Who Won The NFL Draft?

[Tarlam!]

Tank is a very skillfull writer. He deserves that much credit.

[RashanGary]

The bottom line is this: efficent free agent expenditures+effective drafting = competitive team.

I agree Tank....This is pretty much what I've been saying. Where we disagree is that you think it is possible to consistantly and efficiantly build a team through the "free market" known as UFA.

We're very close, but you've been tainted by living in Washington so all you known is the homer vision of their consistantly average team.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Tank is a very skillfull writer. He deserves that much credit.

He deserves more credit than that. His opinions are well thought out. His line that Huff was best defensive player in draft was angle that may prove true.

[MJZiggy]

Tank is a very skillfull writer. He deserves that much credit.

...I say again,

(Snotmare will live on in my mind always for that line)

[RashanGary]

Tank is a very skillfull writer. He deserves that much credit.

He deserves more credit than that. His opinions are well thought out. His line that Huff was best defensive player in draft was angle that may prove true.

I think Thompson's success is going to have a far bigger impact on the long term credibility of the poster known as Tank....

[RashanGary]

I've always respected Tank but not for his well thought opinions. I like his openmindedness and the security he has with his unique thinking process. He can get bashed pretty hard and he doesn't take offense.

[Sparkey]

The bottom line is this: efficent free agent expenditures+effective drafting = competitive team.

Thus far thompson has shown he sucks at both area, free agent and the draft. Thompson 1st FA class produced players Little, Freeman, Klemm, ODwyer, Thompson and Navies; all but Klemm is not on the team anymore. THompson's first draft class produced only 1 contributor, 1 contributor out of 11 picks.

THe result: 4-12.

TANK!!

Dont forget the rest of the 2005 Free Agents:

Chris White - C
Roy Manning - LB
Noah Herron - RB
Patrick Dendy - DB
Samkon Gado - RB
Donald Lee - TE

If your going to use stats and data as reasoning, try not to be so selective next time.

[mraynrand]

Economics is all supply and demand. As supply increases, demand drops. Two clear examples of this are Mike Sherman and Grady Jackson.

[Scott Campbell]

The bottom line is this: efficent free agent expenditures+effective drafting = competitive team.

Thus far thompson has shown he sucks at both area, free agent and the draft. Thompson 1st FA class produced players Little, Freeman, Klemm, ODwyer, Thompson and Navies; all but Klemm is not on the team anymore. THompson's first draft class produced only 1 contributor, 1 contributor out of 11 picks.

THe result: 4-12.

TANK!!

Dont forget the rest of the 2005 Free Agents:

Chris White - C
Roy Manning - LB
Noah Herron - RB
Patrick Dendy - DB
Samkon Gado - RB
Donald Lee - TE

If your going to use stats and data as reasoning, try not to be so selective next time.

Tank got his facts wrong??? Impossible.

[Anti-Polar Bear]

Collins, I haven’t read Thalar and Massey’s report yet (have you?) but from the way Bloomberg uses is it in the article, the theory is effective only if “all things are equal.” The Packers drafted a player in the 2nd round, who is destined to play like a star; whose performance makes his value $9 M but he is getting paid $750 K; hence the surplus of almost $8; in the free agency period that precedes the draft, there isn’t a veteran player who is better than the draft pick; the player will be able to make the transition from college to pro right away; the player will honor his contract. In short, that is like saying that price will increase if demand increases and supply decreases, all things equal.

Any economics will tell you with a salary cap as complex as the NFL, not all things are equal. Changes in taste, income, government regulation, etc. can drive the supply and demand curves to the left or to the right; hence making things unequal. Factors such as holdouts, competition, and experience and talent level can make the theory explained by Bloomberg ineffective. That is what I was telling you with my last post.

Everybody in the NFL knows damn well that rookies are cheaper than top-tier free agents. But will having an excess surplus make your team a winner if you don’t efficiently use that surplus in the free agency market?

[Anti-Polar Bear]

The bottom line is this: efficent free agent expenditures+effective drafting = competitive team.

Thus far thompson has shown he sucks at both area, free agent and the draft. Thompson 1st FA class produced players Little, Freeman, Klemm, ODwyer, Thompson and Navies; all but Klemm is not on the team anymore. THompson's first draft class produced only 1 contributor, 1 contributor out of 11 picks.

THe result: 4-12.

TANK!!

Dont forget the rest of the 2005 Free Agents:

Chris White - C
Roy Manning - LB
Noah Herron - RB
Patrick Dendy - DB
Samkon Gado - RB
Donald Lee - TE

If your going to use stats and data as reasoning, try not to be so selective next time.

Roy Manning was an undrafted fa; he was basically a rookie. So are Herron and Samkon. White (who?), Dendy and lee weren't spectacular; they were simply fill-ins for a desperate team. They were either on the street or on other team's practice squads when they were acquired. Nobody wouldve heard anything about them if it werent for injuries, except maybe for Lee.

Thompson's first class of FA was terrible. One need to look no further than the WK 1 lost to Detroit to see it. Thompson's 1st draft class was terrible. One need to look no further than 4-12 to see it.

[Scott Campbell]

Finding Gado improved Thompson's first year free agent grade from a D to a B-. It's not Thompson's fault that Shermy spent all his money.

The man responsible for the 4-12 season was fired for being incompetent.

[mraynrand]

"The man responsible for the 4-12 season was fired for being incompetent."

---

Wow, that's brilliant. I guess Sherman now gets blamed for injuries to Walker, Green, Davenport, Murphy, Bubba, Flanagan, etc. etc.

I hope you're not suffering from short term memory loss. Sherman was fired in 2005 for being a poor GM. He was fired in 2006 for ..... being a bad coach? Do you really think Sherman was incompetent as a coach? If so, I'd hate to hear what you thnk about Les Steckle, Joe Bugle, June Jones, Dan Devine, Butch Davis, etc. etc.

[Anti-Polar Bear]

"The man responsible for the 4-12 season was fired for being incompetent."

---

Wow, that's brilliant. I guess Sherman now gets blamed for injuries to Walker, Green, Davenport, Murphy, Bubba, Flanagan, etc. etc.

I hope you're not suffering from short term memory loss. Sherman was fired in 2005 for being a poor GM. He was fired in 2006 for ..... being a bad coach? Do you really think Sherman was incompetent as a coach? If so, I'd hate to hear what you thnk about Les Steckle, Joe Bugle, June Jones, Dan Devine, Butch Davis, etc. etc.

Mraynrand, you sound just like Greenday. I think the GeorgeWBush bits by Greenday is pretty funny. Are you Greenday?

[RashanGary]

TANK

I read through Massy and Thaler's study on the NFL draft and salary cap. I copy and pasted mostly the conclusion portions as there was much data and research material that is not worth browseing.





We find that surplus value increases throughout the first round,
i.e., late-first-round picks generate more value than early-first-round picks.



Massey and Thayler on the psychological tendencies involved in the NFL draft selection process...This also translates to the UFA market

Competitive bidding introduces another set of issues. It is well known that in situations in which
many bidders compete for an item with a common but uncertain value then the winner of the auction
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often overpays (for a review see Thaler, 1988). The winner’s curse can occur even if bidders have
unbiased but noisy estimates of the object’s true worth, because the winning bidder is very likely to be
someone who has overestimated the actual value of the object. Rational bidders should recognize this
adverse-selection problem and reduce their bids, especially as the number of other bidders increases.
Instead, increasing the number of bidders results in more aggressive bidding (Kagel & Levin, 1986). The
winners curse was first documented in research on oil-lease bids (Capen, Clapp, & Campbell, 1971), and
has since been observed in numerous field (cf. Dessauer, 1981; Roll, 1986) and experimental settings (cf.
Samuelson & Bazerman, 1985).




Another psychological tendency

A final consideration is the false consensus effect (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). This effect
refers to a person’s tendency to believe that others are more similar to them in beliefs, preferences and
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behavior than they actually are. For example, Ross et al asked their student participants to estimate the
percentage of students who believed a woman would be named to the Supreme Court within a decade.
Students who themselves believed this was likely, gave an average estimate of 63%, while those who did
not believe it was likely gave an average estimate of 35%. This effect does not suggest that everybody
believes they are in the majority on all issues, but rather that they believe others are more like them than
they actually are. In the NFL draft, the presence of a false concensus effect would mean that teams
overestimate the extent to which other teams value players in the same way that they do. This has
significant consequences for draft-day trades. As we discuss below, most trades are of a relatively small
“distance” for the purpose of drafting a particular player. An alternative to making such a trade is to
simply wait and hope that other teams do not draft the player with the intervening picks. False consensus
suggests that teams will overestimate the extent to which other teams covet the same player, and therefore
overestimate the importance of trading-up to acquire a particular player. Such a bias will increase the
value placed on the right to choose.



An overview of the tendencies that take place
We hypothesize that, in spite of the corrective mechanisms discussed above, teams will overvalue
the right to choose early in the draft. For the reasons detailed above, we believe teams will systematically
pay too much for the rights to draft one player over another. This will be reflected in the relative price for
draft picks as observed in draft-day trades. Specifically, we predict

MV(i)/MV(i+k) > E(SVi)/ E(SVi+k)....

This formula shows that the market value on early picks is higher than the actual value of the player

i.e., that the market value of draft picks will decline more steeply than the surplus value of players drafted
with those picks.1 Furthermore, we expect this bias to be most acute at the top of the draft.




Massey and Thaler explain how the value chart is set up to over value early picks
One of the most striking features of these data is how well ordered they are – it seems clear there
is a well understood market price for draft picks. Indeed, the use of this kind of “value curve” has caught
on throughout the NFL in recent years. A few years ago Jimmy Johnson, a former coach turned television
commentator, discussed such a curve during television coverage of the draft, and in 2003 ESPN.com
posted a curve it said was representative of curves that teams use.6 The ESPN curve very closely
approximates the one we estimate for the 1997-2004 period. The close fit we obtain for our model
suggests there is wide agreement among teams (or at least those who make trades) regarding the relative
value of picks. This historical consensus may lend the considerable power of inertia and precedent to the
over-valuation we suggest has psychological roots.
A second striking feature is how steep the curve is. The drop in value from the 1st pick to the 10th
is roughly 50%, and another 50% drop from there to the end of the first round. As, we report in the
following section, compensation costs follow a very similar pattern. Moreover, the prices are getting
steeper with time. In the first period, the value of the 10th pick is 60% of the 1st pick, whereas in the later
period, the 10th pick is only worth 39% of the 1st pick. Since we will argue that even the earlier curve was
too steep, the shift has been in the “wrong” direction, that is, it has moved further away from rational
pricing.


Trading a pick this year for a pick next year is also in the advantage of the team with long term thinking.

Massey and Thaler show that teams are only taking into consideration the likely hood of a player making the pro-bowl. It does not take into consideration the other performance measurements

The graph shows that all performance categories decline almost monotonically
with draft round. This decline is steepest for the more extreme performance measures – probability of Pro
Bowl is steeper than starts, which is steeper than games played, which is steeper than probability of roster.
Finally, we include on the graph the compensation curve we estimated in the previous section. This curve
is steeper than all the performance curves except the Pro Bowl curve, which it roughly approximates. The
fact that performance declines more slowly than compensation suggests that early picks may not be good
investments, just as we report in the next section.


There are three important features of the relationship between on-field performance and draft
order: 1) performance declines with the draft round (for all measures and almost all rounds), 2) the
decline is steeper for more extreme performance measures, and 3) only the steepest decline (Pro Bowls) is
as steep as the compensation costs of the draft picks.


Massey and Thaler show how teams and fans hype early picks which make it more likely for early players to make the popularity contest known as the pro-bowl. This further exaggerates the results of their findings


These researchers found
that draft-order predicts playing time beyond that which is justified by the player’s performance. The
explanation is that teams are loath to give up on high draft-choices because of their (very public)
investment in them. It seems likely this bias exists in the NFL as well, which has a similarly expensive,
high-profile college draft. If so, our performance statistics for high draft-choices will look better than
they “should”. This is especially true in our sample, which is disproportionately weighted by players’
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early years. To the extent that such a bias exists in the NFL, these results suggest even more strongly that
draft-pick value declines too steeply.



The data on Pro Bowl appearances are also biased in a way that makes the performance-draftorder
curve too steep. Selections to the Pro Bowl are partly a popularity contest, and players who were
high first round picks are likely to have greater name recognition.


A position player picked is a 50/50 chance to be a probowler as is the next player chosen ie. the chances of Hawk to make the probowl are equal to the chances of the next LB Simms

The within-position analysis provides a finer-grain look at performance by draft order. Here we
see that whether a player will be better than the next player taken at his position is close to a coin-flip.



Overall, these analyses support one of the main premises of this paper, namely that predicting
performance is difficult, and that the first players taken are not reliably better than ones taken somewhat
later. Still, we have not yet addressed the question of valuation—do the early picks provide sufficient
value to justify their high market prices?



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Massey and Thaler explain how higher picks are overpaid in relation to their worth and in relation to later picks

Let’s take stock. We have shown that the market value of draft picks declines steeply with draft
order—the last pick in the first round is worth only 25 percent of the first pick even though the last pick
will command a much smaller salary than the first pick. These simple facts are incontrovertible. In a
rational market such high prices would forecast high returns; in this context, stellar performance on the


field. And, teams do show skill in selecting players—using any performance measure, the players taken
at the top of the draft perform better than those taken later. In fact, performance declines steadily
thoughout the draft. Still, performance does not decline steeply enough to be consistent with the very
high prices of top picks. Indeed, we find that the expected surplus to the team declines throughout the
first round. The first pick, in fact, has an expected surplus lower than any pick in the second round!