AKC

You're confusing "value" of draft picks (which is a different and subjective measure) with position of picks, which is totally objective. If we were seeking to determine values of picks you would be correct- if we wanted to say pick #4 was "this much" more valuable than pick #20, you'd probably want to include the whole draft. But the necessity in this case is to establish a simple and accurate positional value of the first 64 picks, with the notice given in the original post that any picks awarded at the end of the second round would be given the same positonal value. The study is to establish the equity teams use in the first two rounds by position, so what is required is a quantification of the actual position of the picks. For accuracy, the best way to do this is with an exact and equal gradient between picks. With 64 picks the logical ways to do that are to call them 64-1 or 1-1/64th. This provides exactly what I proposed, an exact quantification of the picks in the first two rounds. This lets you go on to examine and compare equity of the selections between teams in the first two rounds. On the issue of a "draft pick value" study, and realizing under any case that would be subjective, the first link you gave has pretty wild deviations with no explanation in it for the major value difference seemingly at random throughout their chart. I'm sure you can find something far more logical in assigning some average value increases across the body of the whole NFL draft if that's information you're looking for. You probably want to start with studies that provide details of their methodology, something I didn't see with that first link.

Let’s see if I can help you to understand major errors you’re making. The biggest one is ignoring the equity portion of the equation. I’m looking at the totality of each team’s available draft equity and how it’s being used. On the other hand you’ve made the mistake of ignoring equity and instead assuming a Giant’s #25 pick at DT is the same as a Buffalo Bill’s pick of a DT at #26. The problem is that the best teams just don’t get the same number of those high picks as bad teams like the Bills, and therefore the “equity” formula I chose allows a look at the value the best teams place at positions versus our team, something you can’t see using your assumption that ignores the spend/buy equity that is clearly defined in mine. If you want that in simpler terms, the best teams get less shots at the top of the draft than the poor teams. My study shows how the best teams spend as an overall percentage of their budget, yours simply shows what they spend with no reference point. You can’t reach any comparative results in your static system, whereas mine offers a chance to look into the way the war rooms of the best teams see the draft positionally. Clearly this is not for simpletons- we’ve already seen a few of them leave the planet earth over this because a fairly simple application of sound mathematics is so far over their heads. But if you’d like to consider how you can gain some insight into the differences between the Bills and the best teams, there’s a chance here if you can get past some of the misconceptions you’re still hung up on.

The methodology explains that the first two rounds are used to represent the "Top of the Draft". While one might argue that three rounds would be better, or the first 50 picks, the study was framed as the "top of the draft" and the use of rounds one and two still seems to reasonably represent that. If your point is that I could have instead titled it "Positional Drafting Trends in the First Two Rounds of the Draft", I'd agree that it would help avoid any confusion among readers about what the "Top of the Draft" meant. Your use of the word "arbitrary" here seems curious to me. I don't see anything arbitrary about the quantification as I established it. The actual value of each pick is 1/64 more or less than the pick before or after- for instance, pick #1 in the draft is worth 64/64s, or 1. The next pick is worth 63/64ths, and the last pick in round 2 is worth 1/64th. Instead of being arbitrary, the gradient is exact going up or down the draft board. In the first value chart you suggest, the quantification used does appear to be arbitrary. Take a look at picks 20-23. They value pick 23 at 760, pick 22 at 780 and pick 21 at 800. In their quantification, there's a total difference in "value" between picks 23 and 21 of "40" on their value chart. Now look at pick 20- they list it at 850. Their "value" jump between the 21st and 23rds picks is less overall than the value jump just between picks 21 and 20. And on their board, there are many instances of the same types of hops. I don't see that they've offered their methodology anywhere to explain such dramatic swings in the values between draft picks, and short of some explanation along those lines I can't find their arbitrary type of quantification superior in any way to the exact gradient as I've proposed it. If I'm missing something there, I'm happy to take another look at it. Let me know if you see something I don't. You're 100% correct. My study in no way studies success or failure of draft picks, nor does it in any way claim to. I very clearly identified and limited the study to the top of the draft trends positionally between the best teams versus the Bills. Success and failure are totally subjective studies, whereas by staying with the objective theme of positional draft trends, there can be no dispute about the existence of the trends. Even if we take the more arbitrary value system you proposed and applied it, the same trends will exist, simply in slightly varied overall percentages. As I also point out in the original post, identifying the trends doesn't mean these are conscious strategies or policies of NFL teams. That's up for the reveiwer to consider. I learned something from the look at how good teams end up using their top picks- but that clearly doesn't mean everyone else will. If you get something from it that's great, or if you feel you can improve on it in some way I'd be very interested to see your study.

Thanks for taking a look at the DEs too- I was keying on the interior. I agree that the wild card inside will be whether Spencer Johnson can hold up against the run- he otherwise exhibited some good instincts. The use of him suggests the team really does intend to try to get him onto the field frequently too- so IMO he becomes the one to watch to give us some hope of improvement in providing interior pressure. The one thing I'd say in Williams defense on passing downs- outside of the quality of the Skins line, is that he was facing 2 helmets nearly every play, withteh center cheating to him most downs.

We'll have to see if Stroud can get back to his great initial steps of the 2003 season- my real observation in this game was that Washington treated him as the lowest pass rush threat on our DLine when they dropped back to pass. In exactly the same circumstances, when Spencer Johnson relieved Stroud, the 'Skins doubled Johnson. It may mean nothing, but it's a trend to continue watching if it truns out he's got no burst and the rest of the league knows it. The big guys are great to defend against running games, but in a division where we're looking to climb over a short passing offense the big guys don't cut it. If you're big and quick like Ngata, you can be a big contributor, but without a push on passing downs the West Coast teams will dominate the older, slower lines. I haven't watched enough Vikings ball to judge JWilliams skillset.

The study is linked here: Top of the Draft Positional Drafting Trends of the Super Bowl Teams versus the Bills I see Kendall with very bad position, yet he still pops McCargo below the pads and leaves him in no position to help defend the play. Two questions- A) If it's a stunt, who's the other player stunting with him? No one else leaves their gap on the play. B) It's tough to run a stunt on 2nd and 4 at the 5 yard line- a stunt is the slowest form of rushing the passer, and typically used where there's a pressure down like 3rd and long. That gives the stunt time to develop while the QB sets up and picks their long target. I'm not saying no team has ever run a stunt inside the opponent 5- but in a Preseason game it's hard to imagine it being called. Add in the fact that nobody else on our line seemed to have any call for a stunt and the odds seem pretty overwhelming that McCargo simply free-lanced.

Unweighted views like your above offer less insight than weighted views. By weighting views (placing a higher value on the first pick in the first round versus the 30th) and more importantly considering what each team has decided to spend at the top by position, it's possible to begin to see the differences in draft strategies- or at least in the positional draft outcomes. Your static method of saying "The Browns, Browns and Panthers all used a second round pick on RB" doesn't offer us the same type of insight into the way teams are looking at the draft by position.

Your act has become incredibly stale on this board. You've managed to put up almost 11,000 posts in less than 5 years here- without a single original thought outside of your "bevy of 1st round WRs" who would be drafted in 2008, without a single idea of your own- predominantly posts talking about how stupid the world or Bill's fans or people you disagree with are. Most of us who spend some time in Message Board communities understand that one of the evils of the medium will be a few losers who spend most of their waking hours bouncing from one Message Board to another with little fake cyber personalities you feel you must uphold. Your welcoming VABills as your wingman in this thread should tell most people here with anything approaching a normal life just how desperate things are in your orbit. I've come to TSW for many years to talk about football. Anyone can search back to my topics and see that football is my interest and the reason I come here. The topics under your name, on the other hand, might be confusing for the uninitiated: Multiple "Rachel Ray" posts, concerns about "wasted salt in the chip bag", not to mention the wow factor of you "Bored on Friday" topic starter. I'll bet Saturday nights are a real hoot in your life! Since the "Ignore" feature was added to TSW, I've only found one douche bag deserving of being completely dropped from consideration in any thoughtful discussions. I hope you'll find it an honor to become #2! And remember- no matter how many times you tell the lie you've tried to perpetrate about "any DT...", you're only playing to a couple of riders on the back of the short bus you commandeer with VABills. But hey- there's something homey about you nose pickers all being in one place together!

I think you ignore the evolution of the game. The "fast release" offense with a first and second down throw being as likely as a running play has basically negated the old, fat FA pickup who gave you immediate help in the AFC East of yore. Our division requires facing at least a 2 game series every year against a team who throws the quick strike O against us, and picking up a vet like Marcus Stroud whose best seasons are years behind him might have been a good idea in 2001 but if I'm reading the game's evolution properly it's not going to make our Bills better in 2008. In your world, we get better against short passing offenses by bringing in Stroud. In my observation, Stroud does virtually nothing to help us against the short pass. Stroud still has better line skills than any of the DTs we had on our roster last year, and that will help us against the run. But it does little to help us against the tight passing teams we need to beat if we want to have any chance to be a postseason threat. The best teams in the NFL make a higher investment of their available high draft round equity on their DLines than we do. You choose to look at other ways to explain that than simply accepting that premium DT talent is at the top of the best team's lists- while clearly being a stepchild to the Harris/Ngata/Wilfork- less Bills.

"The Bills have focused too much on spending top equity on the draft on WR". I guess if- like you- I'd been naive enough to make the case to pick Limas Sweed at 11, the above statement might seem "outrageous". As I pointed out to you all through the original string before the draft, there was nothing outrageous about it then because the draft was weak at WR at the top. Not sure of you caught the draft this past April, but there actually weren't any WRs taken in the first round. Which makes the most outrageous statement made on TSW before the draft those you made about all the "1st round WRs" and how even if other team's didn't have WRs high on their list, a WR at 11 in the 2008 draft "wouldn't be a reach". You won't have to remind me in the future about the quality of your draft analysis. Use the most reasonable data and include everything in the study- but continue with your misrepresentation spam. You're much better at that than analyzing the draft! Every poster with a math background said there was no fault with the math. Nice fabrication attempt, but the facts prove you once again couldn't care about honset psoting- and consistent with your history of misrepresentations. Your specialty- continue to fail to grasp a concept that some of the most knowledgable football posters on the board are telling you is correct- and instead spin out of control telling fabricating herrings like "any first round DT.." because after all- you're not really here to talk about football- it's very clear that you're simply here to run up a huge post count.

In the specifics I wanted to look at- what is it "in the draft" that the best team's prize positionally- it would dilute the results if I added in FAs. I specifially wanted to see which premium 21/22 year olds they were adding to the roster on a positional breakdown. What I found was that the best teams average investing 36% of their top draft equity into their lines, 10 points higher than the Bills. Of course one can go out and pick up FA linemen- but as far as young talent, that leaves a pretty large void between us and the best teams, where they are investing nearly 50% more on their lines in the draft than we do. There are other areas like TE where we're way off the clear pattern among the best clubs.

Actually that's not correct- in fact if you simply look at the post above you'll see I set the study to the logical positions, including OLine and DLine. It's true that my personal opinion is that DT has become among the critical premium positions in the league to defend against West Coast style offenses, the study is about commitments made to the whole of the DLine and the whole of the OLine.

What separates us from monkeys is that we have people who take the initiative to come up with a plan and initiate it. In the monkey world the others will scream, throw bananas and tear down the work of the conceptionist, leaving their society no better for the idea. In the human world, the conceptionist may be aided by others with better ideas, or they may simply build it against a gathering peanut gallery. In either case, we call it progress. Among other things, it's the foundation of "learning". What we have is a few people saying they have a better way. I invited them to excercise any better way from the very first post. As yet there is not a single taker- all squawking and no action. But I would agree that monkeys can sometimes be entertaining.

Following is the methodolgy I offered for the Study I wanted to consider. I opened the original post up with this statement: Using the draft records of Super Bowl teams allows a look into how those teams have “budgeted” at specific positions at the Top of the Draft. This study does not establish whether these Positional Budgeting Trends are a conscious strategy on the part of all or any of the teams in the study, but the trends do represent contrasts between the players Super Bowl teams target at the Top of the Draft versus the positions the Buffalo Bills have been drafting. I didn't represent it as anything it wasn't- in fact as you can see I didn't even represent it as conclusive in any way. Apparently though it was threatening enough to the opinions of a few posters that it became a target for their complaints about how "the would have done it". It's probably most telling that not a single one of those who insisted they had some better way have done a damn thing towards showing their "superior approach" to us. Here's the methodology I used and offered with the original post: In order to compile usable information for the study, the following reasonable stipulations were adopted in order to establish a study group and time window: 1) Top of the Draft- This is represented by the first two rounds. The players selected in these two rounds represent the prospects that NFL teams have concluded are the best talent entering the league from college each season. 2) Draft Budgeting- To establish a position by position numerical score for each team, the study uses the sum of the specific draft choices in which each team selected players at each position during those first two rounds. In order to end up with a highest to lowest sum, the selections were counted inversely. Since there are 32 team picks in each round each of the first 64 picks is assigned the inverse of its position, with draft pick #1 being given a numerical score of 64 points, draft pick #2 counting for 63, etc. 3) Compensatory picks- Compensatory picks following the 64th pick of the draft were counted as 1 point in each case. 4) In establishing a window to study successful draft budgeting, the average number of years first round draft picks average playing for their original team (6-7) was used. The past 7 drafts were those considered. 5) “Super Bowl Teams” will be NFL teams who have won their Conference Championships over the past 5 seasons. This allows the Super Bowl rosters to have two mature draft classes entering the study and limits teams declining from bad contemporary drafting over the study window like the Super Bowl Raiders following the 2002 NFL Season. 6) Positions- Positions are defined by: DL, DB, WR, OL, TE, RB, LB and QB. 7) Percentages- Percentages are carried to the closest whole number.

As I've invited, you have my methodology: if you'd care to expand on it or provide a better way to determine draft equity by position in the first two rounds of the draft, I'm waiting with an open mind to see your work. If on the other hand you're simply another of the windbags on this board who can't come up with a better way to do it, it'll explain exactly why you haven't simply shown us your "superior" study and set of results.

Since I'm a lot more interested in all the 1st rounders you predicted in that post, I'd enjoy you sharing the list of those with us now- Might be time to change shoes! Another real gem- Ramius April 23- The Bills may have WRs rated higher than the "experts" do, and there might not be much to choose from when our 2nd round pick comes around. Picking someone at #11 when the dumbass "experts" say they shouldnt go until 17-18 isnt a "reach"

I'd welcome you to expand on the statistical findings in all the ways you propose. I specifically included the methodology with the study in the event anyone was inclinded to do just that. I look forward to having your results added to the body of knowledge here on TSW.

You cook a nice dinner and street people show up- welcome to the Internet. Why don't we start with Super Bowl I.

I won't argue with you on that. If you'd actually gone to the study and read it, you wouldn't have found yourself swimming in the Ramius lie about "any DT", and you would have seen that the honest reviewers suggested expansions, but the methodology (which was all included) was acceptable and ended up showing that there are measurable positional drafting tendencies, and the Bills tendencies in some cases are out of whack with good NFL teams, and very specifically in the areas of DL/TE.

Oh my God- there're a dozen idiots on TSW? Say it ain't so!

Ramius- Apr 24th, 2008= 2 days before NO WR were taken in the first round Just because there is no clear cut #1 does NOT mean that the draft is WR weak. There are quite a handful of WRs that will go in the 1st Does the head of that pin hurt your feet?

What's laughable is his trying to sell that the Bills 4-3 scheme DL investment is comparable to the Steelers in a 3-4! Yeah, their roster should look just like ours from a positional allotment, wink wink.

I enjoy you making a compete ass of yourself. OC IN PHilly says he'd have expanded the study to include more teams. Good for him. Game. Set. Match. That's right, it's as stupid in this context as it was when you put it in the above string. You apparently haven't recovered from being exposed for your statements about "all the first round WRs in 2008" that turned out to show you to be a draft know-nothing. All your spam isn't going to change your inability to understand the draft strategies of the best teams.

Where do you come up with that BS? The Colts? Are you kidding me? You need to go back and read the study- you don't have a clue what you're talking about. The Colts used DLine equity at a rate virtually 50% greater than the Bills over the study period. Let me fill you in on a little secret about the Steelers- they play in a 3-4. That scheme requires a greater investment in LBs than a team in a 4-3, and a lesser investment in DL. Act as surprised as you want at the Steelers equity numbers and suggest that the Bills having similar numbers is somehow "equal"- but let the intellectually honest and curious discuss the trends. Lions Bills? BS once again. The study showed that like the Lions, the Bills spend a higher draft equity at the top of the draft on their offenses versus their defenses, while the best teams use high draft equity on defenses. KC? The Jets? The Texans? Spare me the Chicken Little arguments- Ramius is already in the thread. As I said in the study- I couldn't care less what mistakes bad teams make- i wanted to see how the Bills stacked up to the best teams. I only included the Lions info because of the Ramius insistence that we'd see a run on WRs in the first round of the 2008 draft.

Only if you are stupid anough to believe a lie perpetrated by Ramius. Now on the other hand, if you're smart enough to actually go to my posts, and the study in particular, you'll see that I used the first two rounds and quantified each pick/position for 7 drafts. The Giants used more equity over that time frame than the Bills by a substantial percentage. And that was the finding I offered- that more top draft equity was used by the best teams than by the Bills. Now I understand why all the "we have to draft a WR at #1" people couldn't accept that good teams in 2008 weren't looking at WRs in the first. The results I got showed that the best teams put a lot less equity in WRs. The fact we still have the same numbskulls writhing over it tells me more about human nature than it does about our fan base.