Bill Walsh's Draftisms

[DocLawless]

I corrected what I think was your typo, but it's a moronic statement. A dearth of overall talent in the draft pool means everyone is fighting over a fewer number of good players -- which means your team is less likely to find those 12 good ones. Can't you just simply say you try to pick the best player each time you have a selection, period? Geezus, this is not rocket science.

Geezus, this site would be a lot better off without your condescending attitude and rude remarks. Let people talk without making them feel bad about it. It is afterall, a forum.

[Orton's Arm]

Draft value is a lousy concept. A pro bowl player is a pro bowl player regardless of where they were drafted.

Do you think 49er fans really give a crap in what round Montana was drafted?

 

 

 

Ummm ....

 

"... describing the round in which a player should be taken. That's the wrong starting point,..."

 

"Getting a Pro Bowl punter in the 7th round is good draft value. Getting a Pro Bowl punter in the top ten picks of the draft is not."

 

Either I missed the sarcasm, or you just contradicted yourself.

I wasn't being sarcastic, and I didn't contradict myself.

 

The problem Bill Walsh was addressing was that scouts were beginning by trying to slate players into particular rounds. As I stated earlier, that's not a good starting point. The right starting point is to clearly visualize the team you want to have, and then to ask whether the player you're looking at has a place on that team. If the answer to that question is no, then you move onto the next player, without trying to pin a round onto the player you've just decided to pass up. If the answer is yes, then you start figuring out where you need to be in the draft to take the player you want.

 

Joe Montana would have been great draft value even if he'd been taken first overall. The reason he would have been great draft value at first overall is because there weren't other, better players available in that (or just about any other) draft for the 49ers to take! But taking a Pro Bowl punter first overall is a boneheaded move--and represents bad draft value--because there are going to be plenty of other players in that draft who could have contributed more to your team than the punter. While it's impossible to perfectly predict how any given drafted player will perform, every draft pick you make should represent a good faith effort to add whichever player will contribute the most long term value to your team.

[Geno Smith's Arm]

I wasn't being sarcastic, and I didn't contradict myself.

 

The problem Bill Walsh was addressing was that scouts were beginning by trying to slate players into particular rounds. As I stated earlier, that's not a good starting point. The right starting point is to clearly visualize the team you want to have, and then to ask whether the player you're looking at has a place on that team. If the answer to that question is no, then you move onto the next player, without trying to pin a round onto the player you've just decided to pass up. If the answer is yes, then you start figuring out where you need to be in the draft to take the player you want.

 

Joe Montana would have been great draft value even if he'd been taken first overall. The reason he would have been great draft value at first overall is because there weren't other, better players available in that (or just about any other) draft for the 49ers to take! But taking a Pro Bowl punter first overall is a boneheaded move--and represents bad draft value--because there are going to be plenty of other players in that draft who could have contributed more to your team than the punter. While it's impossible to perfectly predict how any given drafted player will perform, every draft pick you make should represent a good faith effort to add whichever player will contribute the most long term value to your team.

 

Really now, I think it's generally accepted that punters, and place-kickers are outside the normal rules when discussing the draft. It would be a real pain to have to qualify EVERY post with "this discussion doesn't apply to kickers or punters".

 

As an aside, my screen name "Matthews' Bag" was a direct response to "Edwards' Arm". It was inspired by the teabagging of Edwards by Clay Matthews in his final game as a Bill, and the lowest point in franchise history in my opinion.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Matthews' Bag

[eball]

Geezus, this site would be a lot better off without your condescending attitude and rude remarks. Let people talk without making them feel bad about it. It is afterall, a forum.

I wasn't calling the poster moronic, I was calling Lombardi's article moronic. Capece?

[BobChalmers]

Draft value is a lousy concept. A pro bowl player is a pro bowl player regardless of where they were drafted.

Do you think 49er fans really give a crap in what round Montana was drafted?

 

OMG this whole anti-intellectual argument is tiresome and foolish, and this has further lowered my regard for Trent Edwards' talent scout.

 

 

Please all try to follow this:

 

1. The draft is not about making one pick. If it was, then all this idiotic blather about "just take the top guy when it's your turn" would make sense.

2. If you don't want to suck, you need to think about the whole of your draft as you go.

3. Taking someone BEFORE YOU HAVE TO is STUPID - even he turns out to be a Hall of Famer.

4. BECAUSE you were wasting opportunities to ALSO take someone else who would help your team.

 

Assume your draft board is researched and prepared thoroughly and you believe in your scouts - if you don't, rewind to this step and improve your scouting until you get it right.

 

Suppose you are the Chicago Bears and it's the year 2000. You believe Tom Brady might be a HoF player, but you know noone else will take him before New England in round 6:

 

Taking Tom Brady in the first round would have been a stupid move. Sure, you got a hall of fame QB, but you just missed out on a hall of fame middle linebacker in Brian Urlacher.

 

Taking Tom Brady in the sixth round ahead of New Englend would have been brilliant. Now you've got Urlacher AND Brady, although you have cost yourself Kicker Paul Edinger.

 

That's the trick to it that makes Walsh's argument stupid: each pick is not just a choice of who to take - it's also a choice (cost) to not take someone else. History shows that the higher round picks generally do better, so using a higher pick to get someone when you didn't have to is to foolishly pay a self-inflicted cost of not taking someone else who could have also helped you.

 

Obviously, your knowledge is never that perfect - but operating without the basic sense that the draft is a game within the game, where you are trying to improve your whole team by getting the most total value from all your picks (including trading them up or down to line up with where you see the better players) is idiocy that leads to failure. Advocating that behavior for one's team or others is to expose one's mental laziness.

Edited April 20, 2012 by BobChalmers

[Wayne Cubed]

OMG this whole anti-intellectual argument is tiresome and foolish, and this has further lowered my regard for Trent Edwards' talent scout.

 

 

Please all try to follow this:

 

1. The draft is not about making one pick. If it was, then all this idiotic blather about "just take the top guy when it's your turn" would make sense.

2. If you don't want to suck, you need to think about the whole of your draft as you go.

3. Taking someone BEFORE YOU HAVE TO is STUPID - even he turns out to be a Hall of Famer.

4. BECAUSE you were wasting oppotunities to ALSO take someone else who would help your team.

 

Assume your draft board is researched brilliantly and you believe in your scouts - if you don't, rewind to this step and imporve your scouting until you get it right.

 

Suppose you are the Chicago Bears and it's the year 2000. You believe Tom Brady might be a HoF player, but you know noone else will take him before New England in round 6:

 

Taking Tom Brady in the first round would have been a stupid move. Sure, you got as hall of fame QB, but you just missed out on a hall of fame middle linebacker in Brian Urlacher.

 

Taking Tom Brady in the sixth round ahead of New Englend would have been brilliant. Now you've got Urlacher AND Brady, although you have cost yourself Kicker Paul Edinger.

 

 

Obviously, your knowledge is never that perfect - but operating without the basic sense that the draft is a game within the game, where you are trying to improve your whole team by getting the most total value from all your picks (including trading them up or down to line up with where you see the better players) is idiocy that leads to failure. Advocating that behavior for one's team or others is to expose one's mental laziness.

 

First, excellent response and analysis.

 

Second, I think when people say draft value is stupid or a lousy concept, they mean unless you know all 32 teams boards and compare them, how can you say a player is a reach or a value pick. People like Todd McShay and Mel Kiper give their opinions and values to players which in turn get used by average joe fan. Which in the end means nothing because they aren't NFL GM's or masterful evaluators of talent. If they were, then they would be GM's themselves or be involved with a team.

 

Every year these draft pundits over value and under value players. It happens quite a bit. But if a team believes they got their player at the right time and round then words like reach and value get thrown out the window. Teams don't ever know what each others boards look like, so they don't know if in comparison its a reach or value. And I'm sure they don't go to these "experts" for advice. The teams opinions are the real experts.

 

So in the end, these arbitrary words get tossed around, like reach or value, by people who have absolutely nothing to do with the teams, besides maybe being a fan. So who's to say whether one team got a great value in comparison to what other teams have them rated. They don't ask other teams about each others drafts, so in the end us fans have no idea if any one team reached or got value.

[Cynical]

First, excellent response and analysis.

 

Second, I think when people say draft value is stupid or a lousy concept, they mean unless you know all 32 teams boards and compare them, how can you say a player is a reach or a value pick.

 

Absolutely and exactly.

 

Bob even used an example in his reply.

 

"You believe Tom Brady might be a HoF player, but you know noone else will take him before New England in round 6:"

 

Thus the concept of draft value is lousy.

 

You do not know how each team values a particular player at a given time during a draft.

[Cynical]

I wasn't being sarcastic, and I didn't contradict myself.

 

The problem Bill Walsh was addressing was that scouts were beginning by trying to slate players into particular rounds. As I stated earlier, that's not a good starting point. The right starting point is to clearly visualize the team you want to have, and then to ask whether the player you're looking at has a place on that team. If the answer to that question is no, then you move onto the next player, without trying to pin a round onto the player you've just decided to pass up. If the answer is yes, then you start figuring out where you need to be in the draft to take the player you want.

 

Joe Montana would have been great draft value even if he'd been taken first overall. The reason he would have been great draft value at first overall is because there weren't other, better players available in that (or just about any other) draft for the 49ers to take! But taking a Pro Bowl punter first overall is a boneheaded move--and represents bad draft value--because there are going to be plenty of other players in that draft who could have contributed more to your team than the punter. While it's impossible to perfectly predict how any given drafted player will perform, every draft pick you make should represent a good faith effort to add whichever player will contribute the most long term value to your team.

 

See my response to Wayne.

 

But to elaborate further:

 

If a team thinks a punter will be a HOF but none of the other players will be, than the best move for that team would be to take the punter in the first round, especially if they really have a need for a punter.

 

This is why you are contradicting yourself. You have applied a value to a punter and determined said value does not warrant being picked in the first round, period.

This is no different than the scouts saying you should pick QBs in the first, Lineman in the second, etc ...., and punters/kickers in the 7th.

You thought process may not be as rigid as that example, but the concept is the same.

[Cash]

Absolutely and exactly.

 

Bob even used an example in his reply.

 

"You believe Tom Brady might be a HoF player, but you know noone else will take him before New England in round 6:"

 

Thus the concept of draft value is lousy.

 

You do not know how each team values a particular player at a given time during a draft.

No, no, it's fine. You just get your 2015 edition of Gray's Sports Almanac, look up where all of the Pro Bowlers were picked, and draft them a couple spots earlier.

 

Or Buddy Nix could put on the ol' catsuit and break into the other 31 teams' offices the night before the draft and steal their draft boards. That would work, too.

 

All jokes aside, BobChalmers has a bit of a point here, which is that if you can get a guy at your next pick, you don't need to get him at your current pick. So you should draft the best guy who won't be around at your next pick. The problem, of course, is that it's very hard to know if a guy will be available at your next pick or not. Anyone who gets deep into mock draft stuff knows that beyond the first 2 rounds or so, it becomes incredibly difficult to predict a player's draft position. It's not uncommon to see guys drafted as high as the 4th round who weren't even projected to be drafted (sometimes not even invited to the combine).

[Sisyphean Bills]

I thought the comment about the scout sitting there and having nothing to say throughout the draft was pretty interesting to read in black and white. It's a real contrast to the "he's a paid professional!" reaction that is so often used to cover up an obvious lack of performance.

[BobChalmers]

No, no, it's fine. You just get your 2015 edition of Gray's Sports Almanac, look up where all of the Pro Bowlers were picked, and draft them a couple spots earlier.

 

Hehe - yes, I admit I had that very picture in my head when I was typing this morning - the whole run of Back to the Future movies has been running a lot on cable this past month.

 

Or Buddy Nix could put on the ol' catsuit and break into the other 31 teams' offices the night before the draft and steal their draft boards. That would work, too.

 

Thank you oh so much for that mental image.

 

All jokes aside, BobChalmers has a bit of a point here, which is that if you can get a guy at your next pick, you don't need to get him at your current pick. So you should draft the best guy who won't be around at your next pick. The problem, of course, is that it's very hard to know if a guy will be available at your next pick or not. Anyone who gets deep into mock draft stuff knows that beyond the first 2 rounds or so, it becomes incredibly difficult to predict a player's draft position. It's not uncommon to see guys drafted as high as the 4th round who weren't even projected to be drafted (sometimes not even invited to the combine).

 

Right - as I said - your knowledge is never really that perfect.

 

But here's the thing - you don't need perfect predictive knowledge of a specific event to have perfect knowledge of what decision to make!

 

Easiest game-theory case example ever:

 

I tell you I'm going to give you $1,000,000 every time you call my coin toss correctly. You get 7 flips.

 

You also have researched my coin and know that it's ever so slightly rigged and comes up "heads" %55 of the time.

 

Now, we don't know if it will come up "heads" the next time I flip it. In fact, there's even close to a 4/1000 chance it will come up "tails" all 7 times I flip it.

 

However, you are a complete idiot if you don't call "heads" every single time, right?

 

Same thing here: if you think your scouts are good, and you think you can guess what your 31 competitors are likely thinking, then it is worth applying that knowledge as part of your decision process for your own pick and your own choice to move up or down.

 

Even in 2000, w/o Gray's Almanac 2015, picking Brady in the first would have been stupid - there was no way anyone would take him THAT high. It doesn't matter that your one nutty scout tells you he's the next great QB (which you also can't know with perfect knowledge) - you don't take a guy you are 99% certain noone else is about to take.

 

Were the Bills not smarter for not taking Jason Peters in the 3rd (or any) round? You get a guy when you have to - it's risky - but you have to push the edge to get efficient results out of your limited resources - if you refuse to take those chances you are probably headed for mediocrity at best.

Edited April 20, 2012 by BobChalmers

[Orton's Arm]

See my response to Wayne.

 

But to elaborate further:

 

If a team thinks a punter will be a HOF but none of the other players will be, than the best move for that team would be to take the punter in the first round, especially if they really have a need for a punter.

 

This is why you are contradicting yourself. You have applied a value to a punter and determined said value does not warrant being picked in the first round, period.

This is no different than the scouts saying you should pick QBs in the first, Lineman in the second, etc ...., and punters/kickers in the 7th.

You thought process may not be as rigid as that example, but the concept is the same.

Bob Chalmers has blown this thread out of the water. With his having expressed things so lucidly, there's little work for me left to do.

 

As he pointed out, there's little point to taking that punter in the first round if you're reasonably certain no one else will take him before the fourth round. That's just a waste of scarce draft resources.

 

Another reason not to take a punter in the first round is that a punter is considerably less valuable than an equally talented starter on offense or defense. In your example talent levels are not equal: the punter is HoF, while the available offensive and defensive starters are not. But which would you rather have: a Hall of Fame punter, or Stevie Johnson? A Hall of Fame punter, or Andy Levitre? I'd much rather have Johnson or Levitre over the punter, even though the former two guys aren't Hall of Fame players. More generally, I'd propose the following formula to get a (very rough) approximation for player value.

 

Player performance x position value = player value

 

The above formula is far from perfect, and I'm sure someone who's put more time and thought into this than I have could come up with something better. But the formula is a starting point, and is better than nothing.

 

For the Hall of Fame punter, the formula is player performance of 100 (out of 100) x position value of 1 (out of 10) = player value of 100. For Levitre, the formula is player performance of 55 x position value of 3.5 = player value of 192.5.

 

The above logic applies to all positions, not just kickers and punters. A top-15 LT is worth more than a Pro Bowl OG, for example.

 

I mentioned the absurdity of taking a punter in the first round to illustrate a larger point: that the value of a player's long term contribution to your team is affected not just by the quality of his play, but by the relative value of his position.

 

Another point to remember is that if you take a punter in the first, second, or even third round, you create a situation in which the punter has to play at or near a Hall of Fame level to justify the pick. There's very little upside--that is, there's very little room for him to give you more value than his draft position would have indicated. However, Hall of Fame level punters are very rare. There's an excellent chance the guy will fail to live up to that Hall of Fame success threshold which had been set for him. For every Hall of Fame punter, there are probably ten or even a hundred Pro Bowl level punters. Statistically, this guy is much more likely to be in latter category than the former.

 

Finally, someone in this thread characterized the word "reach" as a made-up word. The pundits called Whitner a reach, and they were right. They called McCargo a reach, and they were right. They called Trung Canidate (a RB drafted in the first round by the St. Louis Rams to replace Marshall Faulk) a reach, and they were right. Of the players I remember having been called reaches, every last one has turned out to be a bust. Maybe that's just my memory being imperfect. But until there's at least some evidence to suggest that a player called a reach has as much chance of succeeding as anyone else, I, for one, am not going to dismiss the collective wisdom of football analysts. Any of those analysts would have done a much better job as Bills' GM than Marv did!

[Cash]

Bob Chalmers has blown this thread out of the water. With his having expressed things so lucidly, there's little work for me left to do.

 

As he pointed out, there's little point to taking that punter in the first round if you're reasonably certain no one else will take him before the fourth round. That's just a waste of scarce draft resources.

 

Another reason not to take a punter in the first round is that a punter is considerably less valuable than an equally talented starter on offense or defense. In your example talent levels are not equal: the punter is HoF, while the available offensive and defensive starters are not. But which would you rather have: a Hall of Fame punter, or Stevie Johnson? A Hall of Fame punter, or Andy Levitre? I'd much rather have Johnson or Levitre over the punter, even though the former two guys aren't Hall of Fame players. More generally, I'd propose the following formula to get a (very rough) approximation for player value.

 

Player performance x position value = player value

 

The above formula is far from perfect, and I'm sure someone who's put more time and thought into this than I have could come up with something better. But the formula is a starting point, and is better than nothing.

 

For the Hall of Fame punter, the formula is player performance of 100 (out of 100) x position value of 1 (out of 10) = player value of 100. For Levitre, the formula is player performance of 55 x position value of 3.5 = player value of 192.5.

 

The above logic applies to all positions, not just kickers and punters. A top-15 LT is worth more than a Pro Bowl OG, for example.

 

I mentioned the absurdity of taking a punter in the first round to illustrate a larger point: that the value of a player's long term contribution to your team is affected not just by the quality of his play, but by the relative value of his position.

 

This is one of several really good posts in this thread. I'm about to contradicts some things in it, but please don't take that for an overall disagreement with your post or point. I'm just pointing some things out.

 

Another point to remember is that if you take a punter in the first, second, or even third round, you create a situation in which the punter has to play at or near a Hall of Fame level to justify the pick. There's very little upside--that is, there's very little room for him to give you more value than his draft position would have indicated. However, Hall of Fame level punters are very rare. There's an excellent chance the guy will fail to live up to that Hall of Fame success threshold which had been set for him. For every Hall of Fame punter, there are probably ten or even a hundred Pro Bowl level punters. Statistically, this guy is much more likely to be in latter category than the former.

Bolded is an understatement -- there has never been a Hall of Fame punter, unless you count Otto Graham (you shouldn't). Ray Guy's name gets brought up every year, but I don't think he's ever been a finalist and maybe not even a semi-finalist. And according to his Wikipedia page, he's the only full-time punter ever to be nominated at all.

 

Finally, someone in this thread characterized the word "reach" as a made-up word. The pundits called Whitner a reach, and they were right. They called McCargo a reach, and they were right. They called Trung Canidate (a RB drafted in the first round by the St. Louis Rams to replace Marshall Faulk) a reach, and they were right. Of the players I remember having been called reaches, every last one has turned out to be a bust. Maybe that's just my memory being imperfect. But until there's at least some evidence to suggest that a player called a reach has as much chance of succeeding as anyone else, I, for one, am not going to dismiss the collective wisdom of football analysts. Any of those analysts would have done a much better job as Bills' GM than Marv did!

2002 draft comes to mind -- both Levi Jones at #10 and Dwight Freeney at #11 were characterized as reaches at the time. I distinctly remember the ESPN crew giving the Bungles the absolute business for drafting Jones at #10. They cut the Colts a little more slack (or at least Mel Kiper did), but there was definitely talk of him being a reach. Obviously Freeney panned out very well, but Jones panned out pretty well, too. He was a good starter at LT for 6+ years. Not an amazing pick, but to your point about positional value, getting an above-average starter at LT for 6+ years is worth a lot more than a pick like Whitner.

 

In 2010, Tyson Alualu was the joke pick of the entire draft, and one of the ultimate reaches. Yet he started as a rookie and played really well, and was one of the keys of that defense.

[Ramius]

All this talk about drafting punters in round 1 invalidates the entire argument. Debate in terms relevant to the argument instead of using the far extreme that will happen 0.000001% of the time.

 

Draft value is meaningless, because if the Bills think Cordy Glenn is going to be a good LT and they take him at 10 and he turns out to be good, it makes no difference if they were considered to have "reached" for him or got poor "draft value."

 

The entire reason the "draft value" argument is myopic is because there's no basis of comparison to generate "value" from. When someone claims the Bills got good or bad draft "value," they are doing nothing but repeating what Mel Kiper or suntanman told them. Chances are, kiper's or suntanman's list was WRONG in the first place. Idiot draftniks and mock drafters use words like "value" and "reach" so they can do nothing more than say they were right and the NFL team was wrong. And therein lies the crux of the argument. All of this talk about "value" and "reach" begins on the FALSE assumption that the mock drafter's list is correct and the NFL team's list is wrong.

 

Know a team that has gotten excellent "draft value" in the recent years? Carolina with Everette Brown and Jimmy Clausen. How have those "great value" picks worked out for them? I bet they'd much rather have actual talented players instead of great value.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Ramius

[K-9]

All this talk about drafting punters in round 1 invalidates the entire argument. Debate in terms relevant to the argument instead of using the far extreme that will happen 0.000001% of the time.

 

Draft value is meaningless, because if the Bills think Cordy Glenn is going to be a good LT and they take him at 10 and he turns out to be good, it makes no difference if they were considered to have "reached" for him or got poor "draft value."

 

The entire reason the "draft value" argument is myopic is because there's no basis of comparison to generate "value" from. When someone claims the Bills got good or bad draft "value," they are doing nothing but repeating what Mel Kiper or suntanman told them. Chances are, kiper's or suntanman's list was WRONG in the first place. Idiot draftniks and mock drafters use words like "value" and "reach" so they can do nothing more than say they were right and the NFL team was wrong. And therein lies the crux of the argument. All of this talk about "value" and "reach" begins on the FALSE assumption that the mock drafter's list is correct and the NFL team's list is wrong.

 

Know a team that has gotten excellent "draft value" in the recent years? Carolina with Everette Brown and Jimmy Clausen. How have those "great value" picks worked out for them? I bet they'd much rather have actual talented players instead of great value.

 

It really is no more complicated than this. Regardless of all the 'moneyball' metrics that people want to throw at it to make the point. NFL personnel people do not assemble their boards in association with the terms 'value' and 'reach'. Nor do they 'tier' the positions in order of 'importance'.

 

Players will rise and fall, make it or bust. And NONE of that will have depended on his 'value', position, or round selected.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Orton's Arm]

This is one of several really good posts in this thread. I'm about to contradicts some things in it, but please don't take that for an overall disagreement with your post or point. I'm just pointing some things out.

 

 

Bolded is an understatement -- there has never been a Hall of Fame punter, unless you count Otto Graham (you shouldn't). Ray Guy's name gets brought up every year, but I don't think he's ever been a finalist and maybe not even a semi-finalist. And according to his Wikipedia page, he's the only full-time punter ever to be nominated at all.

 

 

2002 draft comes to mind -- both Levi Jones at #10 and Dwight Freeney at #11 were characterized as reaches at the time. I distinctly remember the ESPN crew giving the Bungles the absolute business for drafting Jones at #10. They cut the Colts a little more slack (or at least Mel Kiper did), but there was definitely talk of him being a reach. Obviously Freeney panned out very well, but Jones panned out pretty well, too. He was a good starter at LT for 6+ years. Not an amazing pick, but to your point about positional value, getting an above-average starter at LT for 6+ years is worth a lot more than a pick like Whitner.

 

In 2010, Tyson Alualu was the joke pick of the entire draft, and one of the ultimate reaches. Yet he started as a rookie and played really well, and was one of the keys of that defense.

Good response. I certainly don't object to your pointing out examples of players who'd been called reaches, who went on to justify their draft positions! In another thread, I wrote about different tiers of player value.

 

Tier 1: QB

 

Tier 2: LT, RDE, CB

 

Tier 3: DT, RT, WR, C.

 

Tier 3.5: pass catching TE, S, LDE

 

Tier 4: OG, RB, non-pass-rushing LB.

 

The RB can move to a higher tier if he's a pass catching, all-purpose RB like Thurman Thomas or Marshall Faulk.

 

Of the three players you mentioned, one was a LT, one was a RDE, and one was a DT. That's two tier 2 guys, and one tier 3 guy. The data size is small, so any conclusions one might draw are merely conjectural. One possibility is that reaching for a higher tier player is safer--and associated with more upside--than reaching for a lower tier player. Another possibility is that when a front office of above-normal competence reaches for a player--as Polian did when he took Freeney--there's a strong chance of him being right. But when a front office of below-average competence defies conventional wisdom by reaching, odds are that front office is wrong. Maybe both suppositions are true. Certainly, Marv's front office was of below-average competence. Two of Marv's three first round reaches (Whitner and Lynch) played lower tier positions.

 

Edit: I should also throw in something about the difference between a perceived reach and an actual reach! An actual reach is when you take a player higher than he deserves, based on his college performance and performance at the combine. A perceived reach is when pundits label it a reach. It's quite possible that Marv's perceived reaches were actual reaches, while the perceived reaches of Freeney, Levi Brown, and Alualu were not actual reaches.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Edwards' Arm

[K-9]

Good response. I certainly don't object to your pointing out examples of players who'd been called reaches, who went on to justify their draft positions! In another thread, I wrote about different tiers of player value.

 

Tier 1: QB

 

Tier 2: LT, RDE, CB

 

Tier 3: DT, RT, WR, C.

 

Tier 3.5: pass catching TE, S, LDE

 

Tier 4: OG, RB, non-pass-rushing LB.

 

The RB can move to a higher tier if he's a pass catching, all-purpose RB like Thurman Thomas or Marshall Faulk. ...

 

Oh, the irony.

 

Good luck, EA. I really think you should start your own draftnik kind of business because there are people out there willing to eat this stuff up.

 

GO BILLS!!!

Edited April 20, 2012 by K-9

[Orton's Arm]

All this talk about drafting punters in round 1 invalidates the entire argument. Debate in terms relevant to the argument instead of using the far extreme that will happen 0.000001% of the time.

 

Draft value is meaningless, because if the Bills think Cordy Glenn is going to be a good LT and they take him at 10 and he turns out to be good, it makes no difference if they were considered to have "reached" for him or got poor "draft value."

 

The entire reason the "draft value" argument is myopic is because there's no basis of comparison to generate "value" from. When someone claims the Bills got good or bad draft "value," they are doing nothing but repeating what Mel Kiper or suntanman told them. Chances are, kiper's or suntanman's list was WRONG in the first place. Idiot draftniks and mock drafters use words like "value" and "reach" so they can do nothing more than say they were right and the NFL team was wrong. And therein lies the crux of the argument. All of this talk about "value" and "reach" begins on the FALSE assumption that the mock drafter's list is correct and the NFL team's list is wrong.

 

Know a team that has gotten excellent "draft value" in the recent years? Carolina with Everette Brown and Jimmy Clausen. How have those "great value" picks worked out for them? I bet they'd much rather have actual talented players instead of great value.

Before we go any further, I think we need to clarify what's meant by "draft value." If "draft value" is taken to mean whatever Kiper and others like him says it means, then your point is correct. We shouldn't assume that the NFL team which made the pick is wrong, or that Kiper is right.

 

But there are other ways one can define draft value. I'd like to propose the following:

 

Draft value = player value / draft pick value

 

Draft pick value. To obtain this, you start with an NFL draft value chart, and modify it according to the talent pool available that year.

 

Player value = the quality of the player's play x the number of years with the team that picked him x the value of his position

 

Using the above equations, let's look at Marshawn Lynch's draft value.

 

Player value = quality of play (40 for Lynch) x years with the team (3, I think) x value of his position (3.5) = 420

 

Compare that to a hypothetical QB at or near the Pro Bowl level.

 

Player value for QB = quality of play (70) x years with the team (12) x value of his position (10) = 8400.

 

Lynch represents 5% of the player value of this hypothetical QB. Because Lynch's player value was low, and the value of the 12th overall pick is high, he represents a bad draft pick value.

 

One can use the benefit of hindsight to obtain reasonably firm numbers for the Lynch calculations. If one were to perform a similar calculation regarding a player who was just drafted, many of the numbers used would be estimates. The two biggest unknowns would be the expected quality of play, and whether a player will be allowed to go first-contract-and-out. By plugging different numbers into those unknowns, one can create reasonable best-case, worst-case, and expected case scenarios for early draft picks. That kind of analysis would have shown that even in a reasonable best case scenario, Marv did not get great value from the 8th overall pick (Whitner) or the 12th overall pick (Lynch).

Edited April 20, 2012 by Edwards' Arm

[K-9]

... One can use the benefit of hindsight to obtain reasonably firm numbers for the Lynch calculations. If one were to perform a similar calculation regarding a player who was just drafted, many of the numbers used would be estimates. The two biggest unknowns would be the expected quality of play, and whether a player will be allowed to go first-contract-and-out. By plugging different numbers into those unknowns, one can create reasonable best-case, worst-case, and expected case scenarios for early draft picks. That kind of analysis would have shown that even in a reasonable best case scenario, Marv did not get great value from the 8th overall pick (Whitner) or the 12th overall pick (Lynch).

 

Would you be so kind as to whip up reports on Keuchly, Gilmore, Barron, and Floyd? I need them by next Thursday so there is no rush.

 

Of course, I fully realize that you won't be served by the value of hindsight, but I'm pretty sure if you just plug in all those different numbers into all those unknowns as you suggest, you should be able to "create reasonable best-case, worst-case, and expected case scenarios" for how they'll turn out as pro players.

 

Thanks.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Orton's Arm]

Would you be so kind as to whip up reports on Keuchly, Gilmore, Barron, and Floyd? I need them by next Thursday so there is no rush.

 

Of course, I fully realize that you won't be served by the value of hindsight, but I'm pretty sure if you just plug in all those different numbers into all those unknowns as you suggest, you should be able to "create reasonable best-case, worst-case, and expected case scenarios" for how they'll turn out as pro players.

 

Thanks.

 

GO BILLS!!!

Yours is a reasonable request.

 

There are two ways of creating a reasonable best case estimate for a player's value. One is to watch the player yourself. The other is to base your opinion on draft experts. If there are ten experts whose opinions you trust, and if at least one of those experts thinks a player has Pro Bowl potential, then Pro Bowl becomes a reasonable best case scenario for that player.

 

I haven't watched college football this year, which leaves me to rely on the scouting reports I've seen. To be honest, I haven't gone through that many scouting reports either. If someone with more pre-draft knowledge wants to amend my player predictions, I certainly won't stand in that person's way!

 

That being said, below are best case scenarios for the players in question:

 

Kuechley. Reasonable best case quality of play = 85. Position value = 3. Best case years with team = 11. Reasonable best case = 85 x 3 x 11 = 2805.

 

Gilmore. Reasonable best case quality of play = 80. Position value = 7. Best case years with team = 11. Reasonable best case = 6160.

 

Barron. Reasonable best case quality of play = 60. Position value = 3.5. Best case years with team = 11. Reasonable best case = 2110.

 

Floyd. Reasonable best case quality of play = 80. Position value = 6. Best case years with team = 11. Reasonable best case = 5280.

 

The worst case scenario for the four players is that they're all busts.