Measuring NFL Draft Success

The 2020 NFL Draft has just concluded and already you can find draft grades for each team, despite no player having actually played a single professional game. This is just silly. The only way to know how a team did in the draft is to wait several years and see how players develop, comparing their on-field performance to their draft position. But that is not easy in football, as there is no single statistic that can be assigned to football players to determine their contributions. The best that I have seen is Approximate Value (AV) on Pro Football Reference, and if you read that link, you will realize that approximate is the key word. Still, that doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun with the number and compare draft performances over the past decade.

I downloaded 11 years worth of draft information, from 2009-19, a total of exactly 2,800 players. The 2009 cut-off is arbitrary, mostly because I like having exactly 2,800 players on the list. With the way NFL teams change GMs and coaches these days, going any further back doesn't make much sense anyway.

From the list, I compiled the Weighted Career Approximate Value (CAV) for each team's draft picks, as well as the Weighted Draft Approximate Value (DAV), which is the weighted AV accrued for the team that drafted that player. Of course, teams trade draft picks all the time, and there are compensatory selections, so teams have a different number of draftees over this period. To determine each teams Draft Score, I divided the sum of the CAV or DAV by the number of picks.

And the winner is.....New Orleans! Yes, the 2010 Super Bowl champion Saints have had the most success in selecting college football players, despite having the lowest number of picks with just 65 over 11 years (Seattle and Cincinnati have chosen 104 players in that time). Those 65 Saints draftees have accumulated 943 CAV for a Career Draft Score (CDS) of 14.51 per player. The Texans are second at 13.56 (87 picks), with the Seahawks third at 13.46. Down at the bottom are the San Francisco 49ers, fresh off a Super Bowl appearance. Their 103 picks have combined for just 993 AV. a 9.64 CDS. Expect this number to increase as the 49ers build off their success with recent draftees. The two New York teams are just above the 49ers, with the Jets 74 picks giving them a 9.97 CDS and the Giants 79 draftees 10.3.

However, CAV represents the total value of the player for his career, not for the team that drafted him. You may be good at identifying college talent, but it doesn't matter if you trade that pick after a couple of years and he goes on to star with another team. So DAV is perhaps more reflective of a GM's prowess. Looking at that number, the Saints are still on top, with 715 DAV points for a Retained Draft Score (RDS) of exactly 11. But Atlanta jumps to second spot (from 15th in CAV) with a 10.83 RDS for 76 picks. If I included 2008, when Matt Ryan was chosen, they take over the lead by a substantial margin as their RDS rises to 12.76. Meanwhile, the Raiders (92 picks, 6.83 RDS) and the Browns (98, 7.27) fall to the bottom of this list.

The final statistic in this post is what I call Draft Retention Percentage (DRP), which shows how much of a player's CAV belongs to the team that drafted him. The leader in this category is the Vikings, who have enjoyed 90.6% of their draftees CAV. Unfortunately for them, they are 29th in CAV, so they are not good on draft day, but they do keep those players around, which bumps them up to 19th in the DAV rankings. In other words, they draft poorly and keep those players around. Cleveland is last in this ranking as well, meaning they draft poorly and give up on players quickly, which makes more sense if you think about it. Buffalo, who ranks 12th in CAV but 27th in DAV, is just above them, suggesting that the Bills do reasonably well on draft day but allow their better players to move on too early. In a related note, I hope Sammy Watkins is enjoying his Super Bowl ring.

The upshot of this analysis is that it takes a lot more than good drafting to build a winner in the NFL. Football careers are very short when compared to other sports and you really need the majority of your players to reach their peak at the same time. Tough to do when drafting about seven players a year; clearly free agency and the occasional trade are critical to success. But as the Browns and Raiders show, you cannot win with poor drafting. The 49ers were horrible for years and that is why they are at the bottom of the CAV list, but in another decade, they might be near the top if their recent picks continue to succeed.

It can be fun to watch drafts as they unfold, but ultimately the analysis on draft day is mostly useless (JaMarcus Russell is a prime example). Transitioning from a college program to the pros is not easy and that is why you need to let the players play before figuring out who won and lost at the draft. Looking back to 2009, the team that outwitted the competition in that draft was the Jets. Yes, hard to believe, but their 3 picks (Mark Sanchez, Shonn Greene, and Matt Slauson) combined for 97 CAV, an average of 32.33. Of course, only 60 of that accrued to the Jets. The real winner that year was the Packers, whose eight picks, including first rounders B.J. Raji and Clay Matthews, have combined for 23.88 DAV. No coincidence that Green Bay won the Super Bowl just two years later. On the other end of the spectrum, Dallas had 12 picks that year and they combined for a horrid 17 CAV and 12 DAV. This demonstrates that maybe you need a real general manager to succeed in the league.

Finally, you can also determine which players were the biggest surprises and busts. In 2009, the two who far exceeded their draft position were New England's Julian Edelman (232nd overall, 3rd in CAV, and completely ignored in this draft grade article) and Green Bay's T.J. Lang (picked 109th with 61 CAV). The top pick that year was Matthew Stafford, whose 95 CAV is also the best from that draft class, so the Lions got that one right. The biggest bust was Aaron Maybin, chosen 11th overall by Buffalo, with whom he played just 27 games (with no sacks), then moving on to the Jets and Toronto before retiring in 2014. And just to show that there is more than football, Maybin has gone on to become an artist and a teacher.

There is so much more analysis that can be done on drafts, not just in the NFL but all Big 4 sports. However, this post is already too long, so I'll leave it at that for now. But with the COVID-19 crisis likely to keep me out of stadiums for the foreseeable future, expect more posts like these over the next few months.

Until then, stay safe everyone!

Best,

Sean