Prince Fielder’s deal makes more sense than Albert Pujols’ deal
Salary data in this post courtesy of Cot’s/Baseball Prospectus.
The big problem I had with the Albert Pujols deal the day it was signed is the nature of the contract. The Angels were described as “having plenty of cable revenue” in order to execute such a deal with the game’s biggest star, which made sense.
What did not (and does not) support that notion is that this deal is very heavily backloaded. The Angels have a ton of salary flexibility in 2012 and 2013, but after that, Pujols is to cost the Angels between 23 million and 30 million per season on an ascending basis for 8 years. When you look at the Angels current payroll, you can see why they would do such a thing in terms of backloading Pujols’ money as they will free up plenty of salary each of the next three years. But the only reason it makes sense is if you are skeptical that the Angels are currently awash in cash, or that this cash is burning a hole in their pockets.
There is no question the Angels are a large market team at this point, clearly the dominant franchise within their own locale, and just behind the Yankees in terms of total spending ability, but the payroll flexibility is an illusion. You don’t need flexibility when you have Albert Pujols in his prime, but you most certainly will when you have Albert Pujols well past his prime. It’s particularly disturbing when you look at some of the players the 2014 Angels may feature when you assume zero payroll flexibility (probably too tough an assumption, but still):
- 34 year old Albert Pujols ($23 million)
- 35 year old Vernon Wells ($21 million)
- 31 year old Jared Weaver ($16 million)
- 33 year old C.J. Wilson ($16 million)
- 30 year old Howie Kendrick ($9.35 million)
- Arb-eligible Peter Bourjos
- Pre-arb Mike Trout
- Arb-eligible Hank Conger
- Arb-eligible Mark Trumbo?
A couple of those contracts look fine on their own merits (Jared Weaver’s contract still looks great and Howie Kendrick’s extension is a bargain if 2011 is a real glimpse of his talent). But that list of nine players on the 2014 Angels exceeds $90 million in estimated salary, and simply won’t win a lot of games unless the Angels are able to add to it. The Angels (I am guessing) will try to sit in the $150-$160 million range in payroll over the length of the Pujols deal, which means that they have enough flexibility to build a team around that core, but to stave off the effects of age, the core is almost going to have to be entirely drafted and developed. It’s already 2012, so you might want to get started on that if you’re the Angels.
The Prince Fielder-Detroit Tigers deal makes a lot more sense for the Tigers. The biggest argument against the deal, to me, is that it seems pretty frivolous. The Tigers enter 2012 as a clear favorite in the AL Central, with the Royals and the Indians still about a year away from being true 90 win contenders, and needing the Tigers to decend to between 84-86 wins to be within the realm of contention. The immediate reaction to the Fielder deal was that the Tigers accomplished this: with a Boesch-Fielder-Cabrera-Peralta-Avila middle of the order, there’s no team in the AL Central that can go blow for blow with that group, added to the fact that the Tigers were probably already going to enter the season with the most daunting rotation in the division. But if you take Fielder out of that, you probably drop an estimated 3 or 4 wins off the Tigers total, yet, none of the things I wrote about the Tigers above are untrue.
But what I like about the Fielder deal is that it is in no way backloaded. In the aggragate, the Tigers are going to end up raising payroll by about $15-$20 million over last season and are likely committing to hold payroll steady for the remainder of the tenure of Mike Illitch’s ownership. They had planned to invest the money freed up by the expiration of Magglio Ordonez’ contract into arbitration raises and the backloaded portion of Justin Verlander’s contract. The Fielder deal was most likely executed by ownership in an understanding that payroll would be raised over the life of the deal, obviously with the Franchises’ blessing.
The Tigers lose pretty much any payroll flexibility they might have had, but the first time this will even be a minor consideration for the Tigers is if/when Justin Verlander approaches free agency after the 2014 season. The commitment by the franchise to stay in the $120-$130 million range in payroll for the forseeable future is as large a step forward as it was when they upped payroll in 2008. But this time there is no Dontrelle Willis deal that will threaten the Tigers as AL Central favorites. Only time can do that as the Royals and Indians attempt to join them as annual 90 win clubs.
In other words, the 2014 Tigers have more free money and overall better contracts than the 2014 Angels do. Take a look:
- 30 year old Prince Fielder ($24 million)
- 31 year old Miguel Cabrera ($22 million)
- 31 year old Justin Verlander ($20.1 million)
- 35 year old Victor Martinez ($12 million)
- Arb-eligible Max Scherzer
- Arb-eligible Rick Porcello
- Pre-arb Jacob Turner ($1.1.75 + $1.0 million club option)
- Arb-eligible Austin Jackson
- Arb-eligible Brennan Boesch
- Arb-eligibile Alex Avila
That’s about the same $90 million dollars the Angels are in for 2014 payroll, but that is a much younger team to a man, and a more talented team in my opinion.
And the Fielder contract against the Pujols contract is emblematic of the problems that the Angels are forcing themselves into later. The Tigers might end up being overrated in 2012, but they are not in danger of needing to dismantle their team at any point. Even though they would be better characterized as medium-market against the large market Angels, the Tigers look like they will be a better team starting in 2014 and all else equal, through the 2020 MLB season.
GM Jerry Reese deserves credit for “building” 2011 New York Giants
As one of the minority to pick the New York Giants to win the NFC East (full disclosure: the LiveBall QDS projections had the Eagles (fractionally) ahead of the Giants; I only picked the Giants to win on tiebreaker), I thought that the way that the Giants frustrating ”off-season” got blown out of proportion had an effect on how the Giants were perceived heading into the season. Injuries in the preseason ravaged the Giants defense, to the point where they weren’t right (relative to where they were in 2010) for the first 15 weeks of the regular season.
To recap: the Giants released 40% of their offensive line, could not agree to a contract with WR Steve Smith, did not reach a contract extension with Osi Umenyiora, and let TE Kevin Boss walk in free agency. And a year later, we know the following: neither Rich Seubert or Shaun O’Hara was healthy enough to play in 2011, Smith did absolutely nothing as a Philadelphia Eagle and will hit the market at the low point of his value (where a Giants return is not out of the question), Kevin Boss had a decent year but didn’t even play a majority of Oakland’s offensive snaps, and the only move that had a detrimental effect on the Giants season was perhaps the lack of contractual security that may (or may not) have influenced Osi Umenyiora’s decision to sit inactive in seven games this season. His return is one of the primary reasons the Giants defense has been very good in the playoffs after struggling in the regular season.
But the real job Jerry Reese has done in New York is more of a credit to how he approaches the task of season to season management of his roster. The Giants won the super bowl behind the strength of Reese’s first draft class in his first season on the job, but that championship roster was built by Ernie Accorsi. If the Giants win the super bowl this year, Reese will deserve all the credit (even though he’ll never get the credit for having Eli Manning on the roster — despite making the decision to extend him for 6 years – $100 million). Sure, it’s easier to build around a quarterback then it is to find a quarterback while building, but we need to remember that when Jerry Reese took this job, Eli Manning was far closer to being let go by the Giants than he was to the contract Reese gave him. And while the Giants SB championship in 2007 wouldn’t have been possible without a great contribution from Reese’s rookie class, you could have argued that up until now, that super bowl championship did more for Reese than Reese had done for the Giants.
But Reese did very unpopular things this summer. And almost all those moves ended up being unconditionally right, only exception to the ones where we don’t know how they will end year. We don’t know how Osi Umenyiora’s Giants contract will end yet. But we know that the Giants have exceeded their expectations for this season, once again saving Tom Coughlin’s job in the process. The term addition by subtraction doesn’t adequately describe how the Giants prepared for this season: they struggled for a lot of this year because of questionable additions (Antrel Rolle), and injuries (Terrell Thomas, Jon Goff). But Eli Manning’s excellent season was fairly predictable (which I predicted here in explaining my reasoning for being higher on the Giants than the Eagles) despite the regression of his offensive line, and though we would have never known Victor Cruz (who I liked coming into this year) was going for 1,536 yards receiving, he essentially ended up playing the role it seemed like Mario Manningham would play.
The Giants were an above average team in the regular season, which is better than most people expected, and probably about what they deserved to be. The team that is torching teams in the playoffs is a function of the design of Reese and his staff. The Giants are not doing it with a great contribution from it’s 2011 draft class, where 6th round pick LB Jacquain Williams of USF is probably having the best rookie season of the group. It’s a different model this year from the one they used in 2007. Gameplans are much more Eli-centric now-a-days. Victor Cruz is far more reliable than any receiver that played for the Giants in the past. The offense around Manning is almost entirely comprised of Reese acquisitions (LT David Diehl, RG Chris Snee, RB Brandon Jacobs, and RT Kareem McKenzie, who are all having mediocre-at-best years, are the other exceptions), and it’s that offense that has kept the Giants in the hunt all season. So has defensive coordinator Perry Fewell, another Reese move.
It doesn’t seem like Jerry Reese deserves so much credit because here we have Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning as the faces of the Giants, and they’ve been around since 2004. But this team that’s winning now is winning entirely because of Reese’s organizational philosophy and because of his decisions made this summer. And he deserves plenty of credit for their success.
An important part of the Tim Tebow debate: the strength of the Denver Broncos defense was a myth
The Denver Broncos accomplished far more this season than anyone could have imagined without some scenario where Kyle Orton would have challenged for pro-bowl consideration. Not only did that not happen, but Orton actually BEAT the Denver Broncos this season as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. Despite that, the Broncos overcame everything including a 1-4 start to beat the odds and capture their first AFC West crown since 2005. Not only that, but they went on to win their home playoff game against all odds, matching the accomplishments of the best post-Elway Broncos team in everything but total wins (Mike Shanahan won 11 games twice after Elway).
The Broncos season really can’t be viewed as anything but a massive success. Sure, the ability to make the playoffs ended up coming entirely from out of their control after Week 14 (San Diego, Oakland a combined 3-3 in those must-win weeks), especially for the team that had by far the easiest schedule down the stretch of any AFC West team. And had the Broncos missed the postseason, we would never have had the opportunity to use a playoff victory as a grounds for team success. So yes, they got lucky along the way. Plenty lucky, actually.
The Broncos-luck relationship often gets framed as a struggle between offense and defense, where Tebow and the Broncos offense is considered to be extremely fortunate to be playing for the win at the end of every week with a point total typically around 10. And while there are individual examples of games the Broncos could not have won without exceptional defensive effort, they proved to be the exception, not the rule.
Statistically speaking, the Broncos defense finished 19th in total DVOA this year, 18th in weighted DVOA (which completely discounts the Kyle Orton games), and 24th against the pass despite a pass rush that improved over the course of the season. On a down by down basis, the Denver Broncos actually had a worse defense against the pass than the putrid Oakland Raiders, who would have won the division with even a modicum of end-of-season defensive discretion. This is a defense that was just bad on the back end most of the year.
How did the Broncos keep scoring defense under control in the regular season? Look at their opponents. In the NFL, points come out of the passing game. That doesn’t mean all good offense comes out of the passing game (we’ll get to Tebow in a minute), but that’s how you score points. The Broncos beat these teams this year: Andy Dalton’s Bengals, Matt Moore’s Dolphins, Carson Palmer’s Raiders, Matt Cassel’s Chiefs, Mark Sanchez’ Jets, Philip Rivers’ Chargers, Christian Ponder’s Vikings, and Caleb Hanie’s Bears. They gave up points in excess of 20 in two wins, against the Raiders and Vikings. That’s not exactly the record of a great passing defense. Sure, the Chargers can go off against any team, and the Bengals had a decent year throwing the football, and the Raiders were at times this year a good passing offense, but that is an awful record.
And Tebow, with some timely special teams help, manged to win 2 of his 5 starts (plus 1 and 2 in the playoffs) in which the Broncos defense surrendered 24 or more points to the opponent. If that’s what Tim Tebow actually was in year two, a 40% winner in games where everything else was equal, he’d be a strong candidate for a year 3 breakout. But that’s not what Tebow actually was. He was a 40% winner in starts where his defense got torched. Tebow won six of his seven starts where the other team’s offense simply failed to perform at an adequate level for 4 quarters.
So yes, Tim Tebow had a lot of help all year long. When he got it, he was practically unbeatable. When he didn’t get it, he still won between 40-50% of his starts. If the Broncos don’t improve as an organization (or a defense) heading into 2012, Tebow may struggle to produce another 8 win season. He and the Broncos caught plenty of breaks this year, more perhaps than they deserved. They weren’t great at any one thing. They were consistently above average at running the football. They made timely plays. This was a much improved Broncos team.
But to perpetuate the myth that the Broncos were a great defensive team that kept their offense in the games all season would not be accurate. They were a 4th place team playing a 4th place schedule in a league that believes any team can win 8 games in any year. In 2011, the Denver Broncos did not feature a special defense. They could be better described as the “any team” of 2011.
The Salary Cap still doesn’t act as a limiting factor on NFL teams
A thought exercise that I have been having with myself today: How would the NFL world be different if the 2011 CBA had not contained a salary cap. We just had, in the character-limited words of Evan Silva:
2011 FA class was deepest, most talented in NFL history. 2012 class not far off. It’s loaded. Will post comprehensive list on Friday.
So with perhaps the deepest free agent class in memory, NFL teams went nuts in terms of adding contracts to their ledger. Except, they didn’t really. Two years after Albert Haynesworth landed a $100 total value contract, and one year after Julius Peppers signed a contract with total value in excess of $90 million, Nnamdi Asomugha (a player who might have had a better reputation than Haynesworth and Peppers) ended up going to the Philadelphia Eagles for…$60 million over five years. Which is an annual value that exceeded teammate CB Asante Samuel’s 2008 contract with the Eagles by about $2 million a year. And about $5 million less per year than Asomugha was getting from the Raiders.
The additional supply of players at need positions certainly affected the size of contracts: the Texans dropped out of the Asomugha sweepstakes to focus on a younger target: CB Johnathan Joseph (who signed for Samuel money). But it came down to the Jets, Cowboys, and Eagles. And before we credit the salary cap for doing it’s job, it’s worth pointing out that the Jets and Cowboys both had decisions to make on Antonio Cromartie and Terence Newman respectively. The Jets opted to get out of the bidding and the Cowboys opted for Newman. Asomugha became an Eagle.
The salary cap did its job to force teams to choose rather than opting to add Asomugha to an already existing roster. Except, that is, once we look closer. The Eagles got the dream team moniker in part because they took the 2010 Philadelphia Eagles secondary, and added Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to that group (while admittedly losing Quentin Mikell in free agency). The functional purpose of the NFL’s salary cap is not to cap total spending on players (although the NFL Owners enjoy the security that it provides), but instead to foster player movement through termination of veteran contracts. In context, the Cowboys’ decision to keep Newman was highly suspect even independent of the potential for an Asomugha deal. At the time, an argument that the Cowboys would have been better off with Newman instead of Asomugha would have been laughed out of the room. The Cowboys framed the events of the pursuit of Asomugha as a false premise. It’s not that they couldn’t have used him. It’s that he got paid more than the Cowboys estimated he was worth.
Fundamentally, the mechanics of free agency have nothing to do with a salary cap, and the NFL is great evidence of this. The salary cap functions to limit teams that do not manage it very well, but does nothing to limit a team that knows how to manage a cap. There are all sorts of cap exceptions in the NFL, and player salaries are non-guaranteed. That is very significant because until contracts become fully guaranteed upon signing, the salary cap will never be a limiting factor in a sport which allows you to roster 53 players during the season and 80 during the offseason. In fact, even teams that spend recklessly will never be limited by the salary cap so long as they don’t also recklessly guarantee a larger portion of the contracts they write than the rest of the market dictates.
And even should a team get into trouble, it has an endless supply of future years for which it can push cap dollars into if it needs to free up space. To repeat, only through terrible, negligent management of the salary cap can a team reach a point at which they will be limited in what they can do in the future by what is currently on their books. There have been a few of examples of this, such as the 2004 Titans, the 2004-2009 Redskins, and the Raiders twice, in 2003 and again right now. But the reason that the salary cap is not a limiting factor on a team, in general, is because it is so gosh darn high.
On average, a team can put $10 million dollars to every position on the field under the salary cap, and they will not reach it. It’s true that a lot of teams will exceed $10 million cap dollars at one position, most teams at least will do so at two or three positions. But we can’t ignore the fact that a lot of really good teams have a high percentage of their roster well below it’s market value because it came through the draft.
The draft obscures everything here because very much like baseball, a vast majority of NFL players won’t even qualify for free agency until their athletic peaks. So the teams that get their best years (and have things like the franchise tag to retain rights to those players’ best years if they manage the cap particularly well) will never, ever have to write a market value contract to a player to compete unless said player is a cornerstone of the franchise. Teams like the Colts and Packers have been rather extreme about it, but for the most part, free agency doesn’t make a lot of sense for those teams.
In a sport where the best organizations have 75-85% of their roster under market value, what the heck is the point of a salary cap? Well, it fosters player movement, and it protects small market owners against the Cowboys deciding to operate like the Yankees. But for the 26 teams in the middle of the spectrum, it wouldn’t change a thing if the salary cap never existed.
Back to the thought exercise: what would have happened to the NFL over the last six months or so if the players and owners had agreed not to have a salary cap. Would it have helped Nnamdi Asomugha? Well, he probably would have grabbed a longer contract, but there would have been a lot of empty years on the back end. If it helped him, it only would have been because the Raiders (who had capped themselves out of the Asomugha sweepstakes) could have given the Eagles a run for their money, but if the player wanted to leave, he would have left. Would the Eagles have made it to the playoffs if there was no salary cap? That’s really unlikely. Would the Giants be any different? Probably not. Would the Bengals have ponied up the cash to keep Johnathan Joseph? Unlikely. Could Atlanta have been more aggressive? Maybe, but this still would have been a transitional year for them, at least offensively. The Lions? They didn’t even spend up to the cap. Chicago and Indianapolis are notoriously picky when it comes to player evaluation. The Arizona Cardinals pinch pennies anyway. The Rams opted for fiscal conservative policy, as did the Bucs.
Outside of the desperation of the Dallas Cowboys, it’s unlikely that the NFL would be any different if the salary cap didn’t exist. There would not be as much player movement, and as a result, I think veteran players would get paid more under a non-salary cap system, but teams have much more flexibility under the current system of non-guaranteed contracts. The cap sounds nice in theory, but has no actual practical application with regards to the majority of the teams in the NFL.
Wild Card Weekend Commentary: Understanding why the home teams gave such a great effort
It would be easy and perhaps very acceptable as well to get caught up in the excitement of what Tim Tebow did yesterday for the Broncos in the Wild Card round against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and miss the fact that what Tebow accomplished, in the context of the weekend, wasn’t out of context at all. Every one of the home teams in the four Wild Card Weekend playoff games covered the spread, and every team except New Orleans did so by more than a touchdown (and I thought New Orleans’ line was pretty high). This was a sensational weekend for division winners and really just not a good effort at times by wild card teams.
I want to leave the discussion of whether 8 or 9 win division winners should continue to be awarded home playoff games in the first round for another day. But I can’t ignore what the results of this weekend mean for the playoff picture in general.
There are only five or six (depending on how you have viewed the Texans after the Schaub injury) super bowl contenders remaining. And after this weekend, I am no longer confident that a team like the Giants or the Broncos who won a weak division to get into the playoffs can not legitimately be considered a threat to make the super bowl.
Take the Giants, for instance. Do they get into the postseason in a year where the other NFC East teams do not fall all over themselves in pursuit of higher draft position? Probably not. But the Falcons were one of the teams I had pegged as a darkhorse to come out of the NFC and — if not make it to the super bowl — at least bust some other more accomplished teams on the way. And the Giants — who have not been strong at all at home this season — didn’t allow the Falcons offense to put up a single point, blowing out Atlanta by a margin of three touchdows. That doesn’t mean that New York is a good bet to give Green Bay a game next week, but we’re at the point now where it is obvious to anyone that if the Giants can get by the Packers, they become a favorite to go to the super bowl.
Put another way, it does us no good to analyze the Giants as “not really a super bowl contender” because at this point, the only thing that can prevent the Giants from competing for the right to go to the super bowl either in New Orleans or San Francisco is a loss to the defending super bowl champion and obvious favorite to return to the Big Game.
Denver’s case is a bit more far fetched, and if you look at their team, even in the context of a great win yesterday, this doesn’t seem like a super bowl contender without projecting the accomplishments of it’s quarterback to the rest of the team. Tim Tebow was a sensational college player for sure, one who helped win two national championships, but at the current moment he is merely a decent NFL quarterback who continues to defy that nasty thing that is the probability that a team that lacked the talent to win even 2 out of its first 5 games would be able to win 8 of its next 13.
What has people so enthralled in this Bronco-mania is the fact that the Denver Broncos have failed to make but one of their 8 Tebowian victories look deserved. They pretty much had the Week 9 match-up at Oakland in hand by the four minute mark of the fourth quarter. But beyond that, even the games that haven’t gone to overtime have been an adventure.
What has occurred with Tebow and the Broncos has been wired, but not unprecedentedly weird. The 1970 Oakland Raiders essentially had the same kind of season, with George Blanda* playing the role of Tim Tebow.
*George Blanda completion percentage in 1970: 52.5%. Tim Tebow 2011 completion percentage: 46.5%.
The Broncos have beaten a number of very good teams on their streak, but both the wins over the Jets and Steelers have come at home in exhilarating fashion. It would be silly at this point to suggest the Broncos aren’t going to have a chance in New England next week, but at this point that would be no more silly than a direct comparison of the merits of the two teams. One thing this Broncos’ run has done is it has resulted in a complete over-attribution of success in favor of the Broncos defense. Von Miller, Elvis Dumerville, and Champ Bailey are all sensational players and there are plenty of quality role players on this defense, but it’s now one of the worst remaining defenses in the playoff. The real attribution in the Broncos’ season — no different than the 1970 Raiders — is a true occurring of dumb luck.
Just like the 2011 Broncos failed to win more than one out of their first five games, the 2011 Raiders failed to win more than one out of their final five games, blowing a one game lead in the process to a team that couldn’t score for the final 10 quarters of it’s season. The Broncos earned their eight wins. It was dumb luck that that was enough to win a division which finished all of two games below .500. The Broncos have also enjoyed plenty of instances of in-game luck. But because football analysis hasn’t yet been able to totally and accurately define Tim Tebow as a player, a lot of credit is going to a defense that, overall, has been very average.
This is why you would expect New England and Green Bay to win in blowouts next week. You saw how much homefield advantage this week to otherwise mediocre teams. Why wouldn’t great offenses like NE and GB benefit in the same manner from all the advantage of playing at home, following a bye? We could very easily get through two rounds of the playoffs without a road team pulling off a victory in the postseason. It’s hard to see for sure, the way that New Orleans is playing right now, but New England, Baltimore, and Green Bay enter this week as heavy home favorites.
After what I felt was a lackluster season for premier bowl match-ups, the NFL has really offered its fans a lot of compelling match-ups in the NFL postseason through two weeks. The actual games themseleves haven’t necessarily lived up to the excitement factor that the two teams playing in them provide, but its hard to complain about two young teams in Houston and Cincinnati (for example) playing a one-sided game with sensational plays by rookie DE JJ Watt and third year RB Arian Foster. To see that team go against the (super bowl bound?) Baltimore Ravens? That’s a lot better than drawing Cincinnati at New England next week.
If the home teams keep it up next week, chances are that there will be three more blowouts and a thrilling game between the 49ers and Saints. That wouldn’t be surprising at all, given that Denver, Houston, and the Giants all managed to get by the first round. It also wouldn’t be a bad thing for the NFL to have a year where the 1st and 2nd seeds in both conferences reached the Championship round.
But this is the NFL, and it’s likely that at least one team will get upset next week. And while the focus will be on Tebow and the Broncos, I think the more interesting in-game matchup is how the Baltimore Ravens will handle Andre Johnson being back in the lineup for the Houston Texans. The Ravens avoided Johnson in the regular season when he got hurt two week earlier. In what will certainly be billed as the biggest game in Texans history, Johnson is the most important player in the NFL next week, as it is almost impossible for the Texans to advance past the Ravens unless he has a stellar game.
Finally, I offer the home/road splits for the eight remaining playoff teams:
- Baltimore (8-0 home)
- Green Bay (8-0 home)
- New England (7-1 home)
- San Francisco (7-1 home)
- Houston (5-3 road)
- New York Giants (5-3 road)
- Denver (5-3 road)
- New Orleans (5-3 road)
Just like Wild Card weekend, next week will not be a cake walk for any of the road teams. But the only poor performing* road teams that made the postseason this year — Pittsburgh and Atlanta — are out. There will be plenty of believers in New Orleans this week, bu their chances of advancing may not be much higher than those of Houston. And if a number one seed happens to fall next weekend, the Super Bowl picture will change violently.
NFL regular season postmortem: Teams most likely to be back in the postseason in 2012
Twenty NFL teams are already out, with history suggesting that 12-14 of those 20 teams will also fail to make the playoffs next season as well. The NFL may have great parity, but one-third of the NFL is blissfully unaware of it. This article is not about those teams.
This article is about teams that saw their season end on Sunday, but already have a leg up on their competition and perhaps even including teams in the playoff field. There are a couple teams on this list that are obvious, but a couple that you may not be considering as playoff contenders.
The problem with preseason projections at this early juncture is not their lack of accuracy, but that I’m regressing everything in my system so much that a vast majority of teams come out looking average. Which is a perfect representation of how the NFL works: most of the league heads into the offseason projected for 7 or 8 wins and has to do stuff to separate themselves from the pack. Again, this article is not about those teams.
San Diego Chargers/Philadelphia Eagles
I combined these two teams because there’s just not that much to say. Both teams underachieved this year. The Chargers, of all teams, actually won some games in September and October to obscure that things were going wrong behind the scenes, which became painfully obvious when they went on a six game losing streak that lasted from before Halloween until December.
The Eagles were a pretty good team this year. They were a mistake prone team that struggled with turnover differential in the first half of the year. They corrected those issues in the second half, just in time to lose Michael Vick to injury and trudge through a 1-2 record with Vince Young that dropped the Eagles to 4-8. That season had anything and everything.
Philip Rivers (and his protectors and receivers) deserves plenty of blame for what went wrong this season, but he also conclusively proved at the end of the year that he’s one of the best quarterbacks in football and the Chargers can not win games without him. Rivers played well enough down the stretch to save Norv Turner’s job and to save GM A.J. Smith’s job. While that is enough to make some Chargers fans sick, the Chargers will open 2012 as the overwhelming favorite in the AFC West. Again.
The Eagles will almost certainly open 2012 as the favorite in the NFC East. They have quarterback questions: if it’s not Mike Vick’s health, it’s his abilities, but he does happen to be at the controls of the most dominant offense in his division. This may not be a dream team, but it’s a team that has Michael Vick, LeSean McCoy, Brent Celek, Jason Peters, Todd Herremans, Evan Mathis, Cullen Jenkins, Trent Cole, Jason Babin, Nnamdi Asomugha, and Asante Samuel on the same roster. That’s pretty good.
Seattle Seahawks
The Seahawks, not the 49ers, are the best bet for first place in the NFC West next year.
It starts at the quarterback position, where although it is unclear what the Seahawks will do to improve on Tarvaris Jackson (who had a pretty good season), it’s clear that so long as they have Jackson, I would expect them to be stronger at quarterback than the 49ers. Alex Smith did have a great season. He threw an interception once every 91 passes. But with as stripped down to the basics as Jim Harbaugh’s offense was, there’s an element of beginners luck going against those teams that see him twice a year. This is not a difficult offense to scheme for, and furthermore, the formula relies on dominant defense to be successful.
It’s a formula run by many coaches with limited passers over the years and any coach that had a defense that wasn’t one of the five best units in football hasn’t won many games and hasn’t been able to avoid turnovers. There’s at least a decent chance that the Seahawks will have the best defense in the division next year as well.
Furthermore, the Seahawks are loaded with talent at receiver and have mastered Tom Cable’s zone blocking attack to become one of the most bruising, physical running games in football. While it’s too early to discuss the rebuilding Seahawks as a super bowl contender, it’s not at all too early to project them as the favorite in the NFC West next season.
Kansas City Chiefs
This may be premature because of the quarterback questions on the Kansas City roster. Matt Cassel? Kyle Orton? Someone else? It’s not too early however to fire up the Jim Zorn redemption tour, the way he coached Orton down the stretch in Kansas City.
The Chiefs won seven games after losing all those players to injury. Their defense probably had an overrated season, all things considered, but the unit was playing well at the end of the season (particularly against the run), and only the safety level remains a weakness. Getting Eric Berry back next season will help.
But the biggest difference is that the Chiefs developed Dexter McCluster as an offensive weapon and they will be getting Jamaal Charles back from injury. Charles’ effectiveness coming off an ACL injury is going to be a big story next year, but he will be just 26 years old next year, and he should be a quality runner throughout the duration of his extension with the Chiefs.
And obviously, the fact that the Chiefs and Chargers are going to be very good teams next year is really bad news for the Raiders and the Broncos.
Tennessee Titans
Whether the Titans go with Jake Locker next year at quarterback or go with Matt Hasselbeck again to open the season, they are a team that sets up nicely to make noise in the AFC South. The Titans just barely missed the postseason and have only themselves to blame for dropping a game to the Colts. The Titans actually went just 2-4 in division play, the same record posted by the 2-14 Colts.
Where they really proved that they had the answers this past season was on defense, with one of the better secondaries in all of football. And while Locker remains unproven, we know how much Hasselbeck struggled to move the ball in Seattle before coming over and having a re-birth in Tennessee. This offense is set up for the quarterback to succeed.
Somehow, someway, the Titans will need to answer questions about their running game. This is a pass blocking line that doesn’t open up holes, and Chris Johnson is being paid a whole lot of money to tiptoe towards the sideline. Locker’s mobility and ability to bring college spread plays to the Titans if they are so inclined could help to split the defense for Johnson in 2012.
Still whether by a small decline from the Texans or by seizing a wild card if/when the Steelers/Ravens/Bengals decline, the Titans should be back in the postseason in 2012.
Carolina Panthers
The scariest thing about Cam Newton is how mortal he actually was as a 22-year old rookie. This wasn’t like Andy Dalton who spent half a season for the Bengals playing over his head. Newton had some bad games along the way while putting together amazing accomplishments. In 2012, Newton will try to prove he is a generational quarterback prospect in the way that his division competition (Matt Ryan and Josh Freeman) never were.
The Panthers will need to find some solution on defense to keep Newton in games. They were ravaged by injury early last year, but Ron Rivera is not a lazy slouch of a head coach: he has long been able to identify defensive talent, and the Panthers went through a long rebuilding project on that side of the ball this past season. They went through rebuilding on offense as well, but Newton was so sensational that the rebuilding didn’t last long.
There will still be challenges. This team needs to get Newton some receivers. And all-world offensive coordinator Rob Chudzynski was so good with Newton this year that he likely earned himself a look as a head coach elsewhere. But the Panthers have the trifecta of: a great coaching staff, a sensational young quarterback, and a competent supporting cast for that quarterback. Now they just need to get the defense.
LiveBall Sports’ 2011 NFL Playoff Preview: The Detroit Lions can win the Super Bowl if…
It hasn’t been the kind of season that Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was hoping for. Stafford is asked to do a lot. He leads the NFL in passing attempts. And he’s averaging more than 300 yards per game. But as you may imagine for a young quarterback asked to throw that many times, it didn’t always work. In losses this year, Stafford posted underwhemling statlines like 15 for 32 for 183 yards and a touchdown (vs. Atlanta), 33 for 63 for 329 and a touchdown with four interceptions (at Chicago), 32 for 45 for 276 yards and a touchdown with three interceptions (vs. Green Bay on Thanksgiving), and a 227 yard effort at home against Minnesota in a game where the Lions barely held on to go to 8-5.
It hasn’t always been easy for Matthew Stafford, which is an emotion I attempted to capture in this December 9th article on the Lions. So what’s the difference on a Lions team that has gone 3-0 since that article was written and has beaten two AFC West teams fighting for their playoff lives? Well, at some point during the Oakland game, it’s possible that the difference has been quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Stafford struggled for much of the Raiders game, and on a 4th quarter drive that the Lions coaches on the sideline called a “must have,” Stafford treated it as such: he tried to make a play down the field outside the pocket, looking for Calvin Johnson. Raiders DT Tommy Kelly stripped the desperate Stafford, and LB Aaron Curry recovered the fumble for a Raiders touchdown to go up 27-14. Kelly had put the Lions playoff hopes on life support.
But there was a catch. Matthew Stafford’s performance since that play by the Raiders looks like this: 38 for 54 for 516 yards, 5 TDs, and 0 INTs. And two wins. The sample size is too small to suggest that Stafford has turned a corner as of late. But he has 8 TD passes to no interceptions since the Lions last loss. And against the Chargers at home with a chance to send his team to the playoffs, Stafford looked like the best player on the field on either team. He was sensational.
The Lions can only go somewhere in the playoffs if this is the real Matt Stafford. They simply never developed any semblance of a run game. Stafford leads the league in attempts because all the Lions can do to move the football is throw it. The Lions know their personnel as well as anyone, and Jim Schwartz readily admits: his team has no running game. They’ll run it to run out the clock, but that’s it. Their short yardage game is non-existent. Their offensive line can hold up in pass protection, but it is not a group that can move anyone off the ball. When you add to that the fact that the Lions’ top two highly drafted picks at running back (Jahvid Best and Mikel LeShoure) are both on injured reserve, you could forgive the Lions for throwing more than 40 times a game.
It just means that the Lions are incredibly sensitive to a poor performance by Matthew Stafford in the playoffs. So he needs to go into Green Bay, play like he has the last two weeks if for no other reason than to give the Lions coaching staff confidence to use the Lions’ best or riskiest passing plays in the playoffs.
It should be pointed out that a team like the Lions even winning a single playoff game would be a minor upset. Teams built like the Lions are supposed to get exposed by playoff teams as the Lions did when they played the 49ers and Falcons at home in consecutive weeks, or when they played the Bears at the height of their health this year, or when they played the Packers on Thanksgiving, or when they tried to come off that Thanksgiving game and win at the Superdome against the Saints. For the most part, playoff bound teams have exposed the Detroit Lions as something less than that.
Which is why what the Lions have done the last two weeks is so interesting. They’ve faced two pretty good football teams in Oakland and San Diego, and erased a huge lead by the Raiders and blew out the Chargers. Those games don’t fit with the narrative that the Lions are supposed to be exposed on the road and against good teams. The Packers will be resting players, so the Lions have little to prove outside of keeping Matthew Stafford in rhythm and getting yards in chunks down the field. Barring the outcome of that meaningless game, the Lions will enter the playoff field without a win over a team that is currently in the playoff field (though the Cowboys can win and get in in Week 17).
As I wrote about the Falcons last week, the Lions would be best served to get the five seed so that they can play a very beatable NFC East champ. That will be a road game, but if the Lions can go get that win next week against Green Bay, then continue the streak in Dallas/New York, you will have a really interesting shot by the Lions to go a lot deeper. They could draw San Francisco in the divisional round via this route, and avoid their banes in the first two rounds: New Orleans and Green Bay.
At that point, we’re talking about the Lions being in the NFC Championship game by circumstance of beating two teams who many question as legitimate playoff teams (for the record, I would pick San Francisco over Detroit in the divisional round, but we’re going to ignore that because…look at the title of this article). Then we’re looking at Detroit needing to upset the Packers at Lambeau Field for the second time this month, which could easily happen.
The Lions will need Stafford to play like he has of late, and they will need Calvin Johnson to play like he did at the beginning of the season. They will need their defense to show up, be able to harass the passer, and be able to protect it’s LBs against the run. The Lions were paper thin in the secondary the last time they played Green Bay, and we’ll get to see how well built they are to take on the Packers in the playoffs. We know from the Thanksgiving day game that the Lions defense can give the Packers offense fits in spurts, but what we didn’t see that day was an offense that could match the Packers. We have seen that Lions offense in recent weeks.
In their best form, the Lions are a poor man’s Packers. If the Lions can win the super bowl, it will take a super effort from a couple of players that the Lions spent the mega bucks on in the draft and free agency. The Lions have proved in the last two weeks that they are built to be a threat in the playoffs now. With that said, it would be an upset if they made any noise in the postseason. This is still a very young team, a very immature team. No one will be picking the Lions to do any damage in the playoffs to anyone but themselves. However, the talent to win the super bowl is already in place. For the Detroit Lions to pay off their first playoff season in 12 years with a super bowl appearance, a couple of very young Lions are going to have to lead the rest of the team past opponents who come into this playoff season far more tested, if not proven.
NFL Quarterback Supply bottoms out
2011 has been a banner year for quarterback injuries. A week ago, I wrote about that, examining the quality of the injury replacements. In many cases, the analysis was a simple acceptance of the fact that this team or that team were not prepared to survive the loss of their starting quarterback.
In a typical year, NFL quarterback supply (guys who are ready to go into the game and try to win) typically exceeds the number of teams by about one and a half times. In a league with 32 teams, there are roughly about 50 quarterbacks with either the experience and the ability to perform at the level expected of an NFL player. In 2011, a ton of starting quarterbacks got hurt, and the performance of the backups was remarkably disappointing. In past years, there was never a significant issue with quarterback supply: teams that wanted to improve at the quarterback position and knew how to do it typically could without giving up very many resources. In 2011, this really wasn’t the case, at least after the draft passed.
A back-of-the-napkin look through an NFL players database shows about 62 names of players on rosters who can perform at an NFL level, about two per team. But currently 16 of those players are too injured to perform. It’s not uncommon at the end of an NFL season to have a significant amount of injuries, but there are teams playing guys without NFL ability because of these injuries and because they were not able to do anything to acquire another quarterback. That means that the NFL is currently rotating through 46 players who are able and healthy enough to play this upcoming week. The Steelers will be starting Charlie Batch against Kellen Clemens for the Rams this week.
It isn’t just those teams. For every team like the Lions that goes three deep at the QB position with guys who can run their system in relief of the starter, there are teams like Washington, the New York Jets, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Kansas City who went into the season one deep at the QB position. Some like the Jets did it arrogantly, others like the Redskins did it delusionally. The Jaguars did it tragically. For whatever reason, this year of the lockout, 2011, has featured a sharp decline of quarterback supply. Retirements from guys like Brett Favre are one reason, and the lack of development of the quarterback draft classes of 2009 and 2010 represents another reason. Beyond that, coaches change teams all the time and that contributes to the disparity of backup quarterbacks. A quarter of the league has two or three guys who can take the field in this league, a quarter of the league has one, if that. Most of the league has a starter, and a backup. But it is not as certain as in past years that teams will be able to afford a backup that they trust. A quarter of the teams in this league did not even enter the season with a contingency plan at quarterback.
The Houston Texans were fortunate: they re-signed Matt Leinart after drafting T.J. Yates in the sixth round, despite having an established (if injury prone) franchise quarterback. Prior to that, Rex Grossman and Dan Orlovsky (both part of the 62 figure from my count) had served as backup quarterbacks on the Texans. Quarterback depth is still very important to the Texans, and that’s one of the reasons their 2011 season is still very live, even after a pair of crushing losses.
With an unprecedented amount of players coming off of IR this offseason, a strong 2012 QB draft class, and the natural development of the 2011 rookie class, this dip in quarterback supply is going to end up being just a blip on the radar. There will be more than enough quarterbacks for every team to go two deep next year. It doesn’t seem like many of these QB injuries are career-threatening with a couple of exceptions (Jon Kitna – age, Peyton Manning – neck). Guys like David Garrard and Chad Henne are going to get right back into the game next season.
Still, this could end up being a major storyline in the playoffs. The Jets: Mark Sanchez is backed up by 41 year old Mark Brunell. The 49ers: Alex Smith is backed up by a pair of rookies, Colin Kaepernick and Scott Tolzien. The Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger is banged up and Charlie Batch is going to have to play (and stay healthy). The Texans: T.J. Yates is in as a rookie because of injury. The Ravens: Joe Flacco is backed up by Tyrod Taylor. The supply of NFL quarterbacks typically mitigates the arguments that teams can blame injury luck at the quarterback position for their misfortune. To me, teams should have long been better prepared for this. But this year, even the well prepared teams are down to their last legs at the quarterback position.
The quarterbacks page at Football Outsiders paints this picture well. The top 32 quarterbacks in both DYAR and DVOA have performed adequately this year. 32 just happens to be the number of teams in the NFL who need performance from their quarterback (all of them). On the list of 32, there are two Houston quarterbacks (Schaub and Yates), two Oakland quarterbacks (Campbell and Palmer), two Miami quarterbacks (Moore and Henne), and a 33rd player just below the minimum attempts threshold (which is 100 passes), Jake Locker, making two Tennessee quarterbacks (Locker and Hasselbeck). The three teams that don’t have a quarterback on the list of 32: Arizona, St. Louis, Jacksonville.
In all three of those cases, the projected starter going into camp has struggled with injury.
In Arizona’s case, they were fortunate to find some unexpected depth on their own roster in John Skelton, but having Skelton perform now does nothing to solve the long term issue of the Cardinals quarterback situation. But quarterback depth (nothing behind or challenging Sam Bradford) and Jacksonville (forcing Gabbert to play after Garrard release because Luke McCown was unplayable) is the story to these teams’ seasons.
It will be interesting to see if teams put more of a premium on rostering backup quarterbacks in the future. There will certainly be a greater supply in 2012.
LiveBall Sports’ 2011 NFL Playoff Preview: The Atlanta Falcons can win the Super Bowl if…
With a resounding victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 15, the Atlanta Falcons separated themselves from the pack and put themselves in position to win 10 games this season. They will clinch a playoff spot at that point. But of all the wild card teams in either conference, it’s the Falcons that will be drawing the easiest first round match-up, in likelihood.
It’s a welcome difference for a team that drew the toughest divisional round match-up in the playoffs last year. The Falcons didn’t really even play all that poorly against the Packers in the divisional playoffs next year, they simply found themselves in the way of Aaron Rodgers. The Falcons have shown a very pronounced home/road split under head coach Mike Smith, but that has (predictably) weakened this year, and so it may be fitting — if the Falcons make a run this year — that the Falcons are doing it on the road.
While the AFC field is interesting because 75% of the ‘old guard’ (minus the Colts) are right at the top of the conference yet again, the Faclons may be sitting prettiest in the NFC field simply because it’s become a quarterback field in the NFC (Brees, Rodgers, Eli, Romo, Vick, Cutler, and soon Cam Newton and Josh Freeman). All those players except perhaps Brees will be in their primes over the next three years as the old guard of the AFC (Manning, Brady, maybe Schaub) decline. The fact that it has become a quarterback field makes the Falcons the most interesting team of all in that conference.
The Falcons are not, and have never been under Mike Smith, a quarterback dependent team. Until this year, everything Atlanta did was based off Michael Turner and the running game and the offensive line. Roddy White may be a great receiver who can do it all, but the Falcons have long been contented to use White in a role that keeps him between the numbers and underneath the LB level racking up catches to stay on schedule. White has flashed the ability to be Reggie Wayne of the next five years, but the Falcons have gone out of their way with Tony Gonzalez and White to protect Ryan. When the Falcons have spread the field this year with Ryan in the gun, they have had to endure uneven, even disappointing results. Ryan doesn’t always make the right reads, and sometimes he does make the right read, and gets the ball to rookie Julio Jones in a one on one, and Jones isn’t ready to come through yet.
I think you can see how difficult the Falcons are going to be to defend in the future, but the multiplicity of the Falcons still depends heavily on Michael Turner. It’s not clear what the Falcons will get in the future from Turner, but right now, they still have one of the better backs in the NFL carrying the football. And because the Falcons ground game is so tough to defend, Matt Ryan gets a couple great looks down the seams a game off of play action.
I think it’s difficult to put Matt Ryan in the class of those other guys in the NFC, but if you just judge him and his Falcons against Tony Romo’s Cowboys, Eli Manning’s Giants, Aaron Rodgers’ Packers, and Drew Brees’ Saints; Matt Ryan plays for the NFC team that isn’t consistently blowing coverages left and right, has and leans on it’s running game for more than just conservative effect, and has the veterans around him trying to reach levels they never have before. The burden on Ryan to succeed in the playoffs will be there, but Ryan’s infrastructure is much better than anyone else in this field. And even though he’s probably not, Matt Ryan can masquerade as one of the NFC’s best quarterbacks in the super bowl should the Falcons get there, similarly to a guy like Matt Hasselbeck in 2005.
If the current seeding in the NFC was to hold, the Falcons would draw the Giants/Cowboys winner in the first round on the road, two teams that really do not enjoy much of a home field advantage. And then the Falcons can go to Green Bay to ruin the Packers season.
There are three defenses in or around the NFC playoff field that can give the Packers the kind of fits that the Chiefs just did. The Falcons are one of those teams. As are the 49ers, and the Bears. A couple of problems with the 49ers challenging the Packers: they have weaknesses in their secondary, and typically haven’t had to use their nickle defense extensively in wins. Beyond that, the 49ers win in a very formulaic manner. It is unlikely they could beat a full strength Packers team playing like they currently do. The Bears absolutely could, but the thing that would ruin the Bears chances against the Packers (lack of competency on offense) is also going to ruin the Bears’ chances of getting in the postseason field. The Falcons, once they get in, pose the largest threat to the Packers, because they can give them a game on defense, and unlike the other defense-only NFC teams, the Falcons can put Matt Ryan on the field, drop him back, and scheme to attack the weaknesses of the Packers.
The roadblock that would stand between the Falcons and a super bowl run is a trip to the Superdome to play the Saints, something the Falcons have to do this Monday night, because that’s what the regular season schedule stands. When Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams gets a read on how to frustrate a quarterback, he has the ability to make players like Ryan look very average, and can do it while loading the box to limit Turner. The easiest path for the Falcons to get to the super bowl is to avoid the Saints by hoping the Saints get shipped off to San Francisco or Green Bay before the Falcons have to play their division rivals. Pending the outcome of this week’s game, there are still improvements and adjustments to be made by the Saints offense against the Falcons defense. But trying to make those adjustments on the fly to catch Drew Brees on the scoreboard is not a particularly fun or practical way of playing in Indianapolis this February.
So yes, the case for the Atlanta Falcons to win the super bowl this season isn’t airtight. No team is going to be favored to beat the Green Bay Packers in the playoffs, and the Saints have long been a thorn in the side of the Falcons. If it came to an Atlanta at San Francisco championship game, Atlanta might be favored on the road, but passing that test is far from a certainty. It’s just that when you examine the wild card contenders: the Jets, the Steelers, the Bengals, the Lions, the Seahawks, or the Cardinals, that it becomes favorable to believe in what the Falcons are doing right now. They have a much better makeup as a playoff team than they had in either of the prior two years.
Three years ago, the Falcons were the 2011 49ers. They were protecting a very successful quarterback and winning according to formula. They could not overcome Kurt Warner and the high flying Cardinals in a playoff game. Last year, their offensive was highly efficient, but limited, and their defense was a weak point. The Packers ate that up. This year, the Falcons are much more multiple, have a much more high-powered offense that, at times, looks almost limited by a pretty darn good NFL quarterback, and a weak offensive line. That potential, combined with a resurgent defense, and a tried and true running game makes the Falcons a very interesting pick in the NFC as potentially the most complete team in the NFC.
How valuable is having a draft pick at the top of the first round?
There are two very unique outputs from the waning weeks of the 2011 NFL season. These two outputs are not unrelated. First, there have been a good percentage of awful performances by quarterbacks over the last three or four weeks. Secondly, there has been more discussion about doing ‘whatever it takes’ to position oneself to draft at the top of next year’s NFL Draft than ever before.
So, naturally, it’s the teams that are suffering from awful performances by their quarterbacks that are talking about getting into position to draft a more different quarterback in April. But realistically, not all the teams that are in position to draft a new quarterback are going to draft one. There are a lot of different variables that the fans of teams don’t account for when pushing for their own teams to lose out. Is it really more valuable to a franchise to pick higher in the first round?
The short answer is that yes, it is, because draft resources are so finite and valuable. Teams pay more to higher draft picks (though not quite as much on a marginal basis as in the prior CBA). But the additional cash outlay ends up being money well spent because you are paying for additional control of the results of your draft. You can have the best scouting resources and methodology in the league, as well as the league’s premier decision makers, but it’s going to be much easier for a team drafting six picks ahead of you to produce a great draft even if they don’t have your personnel resources.
Anyway, I did a study using 10 years of draft data from 1997-2006, and then I compared the average career Approximate Value of the players in the data sets, while testing the variable of which part of the draft the picks were made in to determine how valuable high picks were. I will share with you some of the more unscientific observations of my findings.
The team with the first overall pick matters, but only because of the “generational talent”
In 80-90% of all years, having the first overall pick is not a particular advantage. In general, there are a finite number of elite talents in every draft, some years there are just two or three, and in other years, there are seven or eight. But every five years or so, the NFL produces a player such as Peyton Manning, Michael Vick, or you know, Andrew Luck (it’s an interesting debate whether or not there may be a second generational talent in this draft, such as RGIII or Trent Richardson). In years where there is a well known generational talent, having the first overall pick is probably more than 150% more valuable than having another random pick in the first round, and perhaps 100% more valuable than having any other pick in the round (second overall, in this case).
Overall, the first overall pick came out about 55% more valuable than a random pick in the first round. However, in most years, it’s worth pointing out that there’s no discernible difference in having the right to choose between the player who goes first overall and the player who goes third overall or even the player who goes fifth overall. Plenty of that might simply be a reflection of who is doing the choosing: you don’t get the first overall pick by building a bunch of division winning teams. But if there are a group of elite talents in any given draft with an abnormally high rate of success, the ability to pick one over another does not overtly increase the value of a draft pick.
There is no trend that shows having the second or third pick is more valuable to a franchise than having the fourth, fifth, or sixth pick
And it’s this finding that makes the fact that there are so few trades into the top five picks so interesting. Teams that have the first, second, or third picks typically don’t have a lot of serious suitors for their picks. Instead they get a selection of buyers offers, which they typically pass on to pick the players they like the best. In some years (2007 for example), there are one or two top picks but by fourth overall, teams are picking from their favorites from a second tier of players. Even then, no incentive exists for teams to pay to get a top two or three pick.
Additionally, in no draft during this study did the first and second overall picks both become elite players. The best no. 2 overall picks in the sample: Donovan McNabb (105 career AV), Julius Peppers (97 career AV), and Leonard Davis (64 career AV)? Michael Vick was the first pick in the Davis draft, but Davis hardly qualifies as an elite professional. The best third overall picks in this study: Andre Johnson (73 career AV), Shawn Springs (62 career AV), and a near tie between Larry Fitzgerald (58) and Chris Samuels (57).
Generally speaking, top five picks did just as well as top three picks over the sample I looked at.
Top 10 picks do well for the money compared to Top 5 picks
But at some point, there is a drop-off between the expected return on the tenth overall pick and on a top five pick. Elite performers rarely make it through the first nine picks, and the elite performers who do make it that far seem to be likely to fall further. For every Willie Anderson or Terrell Suggs, there is a JJ Stokes or a Dunta Robinson.
But having a top ten pick is definitely still an advantage compared to having a random pick in the first round, to the tune of having a random pick in the top ten being worth about 20% in total career value more than a random pick anywhere in the first round. Compared to the average top five pick, it’s actually a bargain (dollar for dollar) to pick between 6th and 10th.
The cost of contending for the playoffs is meaningful
Teams that pick below 11th in the first round receive, on average, a 11% lower return in career AV than a random pick anywhere in the first round. That means that teams that win at least seven games are more likely to “lose” value in the first round compared to the rest of the league, all else equal (all else is hardly ever equal, and smart teams capitalize on other teams who won’t pick in the top ten). So yeah, the Philadelphia Eagles are incurring a significant cost in terms of future franchise value because they are winning games after starting the season 4-8, and are now a three step process away from winning the NFC East and making the playoffs. One more win will force the Eagles into the middle of the first round. Their last two first round picks, DE Brandon Graham and OL Danny Watkins, have yet to produce a successful season between them.
I did not discover a particular cost paid by teams who pick 21st or lower, meaning that once you are competing for the playoffs, there’s no cost to your franchise (at least in the NFL draft) for making it. The average 15th overall pick does minimally better than the average 26th overall pick.
How to rebuild a franchise by picking high every year
If you keep picking in the top 6, 7, or 8 for multiple years in a row, and you keep connecting on elite draft performers, that’s the simplest and easiest way to go from worst to first in the NFL. However, that leaves one conundrum unsolved: pieces for the passing game, offensive skill talents. There is a premium on these performers compared to other elite performers, and at least in the case of receivers and quarterbacks, a high bust rate exists in the top ten.
In my estimation, drafting receivers and quarterbacks down the board in the first round makes the most sense because that is where the values are found at those positions. The problem is that to get to the point where you are winning games and picking in the middle of the round (as opposed to trading down), you have to be able to get some sort of meaningful production out of your current passing game. And it’s teams that are winning and getting production from their passing offenses that are the least likely to make the changes to their passing game using draft picks, and that could be skewing the values we see in the numbers around this part of the draft. With receivers and quarterbacks being so highly drafted early in the first round, this could be creating the effect which makes all top ten draft picks look the same from a value perspective.
To test this effect, I isolated offensive skill positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) from the rest of the draft and increased the sample size by two years to help offset the effect of a smaller sample.
There is no difference in the value of QB/RB/WR/TE beyond the tenth pick compared to all positions, relative to having a random pick in the first round
That does dispute my prior assumption that teams should target QBs or WRs later in the first round because their is better value. If the need is at other positions, and the value is at other positions, teams should take the best player available according to need.
There is a big difference between having a top five pick and top ten pick when isolated to just offensive skill positions
There it is. The players that really make a difference for franchises and who have elite draft grades: the quarterbacks, the receivers, the runners: teams who pick in the top five or six do not leave these players for other franchises to have like they do at other positions. That’s why Julio Jones and A.J. Green went so quickly in the 2011 draft, and it’s also why there was a run on quarterbacks around the turn in the first ten picks in this past draft. The natural risk associated with these positions means that this pushes sounder draft prospects at other positions such as defense and offensive line down the board towards the next five picks, where it makes sense to pick the remaining elite prospects.
There was a very large difference in the quality of QB/RB/WR/TE picked between 6th and 10th, and all other positions. Of course, this sample did not include Adrian Peterson’s selection from 2007, but did include all of Matt Millen’s picks at skill positions. In fact, this study over the course of ten years may have great insight into why Millen had so little success in the draft.
No team consistently picks in the top five in the NFL draft. Top ten, sure, but a two win variance in finish can be the difference between picking 3rd and picking 9th, even if the team isn’t any better. From 1997 to 2006, teams who selected QB/RB/WR/TE between 6th and 10th in the NFL draft received the production of a random QB/RB/WR/TE taken anywhere in the first round. It was not a profitable use of a top ten draft selection compared to other positions. And Matt Millen was one of the biggest perpetrators of that phenomenon.
Conclusions
There is a meaningful value to having a top ten pick as opposed to not having a top ten pick in terms of being able to land one of the elite talents of the draft. But on average, if that elite talent plays offense and can throw or catch footballs, the stock of the player is driven up inside the top five or six picks. Even elite pass rushers, on average, are not selected quite as high as players who affect quality of a team’s passing offense. Players who play these positions come with an inherently high level of draft risk, but the opportunity to draft players on this list is rare and valuable.
And it suggests that the right to choose between Darrius Heyward Bey and Michael Crabtree may seem like it has an obvious answer, but that the differences between the two players are far more marginal than one may realize.
The Editor
-
Greg Trippiedi
-
Brian Cesarotti
-
Tom Jakubowski
- No posts
