob McGinn, Rick Gosselin (when he did them) and the late, great Joel Buchsbaum. Their rankings are much more valuable than one guy's opinion.

 

[Risen Star]

Joel Buchsbaum had sources around the league but so does Kiper and McShay. They all watch film and rank accordingly. Sources do impact their rankings but to suggest any of the three rank them strictly off what they're told is wrong. You could barely walk in Buchsbaum's place with all the tapes, binders and notes he had on the players and that wasn't because someone told him where to rank players over the phone.

I found the initial post cherry picking nonsense.

 

[Rogerthat12]

Joel Buchsbaum had sources around the league but so does Kiper and McShay. They all watch film and rank accordingly. Sources do impact their rankings but to suggest any of the three rank them strictly off what they're told is wrong. You could barely walk in Buchsbaum's place with all the tapes, binders and notes he had on the players and that wasn't because someone told him where to rank players over the phone.

I found the initial post cherry picking nonsense.

Yep, for example, Dane Brugler has scout connections with NFL teams, watches substantial amounts of game tape on over 400 plus prospects, attends some games and bowl championships, also attends the Shrine game, Senior Bowl and Combine with some Pro days.

Through his efforts, he offers the most comprehensive Draft Guide every year that offers substantial analysis of the 400 plus full reports on prospects, the best available.

There may be some talent evaluators that are piss poor to be sure but some of these guys are informed through their own analysis with team sources as an additional guide, not a replacement for their actual work.

I also do not believe that every fan that purports to, has indeed watched all of the game tape of a said prospect and neither do I believe said fan has any or much actual training of talent evaluation from a scout or former scout.

The untrained eye can see anything while watching the same tape that an expert is watching while coming to extremely different conclusions.

Further, I have had these types offer me a single youtube game tape as evidence for their position, yes, a single game tape then when viewed contradicted their perspective while ignoring the said prospects full body of work.

Unless you have some actual training and have a comprehensive understanding of a prospect through game tape, coaching sources and the like, you can have some understanding of a given prospect but it will be limited in scope and understanding if we are being honest.

This does not mean that you must bow to these type of evaluators or agree with everything they say nor does it mean you can not be right about a certain player when the "experts" got the evaluation wrong but it does mean you are probably limited in terms of training and resources and if you were being honest, should warrant some humility in the Draft Zone!

 

[Verdict]

Keys to Understanding the NFL Draft

1. The “draft experts” on TV and the internet are generally either guys who got fired from NFL personnel jobs, or guys who never did them at all. Their rankings tell you little about how the teams are actually ranking draft prospects, or how good those prospects actually are.

a. It follows that you shouldn’t treat their rankings as anything but educated guesses, at best.

b. From that, it follows that trying to judge the “value” of a draft pick made by a team by comparing where they took a player to where the “draft experts” guessed the player would be taken is kind of dumb. Remember when Travis Frederick was decried as a "terrible value" because the Cowboys took a guy with a 2nd round grade at the end of the 1st round?

2. A large % of the players drafted will be complete busts, so the teams aren’t that great at ranking players, either. Even highly successful teams have many, many draft busts.

a. Literally nobody has any idea if that quarterback will be the next Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. The Cowboys just got on the good side of this equation by drafting someone who in hindsight should have went top 5 overall in the 4th round.

3. The NFL Combine will cause lots of people to get excited about things that don’t matter to NFL performance while forgetting about things that do.

a. The main value of the Combine is in the boring things like the teams interviewing the players and the medical evaluations. These will also get the least coverage unless someone literally finds out he has cancer (which has happened!) The interview results were the first clue that Dak was not the generic dumb spread option gimmick QB he was assumed to be by the media.

b. Some guy who can’t actually play but runs a fast 40 will be overvalued by everyone, even if they are terrible at their actual job on the field. This includes wide receivers who can’t catch, when catching balls is the entire point of their job. The Eagles drafted Nelson Algholor for a 4.37 40 without noticing that he couldn't catch in college, and ~surprisingly~ he turned into a drop machine in the pros.

c. Some guy whose job doesn’t even have anything to do with sprinting will be undervalued by everyone because their 40 time was slow, even if they are great at their actual job on the field. This includes obvious positions where this makes no sense, like centers and nose tackles. Travis Frederick's slow 40 time was treated as a big knock on him even though center 40 times have mattered exactly never in the history of everything.

There will probably be at least one tall schmuck who "looks like an NFL quarterback" and everyone gets excited about even though he’s dumb as a stump and can’t hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn. Pretty sure this was Christian Hackenberg in 2016, a guy who looked like trash in college but was 6'4"and went in the 2nd round somehow.

Anything I missed?

After that post I think you can drop the mic and do a victory lap.

 

[sureletsrace]

This whole thread is gold.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

It's important to differentiate between guys who rank the players themselves and those who compile rankings based on their sources around the league. You're referring to the former. The latter are guys like Bob McGinn, Rick Gosselin (when he did them) and the late, great Joel Buchsbaum. Their rankings are much more valuable than one guy's opinion.

Exactly. Although it's pretty apparent that Kiper starts off doing his first mock draft based on his own opinion and as time progresses he starts to get information from college coaches and then agents. And as we near the draft he either gets more info from actual NFL sources and/or starts following what other NFL draft experts are saying. He was the guy that had Manziel as the #1 overall pick in the draft. That may have been done to create a splash for himself as he eventually changed his mind over time before the draft started.




YR

 

[Yakuza Rich]

4. Let's talk about draft grades, and what's really happening with them.

a. The draft "experts" mentioned above make guesses about what teams will do. Then they reward or punish those teams with grades based on how well what the team did matched their guesses. In other words, the teams that get bad grades are the ones that make the draft "experts" look bad, by implicitly showing that their ideas of player value do not line up with what actual NFL teams think of player value. The whole thing is based on a self-serving thought process that starts by assuming their guesses are correct, and reasoning backwards from there. If you want to know if a guy's grades have any credibility, see if they make any effort to understand why the team did something they didn't think they would.

b. Sometimes teams just do patently dumb stuff they should get ripped for, like take bad kickers in the second round, sure. But that's the exception rather than the rule.

c. Thus, if the Cowboys get As for draft grades, don't get too excited. If they get Fs don't get too ticked off.

5. Beware of player narratives that keep getting repeated over and over again.

a. This happens on the level of both draft "experts," and even NFL coaches and execs that should know better. Often a guy will get pigeon-holed into a category they don't belong, and it just keeps getting repeated over and over again until it sort of becomes accepted truth. Here we come back to Dak, who weirdly kept being compared to Tim Tebow of all people. This probably got started because his head coach in college was Tebow's OC. But here's the thing: even with what we only knew at the time of the draft, the comparison was total garbage. Dak wasn't a hulking linebacker-sized dude like Tebow, he wasn't nearly the running QB that Tebow was - and he was a radically more advanced passer with massively better throwing mechanics at the same point in their college careers. That leaves them with almost nothing in common as prospects!

b. So if you keep hearing "X is like Y" take a step back and decide for yourself if the comparison really makes sense, or is just lazy.

I don't have a problem with draft grades, even right after the draft. The issue is more on the grading methodology used by the experts. You will find that most of the grades will fall within a C to B- range because the experts don't understand how to create an effective and insightful grading process. Then when a team drafts 'big names' they get a higher grade. But, if you're a lousy team that is drafting first...you're more likely to get that big name player in the draft.

The draft is about value. If you get a projected 1st rounder in the 3rd round and he gets injured and never lives up to his 1st round projection...the pick wasn't a bad pick, it just didn't happen to work out because of an injury that nobody could predict. If the experts looked more at where the player was drafted versus their projections and were tougher on the grades, you could see a lot better and more interesting draft grades.




YR