LiveBall Sports

For today’s Friday Night Quarterback (on of course, Saturday Afternoon), I’ll address which receiver combinations make passing games work, and which promote mediocrity and struggle.  The hardest part of this exercise will be to separate the role of the quarterback from the role of the receivers.  Defining successful isn’t hard, you can just look back about five years, look at the type of team that is at or near the top of the league and make them category no. 1, and then take all other teams that don’t ever threaten to break into that elite category, and make them group no. 2.

First, it’s necessary to establish that the optimal passing structure in the NFL today is to send four players out and keep an extra blocker in to protect the quarterback against exotic blitzes.  In the spectrum of NFL offense today, this is a fairly conservative, if popular, tactic.  Usually, teams are willing to adjust by getting five players involved in route patterns if at halftime, their adjustments dictate this.  But for the most part, quality passing teams have four full time targets they throw to in order to maximize offensive potential.  Teams that are rush-heavy sometimes rely on far fewer targets and a play action passing, but the vast majority of successful passing offense, in today’s game relies on an arsenal of playmaking WRs.

I went through the last five years of great receiving units, and tried to find patterns and trends that lead to teams holding onto their elite offense from season to season, while simultaneously looking for patterns in teams that dropped out from the elite.  Sometimes, teams who were elite fell out of prominence and would return in recent seasons (Denver or Dallas), while others have not found a fix to the passing game they were once known for (Seattle or Cincinnati), and mixed in with these groups are the one time wonders (Philadelphia, Arizona, Carolina, Kansas City, Miami, Jacksonville, Atlanta and Minnesota).  However, it’s probably best to start with the teams that feature consistently strong passing attacks.

The best of the best of passing games over the last five years are the San Diego Chargers, Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, and Pittsburgh Steelers.  And to this list, I feel it’s prudent to add the New Orleans Saints, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans and New York Giants as teams who really make a living throwing the football as opposed to running it.  That’s a eight team sample to give us the baseline for well-constructed receiving corps in a modern NFL passing game.  There are other very good examples, but for various reasons, it’s this quarter of the league that I would prefer to model a passing game off of.

There is two distinct and different philosophies at work here when it comes to building a cast of receivers.  The first type is the match-up based philosophy, and typically, this approach involves teams working to build an arsenal of weapons that can dictate for the quarterback where he can throw the football based on the coverage.  Teams that employ a match-up based philsophy often have two receivers: 1 and 1a who are among the top 20 at their position, and then use those players in creative formations to dictate coverage, and isolate weaker coverage players one on one against other players on the offense.  The Packers do this with Greg Jennings and Donald Driver, both no. 1 types, and then have used their TE in “flexed” position to take on smaller safeties in jump ball situations.  When the Bengals had a top-level passing attack between 2005 and 2007, T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Chad JohnsonOchoCinco were the 1 and 1a targets, which allowed Chris Henry, Reggie Kelly, and Kenny Watson to take advantage of the weaker coverage players.  With the decline of OchoCinco and the departure of Housmandzadeh, the Bengals struggled through 2008, and came out a different team altogether while making a 2009 playoff run.

The alternative to this is to have one go-to superstar, and to invest in complementary parts for the star.  This is how Houston does it, and how Indianapolis has re-invented their offense in the wake of Marvin Harrison’s retirement.  I would argue that this is how New England is built to win, although, they run a disproportionate part of their offense threw Wes Welker.  But Welker would be far easier to defense without Moss out there on the outside, thus, Welker is best defined as Moss’ complement.

What’s interesting is this: more than half of the NFL is represented in having been within the elite passing offenses within the past five years (if only for a fleeting moment).  Some teams, such as Denver/Philly/Jacksonville/Miami have done it largely without a lot of help from their receivers.  Most teams, though, have a strong receiving corps that produces from year to year.  The teams that have those strong receivers can sometimes even survive a change at the QB position (Green Bay), and those who can keep the passing game together, quarterbacks, receivers, and blockers can sustain NFL offense at it’s highest level.  What I’m going to focus on is the predictive trends of this research.

I did not find one method of pass-game building to be significantly more sustainable or productive than the other method.  However, one of the things I did discover was that teams that built their passing game around a few targets–and were successful (at least temporarily)–also had a tendency to not sustain.  The teams who fell the furthest were the teams who were most dependant on one or two players to carry their passing offense, particularly if one or both of those players were aging.

Two teams that really stood out in 2008 as teams that had only two contributors to their passing game were the Falcons and Panthers.  Roddy White and Steve Smith were among the best receivers in the league that year, and Michael Jenkins and Mushin Muhammad had excellent complementary years.  Neither was a factor for their teams in 2009, and despite the effort to acquire alternative talents (Tony Gonzalez was traded to Atlanta for a 2nd round pick), the decline in the passing attack killed the playoff hopes of both teams.

Going back even further shows us that the 2006 Eagles and the 2005 Steelers suffered from some of the same effects.  That Eagles passing game was built around Brian Westbrook and Donte Stallworth with a contribution from Reggie Brown.  That wasn’t very deep, and even though Brian Westbrook only got better in 2007, the Eagles just couldn’t generate a consistent passing game, and missed the postseason.  While the Steelers won the super bowl in 2005, Hines Ward and a rookie by the name of Heath Miller were the only targets that the Steelers used for the young Ben Roethlisberger, and drafting Santonio Holmes in the next draft couldn’t immediately get the Steelers back to the playoffs.

Obviously, there’s a sample size issue here.  To be an elite passing attack, and also to have a dearth of weapons at key positions (even if it’s a star, or pair of stars, with no depth), it’s not a common combination.  But we know that some teams need an elite passing attack to make the postseason, and it’s certainly a trend that teams will get thinner in terms of offensive depth before they get weaker in terms of production.

What does this mean for some of the elite passing units in 2009?  Well, the teams with great offensive depth such as Houston and Pittsburgh should get even better in 2009.  If the Giants can fix some leaky protection issues, Eli Manning should grow with his receivers–clearly an excellent, young group–and they should reach elite levels.  The Vikings, pending the health of weapons like Sidney Rice, Percy Harvin, and Vicante Shiancoe, should be back at the top of the league again, and the Indianapolis Colts and San Diego Chargers are of course going to remain the standard by which NFL passing games are judged.

There are a few teams who might be in trouble with their passing games in 2010.  The Green Bay Packers have invested many high draft picks in their receiving corps, but are still highly dependant on 35 year old Donald Driver to be a no. 1 type who can take the pressure off of 1a type Greg Jennings.  Without a vast improvement from either Jordy Nelson or James Jones, defenses might be able to get away with single coverage on Driver, and putting the heat on Aaron Rodgers.

However, serious issues might be sitting just under the surface of two offensive landscapes where the future looks rosy.  For the Dallas Cowboys, 2009 proved that their offense could reach levels without Terrell Owens that it could never reach with him.  The key to everything was an undrafted receiver from Monmouth (NJ), Miles Austin.  Austin’s emergence, combined with Jason Witten’s consistent greatness, made slot receiver Patrick Crayton a legitimate, productive target in the offense, and made Roy Williams’ lack of production tolerable.  But Austin, who came from the depths of the depth chart in 2009, needs to prove he’s capable of sustaining his attention to detail…while he is getting all the attention from the defense.  If Austin can’t be as awesome as he was in 2009, and some decline is to be expected, then Crayton will likely fade into the background as well.

Witten is always going to be there and be productive, but the pay hierarchy of Dallas receivers does dictate that Roy Williams is always going to be lurking to steal some reps from Austin, but the Cowboys have been built as a complementary offense since 2007, and one of the biggest problems in 2008 (and the start of 2009) is that the receivers getting a majority of the looks weren’t getting the job done.  In 2010, that could again be a reality for the Cowboys one way or another.

For the New England Patriots though, having Tom Brady at the controls of an offense that fails to produce elite results with the pass is nearly unfathomable.  Yet, when you look at the depth of the players on that offense, it appears that these notions could be reality as soon as 2010.  It’s a bad situation there with Wes Welker coming off serious knee surgery, and Randy Moss’ age becoming a limiting factor that make his two years with the Raiders look like just a small blemish.  Ben Watson has been the cover two buster on the Patriots for the last four seasons, but he’s departed now for the Cleveland Browns, and the Patriots have only Alge Crumpler on the roster with starting experience.  Tom Brady is excellent at throwing interior seam routes so you’d figure the Pats will find someone to handle this mantle, but since 2007, the Patriots have weakened considerably.  This unit once had more quality targets than they were allowed to play with at once.  Right now, they are just Moss*, Welker*, and whatever the heck Kevin Faulk can give them at age 34.  And with multiple asterisks in that group, even Tom Brady himself might not keep the Patriots among the league’s best passing teams in 2010.

Getting your offense to the next level

Teams that want to build a downfield offense through their receivers need to work on getting that one player that can make a difference before they concern themselves with getting a second player.  The complementary player is an odd phenomenon.  They can be among the most useful players in all of pro football, and sometime among the least replaceable, but if there isn’t a guy on the other side that can make big plays in all areas of the field, defenses are often athletic enough to take away even the best complementarty players.

The most successful passing offenses that have failed to reach an elite level, I would say, have been the Titans and the Ravens, and I believe each team’s lack of a strong receiving structure has been what has prevented them from getting to the top.  Derrick Mason has had great years in Baltimore for Kyle Boller and Joe Flacco over the last three years, but a strong receiving corps he can not make by himself.  The last four years, the Titans have had four different receivers lead the team in targets: Drew Bennett, Roydell Williams, Justin McCariens, and Nate Washington, with none of the above leading the team in receiving value (DYAR), the hallmark of a poor receiving structure.

So who’s next?  What long dormant offense will most likely join the ranks of the elite over the next few years?  The receiver structure of the Bears and the Lions are as deep as it’s ever been in either teams’ history.  The Bears are hoping to develop a true no. 1 receiver, and the organization thinks that second year player Johnny Knox can fill the role.  If Knox can be the guy who catches 80 balls a year for 1,200 yards and a bunch of long TDs, as many think he can be, the Bears already have the complementary parts in place: Earl Bennett, Devin Hester, and Devin Aromashadu.

For the Lions the issue of who the number one guy will be is a lot more clear: Calvin Johnson was drafted in 2007 to be the guy that none of teh top ten group of: Roy Williams, Mike Williams, or Charles Rogers could become.  And the team’s call to sign Nate Burleson signals a change in philosophy from the Millen days of trying to have multiple number one type targets.  Combined wih 2009 draft choices Brandon Pettigrew and Derrick Williams, the Lions are both deep and strong at receiver, so long as Calvin Johnson can be the player the Lions feel he can.  One more team to keep an eye on in the future is the 49ers, but they’ll need Michael Crabtree to arrive before they can reap the benefits of a top passing game.

Internal development and external scouting are the two most direct ways that teams can develop their own receiving corps, but once a strong set of wideouts is obtained, it’s even more critical that teams do what is necessary to keep the unit stocked with young talent and productive.  When you consider that teams can go longer than a decade without lucking into a strong wide receiver, you can understand why these skilled athletes are among the highest paid in the NFL, even when the amount of times that one receiver touches a football in a game is, honestly, quite limited.

Recent NFL insider reports have the Buffalo Bills in pursuit of Eagles QB Donovan McNabb…and the Oakland Raiders in hotter pursuit.

The interest in McNabb is the top story of the NFL offseason.  Surprising?  Hardly.  Jay Cutler’s insubordination and subsequent trade was surprising.  McNabb has little value to the Philadelphia Eagles offense, and whatever value he does have is negated by the fact that he’s blocking Kevin Kolb from getting onto the field.  A McNabb deal was inevitable.  Still, there are elements of this deal that are surprising:

1) The Eagles are still trying to leverage McNabb’s name brand into a relatively high draft choice compensation.  2) Teams are biting, despite the fact that this next year plus of McNabb’s career can’t be worth too much more than a fourth round pick.  3)  These teams are nowhere near the kind of teams that could use McNabb’s services.

Of course, the “team that is only a quarterback away from the Super Bowl” is usually a strawman.  The 2008 Panthers were a good example of this kind of team, but no one realized it until it was too late.  Everyone thought the 2008 Vikings just needed a quarterback, but they also needed a competent receiving corps and someone who could block for this quarterback and Adrian Peterson.  Minnesota added Brett Favre, and even got a breakout from Sidney Rice (some would argue this was because of Favre, but I believe it was primarily coincidental), still couldn’t protect the passer, and only won one playoff game.  At least they didn’t go backwards.

So yeah, the team that could use Donovan McNabb likely has no idea yet that they need him.  Which is why his top suitors, the ones that will meet the Eagles asking price, are organizations that haven’t a clue what they are doing.

In an optimal situation, 34 year old quarterbacks aren’t finished.  Steve McNair proved as much by having a great 2006 season on a Ravens team that went 13-3.  But sub-optimal organizations can age their players at a much higher rate.  This means that, there’s almost no point to acquiring McNabb in a trade–and only a few teams would benefit from making a play on him if he was relased.

It’s always tough to realize the exact point at which a once great player loses his value and becomes just another guy, but credit the Eagles for internally researching the problem that they will obviously have with McNabb in the future and trying to get value for him while they still can.  With that said, the least they should do for McNabb is giving him the dignity of not being traded to Oakland (or, really, Buffalo) and going from being a staple of an organization to kind of a punch line in his last few years.  The Eagles are clearly doing right by themselves, but now they need to do right by McNabb in these trade talks.

Joe Mauer: now a Twin through 2018.  Price tag?  $23 million per year, beginning in 2011.

Is he worth it?  Absolutely.  To the Yankees, Red Sox, or Cubs.  Whether or not Mauer can justify the type of contract that the Twins are dropping on him is going to depend heavily on how well his team around him performs, as ESPN’s Rob Neyer pointed out on Brian Kenny’s radio show last night.

While I prepare my position, why don’t you try to answer this hypothetical question: what is the dollar value of a World Series championship to the Minnesota Twins?  Literally: if the Twins could buy a world series title, how much would they pay for it?  This is not an open-market hypothetical, but rather, an even trade between the MLB and one of it’s clubs.  If the team’s payroll runs in the $70-$100 million range, it’s obviously worth more than that.  That’s just the amount the team can spend in order to do baseball-related business for a year.  The reason team’s have payrolls is because they are trying to chase playoff wins and titles within financial reason.  All teams (owners) would be willing to go in excess of their budget for playoff appearences, and most would be willing to go in excess of that for wins, but you can’t guarantee your organization anything by spending for the sake of spending.  If you could, like you can here: would you pay double your payroll?  Triple?  Quadruple?  All are reasonable answers.

If the Twins quadrupled their payroll in a one time lump sum to by a world series title, they’d be spending about $300 million on that title.  Mind you, that doesn’t guarantee a bunch of playoff berths along the way and the revenue that comes with it, that’s just one title.

At $184 million over eight years, what are the Twins really getting if they don’t deliver a title while Mauer is here?  It’s probably safe to assume that in some years, Mauer will be the difference between the Twins missing the playoffs, and the Twins making the playoffs, in which case, his annual salary will pay for itself (by way of revenue) when that occurs.  Other years, that will not be the case, and the Twins could have been financially viable with or without Mauer.

Mauer is home-grown in Minneapolis, which has sentimental value, but has little to do with this contract assessment.  For a small market team like the Twins to come out on top of this deal, they really do have to win it all before Mauer ages into “just a guy.”

Does that mean this deal is bad?  No.  It was an obvious opportunity to take.

The pressure is on the organization now to deliver on this investment.  But if instead, the Twins had just let Mauer walk for the same type of contract in a large market (probably a bit inflated by competition among three teams who could afford it), the issue for the Twins would be directly about financial viability in the AL Central and not about the World Series.  It would have been about trying to scrape together enough wins to make the postseason in a crappy division.  The opportunity cost saved by not signing Mauer may have dried up after just consecutive years of not making the posteason.  And, of course, there’s no actual opportunity to go buy a championship.  Paying for elite talent that you developed is about as close to that as you can get.

To justify this contract, a string of playoff appearances, nor a single Pennant surrounded by a bunch of near misses in the postseason is good enough.  The Twins need Mauer to stay healthy and then Mauer needs the Twins to remain loaded with talent.  A failure on either the health end of the payroll end could send the Twins spiraling into debt.  But until that happens, the threat of that kind of contract failure will be distant.  In the immediate sense, the Twins have the superstar of the American League under contract through age-35.

They’ll be competitors every year that Mauer plays 140+ games.  And they have a lot of time to make it all work: develop young talent, trade off other pieces in a year where the team struggles, build from within, and above all win.  Mauer will keep them in the hunt, so long as it’s realized that being “close” is no longer enough.

Friday night quarterback is a column that is being launched at LiveBall Sports, well, tonight.  It will run weekly, and it will investigate issues in football labor markets that are creating arbitrage opportunities for smart teams.  Initially, this premise was the whole goal of starting a blog like LiveBall, but unfortunately, the time commitment issue has forced me to focus less on these ‘investigative’ issues, and more on current events than I would like.  This is a major step towards changing that.

Releasing a column each Friday night isn’t going to lead to instantaneous web hits, which is exactly the point.  I want these to be the articles that have staying power, and continued to get linked to years down the road.

FNQB can also double as a slang term for armchair analysts whose football playing careers ended after high school.  You’re more than welcome to steal that one, as I don’t even want it.

Article after the photo-jump.

When the NFL and NFLPA ever decide to seriously consider getting down to details of a new CBA, one of the biggest points of contention between the sides will be the absence of a rookie-slotting pay scale that would protect teams at the top of the draft from having to fork over major bonuses to unproven players.  I’m generally against a rookie pay scale because of what it would do to competitive balance–essentially, teams at the top of the draft would be getting the best years of premium talent at bargain basement prices, and this will promote tanking at the end of the year once out of the playoff race–but one of the biggest changes that will happen once the top of the draft is capped (as it will inevitably be, someday) is that some top junior prospects will stay in school and complete their development without having to worry about passing up a career-making payday.

You see, what we have right now is a draft where some of the best prospects at each position are some of the least prepared for life as a professional athlete, and some of the most prepared prospects are dropping until the fourth and fifth round, and being buried.  As advancements in draft analysis have been made, the rate of busts in the first round has skyrocketed to heights that have not been seen before.  In theory, this shouldn’t be happening.  Teams should be using past data to analyze the moves they are making in search of an optimal draft formula.  But this hasn’t been happening.

Sure, sports analysis is probably not as developed as some of us would like, but the majority of the people making the evaluations and decisions aren’t idiots.  Take last year’s QB debate: Stafford vs. Sanchez, or if you wish, the 2007 QB debate (Russell vs. Quinn) or even the 2006 debate (Young vs. Leinart vs. Cutler).  Two questions we can ask in hindsight are: 1) whether or not the draft properly values it’s prospects in the right order, and 2) whether the quality of the class at the top reflects an obvious difference from the rest of the QB class.  In the case of Stafford v. Sanchez, we don’t really have an answer yet.  Both played like raw-as-heck rookies for most of the season.  If either showed a sign of anything positive, it’s that Sanchez strung together a solid three game stretch against playoff defenses.

But the 2007 QB debate offers us resounding evidence to the contrary in both cases.  Who would have been the better pick at No. 1?  Probably Quinn.  Are either Quinn or Russell going to end up being the top pick in the class?  Probably not even in the top two (I’d say Kevin Kolb has the most value, with Trent Edwards just a bit ahead of Quinn, though that could soon change).   What about the 2006 draft, did the teams get it right then?  It looks like Vince Young still has the most upside of the three first round picks, with Cutler coming in ahead of Leinart (i’d imagine) in the minds of most.  But Charlie Whitehurst, a third round pick, just got traded to the Seahawks for the price of a pick equivalent to a late second rounder, and was given a two year extension.  How many of the first three QBs could be traded for that price?  You wouldn’t get that return on Matt Leinart, most likely.  You’d probably get it on Cutler and perhaps Young, but just a year from now, that’s probably a different story.  In defense of front offices in 2006, Kellen Clemens, Tarvaris Jackson, and Brodie Croyle haven’t amounted to much, and it’s not all that uncommon.

According to the approximate value metric over at profootballreference.com, the player who has had the most college starts out of all first round quarterback in the draft class has led each year from 2002-2008, with two exceptions: 2004 where Rivers (most starts) trails Ben Roethlisberger (two more years as a pro starter) by only 3 AV points, and 2007, where JaMarcus Russell (8 AV) was able to write his name on the paper before Quinn (3 AV) was handed the test (no word on whether he nailed the spelling).  I didn’t go back prior to 2002 because only one QB was selected in the 1st round of the 2000 and 2001 drafts, but Daunte Culpepper and Donovan McNabb were the two college starts leaders in 1999, and then, of course, Peyton Manning in 1998.

Naturally, on the flip side, the results haven’t been great for the early declarers: Young, Russell, Stafford, Sanchez, Rex Grossman and Alex Smith have struggled immensely, while Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers have led the underclassmen in production (keep in mind that Stafford and Sanchez can both move themselves into that second class with a pro-bowl type 2010 season).  You’d expect the trend to have resulted in fewer underclassmen leaving their last year of college on the table and jumping to the NFL, but the trend has gone in the opposite direction.  The 2009 class was really weak in terms of seniors, just an awful, awful class (Pat White was the only senior drafted in the first three rounds), and so, naturally, three underclassmen made the jump and went in the first round.  The market seemingly did not adjust for this weakness in the class, and ended up just drafting the three underclassmen as if they were a strong senior class.

But because Stafford, Freeman, and Sanchez all left school early to fill the void at the top of the 09 draft, it took a naturally strong 2010 QB class, and weakened it considerably.  The top seniors in this draft are considered to be some combination of: Colt McCoy, Tim Tebow, Dan LeFevour, and Tony Pike.  That’s a pretty strong class, but imagine how strong that class would be if you added four year starters in Stafford and Freeman to it, and then also a healthy, uninjured Sam Bradford as a fourth year junior.  You think Jimmy Clausen might have stayed at Notre Dame if the draft class was that strong?  That class might have put the 1983 and 2004 QB draft classes to shame.

The point is this: college quarterbacks are in greater supply now than they have ever been in the past, but the promise of mega-bucks has created a shortage of elite prospects at the QB position, and it has also created major inefficiencies in the scouting market.  If the quarterback talent is in greater supply than ever before, and the demand is still quite high, but draft positioning is producing a weaker and weaker correlation to success by the year, which it is, why do teams continue to push the top rated QB prospects higher on their boards?  If teams were learning from history, wouldn’t Sam Bradford and Jimmy Clausen be moving towards the rest of the pack, instead of away from it?

Regardless of the fact that Bradford and Clausen are being hailed as the best prospects in the draft by people much, much smarter than myself, I am thinking that the opportunity to arbitrage in the NFL draft at the QB position is reaching the highest levels it’s ever been at.  If we go back just ten years to 1999, when the last great push by underclassmen to the NFL draft was made, the 2000 senior class had only one QB drafted in the first two rounds as did the 2001 class.  It just so happened that these players ended up being Chad Pennington and Drew Brees.  Those weren’t considered great classes — and they weren’t — but I’d take either of those guys over the cream of the crop from the 1999 draft (which we now know is Donovan McNabb with the benefit of hindsight).

Essentially, it’s this historical evidence that I’m basing my opinion that Colt McCoy is the best quarterback in this draft on.  Or even Tim Tebow: if five years down the road, Tebow is still in the league, still playing quarterback, and knows an NFL offense like the back of his own throwing hand, is there really any doubt he’ll have become a stronger player than Clausen?  You’ll have to spend a first round on Clausen, and probably only a second rounder on Tebow, but those are all of the biggest concerns with Tebow: poor mechanics that lead to sub-optimal velocity and accuracy on the football, doesn’t know a system that has any NFL components in it (and struggled with those concepts as a senior), and thusly, a team might lose patience and move Tebow to another position, he’s obviously being overdrafted in the second round.  If I had a crystal ball that said that, in 2013, Tebow had passed all those tests with flying colors, then knowing nothing about anyone elses accomplishments up to that point, you’d probably suggest to me that Tebow had been underdrafted in the second round.

What about this hypothetical?  Let’s say I have a crystal ball, and I can tell you two “truths” about Sam Bradford’s career:

• He will win the rookie of the year award in 2010
• He will never make a pro-bowl or all-pro team in his career

And I’ve told you nothing relating directly to his production or the successes of his teams he has played on, only what writers thought of him along the way…would you take Sam Bradford in the top 7 picks in the 2010 draft?  All you know is that the guy won a bunch of games this year and never was considered a pro-bowl caliber performer.  Maybe Vince Young’s career comes to mind.  Vince has played in two pro bowls, of course, but it’s not like he deserved either nomination.  In other words, you still don’t know a lot more about Sam Bradford’s prospects than you did before you asked me what my crystal ball said, but you can derive that there will be a bunch of people who felt that Bradford was a bust, and a bunch of people who thought he was worth the draft choice.  Even if my premises above both end up being false, what you’ve probably derived about Bradford will probably be true.  And you probably wouldn’t draft that guy above my hypothetical Tebow, even though you know nothing about what Tebow actually accomplished up to and after the point which he has mastered an NFL offense.

So how can teams avoid a situation where the best prospects in every draft aren’t actually the best prospects?  There’s clearly an arbitrage situation here.  In the financial world, you could just “short” futures in Sam Bradford today, and reap the inevitable profits later.  Well, the NFL draft isn’t a free market.  It’s a highly restricted market where each of the 32 teams controls the entire market one pick at a time, for the duration of a single player.  If you want to capitalize on an arbitrage opportunity, you need to be very creative.  This is what I propose:

If, between now and the time a slotting system is implemented, first round quarterbacks are almost always going to be a bad proposition, while quarterbacks in general, are only a slightly worse proposition than they would be otherwise, the first step is obvious.  If you’ve valued the prospects properly, and according to historical returns, you won’t but hardly ever have a first round grade on a quarterback.*

*I have mid-first round grades on Clausen, Bradford, and McCoy, because I believe this is a great QB class.  In a normal class, I might have them all in the second round.  There’s an uncertainty factor here.

This corrects the problem of drafting quarterbacks too highly in the draft, but now there’s a different problem: a lot of successful teams already have great quarterbacks.  These teams are not engaging in the destructive practice of taking a first round quarterback because they do not need a quarterback.  So they are already reaping the arbitrage benefits of the poor valuation system of the teams that require a quarterback.  The Colts and Patriots, who have had franchise quarterbacks the longest out of any team, have been drafting first round stars since 2001, and the Vikings and Eagles* have also not needed to spend a first round pick on a quarterback since 1999.

*Both have picked a QB in the second round, however.

To solve the problem, our hypothetical arbitrage team has to draft like a team that has a franchise quarterback.  But it also needs to open itself up to actually acquiring that franchise quarterback, while drafting unlike such.  This is how you accomplish it:

You structure your depth chart at the quarterback position as follows: {veteran starter, second year draft choice, first year draft choice} where all draft choices come from the third round or later.  In this case, the veteran starter is not just some whoever, but a valuable quarterback who can succeed in your scheme, and more importantly, can win games for you this year if his team is good enough to do so.  The idea here is that you aren’t sacrificing wins in the present for wins in the future.  It’s in fact critical that this part of the strategy be followed, because there’s no standard timetable for when the strategy of the present becomes the future.  It could be one year, or it could be twelve years.

There are three revolutionary ideas here.  The first is that the quarterback position should be considered a fungible position for two thirds of the NFL.  One-third of the NFL has franchise quarterbacks who are with $10-$20+ million annually in value to their franchise.  The rest of the league does not have this kind of player, and therefore, they should all be in the same boat.  The second main idea here is that, over time, the teams that are not using high picks on quarterbacks are going to be slowly outdrafting the teams that are holding the status quo, and therefore, the roster should be stronger for the team that is abstaining from drafting highly projected quarterbacks, all else equal.  Finally, there’s this point: the veteran backup quarterback on a bad team, no matter how good he is, is probably more of a hinderence on the franchise than a help.  This isn’t true of the 11 or so teams who already have top quarterbacks, but for the rest of the league, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to have plan B be someone other than a potential franchise quarterback.

Now, the idea is to use a draft pick on a quarterback, every year–after the second round.  By not investing in scouting for the quarterbacks with the highest projections, the teams who adhere to this strategy should have a better idea of who is undervalued among the rest of the class.  This should result in landing one undervalued prospect every year at the position, and stashing them away on the depth chart while winning games with the veteran starter, who remember, is supposed to be a good (or at least league average) player.  As for the depth chart, the school of thought with quarterback development is that the biggest leap in development comes from the first year to the second year.*  Well, the idea is to have the emergency quarterback spot tied up in a rookie developmental prospect who was taken for being undervalued in the draft, but will not ascend to the backup spot until after this second year development has been realized.  This is to prevent a situation like with 2005 Chicago that would suggest that Kyle Orton is a completely worthless player who has no developmental value.

*(and the Jets, Lions, and Bucs can only hope…)

By eliminating the importance (and existence) of a veteran backup, we get a situation where either the team is highly competitive in any given year, or it’s second (or in some cases, third) year developmental prospect gets to play in the offense, and can be evaluated as such.  The concept of a veteran starter that doesn’t have contractual security from his organization is the key.  It may seem like a foreign concept for teams to have a player that they would feel comfortable going to battle with week after week, while maintaining the idea that he might not even be on next year’s team.  A cynic might even refer to this as a “lame duck” spot on the roster, and might argue that the very notion of not having contractual security might negatively affect the performance.  In a multi-billion dollar business with millions of fans, this is a pretty dumb suggestion, but it could be argued anyway.

As long as their remains a steady diet of veteran players who can be acquired for little to no organizational cost and can win games on a team with good talent around them, the process can sustain itself until a franchise quarterback is discovered and developed.  This might produce a high variance of year to year wins (as the volatile post-super bowl Buccaneers attempted to do just this, while ranging between 11 and 4 wins for a period of about 5-6 years), but if you draft well (which is key, Bruce Allen), you’ll sustain yourself long enough to eventually find that franchise quarterback.

****

Speaking of Bruce Allen, let’s take the Redskins as an example, while comparing them to the Bucs.  In this analogy, Jason Campbell is your Brad Johnson.  Rex Grossman is probably your Brian Griese.  Colt Brennan is…Shaun King?  Flip those two if you like.  Mike Shanahan is your super bowl winning coach with plenty of job security.  Bruce Allen is Bruce Allen.  He’s taking over a franchise that had a recent history of trading all it’s high picks to the team that used to employ it’s current head coach (so far so good!).

Now we start to jump between years to make the analogy fit.  As a first year GM, you inherit a top five draft choice, and invest it on the offensive side of the ball, in this case, that means: Russell Okung, Trent Williams, or Cadillac Williams C.J. Spiller. In the middle rounds, you draft a quarterback from Texas by the name of Chris Simms Colt McCoy.  By year #2, you’re starting the season with one veteran on the roster (Grossman and Campbell’s contracts both expire after 2010, so pick whoever), and McCoy basically a poor throw or cut-above-the-eye away from assuming the lead role in season two.  You’ve taken over a pretty strong team, and you’ve added some nice pieces in the draft (hey, Michael Clayton once one offensive rookie of the year!), so you should be expecting playoffs.  And McCoy, who starts 10+ games, delivers that division title while completing 61% of his passes and throwing more TD’s than INTs.  Those aren’t franchise QB numbers, you suspect, but it’s sustainable enough to open year three with your third year quarterback as your veteran starter.

Even more picks go into the offense in the third year, and McCoy becomes the club house leader on a team expected to accomplish big things offensively, but even with big improvements on the offensive line (finally), the defense (which has been ignored in the draft since you took over) drops off sharply, and McCoy is knocked out for the year in September with a ruptured spleen achilles’.  Suddenly, the season is lost, and McCoy isn’t a prospect anymore.  The back-up who played all year didn’t show much, so the team is back to square one.

For the Redskins, like the Bucs, things hardly went as planned, and they hadn’t found their franchise QB, and yet again they are picking high in the draft.  This can happen.  The good news is that, if you’ve drafted well, you haven’t spent much money, people still believe in your super bowl winning head coach who brought a division title, and the roster is still stacked with talent.  The team needs to go get a veteran starter at quarterback for 2013, but there’s no reason to believe that they can’t make a playoff run.  Eventually, you’ll find that franchise quarterback.

***

Perhaps a legislative change will come first, and once again, first round quarterbacks will come with first round value.  As I suggested at the top, we’re probably not that far off from a slotting system that will do just that.  In the mean time, it’s the team with the best rest-of-the-team that is going to join the teams with franchise quarterbacks like San Diego, New England, New Orleans, and Indianapolis in the playoffs.  The whole idea with a franchise quarterback is that it’s much easier to pay one great player rather than have a great team, but it’s probably easier and less costly right now to have a bunch of great players than one great quarterback.

Until that changes, teams are best off not competing for the services of a select few unprovens, and rather, grabbing the top athletic talent regardless of the position they perform at.

On Sunday afternoon, the Browns dealt quarterback Brady Quinn to the Denver Broncos for a 6th round pick in 2011, a conditional 6th rounder in the *conditional* 2012 draft, and fan-favorite fullback Peyton Hillis.  For Cleveland, this trade is nothing more than a glorified release.  For the Broncos, it could make their franchise (or, you know, it might not).

The first premise of this trade that needs to be stated is the fact that, with the playoffs on the line for the final four weeks of the 2009 season, the Broncos took the offense out of Kyle Orton’s hands.  This is a pretty simple premise, but necessary to understand why the Broncos are looking to address the quarterback position.  If you look at just the raw numbers in a direct comparison between Brady Quinn in Cleveland, and Kyle Orton in Chicago/Denver, it is difficult to support an argument that Quinn is better.  Kyle Orton has completion percentages the last two years of 58.5 and 62.1%.  Quinn has produced at 50.6% and 53.1% over the same timeframe.  For their careers, Orton and Quinn are stylistically similar in that their greatest asset is their ability to avoid turnovers in critical situations, and both tend to sport a reverse correlation between passing game yardage and winning.  This is to say, as opposed to a player like Peyton Manning or Philip Rivers, who win games on the quality of their passing, Quinn and Orton both tend to win on the quality of situational play (red zone, third down), passing yards be damned.

But if we go to the win percentage rate stats, available over at Brian Burke’s advanced NFL stats blog, it’s clear that the anecdotal evidence backs up the notion that Quinn and Orton aren’t all that far apart.  WPA is designed to be an anecdotal stat.  If you wanted to measure quarterback efficiency, you could use any number of conventional or sabermetric stats to do so.  Here, we’re just looking at the effect that plays involving a team’s quarterback have on winning and losing.  We’ve established that Brady Quinn hasn’t put together any meaningful passing efficiency in his professional career, however, when you compare his “winning” to Orton’s “winning”, we’re talking about two guys who are pretty close to the average.  Orton’s WPA/start comes out to about +0.1,  and Quinn’s WPA/start comes out to -0.05.  That basically means that, all else equal, Orton’s 2009 performance wins about two more games than Quinn’s over the duration of the season.

Of course, in making the trade, Brian Xanders and Josh McDaniels are emphatically stating that they don’t believe all else is equal.  And why would they?  Quinn badly outplayed Derek Anderson this season while they both tried to learn a new offense, and Orton didn’t produce at a fraction of the production Denver gave up when they traded Jay Cutler.  If you humor me and assume just for a second that Jay Cutler and Derek Anderson are equals (I’ll adjust for this obvious fallacy in a second), the differences between the pre-Orton/Quinn offenses in Denver and Cleveland respectively are stark.  In the past, the differences between the quality of the Denver offense and Cleveland offense has ranged from no discernible difference in 2007 all the way to 6 wins difference in 2008.

What I’m about to do is in no way scientific, or even good practice: if we regress that 2008 figure to the mean a little bit, I’m okay with establishing a difference between the pre-2009 Browns/Broncos offenses at 4 wins, and then we still need to adjust to take out the difference in quality of the quarterbacks that preceded Quinn and Orton.  Jay Cutler was in a terrible offense and produced about one-half win over 16 games in WPA, Anderson, also in a terrible offense, was just under -2 wins over the course of half a season.  To go any further in the calculation would be to compare apples to oranges, so I’ll just point at that spread and suggest that, at most, we should cut the difference between the Browns offense and the Broncos offense in half based on how their totals have been affected by the quarterbacks who played in the offense.  We’ll just say that any quarterback who leaves the Browns and goes to Denver should see a boost of about 2 wins over the course of an entire season.

This is a conservative estimate for change of offensive environment.  But it completely eliminates any statistical advantage that Kyle Orton has over Brady Quinn in WPA.  It’s impossible to use these fairly abstract adjustments to be able to forecast how either player will progress over the course of the offseason and into next year, but even if Brady Quinn doesn’t make a great improvement from his performance in Cleveland, he’s still likely to offer the same sort of productivity the team was getting out of Orton in 2009. Therefore, with Quinn’s untapped upside, Orton should only hold onto the job through strong improvement in the offseason.  If Orton can be a 64% completion guy who throws twice as many TDs as INTs and for more than 7.o YPA, Denver probably won’t be able to get that production out of Quinn.  But that would be a huge improvement for Orton, and the Broncos need to keep their options open.  Quinn will need to improve his dreadful completion percentage to ever be a productive QB, but a 3% increase from 2008 to 2009 given a scheme change is a positive sign.

The bigger picture is this: the Broncos are not limited from making a play on a first round quarterback with the 11th overall pick, and Jimmy Clausen figures to be there at that point.  The Quinn trade does not in any way limit the Broncos from pursuing an option they may feel is greater than either Orton or Quinn (though, anecdotally, if Clausen is this guy, I might be worried about the conclusions their scouts have made).  Clausen is a different kind of player who won’t throw underneath quite as much, but it makes little sense to draft Clausen and get rid of Brandon Marshall.

The Broncos have plenty of options, but replacing Chris Simms on the roster with Brady Quinn fills their biggest need as of right now.  Filling needs before the draft opens up the board towards the value as dictated to the decision makers by the scouts and information department, and that generally leads to successful drafting.

Some disjointed thoughts on some very interesting teams that will play in a very uninteresting NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Field.

Notre Dame A basketball team that completely re-invented itself in the middle of it’s season, faced with the necessity to do so, or to end it’s season early in the Big East tournament.  The result: six straight wins in the NCAA’s toughest conference, and a two point loss at the buzzer to Big East Champion West Virginia.  Notre Dame enters this tournament as one of the toughest outs anywhere in the bracket, but they’ll have to handle another tough out, Old Dominion, in the first round.

Oklahoma State beat Kansas decisively in Big 12 conference play, so they might be the team best equipped to handle Georgia Tech and Ohio State in the first two rounds.  If and when they can get by the two teams they’ll play this weekend, Georgetown is going to be a near reprieve in the sweet sixteen.  I think they can come out of this and earn their rematch against Kansas.

Kansas State is the team that first de-throned the Texas Longhorns, and this was before we found out that UT wasn’t going to be much of a threat down the stretch.  They’ve been unable to overcome Kansas, but they’ve been a top ten team in the country throughout the year, and they’ve got the best chance to play in the final four of any team that is not a number one seed.

Michigan State is never really not a great pick to make a run in the tournament, as they are pretty much an ACC team stranded in the north. Duke, without the villain aspect.  But this year, there’s simply not a whole lot of upside for last year’s runner up.  They’re going to be a dead heat with Maryland, and that’s if they can get out of the first round against New Mexico State.  And if they happen to make it through to the Sweet 16, which wouldn’t be all that shocking given their history, there’s not a whole lot Michigan State can do to beat Kansas.  It wasn’t a good draw for Tom Izzo’s crew, and they’re not playing their best game right now to boot.

Marquette is such a strong team that squeezes the most out of its recruits, and on top of their accomplishments, their draw in the tournament is really good.  And yet, I don’t think they are going to be able to travel out to the west coast and beat a less accomplished but more talented Washington team.  Marquette will make an early exit before they can get going.

Baylor sports very strong fundamentals this year, which would normally make them a great investment to do well in this tournament.  But, if Notre Dame can slip by ODU (and that’s far from a certainty), the culmination of everything they have accomplished in the past three weeks will come to a head against Baylor.  And at the end of the day, the number one peripheral value in college sports is program history.  Notre Dame has had it’s best tournament season in school history, Baylor is talented but unestablished, and I think they’ll make the exist prior to the sweet 16, one way or another.

The Kansas City area media, normally the poster children for midwestern modesty, are nearly unanimous in their assertion that this year’s Kansas team is the best college basketball team any of them have ever seen.  Jason Whitlock, in particular, has been notoriously vocal in this assessment.  The numbers support them.  Kansas appears to be every bit as dangerous as any team has been going into the tournament.  I cannot say the same for an overachieving Syracuse, or even a great team like Kentucky.  However…

They are not my favorites to take the tournament.  The favorites, according to this non-expert, are the Duke Blue Devils.  My comment about program strength should have probably given this away, but Duke excels in two critical areas: perimeter shooting, and perimeter defense.  For all of what OSU’s Evan Turner can do, I wouldn’t bet against even odds that Jon Scheyer has the best tournament of any player.  Duke is a near lock to be in the final four, thanks to their lucky draw, and beyond that point, they will progress purely on merit.  I do not feel comfortable picking anyone in this weakened field besides Duke, which makes them the pick.

After one high pressure week of free agency, and plenty of bargains might I add (looking at you Ryan Clark, Aaron Kampman), the market has been stripped of the top end talent at most positions.  And with the pressure off teams to go out and improve their teams now, some teams will be able to find steals on the secondary market.

So, where’s the value?  In most years, now that we are more than ten days into the league year, the quickest way to improve would be through a trade.  This year would be no exception to that rule.  But trades are often costly in terms of draft pick compensation, and because of the type of player that works his way onto “the outs” with his coaching staff, trade targets, talented as they are usually come with a catch.  No team has been willing to throw a first round pick at Brandon Marshall in either an offer sheet or a trade agreement, because of the baggage associated with acquiring him.

The talent on the value free agent market usually tends to be position-specific.  The free agent defensive lineman who didn’t get saddled with the franchise tag flew off the board like wildfire.  The defensive backs class, weak to begin with, was picked to shreds early on.  Want a quality quarterback? Forget about it! The Cleveland contract with Jake Delhomme tells you everything you need to know about the market rate for prior success at the position.  The running back class was old, and has been weakened from its original form by the multi-year contracts thrown at players like Chester Taylor, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Larry Johnson.

So what’s left?  Well, team needs have to be specific to the holes on the team who is pursuing these players, but two markets of unrestricted free agents remain relatively untouched: interior lineman, and linebackers.  The Cincinnati Bengals have failed to reach agreement with RG Bobbie Williams, who was one of the best two or three players on the market to begin with.  Williams has had weight issues in his career, but he was at his best all of last season, and while teams shouldn’t pay above market rates based off career years, it’s hard to imagine a team not improving instantly with his acquisition.  Same with Texans’ LG Chester Pitts.  Talks between Pitts and the Texans are ongoing, however, he’s available to any team who plays the zone scheme and needs an above average pass blocker at left guard at a pretty reasonable cost.  Any takers?

After a small dropoff, teams can also bid on 39-year old Kevin Mawae, who remains a quality center in this league even at an advanced age, or they can take a chance on C/G hybrid Richie Incognito, who brings the dreaded character issues to the table, which are only partially offset by his talent.  There’s two factors at work here that will keep player costs down at the position.  The first is supply, the second is demand.  Relative to the tackle position, which has become more and more isolated from the interior line, teams still believe heavily in player fungibility.  Guards are going to sign after inferior rated tackles because teams are not fearful of losing their guards to other teams and being unable to replace them.  And with supply, we’re four deep right now with average or above average interior line types.  Mawae’s only strong interest is from his current team, the Titans, and there’s a extenuating circumstance with Mawae being President of the NFLPA during this labor dispute, which probably shouldn’t, but will hurt his market.

But with the linebacker class, there’s no real easy explanation to why these guys have been slow to come off the market.  For one thing, linebackers are hard to replace on the open market, and while they aren’t paid like premium talents, its too easy for offensive coaches to exploit below average linebackers.  Tully Banta-Cain and Scott Fujita went quickly, as did Karlos Dansby and the recently released Will Witherspoon.  These aren’t great players, but they are quality guys who aren’t going to have comparable talent available for no draft pick compensation within a month.

For right now, any team could sign Antonio Pierce (given he passes a physical), or Akin Ayodele to play inside linebacker, or any of Keith Bulluck, Joey Porter, Danny Clark, and Pisa Tinoisamoa to play on the outside, but the interest on these players has been slow at best.  Bulluck and Porter, in particular, are still difference makers who need to be accounted for in all defensive schemes.  The wide variety of player available at linebacker (one guy for every role in every scheme, seemingly) makes you wonder what teams who have needs at linebacker are waiting for.  The prices are at bargain basement levels, and the talent is undeniable, pending health-checks.

Now, a very strong receiver market has been sufficiently raided near the top of the class: Kevin Walter and Nate Burleson flew off the board quickly, but the Antonio Bryant deal got me thinking: here’s a guy, who has number one type skills and is getting paid number one type money, seemingly as much about being the next Chad OchoJohnson as being his complement on a 2010 Bengals team that will struggle to throw the football.  Bryant has great future value, but if I needed one receiver on this free agent market to win next year, and I couldn’t get Burleson or Walter, the next two guys on my list would be former Bills receivers Terrell Owens and Josh Reed.

Both Reed and Owens have drawn free agent interest from teams who aren’t the Buffalo Bills, but both appear to have their options limited at this point.  Owens was in the mix for the Bengals, and I’m a bit surprised they chose Bryant over Owens, because Owens seems to fit the purpose of winning now a lot better.  Reed’s name has been linked to the Patriots, and he’s been as good as anyone in the league at what he has been asked to do over the last four or so years, which are the same things Troy Brown used to do for the Patriots.  Owens seemingly has no immediate prospects, which means that all roads eventually lead to Oakland.

That’s actually a pretty strong fit for Owens.  If there’s a fault in the Raiders receiving corps, it’s that it’s young and unrefined.  That’s you, Darrius Heyward-Bey.  Owens might demand No. 1 type attention from his offense, and that may limit his value to a lot of teams even before you consider the things that happen just outside those white lines, but on Oakland, if he can take the pressure off of those younger players, Owens can be productive in 2010, and helpful to the cause in the long term.  Whatever it may seem, going after Owens could be a good move for the Raiders.  Meanwhile, the Broncos would be very wise to get in on the Josh Reed sweepstakes, as they need the help at WR before it’s too late.

Free Agency’s second wave offers plenty of options at only a few positions.  For a majority of teams without needs at any of these positions, it’s time to turn attention to the draft to improve.  But for a limited amount of teams who still are looking to make a splash before the draft, looking at some of the available linebackers, interior lineman, and wide receivers who are still available with no draft pick compensation, it’s these cheaper moves that could end up being the best move these teams have made this offseason.

Before moving forward on this, I need to first establish that being a “winner” in free agency doesn’t precede winning on the gridiron.  There is no shame in not spending money, and in football, spending increases the level of uncertainty about your team.  Teams that are successful in free agency get a little bit better, while teams that fail in free agency can cost their teams anywhere between a few points, and a few wins.

Not spending in free agency can be indicative of a team unwilling to improve itself, but also of a team that needs to veteran influence to improve.  No amount of spending can offset the natural improvement and decline of the rest of the roster, but because of the amount of money in the game of professional football, players who improve teams don’t really qualify as “overpaid”, no matter how much they are getting paid.  The premium teams can justify to players on the open market as to not give up any picks is infinite.

The free agency losers on this list have overspent for players who simply aren’t going to improve their team, and could create situations where they are blocking quality young talent simply because of their contract.  Conversely, there’s no one standard that makes you a free agency winner, but the teams on my list of winners all had first weeks that I would describe as “inspired” in one way or another.

Free Agency Winners

1. Denver Broncos Boston West really did do a better job of playing the trends in the market than any other team, landing a plethora of quality talent to help to slow the downhill momentum created by a team that has lost 8 of it’s last 10 games and missed the postseason following a 6-0 start.  Their front seven was one of the keys to their hot start, but it’s decline led to the overall failure of the unit and the team, as well as the ousting of Mike Nolan.  What the Broncos received in Jamal Williams, Justin Bannan, and Jarvis Green.  Denver has seized the opportunity to release players such as Kenny Peterson and Andra Davis, but with name recognition on the DL, we can say that no one will expect Denver’s defense to play in 2010 at the same poor level that it did in 2008, or with the expectation to struggle that was prevalent in 2009.

2. Pittsburgh Steelers Always the quiet contributor rather than the main spender in free agency, the budget conscious Steelers don’t gain points from me for their quick deal with NT Casey Hampton because they were always going to have the ability to use the franchise tag on him, however, their ability to re-sign S Ryan Clark at a reasonable figure was astounding.  Furthermore, the Steelers were quite comfortable signing players behind him, such as Will Allen, a former starter with the Bucs, while it was very much in doubt that Clark would come back.  Then, the team addressed it’s wide receiver depth by buying low on an old friend in Antwaan Randle El, a poor man’s Hines Ward, and a short term deal on the undervalued Arnaz Battle.  These deals don’t limit the Steelers from chasing a receiver in the draft if the value is right, but if they choose, they’re ready for the season and are not reliant on Limas Sweed to show up.

3. Jacksonville Jaguars Jacksonville, unfortunately, seems like they will be unable to stave off  becoming irrelevant in the NFL playoff field in the near-term future, but their signings over the last week, I think, extend the period of time they can contend.  Adding Aaron Kampman to replace free agent Reggie Hayward is a big time signing, and could be the move that allows Derrick Harvey to reach his potential.  It also helps define their needs heading towards the draft as needing to add receiver help and secondary help, instead of needing to look at defensive lineman.  I also think the signing of WR Kassim Osgood is inspired, because teams always underrate the value of special teamers who aren’t specialists.  Osgood has been to four straight pro bowls as the special teamer in the AFC.  While that isn’t much evidence that he’s actually good at special teams, his reputation around the league is of someone who is very respected at his trade.  In addition, Osgood fancies himself a contributor on offense, and he’ll get a chance to prove this in Jacksonville, but he should be worth his contract even if he can’t catch a football.

4. Cleveland Browns The Browns applied cost effective shopping to a need position at RT in landing Tony Pashos on a three year contract by going just a few dollars over the next best offer (Washington).  Scott Fujita, on the other hand, is very underrated.  He’s good in coverage, good on the pass rush, and makes plays in the run game.  I do have a question about how he fits in to whatever defense the Browns are going to run next year, but leaving that temporarily unanswered, he’s a good pickup.

T5. Washington Redskins The Redskins are not on this list for any signing they’ve made.  They’re a winner because of all of the dead weight they’ve been able to shed as a byproduct of the uncapped year.  Here’s what’s most mind boggling: the Redskins’ current payroll with respect to the 2009 season is in the bottom five in all of football.  Bottom.  Five.  Those huge contracts to DeAngelo Hall and Albert Haynesworth now account for nearly 40% of the payroll of the team in 2010.  A rare case of addition by subtraction.

T5. Detroit Lions I don’t have the same vigor about the Vanden Bosch signing that others in my local media market seem to, but I think Nate Burleson is the missing piece in the Detroit offense, which is also a locally unpopular opinion.  People around the team have complained that the team struggled on offense last year in part because of no contribution by the second receiver, but now it falls to Matt Stafford and Calvin Johnson to make Detroit into an elite offense.  They are in position to land a true impact player in the draft, either at defensive tackle or offensive tackle, and if it’s Okung, the offense in Detroit could explode this season.

Honorable Mention: Houston Texans They haven’t gone out and added much talent, but I like the Wade Smith signing, and keeping Kevin Walter was mega-important.  Matt Turk returns as well for another season of watching a middle aged dude punt.

Free Agency Losers

1.  Kansas City Chiefs Forgive me, Royals brethren.  The offseason is still young, but the Chiefs have not moved in the right direction.  Signing Thomas Jones offers a poor complement to Jamaal Charles, and increases the pressure on the third year back to continue his late season breakout, and to carry the load when Thomas Jones inevitably becomes a 3.5 YPC guy…the kind of guy they just released in Larry Johnson.  I also don’t like the re-signing of Mike Vrabel, as I’m not sure what his role is on a rebuilding team.  They have enough coaches on the field, in my opinion.  Then they’ve overreacted to a decent half season from Chris Chambers, and offered him a multi-year contract, the same mistake made by Miami and later San Diego, and a similar error to what Washington did with DeAngelo Hall this year.  The Chiefs must involve Dwayne Bowe and Charles in the offense, and not Jones and Chambers.

2. Arizona Cardinals The Cardinals were not very aggressive in trying to retain the available parts of their 2008 NFC champion team in the wake of Kurt Warner’s retirement, which is defensible in it’s own right.  But I don’t know if I would let a bunch of key parts of my team on both sides of the ball walk while trying to replace them with recently released fodder that your coaches are well networked with (like Larry Foote).  All of Arizona’s losses (Boldin, Gandy, Dansby, Okeafor, Rolle) can be justified in terms of cost effectiveness, but I would have been much more aggressive in trying to replace some of the talent in the system than the Cards have been.  We will see if they can land Joey Porter to fill one of those needs.

3. Minnesota Vikings With Brett Favre doing, well, what everyone should have known would happen, the Vikings are in a very precarious position in free agency, and their response has been less than ideal, in my opinion.  The Vikings can be pretty confident that Favre will return, but honestly, it’s that kind of thinking that will get us all into trouble.  Here’s a team that needs to bolster the interior of it’s great defensive line, given Pat Williams’ health and age, needs to look at it’s MLB position with E.J. Henderson suffering season-ending injuries in consecutive years, and had a weak secondary last year.  On the other hand, the offensive line is the biggest weakness of the entire roster.  And so far, the Vikings have responded by resigning marginal CB Bennie Sapp and resigning WR Greg Lewis, and wining and dining with LaDainian Tomlinson.  It’s admirable if the Vikings are picking now to start developing their own talent, but with Favre’s status very much up the the air, it was almost predetermined that the Vikings would be free agency losers, and they’ve done nothing to change that.

4. Buffalo Bills Terrible, terrible signing of Cornell Green to replace the retired Brad Butler.  The Bills have added seven years to the position, a whole bunch of dollars, and lose a lot of talent.  Furthermore, at a position where the replacement level player is particularly valueless, Green might not even be at that level.  He’ll make three million a year through 2012.  The Bills don’t rank higher because the re-signing of Bryan Scott is a nice move.

T5. Tampa Bay Bucs/St. Louis Rams When you’re down around here in terms of talent, free agency is just one means of improving the quality of your roster.  But there’s a big difference between what Tampa and St. Louis are doing, and what Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland are doing.  It’s hard to improve an above average team with the scraps of other teams, but those are the parts that can help accelerate the rebuilding of teams like the Bucs and Rams.  On the other hand, you could be doing what the Chiefs are, and investing in all the wrong targets.

Value over replacement is a concept that has long been a staple of baseball sabermetrics, even as the effectiveness of it’s measures have vastly improved in recent seasons.  In football, however, measures of value against replacement are far more confusing and open to interpretation: subjective, if you will.  One thing we all can agree on is that the concept is no less real or important to football analysis than it is to baseball analysis.  The only differences are in the effectiveness of common representations and calculations of a replacement level figure.  Football people have to be able to apply concrete evidence of performance to an abstract interpretation of what is replacement level.  If mistakes are made, there will be arbitrage opportunities for shrewd teams.

The main problem in football is that replacement level varies by position, by year.  In baseball, it can be stated that a replacement level offensive player is one who produces at 80% of the league average.  This is probably the most common representation and will never be a downright improper assumption.  There’s no such shorthand method in football.  With no minor league system in football (yet), a freely available talent is no different from one who is out of work.  From a practical standpoint, it’s really difficult to be out of football one week, and starting for an NFL team the next week, contributing at a level that is anywhere near replacement.

A better operational definition of a replacement level player is a backup at any position who offers no additional value to a team past the fact that he has some experience being that team’s backup.  Teams who are successful in the NFL year after year often employ a “next man up” type of attitude to injuries.  These teams can take replacement level players, apply them to a defensive or offensive system, and get performance out of them that is inconsistent with conventional (even sabermetric) methods of replacement estimates.  It’s my opinion that we have to accept this as a necessary evil: replacement level players aren’t always going to perform at replacement.  This is true of baseball as well.

NFL free agency is really our one opportunity during the football calendar year to get a good wide-view picture of how teams value replacement level talent.  In particular, what I’ve been concerned with is looking at which positions get most drained by teams who need to stack their roster with players who have experience at the position.

What I’ve found by studying these trends has been pretty eye opening.  My findings support the previous assertion that the league-wide idea of replacement level is much, much lower compared to the average for some positions than others.  Take cornerback, for example.  Corner is a position that I would describe as being “highly skilled”.  It takes corners longer to develop as players than defensive lineman or linebackers.  But when we apply the concept of replacement to the position, we find that, despite the refined skill needed to excel, players who are very close to the league average (but on the wrong side of it) can bounce around the league just like a replacement level player would.  Look no further than Titans/Browns/Bears/Cardinals (just in 2009) corner Rod Hood, formerly a very successful 2nd or 3rd corner for the Eagles, couldn’t hold a job for more than two weeks.  It’s not just guys who peaked as no. 2 types.  Look at Carlos Rogers, or Bryant McFadden, or Dre Bly, or Shawn Springs, or Brian Williams.  At some point, all of these guys were bona fide no. 1 corners on their teams.  But in 2009, every one of them posted a replacement level type season.  It’s really just the nature of the position: players are quick to rise, and quick to fall.  And once a player drops to consistently below average at the position, he’s easily replaceable.  The freely available talent that can provide teams with a close to average level of play is everywhere.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have found, lie wide receivers and linebackers (yes, linebackers).  Wide receivers with any history of recent success get sucked up off of the open market onto teams within the first few days of free agency every year, and despite this, you still see incredibly high variances in the quality of backup receivers around the league.  After Terrell Owens, Antonio Bryant, and Josh Reed sign (probably later this week) for good money, any team in need of a receiver will have their choice between 37 year old Mushin Muhammad, Mike Furrey, or Marty Booker.  The quality of receiver that comes at a minimum priced contract is so far beneath the level of an acceptable NFL starter that teams almost have to look to the draft to add players who can play special teams and catch passes.

At linebacker, there’s a reason that Jeremiah Trotter gets dragged out of football purgatory every other season.  Replacement level linebackers are plentiful, but those ‘backers who can both lead and go make tackles never are allowed to hit the open market (and when they do, they get Bart Scott/Karlos Dansby type contracts).  The OLBs have, admittedly, been a lot slower to sign than in recent years, but Keith Bulluck and Joey Porter aren’t exactly going to have to sign for one year “prove it” contracts.  Scott Fujita, Tully Banta-Cain, and Mike Vrabel have been well taken care of.  Vrabel, in particular, isn’t anywhere near an average player.  If he played corner, he would have had to retire three years ago.  Heck, Ty Law has been bouncing around unable to hold a job with a single team since 2006, and he was once a much better player at his position than Vrabel was at his.

You may think of quarterback as a highly skilled position where all the best talent gets bought up as soon as it hits the market, but this is simply not the case.  Jake Delhomme and Derek Anderson were starters as recently as last season, but the odds on either of them catching on somewhere as a backup next year are pretty much even.  Other replacement type talent like Patrick Ramsey and Jeff Garcia could start the year on teams, even though they did not finish last year on teams.  The backup QB market is pretty interchangeable with the former starters market, performance seemingly has less to do with it than coach’s preference for one type of player over another.  Such is the life of the former pro-bowler who can only play at -15% of the league average.  At that level of performance, your career needs an “in” to continue.

But one position trumps all the others in the market’s recent interpretation of replacement.  And when I say “trumps,” I mean it’s so glaring that its’ clear that this position functions differently than all the other positions in NFL free agency.  Chad Clifton of the Green Bay Packers just got a 3-year $20 million dollar extension to remain the Green Bay Packers’ left tackle for at least one more season (he’ll receive more than 40% of the total contract value just for this season).  Clifton is 34, a one time probowler in 10 NFL seasons.  Upon becoming a free agent, Clifton visited the Redskins, who had just watched their offensive tackle of Clifton’s draft class (Chris Samuels) retire after 6 pro bowls.

The difference in skill between Samuels and Clifton is roughly equivalent to the difference in skill between Eli Manning and Kerry Collins.  But the Redskins, desperate for a tackle, wanted to seriously consider letting Clifton be the franchise’s left tackle for the next two years in the twilight of his career, that is until they couldn’t beat the best offer of the more desperate Packers.  Why was Clifton, a below average player, worth so much to these teams?  The answer is that, despite being decidedly below average, Clifton was the only left tackle who hadn’t been locked up by their team ahead of time who hadn’t fallen into the dark depths of the replacement.  After him: Levi Jones, Damion McIntosh, and Barry Sims sit on the market, unwanted.

Across the line, the right tackle market has gotten absolutely preposterous.  The prized lamb in the free agent class was San Francisco’s Tony Pashos, who also visited Washington, couldn’t agree to terms, and ended up signing a 3-year contract with the Browns.  Just one year ago, Pashos was an incumbent right tackle on a Jacksonville team that felt it prudent to spend it’s first and second round draft choices on offensive tackles, as well as to sign a veteran LT.  Pashos has never played a position on any line besides right tackle.  But seemingly by virtue of being a free agent when every other team has jumped through hoops to seal their top two tackles if they ever had it, Pashos had the NFL world at his feet, just one year after being completely unwanted.

Pashos and Clifton will both be among the vast landscape of the replacement level lineman before these contracts expire, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  There is a clear shortage of capable starters at the offensive tackle position in the NFL.  While Albert Haynesworth and Julius Peppers have hit the market in consecutive years to sign elsewhere for mega-bucks, teams can hardly find anyone capable of protecting the quarterback.  And so they are hiring players who might be able to help by the dozen.  Cornell Green, a former Raiders lineman best known for his inability to stop anyone, signed with Buffalo for 3 years and 8 figures.  Green is the very definition of replacement level tackle, although apparently the Bills feel otherwise.  The Raiders felt the need to send 2009 FA signing Khalif Barnes to the bench after a foot injury and underperformance derailed his 2009 season.  This year, he’ll be back under a one year contract, and if the Raiders can’t address the need in the draft, he’s in the starting lineup.  Khalif Barnes has very nearly underachieved his way into a promotion.

Players at the offensive tackle position in the NFL don’t have to be anywhere near league-average to command a multi-year contract on the open market.  In fact, those who are league-average or close to it do not get anywhere near unrestricted free agent status.  It seems like it’s only a matter of time until NFL teams start kicking underutilized backup interior lineman out to the tackle position and letting them compete for playing time as starters.

Rod Hood (age 28), who in the most conservative estimates, offers play at -10% of the league average cornerback, has been on four teams since playing in Super Bowl 43 with Arizona.  Chad Clifton (age 34), who in the most optimistic of estimates, offers play at -10% of the league average LT, is offered a 3-year contract by two different teams and gets $8 million to play this season.  When you consider that corners take longer to develop than offensive tackles, we’re left with only two reasonable explanations: either NFL decision makers act completely irrationally, or a league average offensive tackle offers ten to twenty times more value over replacement than a league average cornerback.

And that’s what’s astounding in the NFL labor markets today.

There’s a pretty good article in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, guest written by Houston Chronicle columnist Richard Justice.  The subject: David Carr’s career, in wake of his signing with the 49ers to “compete” for the starting job.

If there is a fault in the analysis performed here by Justice, it’s that he basically exonerates the Texans from overdrafting Carr at first overall in the 2002 draft (my analysis on the class can be found here).  Justice’s sharp criticism of the work done by Charley Casserly and staff between the Carr selection and the disaster of a season in 2005 is pretty much on point.  Of course, the fact that the Texans bucked conventional wisdom and made the best draft pick in their short history just a year after Carr was drafted, giving him a superstar wideout in Andre Johnson via the third overall pick, is ignored.

Carr’s developmental career path was completely normal through the first three years of his career: he was never going to be a franchise passer in the truest sense of the term, but at the conclusion of his best season–to that point– in 2004, Carr was already an above average passer.  Above average is very valuable in NFL dollars, and Carr could have passably fulfilled his billing as a first overall draft pick if he had stayed at that level.  But by the end of the 2-14 2005 season, the Texans were just looking for some way they could salvage the David Carr investment,  and at that point, they probably wasted an 8 million dollar roster bonus (in Carr’s rookie contract) trying to salvage what value had already been lost.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that actually changed in 2005–from 2004–is that the Texans ended up succumbing to their offensive line weakness.  Sure, Carr’s play was a limiting factor on Andre Johnson that year, but no more a limiting factor on Johnson than in both 2004 and 2006 (this is evidenced by the emergence of Johnson into a top level WR as soon as Matt Schaub took over at QB).  In 2005, the Texans could run the ball just as well as they could before, probably even better.  Dominick Davis (Williams), who would not play another snap after 2005, was every bit as productive that year as he was in 2004.

More to the point, Justice is criticizing the leadership of the Houston franchise for allowing the offensive line to reach offensive levels.  In 2004, David Carr was sacked on more than 10% of his dropbacks, and no observer batted an eye at it.  The line was fine in 2004, and that number kind of typifies David Carr as a passer.  In 2005, the two guards from the 2004 team ended up combining for 28 starts at the tackle positions.  The 2005 Texans, despite having a QB and a WR drafted in the top three picks of their respective NFL drafts, were a team that were not built to throw the football.

The fact that they had to throw the football was more due to a complete and utter defensive collapse than anything wrong with Carr, Casserly, or the offensive coaching staff headed by Chris Palmer, but the suggestion by Justice is valid: why invest two top picks exclusively in a passing game, and then not build a team to throw the football?  But a more intense look at the draft patterns of the Texans suggests that the Carr project might have been doomed from the start.

Consider: the chances of the Texans landing a player as dynamic as Andre Johnson at any point in their first four drafts was not very good.  Maybe as high as 30%.  Well, at the point that the Texans landed Johnson, they were one pick into their second draft, and had already landed 4 above average NFL players (including Carr, at the time): Johnson, guard Chester Pitts, and receiver Jabar Gaffney.  Later that draft, they landed tackle Seth Wand and Davis/Williams.  At this point, the Texans turned their draft attention strictly to the defensive side of the ball for the duration of the next two years.

This is pretty much Justice’s point.  The Texans ignored the offensive side of the ball in two straight drafts.  This caused Carr to not progress as expected, it caused Johnson’s breakout season in 2004 to be followed by two largely disappointing years before his 2007 14.1 average yard per catch (injury shortened) season.  According to Justice, the Texans’ owed it to Carr and they owed it to themselves to keep putting talent on the offense, and after consecutive years of adding only defensive players, the management of the team got what they deserved when the team went 2-14.

The more important thing to get out of this is just how hard it is to build a team around a quarterback, even if you pick up the “best” quarterback in the draft.  As an expansion team, the Texans could have picked Julius Peppers, the consensus best player in the draft, or they could have gone for the quarterback and start the building process from there.  Carr’s tragic flaw is, and will always be, his desire to want to hold onto the ball for a second too long.  Because of that flaw, he’s a tough choice at No. 1 overall.  But he’s not by any means a horrible pick: Carr gave Houston a bunch of above replacement seasons that they could not have gotten from quarterbacks off the scrap heap.  It just so happens that 2005 was not one of those seasons.

Here’s the moral of the story: teams that are considering picking a quarterback in the upcoming couple of drafts need to understand why the Texans won 5 fewer games in 2005 than in 2004.  Because of the spot where David Carr was drafted (1st overall), his contract, and the Texans’ place in the league after the 2004 season, the team had no choice but to turn Carr loose and to throw him to the wolves, so to speak.  The results were positively disastrous.

Compare for a second the amount of homegrown talent on the 2-14 2005 Texans offense, to that of the 11-5 2005 Bengals offense.  The Bengals spent two first round picks in the top ten on offensive tackles.  The Texans: none.  But the homegrown talent on defense is pretty similar.  The difference is most stark when you look at that Bengals team, and see all the talent that was drafted–by the Bengals–prior to Carson Palmer being the first overall pick in 2003.  This list involves both tackles, the top two receivers, and the running back.  Palmer was the part that brought it all together for Cincinnati, making the Bengals offense of 2005 and 2006 one of the best units in the NFL.

Teams considering Sam Bradford at the top of this draft should best be doing a self analysis to see if they have the parts of their future team already in place.  If you’re the St. Louis Rams, you have two first round tackles on your roster.  Can Alex Barron and Jason Smith be your tackle tandem of the future?  What about Donnie Avery?  Does he have Chad Ochocinco type breakout potential at wide receiver?  Can you land a competent guard, tight end, or second wide receiver in the second round?  If your best self-analysis measures answer yes to all these questions, perhaps Sam Bradford is the piece who will bring all the parts together.  If Barron, and Avery are not parts of the next strong Rams team, then maybe picking for your need at quarterback over value is going to be repeating the same mistake the Texans made.  If Avery and co. aren’t NFL type talent, Bradford will probably suffer the same fate as Carr when thrown to the wolves.

If the Detroit Lions have an offensive breakout this year, it will be because of their decision to make Matt Stafford the part that brings all of their offensive pieces together: first round tackles Jeff Backus and Gosder Cherilus, first round receiver Calvin Johnson, and first round TE Brandon Pettigrew, and homegrown RB Kevin Smith.  If the Lions do not break out this year on offense, it will be due to the fact that they overestimated the usefulness of players like Cherilus and Calvin Johnson and Pettigrew in developing a young quarterback.  The Lions have a high percentage of Detroit’s GDP hinging on the fact that Stafford’s development will not stall.

The 2005 Texans teach us that an expansion team, and teams in similar position, need to be focused on adding talent above need, because even a well-researched, easily-defensible pick at a need position can and will go awry if a team runs out of goodwill and needs to throw it’s investment to the wind in hopes of winning games.  The Texans Proverb:

Lucky is the team that is merely a quarterback away from being a winner, as their problem is easily solved.  Unlucky is the team who has a quarterback and nothing else, for their fans should never know that they had a quarterback at all.

Alex Smith, meet David Carr.  You have much to learn about each other’s plight.