The five first round trades, compared by four draft charts

[honyock]

Warning: this is very number-y.

I found this website last Friday, but didn't have a chance to make a thread about it until now. Something similar may have already been presented, but here it is again...this comes from the author at footballplusnumbers.com, who has come up with his own chart that reflects his calculations of a more modernized trade chart.

His explanation of how he arrived at his number is at http://www.sportsplusnumbers.com/2012/11/what-are-nfl-draft-picks-really-worth.html . It includes a history of the first draft chart (the Jimmy/Jerry/McCoy chart) and how the author believes valuation has progressively changed since the salary cap was first introduced. It's long, wordy, and interesting for the number geek.

He also includes valuation by the old(McCoy) chart, and by the Football Perspective and Harvard Sports Analysis charts. It's a nice machine that lets you plug in any trade numbers and see the results from all four trade charts, in both numbers and graphs. the value each team received is compared to the value of the first pick overall in the draft, and then compared for each team.

Here are the results for each of the five first round trades this year, with a few comments at the bottom. I've listed the team trading down, and how they came out ahead or behind according to each chart. I hope I've got all these numbers correct:

Oakland: (sent 3 to Miami, for 12 and 42)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -31%
SportsPlusNumbers +2.8%
Football Perspective +9.3%
Harvard Analytics +14.8%

Buffalo: (sent 8 and 71 to St Louis for 16, 46, 78, and 222)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart +0.5%%
SportsPlusNumbers +17.7%
Football Perspective +22..2%
Harvard Analytics +30.6%

Dallas: (sent 18 to SF for 31 and 74)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -9.8%
SportsPlusNumbers +16%
Football Perspective +26%
Harvard Analytics +33..2%

St Louis: (sent 22 and 2015 7th rounder to Atlanta for 30, 92 and 198)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -2.3%
SportsPlusNumbers +24.9%
Football Perspective +36%
Harvard Analytics +50.1%

New England: (sent 29 to Minnesota for 52, 83, 102 and 229)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart +1.5%
SportsPlusNumbers +48.1%
Football Perspective +70.5%
Harvard Analytics +97.9%


Three of the trades - Buffalo, St Louis and New England - came out pretty even by the old McCoy chart. Dallas was about 10% the loser and Oakland a 31% loser by the old chart. However, every team trading down came out ahead by all three newer charts, most by significant amounts. Dallas was a loser in the old chart relative to how Buffalo fared. But in the newer charts, the Dallas and Buffalo trades came out pretty equal.

Harvard Analytics was the most generous for teams trading down, by a pretty significant margin.

By the old chart, Dallas would have gotten fair value by getting the #31 and #61 picks instead of 31 and 74. By all new charts, they were solidly at an advantage.

The author makes some interesting observations about the changes in pick values over time. High first round picks had become almost untradeable in the latter years of the previous CBA. In the two years of the new CBA, it's much more advantageous to trade down, by every chart including the old McCoy chart. He also believes that the new CBA has made values go back in the direction of the McCoy chart...not all the way, but back in that general direction.

I'd guess that some or all teams have their own proprietary charts these days, which they may tweak every year as their evaluation of the strength at the top of the draft varies relative to lower picks. This year is a good example, with a perceived weaker top of first round relative to 2nd-3rd-4th round picks.

I think Stephen claimed sometime over the weekend that we came out ahead on the trade with SF according to the team's chart. That makes me suspect that they're using something more akin to footballplusnumbers chart.

You get out of chart what your assumptions build into it. In reading the author's methodology, there are a ton of guesstimates and assumptions and different ways of crunching the numbers that will provide some pretty big spreads in the numbers. I haven't really dived into the numbers for how the Football Perspective and Harvard Sports Analysis people create their charts, so I can't really give any opinion on which chart I find more or less flawed than the others. The author does give some of his critique and problems of the McCoy chart in the link I provided above.

if you're still reading, I'm impressed and you have my sympathy and apologies. Starting tomorrow, I hope to get a life.

 

[yimyammer]

Seems like high draft picks would be more valuable now there is a rookie salary cap and trading down when there wasn't would be a good thing to do under the old CBA. Those guys are smarter than me, so I guess I'm missing something

 

[honyock]

Seems like high draft picks would be more valuable now there is a rookie salary cap and trading down when there wasn't would be a good thing to do under the old CBA. Those guys are smarter than me, so I guess I'm missing something

I think his reasoning was that under the old CBA, high first round picks had become so expensive relative to the total cap number, that teams weren't that interested in trading up high in the first under most circumstances. So if a team had a high pick in round 1 and wanted to trade down for whatever reasons, they had a harder time finding a trade partner.

The number of trades high in the first round has jumped since the new CBA went into effect, in comparison to the few years prior. It's still a pretty small sample size, but that is the trend so far.

 

[85Cowboy85]

I remember that thread and was curious about this thank you for posting.

I would bet some teams even construct new charts for each particular draft. Different values depending on how many players have certain grades and how likely they are to be there.

I have never gotten the sense that Jerry or Steven is a liar. I don't doubt them when they say that the trade was even according to their chart. The problem is sometimes they omit things that would make them look bad. For instance in 2009 there was no mention of the fact that they had Lesean McCoy with a first round grade on him and traded down. Whose to say whether the players available at 18 according to their board value would have trumped what we got in the deal? By some reports several of the members of the Cowboys front office thought so.

In the end as fans we just really only know what Jerry wants us to know so it can be very very difficult to evaluate his decisions with any kind of objectivity. I'm very skeptical of the Frederick pick but I will hope for the best.

 

[ThreeandOut]

I think one impact of the new CBA is that it is going to be cheaper to trade up. In general teams are not going to get as much in trading down as they used to before the new CBA. The exception to this is New England...for some reason other teams love giving them extra picks.

 

[speedkilz88]

I remember that thread and was curious about this thank you for posting.

I would bet some teams even construct new charts for each particular draft. Different values depending on how many players have certain grades and how likely they are to be there.

I have never gotten the sense that Jerry or Steven is a liar. I don't doubt them when they say that the trade was even according to their chart. The problem is sometimes they omit things that would make them look bad. For instance in 2009 there was no mention of the fact that they had Lesean McCoy with a first round grade on him and traded down. Whose to say whether the players available at 18 according to their board value would have trumped what we got in the deal? By some reports several of the members of the Cowboys front office thought so.

In the end as fans we just really only know what Jerry wants us to know so it can be very very difficult to evaluate his decisions with any kind of objectivity. I'm very skeptical of the Frederick pick but I will hope for the best.

What are you talking about here? Jerry came out right away that they had McCoy with a 1st round grade. That's why we know. His explanation was that they just used a #1 on Felix the prior year along with a #4 on Choice and signed Barber to a large contract. The need was not there and they saw McCoy at the time as another Felix type back. He also admitted that Unger also had a #1 grade and that they thought he was going to fall since they had scouted the teams picking ahead of them. But Seattle managed to trade up and got him.

 

[Cowboys22]

What this tells us is that the old draft chart is out of date and the media and anyone else using it to bash Jerry is either ignorant of the facts or just has an agenda. They said that on their updated chart, they got value and even came out a little ahead on the trade. The old chart was created by Jimmy and was heavily weighted at the top half of the 1st round. Think about that for a minute and you will realize what I came to realize. Jerry came into the league at a time when draft picks were not nearly as valued around the league and saw an opportunity to build a juggernaut from the ground up by basically fleecing teams out of multiple draft picks. He created the chart knowing full well he was going to trade those high valuable picks for multiple others and wanted to get the most he could. Over the years that chart has been watered down a little by teams as draft picks have become more valuable to teams and they just were unwilling to give up soo much to move up.

Teams are also unwilling to release their current draft charts because other teams can use it against you. They keep them secret so the media and fans just go off the outdated heavily scewed chart Jimmy created.

 

[visionary]

Seems like high draft picks would be more valuable now there is a rookie salary cap and trading down when there wasn't would be a good thing to do under the old CBA. Those guys are smarter than me, so I guess I'm missing something

this is what i would have thought

 

[DFWJC]

For starters, there are only 4 valid trades up there. Everyone knows the Oakland trade was the worst trade ina decade of trades not involvingplayers.

You can see right away that SportsPlus is useless.
May as well be throwing mud at a wall with those ranges.
None were within 10% and 2 were > 20% off. Thats is almost randon, it's so bad.

In fact, at least for this small sample size, all of the charts except for the most commonly used (Jimmy/McCoy) chart are almost completely useless. The distributions are entirely unacceptable by any statistical measurement

It does show that the Jimmy/McCoy chart is still pretty accurate.
All "real" trades were within 10% and three of four were less than 3% off...pretty amazing really.

The sample size of this little study is way too small though.

 

[Idgit]

It's always interesting to see how lightly trafficked good threads are when there's not really anything to complain about.

 

[xpistofer]

Warning: this is very number-y.

I found this website last Friday, but didn't have a chance to make a thread about it until now. Something similar may have already been presented, but here it is again...this comes from the author at footballplusnumbers.com, who has come up with his own chart that reflects his calculations of a more modernized trade chart.

His explanation of how he arrived at his number is at http://www.sportsplusnumbers.com/2012/11/what-are-nfl-draft-picks-really-worth.html . It includes a history of the first draft chart (the Jimmy/Jerry/McCoy chart) and how the author believes valuation has progressively changed since the salary cap was first introduced. It's long, wordy, and interesting for the number geek.

He also includes valuation by the old(McCoy) chart, and by the Football Perspective and Harvard Sports Analysis charts. It's a nice machine that lets you plug in any trade numbers and see the results from all four trade charts, in both numbers and graphs. the value each team received is compared to the value of the first pick overall in the draft, and then compared for each team.

Here are the results for each of the five first round trades this year, with a few comments at the bottom. I've listed the team trading down, and how they came out ahead or behind according to each chart. I hope I've got all these numbers correct:

Oakland: (sent 3 to Miami, for 12 and 42)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -31%
SportsPlusNumbers +2.8%
Football Perspective +9.3%
Harvard Analytics +14.8%

Buffalo: (sent 8 and 71 to St Louis for 16, 46, 78, and 222)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart +0.5%%
SportsPlusNumbers +17.7%
Football Perspective +22..2%
Harvard Analytics +30.6%

Dallas: (sent 18 to SF for 31 and 74)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -9.8%
SportsPlusNumbers +16%
Football Perspective +26%
Harvard Analytics +33..2%

St Louis: (sent 22 and 2015 7th rounder to Atlanta for 30, 92 and 198)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart -2.3%
SportsPlusNumbers +24.9%
Football Perspective +36%
Harvard Analytics +50.1%

New England: (sent 29 to Minnesota for 52, 83, 102 and 229)
Jimmy/McCoy Chart +1.5%
SportsPlusNumbers +48.1%
Football Perspective +70.5%
Harvard Analytics +97.9%


Three of the trades - Buffalo, St Louis and New England - came out pretty even by the old McCoy chart. Dallas was about 10% the loser and Oakland a 31% loser by the old chart. However, every team trading down came out ahead by all three newer charts, most by significant amounts. Dallas was a loser in the old chart relative to how Buffalo fared. But in the newer charts, the Dallas and Buffalo trades came out pretty equal.

Harvard Analytics was the most generous for teams trading down, by a pretty significant margin.

By the old chart, Dallas would have gotten fair value by getting the #31 and #61 picks instead of 31 and 74. By all new charts, they were solidly at an advantage.

The author makes some interesting observations about the changes in pick values over time. High first round picks had become almost untradeable in the latter years of the previous CBA. In the two years of the new CBA, it's much more advantageous to trade down, by every chart including the old McCoy chart. He also believes that the new CBA has made values go back in the direction of the McCoy chart...not all the way, but back in that general direction.

I'd guess that some or all teams have their own proprietary charts these days, which they may tweak every year as their evaluation of the strength at the top of the draft varies relative to lower picks. This year is a good example, with a perceived weaker top of first round relative to 2nd-3rd-4th round picks.

I think Stephen claimed sometime over the weekend that we came out ahead on the trade with SF according to the team's chart. That makes me suspect that they're using something more akin to footballplusnumbers chart.

You get out of chart what your assumptions build into it. In reading the author's methodology, there are a ton of guesstimates and assumptions and different ways of crunching the numbers that will provide some pretty big spreads in the numbers. I haven't really dived into the numbers for how the Football Perspective and Harvard Sports Analysis people create their charts, so I can't really give any opinion on which chart I find more or less flawed than the others. The author does give some of his critique and problems of the McCoy chart in the link I provided above.

if you're still reading, I'm impressed and you have my sympathy and apologies. Starting tomorrow, I hope to get a life.

excellent post...thanx...

 

[InmanRoshi]

The higher picks may become more valued under the new CBA, but if they're anything like the Jimmy Johnson chart they're going to be way over valued as the value variance in the picks doesn't not represent the variance in the players. The old Jimmy Johnson chart outrageously over-values the top 30 picks, especially Top 15 pick. The 23rd pick used to select Shariff Floyd at 23 (750 pts) is almost 3X the value of the 67th pick used to select Bennie Logan at 67 (255 pts), but it's virtually impossible that he'll be 3X the player. I don't completely dismiss the impact truly elite players have, but they better be quarterbacks or position players who are capable of taking the routine and mundane 5 yard play and turning them into 70 yard game changers that decide football games. Otherwise, any team still using the 30 year old Jimmy Johnson evaluation chart is just begging to be fleeced. Even the valuation curve of the Harvard Chart is probably too steep. On the other hand of the spectrum, 6th-7th round picks have proven to have such little success rate of turning into starters you might as well view them with the same probability as undrafted free agents.

This guy does a better job of explaining it, completely with nifty charts....

http://rotoviz.com/index.php/2013/0...ation-yet-another-theory-of-draft-pick-value/

 

[Idgit]

The higher picks may become more valued under the new CBA, but if they're anything like the Jimmy Johnson chart they're going to be way over valued as the value variance in the picks doesn't not represent the variance in the players. The old Jimmy Johnson chart outrageously over-values the top 30 picks, especially Top 15 pick. The 23rd pick used to select Shariff Floyd at 23 (750 pts) is almost 3X the value of the 67th pick used to select Bennie Logan at 67 (255 pts), but it's virtually impossible that he'll be 3X the player. I don't completely dismiss the impact truly elite players have, but they better be quarterbacks or position players who are capable of taking the routine and mundane 5 yard play and turning them into 70 yard game changers that decide football games. Otherwise, any team still using the 30 year old Jimmy Johnson evaluation chart is just begging to be fleeced. Even the valuation curve of the Harvard Chart is probably too steep. On the other hand of the spectrum, 6th-7th round picks have proven to have such little success rate of turning into starters you might as well view them with the same probability as undrafted free agents.

This guy does a better job of explaining it, completely with nifty charts....

http://rotoviz.com/index.php/2013/0...ation-yet-another-theory-of-draft-pick-value/

Thanks, Inman.

Love threads like these.

 

[85Cowboy85]

What are you talking about here? Jerry came out right away that they had McCoy with a 1st round grade. That's why we know. His explanation was that they just used a #1 on Felix the prior year along with a #4 on Choice and signed Barber to a large contract. The need was not there and they saw McCoy at the time as another Felix type back. He also admitted that Unger also had a #1 grade and that they thought he was going to fall since they had scouted the teams picking ahead of them. But Seattle managed to trade up and got him.

I see I stand corrected. I hadn't heard it until broaddus mentioned it this past offseason. Still not really a good decision IMO.

 

[theogt]

The higher picks may become more valued under the new CBA, but if they're anything like the Jimmy Johnson chart they're going to be way over valued as the value variance in the picks doesn't not represent the variance in the players. The old Jimmy Johnson chart outrageously over-values the top 30 picks, especially Top 15 pick. The 23rd pick used to select Shariff Floyd at 23 (750 pts) is almost 3X the value of the 67th pick used to select Bennie Logan at 67 (255 pts), but it's virtually impossible that he'll be 3X the player. I don't completely dismiss the impact truly elite players have, but they better be quarterbacks or position players who are capable of taking the routine and mundane 5 yard play and turning them into 70 yard game changers that decide football games. Otherwise, any team still using the 30 year old Jimmy Johnson evaluation chart is just begging to be fleeced. Even the valuation curve of the Harvard Chart is probably too steep. On the other hand of the spectrum, 6th-7th round picks have proven to have such little success rate of turning into starters you might as well view them with the same probability as undrafted free agents.

This guy does a better job of explaining it, completely with nifty charts....

http://rotoviz.com/index.php/2013/0...ation-yet-another-theory-of-draft-pick-value/

The calculation isn't that he will be 3X the player, but that -- on average -- the player you take at that spot in the draft is 3X as likely to be a good player. When the 23rd pick busts, people are surprised (even if only mildly surprised). When the 67th pick busts, no one even knew his name.

 

[honyock]

this is what i would have thought

I think you're both right...I didn't explain it very well in my first post. I said that under the new CBA that it's more advantageous to trade down. It's not really that, its more that it is easier to trade down, because you're more likely to find a trade partner. It's less painful to trade up, because the rookie salaries at the top of round one aren't as big a cap hit relative to the total cap as they used to be.

So if you have pick 3 and want to get out for any reason - you're bad and need more picks to restock, or your needs aren't met by players at the top, or whatever reasons - then you're more likely to find a team willing to trade up now. So there is more trading activity high in round one than there was a few years ago.

 

[honyock]

The higher picks may become more valued under the new CBA, but if they're anything like the Jimmy Johnson chart they're going to be way over valued as the value variance in the picks doesn't not represent the variance in the players. The old Jimmy Johnson chart outrageously over-values the top 30 picks, especially Top 15 pick. The 23rd pick used to select Shariff Floyd at 23 (750 pts) is almost 3X the value of the 67th pick used to select Bennie Logan at 67 (255 pts), but it's virtually impossible that he'll be 3X the player. I don't completely dismiss the impact truly elite players have, but they better be quarterbacks or position players who are capable of taking the routine and mundane 5 yard play and turning them into 70 yard game changers that decide football games. Otherwise, any team still using the 30 year old Jimmy Johnson evaluation chart is just begging to be fleeced. Even the valuation curve of the Harvard Chart is probably too steep. On the other hand of the spectrum, 6th-7th round picks have proven to have such little success rate of turning into starters you might as well view them with the same probability as undrafted free agents.

This guy does a better job of explaining it, completely with nifty charts....

http://rotoviz.com/index.php/2013/0...ation-yet-another-theory-of-draft-pick-value/

I think that what you're saying - that the old draft chart may overvalue players at the top of round one - is one of the reasons why other draft charts have started popping up, to address that possible flaw in the Jimmy/McCoy chart. If the higher picks are overvalued, it creates a hole in the system, that a savvy team could exploit to gain value by trading. And especially by trading down.

The old chart that McCoy created was done completely differently from the newer charts. What McCoy did was examine the draft pick trades from the previous few years , and he found a trend line that emerged when graphing them, and that trend line formed the basis of the chart. The thing is, that trend line was formed not out of any real research by teams on fair value, but out of the trading horse sense of the leagues GM's over that time period. That horse sense rightly included that the value of picks would decrease the fastest at the upper end of the draft - it would decrease logarithmically, not linearly.

Once the chart spread across the league and became more or less gospel, the fact that every one trusted and followed that chart made it less likely that trades would vary from the chart. The fact that the chart existed made it more likely that trades would follow it's trendline. There was some research at the time that showed this to be he case. So it was seen to be accurate by everyone, and that made it even more accurate as a barometer for trades.

But the problem is, was the decrease in value that came from horse sense accurate or not? The GM's rightly got the concept of the logarithmic curve, but did they get the steepness of the curve right? Was it too steep or too shallow?

The newer charts argue that the Jimmy/McCoy/horse sense chart didn't get the steepness curve exactly right. You'd sort of expect this - they weren't using much sophisticated analysis of outcomes, more their sense of things. And the new charts would present the case that the Jimmy/McCoy chart overvalued the higher picks. That gives an advantage to the teams who trade down early, and are aware of the flaw in the old chart. They get better value by trading down than the chart indicated they would. It exploits a flaw in the chart, assuming their trading partner is using the old chart.

The sportsplusnumbers chart guy took a different approach. He was looking for how much value a pick represents to a team, over the NFL life of the player picked. He analyzed every pick since the salary cap came along, and factored in length of career, games started, Pro Bowls, All-Pros, value against replacement players, every variable he could, then created a chart to reflect all that. Just looking at this years trade results, it can vary from the old chart, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. I haven't looked at the other two charts but I'm going to guess that they took similar approaches.

The old chart takes the approach of "This is what has been done historically, so it must represent fair value". It is accurate by popular agreement. And one more thing about the old chart - it came along before major changes in the economics of the league - the introduction of the salary cap and later the rookie wage scale. The chart has never been modified to reflect those changes.

If a savvy team wanted to take advantage of this consistently, one way to do it is trade down early, and you'd probably expect them to be more balanced in their trading later in the draft. The team that has been perceived to be the best draft trader over the past decade is the Patriots. And sure enough, they trade down almost twice as often as they trade up. The stat I found was that they've traded 49 times since 2000 - 17 times moving up, 32 times moving down. I haven't been able to find a good list of the trades, but I'd like to see the breakdown to see when in the draft those trades were made, if there is a pattern there.

I do know that if any team would have access to a more sophisticated chart, it would be New England. They have a guy working for them, Ernie Adams, who I think has the title "Director of Football Research". His story really deserves a thread of it's own. It's pretty unique and bizarre. He's a college friend of Belichick since high school, had his own investment firm for awhile, and now has Belichick's ear on personnel and who knows what else more than anyone else in the organization. He's been described as something of a math/statistics genius/savant. His role is so secretive that no one really knows what he does - not players, former players, team coaches, beat writers, or anyone else in the organization. He's in the war room on draft day, communicates directly with Belichick on headset during games, and is his most trusted friend in the organization.

He's reportedly feeding Belichick info during games on odds of going for it on fourth down, odds of winning a challenge, formations, etc. H'es been linked in legend to Spygate. If anyone knows how to game the system, including the draft, it's Adams. I suspect that he is behind a lot of their trading strategy, and I can't believe that he's depending on a 20 year old chart that came along before the salary cap, that is based on the way things have always been done. the guy is worth a Google, really interesting story.

Anyway, I don't doubt that the old chart is useful as a piece of information for teams, and some may still use it like it is the gold standard. But to treat it like it is gospel is a mistake, I think. There is too much information out there to tweak the values in a more fine-tuned way now.

 

[Hoofbite]

The calculation isn't that he will be 3X the player, but that -- on average -- the player you take at that spot in the draft is 3X as likely to be a good player. When the 23rd pick busts, people are surprised (even if only mildly surprised). When the 67th pick busts, no one even knew his name.

You're saying that the 1st pick isn't 30X the player of the 100th pick?

Bulljive.