A Study on the effectiveness of Bum Mining

[3irty1]

Wist made a pretty unique argument spanning a couple of different threads and I thought it would be worth checking out. I'll just quote him directly:

The Green Bay Packers are the most draftcentric team in the NFL - hands down. The only other means of player procurement, except on rare occassion, is Street FA's. Whom you cannot include in your assessment of TT's late round picks.

That means Tyrone Williams, Shields, EDS, et al... all other Street FA's. You would have signed these guys anyway.

My criteria is that a guy be a legit NFL starter - if you're going to build your team with late round picks and street FA's, don't many of those guys need to be legitimate NFL starters - and necessarily better, i.e. Sitton.

The list is very short - Sitton, Lang, Bishop, Jolly (I include Jolly b/c I love the guy, and he absolutley was a legit NFL starter; but of course he might never play again, we'll see).

That's it... that's the list of TT's bum mining successes in rds 4-7.

You have to take Daniels, McMillian, and House off the list b/c we don't know what those guys are. I think House looks like a hit, but we simply don't know - so they're not considered yet.

I don't include CJ Wilson, Marshall Newhouse, Jurius Wynn, Starks, DJ Smith... they may have started, or are starting - but none of those guys has any business starting in the NFL. If you have them for backups, you're looking to replace them and upgrade. So even though they're playing, I don't consider them legit starters - they are weak links in our lineup that need to be replaced.

We now have 8 years of drafts to look at - it's an ugly, ugly list.

48 guys minus Crosby and the 3 young guys gives you 44 picks to assess. Of those 44, only 4 became legit starters. That comes out to 9.09% hit rate.

I've never really heard anyone argue this before and with our recent trade downs in the 2013 draft wist has put into words for us a philosophy that I think is largely being debated on the forum between others as well. Its a debate of quantity vs quality.

After thinking about about this I didn't think the 9.09% hit rate was really the important part here. Naturally, the later rounds in a draft are of lower quality but the important thing is to get 22 starters that even wist would like so at a 9.09% hit rate it would take 244 picks in rounds 4-7 to field those starters .

What I feel is missing from this equation is the relationship between draft picks. Clearly we'd all trade a couple of 7ths for a 1st or 2nd but that's not an option. Well we have such a way to relate draft picks to each other in the form of draft trade charts. Using wist's list of guys who are "legit starters" I assessed where Ted has done the best job. Here is the draft chart I used.

Wist's list of starters may be slightly conservative but I like it.

Solid starters from the early rounds: (offense) Rodgers, Matthews, Bulaga, Cobb, Nelson, Jones, Finley; (defense) Raji, Matthews, Burnett, Hawk; (probable, but too early to say for sure) Heyward, Perry, House.

I didn't count Mason Crosby as a hit, nor Jolly, nor any of wist's probables and I did leave their draft picks in the numbers as if the picks were misses. Borderline guys like Newhouse and Wilson were also not counted as hits. Also remember that this list is just a reflection of the current roster so even though Jennings and Collins were pro bowlers, they haven't done anything for us lately. For that reason all the value numbers are only meaningful relative to each other.

Ok so here we go. What we've got here is simple. The first number is the sum of all Wist's players in that category. The 2nd number is the sum of all the values of all the draft picks Ted's cast in those rounds to get both the hits and the misses. The third number is the average cost in draft picks it takes to find a guy.

Total Round 1-3 Legit Starters:	10
Total Round 1-3 Pick Values:	14,054.00
Total Round 1-3 Cost/Starter:	1,405.40

Now for the bums. This is the same numbers for rounds 4-7.

Total Round 4-7 Legit Starters:	3
Total Round 4-7 Pick Value:	1,518.70
Total Round 4-7 Cost/Starter:	506.23

So in this light it woudn't seem that it would be advisable for Ted to amass picks at the top of the draft. He finds a starter for every 506 points worth of picks he spends in rounds 4-7 but requires almost three times that many points to find a starter in rounds 1-3.

For shits and giggles I also did this for each round in Ted's draft history.

Round	Cost/Starter
1	1,640 (Rodgers, Hawk, Raji, Matthews, Bulaga)
2	2,276 (Nelson, Cobb)
3	434 (Jones, Finley, Burnett)
4	408 (Sitton, Lang)
5	NONE
6	239.20 (Bishop)
7	NONE

If anyone wants me to run some different scenarios with a different list of Legit starters feel free to leave the list!

[RashanGary]

Haha, this is great. Well done, sir.

[pbmax]

Going to take some time to wrap my head around this.

[RashanGary]

It shows how many points you pay to get a starter. Since lower picks are really cheap (ie, moving back 6 spots and getting another pick) it doesn't add up to much when you miss.

When you blend in Patler's point that if you move back and know you're going to get 1 of 6 equally rated players (the cost is really nothing)
Then blend in thirty1's point that you need quality back-end players on your roster (that benefit isn't even considered when you look at it this way)


While those picks may not have high odds to hit, they do hit from time to time, and they do shore up the back end of the roster. You always have to be sifting through talent. As hard as it is to project college to pro, you have to keep going at it.

It's more like a never ending process, of always mining for talent than it is "bum mining"

[RashanGary]

To summarize the picks:

#55 for #61 & #173
TT moved back six spots, still got a player he had rated equally to the player he would have picked at 55, and got a free late round flyer to boot. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 173

#88 for #93 & #216
TT talked about the middle rounds of this draft being particularly deep. He moved back, likely staying in the deep middle round talent pool and picked up a free pick. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 216

#93 for #109, #146 & #224
Again, listening to Ted say he had a lot of players in the the middle of the draft rated highly so he purposely made picks in that area. Cost nothing. Picked up 146 and 224.

#146 & #173 for #125.
Ted used pick 173 (the freebe pick from his first trade) and pick 146 (a freebe pick from his 3rd trade) to move back into the part of the draft he had highly rated talent available.


Then he had some extra picks to take flyers on some talented college players he might not have been able to get here without using picks on. At the end of the day, if you listen to Ted talk about the draft and understand the concept of players being rated on the same teir, TT ended up getting 2 extra picks in what he considered the sweet spot of this draft and a couple extra flyers (which 3hirty1's analysis shows do matter and do add up over time.)


Ted said he did some things he didn't think he'd be able to do. If I had to guess, listening to him talk about the depth in the middle of the draft, I think getting two extra picks in that area while still keeping his later round picks would be one of thoe things he didn't expect to be able to do. I think the Packers are happy with how the executed this draft. I really do.

[wist43]

wow, that's a lot of math, lol... at work, will give it a good look when I get home.

I really would like to hear where more of you guys come down on this - we have 8 years to assess. Back in the day, when we were all at JS-Online, and came over here, we didn't have enough data to examine, but the picks are there for us to evaluate now.

[Patler]

Doesn't every team have some starters they would replace if they could? Doesn't every team have a few like Newhouse, Wilson and EDS? isn't that the reality of free agency?

[RashanGary]

wow, that's a lot of math, lol... at work, will give it a good look when I get home.

I really would like to hear where more of you guys come down on this - we have 8 years to assess. Back in the day, when we were all at JS-Online, and came over here, we didn't have enough data to examine, but the picks are there for us to evaluate now.

That's exactly what 3hirty1 is attempting to do here. He's showing that it's not just a matter of evaluating picks, but a matter of evaluating risk/reward. You talk about all of these 6th round picks as if he's giving up high picks to get them. Really, he's not. He's moving within tiers of the draft, getting equal players and extra picks to boot.

You can go on an on about how few of the late round picks pan out. That's fine. But at the end of the day, finding talent to play in the NFL is a never ending process that goes on year after year. TT, every year, is mining for talent.

If you want to start evaluating results. 1 SB ring, a bunch of playoff births, a healthy cap situation, the best QB in football and one of the winningest teams since he's been GM of the Packers with no drop off in sight. If you really want to look at results, they speak for themselves.

You're constantly trying to break everything down into the most negative light, but at the end of the day, TT has the Packers competing for the SB year after year. He's already won one SB that way. The Packers are on the short list of teams likely to win it ever year (including this one.)

Fuck, wist, admit it, the guy is doing a good job, even of you don't understand how or why.

[Joemailman]

To summarize the picks:

#55 for #61 & #173
TT moved back six spots, still got a player he had rated equally to the player he would have picked at 55, and got a free late round flyer to boot. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 173

#88 for #93 & #216
TT talked about the middle rounds of this draft being particularly deep. He moved back, likely staying in the deep middle round talent pool and picked up a free pick. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 216

#93 for #109, #146 & #224
Again, listening to Ted say he had a lot of players in the the middle of the draft rated highly so he purposely made picks in that area. Cost nothing. Picked up 146 and 224.

#146 & #173 for #125.
Ted used pick 173 (the freebe pick from his first trade) and pick 146 (a freebe pick from his 3rd trade) to move back into the part of the draft he had highly rated talent available.


Then he had some extra picks to take flyers on some talented college players he might not have been able to get here without using picks on. At the end of the day, if you listen to Ted talk about the draft and understand the concept of players being rated on the same teir, TT ended up getting 2 extra picks in what he considered the sweet spot of this draft and a couple extra flyers (which 3hirty1's analysis shows do matter and do add up over time.)


Ted said he did some things he didn't think he'd be able to do. If I had to guess, listening to him talk about the depth in the middle of the draft, I think getting two extra picks in that area while still keeping his later round picks would be one of thoe things he didn't expect to be able to do. I think the Packers are happy with how the executed this draft. I really do.

To me this is pretty simple. TT didn't think there was value in the 3rd round, but he did think there was value in the 4th round. If he had made his 3rd round pick, in his mind he would have been drafting a player with a 4th round grade. So by masking a few trades, he ended up with 3 4th round picks instead of 2. And he did it without giving up picks in other rounds.

[bobblehead]

I like what you did, but statistics are influenced immensely by the input. For instance, 22 starters is cool, but it takes 45 to make a gameday roster. You don't want to call starks a successful pick, but without that late pick being healthy and contributing we don't win a superbowl.

Is CJ Wilson worthless?? Hell no, he is a legit NFL run stopper. He isn't a stud, but he is valuable to any roster in the NFL...not a single team he gets cut from. How about undrafted FA's that might have been 7ths if we had enough of them...Tramon? Jenkins? Bush? Sam Sheilds? Crosby doesn't count?? In what world? We had a GM that constantly believed he was one player away and sold the farm to get him. Mike Sherman. I don't miss him.

TT won a superbowl. I won't question his method of building a winner just yet. Wist says it was a fluke....but was a fluke that was followed by a 15-1 season. Loss to the Giants? More of a fluke imo. Grants first fumble in forever. Kuhns first lost fumble of his career?? Rodgers fumbled...probably the first or second that season. And don't get me started on dropped passes.

Last season SF was bad ass. We looked soft on D at times...but we still won a lot of games and lost because our OLB didn't know how to STAY THE FUCK HOME!! Amazingly they did the same thing in week 17 against Peterson, corrected it in the wildcard game and reverted back to it vs. SF.

Look, results speak volumes, and we are disappointed after 2 bad playoff losses. Lack of talent? I don't think so, you don't win a SB and a ton of games without talent. Coaching? At times yes, but coaches don't cause 3 non fumblers to fumble in a playoff game.

Bottom line: This is a talented team with SOME weaknesses. We really need Perry and Sherrod healthy. We could really use a S to step up (still not a burnett fan). They will win 12 games this year. Hopefully they don't go bonehead in the playoffs and even MAKE some timely plays ala bush in the SB and run it again. It would be awesome to win it every year, but I can think of 29-30 teams that would pay TT HUGE to come on over if we don't like his team building success.

[3irty1]

Basically if we just wanted to get guys that surpass wist's threshold of excellence, the best thing ted could do was trade the 1322 points worth of picks we started with for about a dozen picks in the top of round 4. From there we'd historically find a starter for every 408 points netting us 3 wist-quality starters out of the bunch.

Of course in this model all picks are the same. Hawk counts just as much as Rodgers and just as much as Burnett. Not really fair IMO. Rodgers is worth like 5 quality starters. Hawk is worth like .75 of one. CJ wilson worth at least .5 of one. I didn't want to get into coefficients for each player though because it'd likely be very subjective. If there were a way to crowd source this, I could dig it.

Guys who have served the franchise well but are not with us like Collins and Jennings count as if they were Brian Brohm because they don't impact our roster as it stands today. I'm not really sure the implications of that.

The last two or three drafts are too premature to bear much fruit but count as nothing but misses including the one we just had. Seems less than ideal.

[bobblehead]

To summarize the picks:

#55 for #61 & #173
TT moved back six spots, still got a player he had rated equally to the player he would have picked at 55, and got a free late round flyer to boot. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 173

#88 for #93 & #216
TT talked about the middle rounds of this draft being particularly deep. He moved back, likely staying in the deep middle round talent pool and picked up a free pick. Cost, nothing. Received, pick 216

#93 for #109, #146 & #224
Again, listening to Ted say he had a lot of players in the the middle of the draft rated highly so he purposely made picks in that area. Cost nothing. Picked up 146 and 224.

#146 & #173 for #125.
Ted used pick 173 (the freebe pick from his first trade) and pick 146 (a freebe pick from his 3rd trade) to move back into the part of the draft he had highly rated talent available.


Then he had some extra picks to take flyers on some talented college players he might not have been able to get here without using picks on. At the end of the day, if you listen to Ted talk about the draft and understand the concept of players being rated on the same teir, TT ended up getting 2 extra picks in what he considered the sweet spot of this draft and a couple extra flyers (which 3hirty1's analysis shows do matter and do add up over time.)


Ted said he did some things he didn't think he'd be able to do. If I had to guess, listening to him talk about the depth in the middle of the draft, I think getting two extra picks in that area while still keeping his later round picks would be one of thoe things he didn't expect to be able to do. I think the Packers are happy with how the executed this draft. I really do.

I believe this is a great summary of TT's thought process. You can disagree with it, but he busts his ass to grade players and if he thought this was the best approach...well, time will tell if it was.

[bobblehead]

To me this is pretty simple. TT didn't think there was value in the 3rd round, but he did think there was value in the 4th round. If he had made his 3rd round pick, in his mind he would have been drafting a player with a 4th round grade. So by masking a few trades, he ended up with 3 4th round picks instead of 2. And he did it without giving up picks in other rounds.

Good logic, but I read somewhere that TT had Franklin with a 2nd round grade. I am still surprised that he didn't use an earlier pick on him, but I believe it was influenced by having already drafting lacy. I think even more likely is that TT had a MOUNTAIN of guys with 3rd round grades and knew most would be there in the 4th so he moved around to get more of them. I think JH summed it up well though. The exact details we will never know.

[bobblehead]

I didn't want to get into coefficients for each player though because it'd likely be very subjective.

This is the statement of the thread and discussion. What seperates a money ball expert from a douchebag isn't the math, its the input. To truly be effective you MUST be the best at subjectively defining that coefficient. I believe TT is as good as anyone at that part, and it happens to be the most important part.

[3irty1]

This is the statement of the thread and discussion. What seperates a money ball expert from a douchebag isn't the math, its the input. To truly be effective you MUST be the best at subjectively defining that coefficient. I believe TT is as good as anyone at that part, and it happens to be the most important part.

I set up the spreadsheet formulas to take coefficients if you or anyone else cares to take a shot at providing them. With the way wist worded his argument I just made them all 1 or 0. Here's all the picks they are needed for. Maybe set Rodgers at a 100 and everyone else relative to that.

Aaron Rodgers
Nick Collins
Terrance Murphy
Marviel Underwood
Brady Poppinga
Junius Coston
Mike Hawkins
Michael Montgomery
Craig Bragg
Kurt Campbell
Will Whitticker
AJ Hawk
Daryn Colledge
Greg Jennings
Abdul Hodge
Jason Spitz
Cory Rodgers
Will Blackmon
Ingle Martin
Tony Moll
Johnny Jolly
Tyrone Culver
Dave Tollefson
Justin Harrell
Brandon Jackson
James Jones
Aaron Rouse
Allen Barbre
David Clowney
Korey Hall
Desmond Bishop
Mason Crosby
DeShawn Wynn
Clark Harris
Jordy Nelson
Brian Brohm
Pat Lee
Jermichael Finley
Jeremy Thompson
Josh Sitton
Breno Giacomini
Matt Flynn
Brett Swain
BJ Raji
Clay Matthews
TJ Lang
Quinn Johnson
Jamon Meredith
Jarius Wynn
Brandon Underwood
Brad Jones
Bryan Bulaga
Mike Neal
Morgan Burnett
Andrew Quarless
Marshall Newhouse
James Starks
CJ Wilson
Derek Sherrod
Randall Cobb
Alex Green
Davon House
DJ Williams
Caleb Schlauderaff
DJ Smith
Ricky Elmore
Ryan Taylor
Lawrence Guy
Nick Perry
Jerel Worthy
Casey Hayward
Mike Daniels
Jerron McMillian
Terrell Manning
Andrew Datko
BJ Coleman
Datone Jones
Eddie Lacy
David Bakhtiari
JC Tretter
Johnathan Franklin
Micah Hyde
Josh Boyd
Nate Palmer
Charles Johnson
Kevin Dorsey
Sam Barrington