The Draft, from best (the Bengals) to worst (the Patriots)



Brandon Thompson (middle), the best value in the 2012 Draft

Lots to talk about on this Monday after the draft.  We'll start with an assessment of every team's draft.  Our aim was to devise a ranking system that took into account player quality, where a team was picking in the draft, and that weighted early round picks more than later round picks.  After the jump, our methodology and the rankings:

NFL Network Online: The NFL Is Always On, Don't Miss A Moment - 7 Day Free Trial.

Component 1: Player Quality: We used STATS Inc.'s grades for each player, available on ESPN's draft site (some rankings require ESPN Insider).  The grades run on a scale of 20-99, with the average players selected in the draft around a 60.
Component 2: Where A Team Was Picking: Here, we assumed that every team selected every pick based exclusively on the STATS grades in component 1, and determined the highest grade that should have been available at each pick.  (At the start of round 1, this was obviously 99, by round 2, it was 89, by round 3 it was 83, etc.)

Subtracting Component 1 from Component 2 led to a "relative value" rating. 

Component 3: Value of a Pick By Round: Early round draft picks carry with them a lot of pressure to create starters, whereas seventh picks are often regarded as "fliers" since seventh rounders rarely have long careers in the NFL.  Thus, we're assigning a multiplier to each relative value rating based on the round of the pick.  Those multipliers are based on some great analysis from Advanced NFL Stats that looks at the relationship between where a player goes in the draft and how long he's a starter in the NFL.

Round 1: 4.1
Round 2: 2.8
Round 3: 2.0
Round 4: 1.4
Round 5: 1.0
Round 6: 0.7
Round 7: 0.4

So a first round pick is about 10x as important as a seventh rounder.

Let's look at Luke Kuechly, who went #9 overall to the Panthers, as an example before we get to the rankings.  Kuechly's STATS score was a 96.  At #9, the Panthers should have been able to get a 95, so his relative value was 96-95=1.  Multiply that value by the round 1 multiplier (4.1) to get 1x4.1 = 4.1.

Things this metric doesn't take into account: (1) Positional need, (2) Draft picks or players acquired (or given up) in draft-day trades, (3) Teams' scouting opinions (or any other scouting opinion other than STATS, for that matter).

Preseason Live: Get live streaming of NFL Preseason games...Limited Time! 

Draft Rankings

Teams ranked by total weighted value across all picks:

Rank	Team	Total Weighted Value
1	Bengals	83
2	Eagles	56
3	Colts	43
4	Dolphins	26
5	Steelers	25
6	Cardinals	22
7	Jets	22
8	Panthers	19
9	Bucs	6
10	Titans	6
11	Chargers	5
12	Niners	-1
13	Packers	-3
14	Giants	-15
15	Bills	-17
16	Saints	-19
17	Redskins	-20
18	Cowboys	-24
19	Vikings	-30
20	Chiefs	-32
21	Lions	-41
22	Raiders	-43
23	Rams	-49
24	Falcons	-54
25	Ravens	-56
26	Texans	-63
27	Broncos	-79
28	Bears	-83
29	Browns	-102
30	Jaguars	-133
31	Seahawks	-147
32	Patriots	-156

Let's start at the top -- what made the Bengals' draft so great?

Round	Pick (overall)	Player	STATS Grade	Expected Grade	Relative Value	Multiplier	Weighted Value
1	17	D Kirkpatrick, DB	92	93	-1	4.1	-4.1
1	27	K Zeitler, OG	88	90	-2	4.1	-8.2
2	53	D Still, DL	89	84	5	2.8	14.0
3	83	M Sanu, WR	68	73	-5	2.0	-10.0
3	93	B Thompson, DT	87	71	16	2.0	32.0
4	116	O Charles, TE	73	65	8	1.4	11.2
5	156	S Prater, DB	65	54	11	1.0	11.0
5	166	M Jones, WR	67	50	17	1.0	17.0
5	167	G Iloka, S	66	49	17	1.0	17.0
6	191	D Herron, RB	42	37	5	0.7	3.5
		TOTAL					83.4

 It wasn't that the Bengals made a killing in the first few rounds -- in fact, their first round picks were slightly below the value they should have gotten at 17 and 27 -- but they made a killing on their late round picks.  Thompson's weighted value of 32 is the highest in the draft this year -- as an 87, he should have gone in the top third of the second round instead of near the end of the third.  It didn't hurt that the Bengals had 3 fifth rounders and seem to have gotten good value on all 3.

As for the other side of the coin, the New England Patriots . . .

Round	Pick (overall)	Player	STATS Grade	Expected Grade	Relative Value	Multiplier	Weighted Value
1	21	C Jones, DL	94	92	2	4.1	8.2
1	25	D Hightower, LB	91	90	1	4.1	4.1
2	48	T Wilson, S	32	83	-54	2.8	-151.2
3	90	J Bequette, DE	60	71	-11	2.0	-22
6	197	N Ebner, S	20*	35	-15	0.7	-10.5
7	224	A Dennard, DB	69	30	39	0.4	15.6
7	235	J Ebert, WR	30	30	0	0.4	0
		TOTAL					-155.8



The Pats were actually fine at most picks, but by this methodology they had the worst pick in the draft, by a mile, in Tavon Wilson, a safety out of Illinois.  I know this is the same team who was playing Julian Edelman at DB, but Wilson projected to a sixth-rounder according to STATS.  This appears to be the very definition of the word "reach," and it has Patriots fans up in arms.  In the second round, the pick was just too valuable to take this kind of a flyer.

Also, Nate Ebner, a rugby player by trade who's walked on to Ohio State, has an asterisk next to his ranking because he wasn't even ranked by STATS.  That's probably in part because he only played three snaps from scrimmage during his college career.  For these purposes, we defaulted him to STATS' lowest score.



Which former rugby player will end of with the better career -- Elber, or Nigel Gruff (left)?

Much more to come on the draft in future posts . . .

Update: More on the draft's second-worst team, the Seahawks, here.

Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/backupquarterbackblog
Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TheBackupQB