League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up

[GunnerBill]

6 minutes ago, Billl said:

 

I don’t care who my OLBs are if I’ve got Ray Lewis at MLB.  I’ll take him and two water boys over three Matt Milanos.  I will grant that it takes a lot of job security to draft that way, though.  

 

Indeed. And it is a balance. You can't swing for the fences every time. There is nothing wrong in principle with safe high floor, low ceiling guys. But you have to consider where is my roster at, how do I look not just this year at the premium spots but how do I look in two years time there and how does that needle move if I go a safe pick here vs if I take a shot. I don't pretend all this is easy but the two running back picks in particular I think were just strategically bad decisions. Cody Ford might have been to an extent too but he was also in part a bad talent evaluation because make no mistake they drafted him to play tackle. But if you are going to pick a running back in the first two days it better be a special guy. A game changer. We picked two guys who are just never going to be that. I actually defend the Knox pick much more. He hasn't really broken out at this stage and has had issues with drops but Knox is a high ceiling athlete. If he had picked up the nuances of tight end his ceiling IMO was as high as TJ Hockenson who went #8 in that same draft. Even if Knox ends up missing there was an element of trying to find a diamond in the rough there who could have high potential that I applaud.

[GoBills808]

If you think Milano in the fifth isn’t an enormous win I don’t know what to tell you

[Billl]

2 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

So you tell me it’s a terrible metric, but you STILL don’t understand how it works. It’s based on the value on the board in the round that the player was drafted. 

 

You also don’t even have enough insight to tell me about a draft class you brought up specifically.

 

I never said it was perfect, I said it was better than what you’re doing above. Putting your own context on the Chiefs draft class. It takes subjectivity out of the equation and uses AV, a metric that‘s used by people who get paid to cover football, use to compare players. It goes a step further and shows how much value you’re extracting from the draft. 
 

I once again invite you to come up with a better way to objectively measure performance in the draft. 

There was a football game played last night.

 

Epenesa had one tackle and no other stats.

Bass kicked 4 FGs and missed a PAT.

Davis had 3 targets without a catch.

If any other rookies played, they didn’t register on the stat sheet.

 

Edwards-Elaire  had a rushing TD.

Sneed played lockdown coverage, made 5 tackles, and had a 15 yard sack.

Danna and Wharton each had a tackle.

Townsend had a punt and held 5 PATs and a FG.

 

Not super interested in any metric that favors the first group.

 

[JGMcD2]

1 hour ago, Billl said:

There was a football game played last night.

 

Epenesa had one tackle and no other stats.

Bass kicked 4 FGs and missed a PAT.

Davis had 3 targets without a catch.

If any other rookies played, they didn’t register on the stat sheet.

 

Edwards-Elaire  had a rushing TD.

Sneed played lockdown coverage, made 5 tackles, and had a 15 yard sack.

Danna and Wharton each had a tackle.

Townsend had a punt and held 5 PATs and a FG.

 

Not super interested in any metric that favors the first group.

 

So instead of a metric that takes into account an entire season’s worth of performance, you’re going to focus on the performance from one game to make a determination?

 

The metric isn’t stagnant either, as time goes on it will change as player perform, but as of right now it shows that Buffalo got more contribution from their draft class in 2020 than KC over the 16 game regular season. 

I made it clear early on that 2020 was pretty unstable and shouldn’t be looked at too heavily, I only included it because someone asked for it. The drafts with multiple years are much more reliable, you’re hyper focused on this year and throwing out that it does a pretty good job with previous years drafts.

 

You’re also listing two players for the Chiefs that they didn’t draft this year... Wharton and Townsend were UDFA. 
 

I’m not debating that CEH, Gay, Sneed and Danna were contributors, but I can probably tell you why at the moment it liked the Bills draft class just slightly more. 
 

In just raw AV for the season the Chiefs class came in at 18 and the Bills draft class came in at 15, but when I did this initial analysis a month ago it became very apparent it wasn’t the most accurate way to see how much value you extracted from a player, I felt the best way was to compare AV to the value of a pick in the round the player was drafted. Admittedly it’s not perfect,  and I want to continue to improve things when I have the time. 

 

CEH has a very good season. He finished with 8 AV and netted the Chiefs positive value in the round at 2.1

 

It looks like Gay was a rotational piece/hurt for a majority of the year. He needed the Chiefs positive value at 0.2 but because he rarely played more than 20% of the snaps he wasn’t able to do enough to be valued as a major contributor. 
 

Niang was net -2.4 net value because he didn’t contribute this year at all. Not getting any value from a 3rd round pick hurts. This obviously changes long term.
 

Sneed was netted then positive value at 1.6... it looks like he REALLY started coming in at the end of the season after coming back from an injury in the second half of the season. AV can only account for the games he played, so the longer he plays and makes an impact, the more likely it is that he’s accurately reflected here. 
 

Danna netted them positive value at 0.8 it seems like he was just a rotational piece but did make some plays so he gets them positive value because it’s more than a 5th round pick was expected to do. 
 

Last pick was Keyes and he netted them 0.3 in positive value. Seems like he was up and down off the PS all year and got a nod for playing fairly well against the Chargers in week 17. 

That’s have you arrive at the +2.6 TOT_NETAV for the Chiefs in 2020. Like I said, it’s not perfect and will undoubtedly change the more this draft class changes. That’s why this year is pretty unstable, but right now it reflects what the team gained over the course of 16 games.

 

The Bills draft class breaks down like this...

 

Epenesa was negative value for the Bills in round 2 at -1.8

He didn't do enough this year as a rotational piece and his performance at this point wasn't worthy of a RD2 pick.

 

Moss was positive value for the Bills in RD3 at 2.6

He was a solid contributor and have 5 AV on the season, his production wasn't quite that of CEH but in 13 games he put up decent numbers with 576 total yards and 5 TDs for the Bills. Although CEH had the better season and that was reflected, this takes into account draft position and the Bills get decent value here for taking a RB with half the production 2 rounds later than CEH.

 

Gabe Davis was pretty big in RD4 with 4.6 net value. 

35/600/7 from a 4th round pick is pretty good value here, so the Bills are rewarded for that. 

 

Jake Fromm in RD5 dings the Bills -1.2 for obvious reasons

 

Tyler Bass gets them 1.6 in positive value in RD6

4th highest scorer in the league, gives them modest value here.

 

Isaiah Hodgins in RD6 dings them -1.4 in RD6 because he didn't play

 

Dane Jackson in RD7 gets them 0.3... very similar situation as Keyes. Up and down but got a little reward for slight contributions. 

 

That is how you arrive at the Bills 4.8 TOT_NETAV.

 

The further you can go back it does a good job of reflecting value in 2017 and 2018. It’s not stagnant. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Billl]

27 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

So instead of a metric that takes into account an entire season’s worth of performance, you’re going to focus on the performance from one game to make a determination?

 

The metric isn’t stagnant either, as time goes on it will change as player perform, but as of right now it shows that Buffalo got more contribution from their draft class in 2020 than KC over the 16 game regular season. 

I made it clear early on that 2020 was pretty unstable and shouldn’t be looked at too heavily, I only included it because someone asked for it. The drafts with multiple years are much more reliable, you’re hyper focused on this year and throwing out that it does a pretty good job with previous years drafts.

 

You’re also listing two players for the Chiefs that they didn’t draft this year... Wharton and Townsend were UDFA. 
 

I’m not debating that CEH, Gay, Sneed and Danna were contributors, but I can probably tell you why at the moment it liked the Bills draft class just slightly more. 
 

In just raw AV for the season the Chiefs class came in at 18 and the Bills draft class came in at 15, but when I did this initial analysis a month ago it became very apparent it wasn’t the most accurate way to see how much value you extracted from a player, I felt the best way was to compare AV to the value of a pick in the round the player was drafted. Admittedly it’s not perfect,  and I want to continue to improve things when I have the time. 

 

CEH has a very good season. He finished with 8 AV and netted the Chiefs positive value in the round at 2.1

 

It looks like Gay was a rotational piece/hurt for a majority of the year. He needed the Chiefs positive value at 0.2 but because he rarely played more than 20% of the snaps he wasn’t able to do enough to be valued as a major contributor. 
 

Niang was net -2.4 net value because he didn’t contribute this year at all. Not getting any value from a 3rd round pick hurts. 
 

Sneed was netted then positive value at 1.6... it looks like he REALLY started coming in at the end of the season after coming back from an injury in the second half of the season. AV can only account for the games he played, so the longer he plays and makes an impact, the more likely it is that he’s accurately reflected here. 
 

Danna netted them positive value at 0.8 it seems like he was just a rotational piece but did make some plays so he gets them positive value because it’s more than a 5th round pick was expected to do. 
 

Last pick was Keyes and he netted them 0.3 in positive value. Seems like he was up and down off the PS all year and got a nod for playing fairly well against the Chargers in week 17. 

That’s have you arrive at the +2.6 TOT_NETAV for the Chiefs in 2020. Like I said, it’s not perfect and will undoubtedly change the more this draft class changes. That’s why this year is pretty unstable, but right now it reflects what the team gained over the course of 16 games.

 

The Bills draft class breaks down like this...

 

Epenesa was negative value for the Bills in round 2 at -1.8

He didn't do enough this year as a rotational piece and his performance at this point wasn't worthy of a RD2 pick.

 

Moss was positive value for the Bills in RD3 at 2.6

He was a solid contributor and have 5 AV on the season, his production wasn't quite that of CEH but in 13 games he put up decent numbers with 576 total yards and 5 TDs for the Bills. Although CEH had the better season and that was reflected, this takes into account draft position and the Bills get decent value here for taking a RB with half the production 2 rounds later than CEH.

 

Gabe Davis was pretty big in RD4 with 4.6 net value. 

35/600/7 from a 4th round pick is pretty good value here, so the Bills are rewarded for that. 

 

Jake Fromm in RD5 dings the Bills -1.2 for obvious reasons

 

Tyler Bass gets them 1.6 in positive value in RD6

4th highest scorer in the league, gives them modest value here.

 

Isaiah Hodgins in RD6 dings them -1.4 in RD6 because he didn't play

 

Dane Jackson in RD7 gets them 0.3... very similar situation as Keyes. Up and down but got a little reward for slight contributions. 

 

That is how you arrive at the Bills 4.8 TOT_NETAV.

 

The further you can go back it does a good job of reflecting value in 2017 and 2018. It’s not stagnant. 

You don’t need to look at more than that game to make a judgment.  It’s glaringly obvious.  You wouldn’t need a best of seven to say that Lebron James is better than me at 1 on 1 if you had just watched us play one game with your own eyes.  CEH (the guy who ran for 161 yards at Buffalo) himself had as many yards from scrimmage as the entire Buffalo rookie class combined.  Sneed (who was amazing from day 1, btw) had more tackles than the entire Bills class combined.  He also had more INTs than the entire Bills class combined. Sneed even had more SACKS than the entire Bills class combined. Mike Danna has more sacks than the entire Bills class combined.  I’m not sure why you’d care to split hairs over the difference between draft picks and UDFAs as if that distinction would matter, but Wharton also has more sacks as an UDFA than the entire Bills class combined.  Hell, the Chiefs rookie class has more PASSING YARDS than the Bills class.  Buffalo drafted a QB.  Kansas City didn’t.

 

I couldn’t care less about how or why a system arrives at such a ridiculously incorrect conclusion.  It should be dismissed out of hand.  Kansas City rookies have 8.5 sacks and 3 INTs on the season.  Buffalo’s have 1 sack and 0 INTs.  None of this is to say that the Bills players won’t go on to have more productive careers, but no credence can be given to the idea that they’ve been more impactful to this point.  Any metric that says otherwise should be ignored.  It’s not worthy of even being used as a data point.  If you want to use it as some sort of barometer, it’s your right to be wrong.  C’mon dude.  It says Matt Milano is a vastly more productive pick than Tre White.

 

[JGMcD2]

2 hours ago, Billl said:

C’mon dude.  It says Matt Milano is a vastly more productive pick than Tre White.

I’m differentiating between draft class and UDFA because this is strictly looking at draft classes, so UDFA are irrelevant. I’m just looking at the draft class, that’s why I differentiated between the two. You’re talking about Townsend holding kicks and Wharton, I’m telling you they’re not included in this. I haven't spent the time to put it together and figure out the best way to lay everything out for UDFA.
 

It’s not saying he’s a more productive pick, it’s saying they got surplus value from Milano in RD5 as compared to White in RD1. It’s not showing you production, it’s showing you value extracted from each round. I’m not sure what’s hard for you to understand about that.  
 

We’ve been going back and forth all day and you still haven’t taken the time to understand what you’re looking at, you continuously misquote what it’s showing you. I find it hard to believe you’re a dumb person, at this point I’m starting to believe your ignorance is intentional to rile me up. I’ve asked you politely multiple times to show me a better way to do it, or even provide feedback on how to improve. I’ve said many times it’s not perfect, but you’re behaving as if it’s wildly off base because you’re a Chiefs fan. I’m here trying to be productive and respectful, but you’re just being rude. 

 

Let me try and explain a different way one more time. 

 

Clyde Edwards-Helaire had a great season, everything you stated is absolutely true. The reason his surplus value isn't very high, is because of the draft pick that the Chiefs spent on him. It doesn't mean that he was less valuable than anybody, it just means that there was only a certain amount of value extracted from him because his production was only slightly above average for a 1st round pick. 

 

I'm not saying he's not a better player or didn't produce more than Gabe Davis. I'm saying the Bills got a better bang for their buck drafting Davis in RD4 and getting the production they did out of him than the Chiefs got drafting CEH in RD1. While production is factored in, so is the expectation that comes with where the player is drafted. 

 

Moss was drafted about a round and a half later than CEH. No, he didn't produce like CEH did. He had less yards and the same amount of TD in the same number of games his Y/A was about the same and his Y/R was about 1 yard less. Nobody would argue that Moss was more valuable than CEH this year. All this is saying is the Bills got more value getting the type of production they did out of Moss by taking him in RD3 than the Chiefs did by taking CEH in RD1. They're almost equal in terms of surplus value, it's basically negligible. 

 

If the Chiefs were to have taken Moss in RD1 and gotten the production out of him that the Bills did this year, they would have extracted negative value because he didn't live up to 1st round value. Heck, if they took Gabe Davis there and got the same production from him that Buffalo did they would have been penalized as well. It's not trying to tell you that it would have been better for KC to take Moss or Davis in RD1, it's just saying the Bills got a better value taking Moss in RD3 or Davis in RD4. It incorporates production AND where they player is drafted. Davis and Moss aren't more valuable if they're drafted earlier, CEH is EVEN MORE valuable if he some how slips and gets drafted later.

 

Say the Bills take Epenesa in RD3 as opposed to RD2, they would still have gotten penalized for the selection because he wasn't very productive. But the penalization would be less severe because he performed closer to the level expected from a 3rd round pick than the level of a 2nd round pick.

 

The last thing I want to point out is it's not really fair to compare Buffalo's draft class to KC's draft class just using yards, sacks, INTs and what not. You're using rookie class as your line of demarcation which is fine if that's how you're going to break it down for your purposes, but KC had 5 defensive rookies compared to Buffalo's 2 defensive rookies. So yes they had 8.5 sacks and 3 Ints to Buffalo's 1 sack and 1 Int, but you have more players to out there playing and producing than Buffalo does. It would be better to look at that all on a per snap basis or per game basis.

 

Just like comparing CEH total yards to Buffalo's rookie class is tough to do. KC had 1 offensive rookie and BUF had 2. Yes, he had 1,100 yards of total offense on 217 touches and 5 TDs compared to Davis and Moss who had 1,175 on 162 touches and 12 TDs. That's more value out of one player, he also out touched them by 55 touches. Volume and opportunity matters, so again it would probably be better to look at these numbers on a per snap basis or per game basis.

 

Again, as it's laid out above, all I am showing you is the value extracted. Nobody is saying Moss is more valuable than CEH, he would have been a bad pick at 32. His production was just good value for Buffalo in RD3. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Big Turk]

4 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

Not necessarily, it takes into account the value found in that round and if you can extract more. 
 

You can definitely benefit from having more picks and hitting on all of them minimally or you can benefit from having very few picks and hitting 1 big and missing on the others. It really just rewards you for extracting as much value as possible, without just looking at raw AV which doesn’t really tell a story as to how you drafted. 
 

So, a first round pick would help, if that pick performed well for us. If they didn’t, it would hurt the value.

 

With our track record I am willing to bet they would have played well....but nowhere near as well as Diggs.

[machine gun kelly]

Op, very thoughtful post and agreed, the largest flaw that Zipper mentions is how absolutely horrible the drafts prior to McBeane were and I don't think people remember how absolutely horrible were their choices.  Most 2014-16 picks are not even in the league or backups at best.

 

The other problem is what are you’re expectations in a draft.  If you hit on 55-60% of you’re picks that can be contributors to the team, you’re drafting well.  When you hit in a 5th to 7th rounder, you’re doing great.  Milano is one example, another is Bass, and Dane should be a good contributor in time.  I don’t know at this point of Ford, Oliver, or Epenesa were good choices.  I expected more from them, but then again guys like Derrick Henry only ran for 500 and 700 yards in 2016-17.  He blew up in years 3-5.  That just typifies a player can break out after their first or second year.

[Motorin']

10 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

Adding the 2020 Draft here... still extracted value in the top third of the league in this draft, although it's a top 10 draft and not a top 5 draft. Usual suspects like IND and BAL hovering around the top.

 

Including updated cumulative totals from 2017-2020... Bills still in the lead. Sorted by the TOT_NETAV, which is the value that the team directly benefits from (they're on top in either category though). 

 

 

Does the 2020 numbers include Diggs production in exchange for the draft picks we gave up?

[JGMcD2]

1 minute ago, Motorin' said:

 

Does the 2020 numbers include Diggs production in exchange for the draft picks we gave up?

It does not. It only includes the value extracted with the picks you use to draft a player. 

[Motorin']

Just now, JGMcD2 said:

It does not. It only includes the value extracted with the picks you use to draft a player. 

 

I get saying we technically didn't draft Diggs with the picks we gave up for him, but for all intents and purposes we did. So not including his value in relation to the value of the picks given up isn't an accurate reflection of the quality of the 2020 draft. IMO.  

[JGMcD2]

5 hours ago, Motorin' said:

 

I get saying we technically didn't draft Diggs with the picks we gave up for him, but for all intents and purposes we did. So not including his value in relation to the value of the picks given up isn't an accurate reflection of the quality of the 2020 draft. IMO.  

Yeah, maybe I can phrase what I’m looking at here better. I totally agree with you, but I’m more concerned with how they’re evaluating and selecting college talent and getting value from it than I am with what they’re getting from trades for professional talent. In my mind they’re kind of two different processes with different kinds of information available to you. 

[Motorin']

3 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

Yeah, maybe I can phrase what I’m looking at here better. I totally agree with you, but I’m more concerned with how they’re evaluating and selecting college talent and getting value from it than I am with what they’re getting from trades for professional talent. In my mind they’re kind of two different processes with different kinds of information available to you. 

 

That makes sense, and seems like very valuable metric you've put together. I'd still like to see where the Bills 2020 draft liens up with Diggs productions factored into the picks given up for him... But more to your point of needing 3 more years to out the team together to match where the Chiefs are at in this process, makes a lot of sense. 

 

 

[Billl]

15 hours ago, JGMcD2 said:

I’m differentiating between draft class and UDFA because this is strictly looking at draft classes, so UDFA are irrelevant. I’m just looking at the draft class, that’s why I differentiated between the two. You’re talking about Townsend holding kicks and Wharton, I’m telling you they’re not included in this. I haven't spent the time to put it together and figure out the best way to lay everything out for UDFA.
 

It’s not saying he’s a more productive pick, it’s saying they got surplus value from Milano in RD5 as compared to White in RD1. It’s not showing you production, it’s showing you value extracted from each round. I’m not sure what’s hard for you to understand about that.  
 

We’ve been going back and forth all day and you still haven’t taken the time to understand what you’re looking at, you continuously misquote what it’s showing you. I find it hard to believe you’re a dumb person, at this point I’m starting to believe your ignorance is intentional to rile me up. I’ve asked you politely multiple times to show me a better way to do it, or even provide feedback on how to improve. I’ve said many times it’s not perfect, but you’re behaving as if it’s wildly off base because you’re a Chiefs fan. I’m here trying to be productive and respectful, but you’re just being rude. 

 

Let me try and explain a different way one more time. 

 

Clyde Edwards-Helaire had a great season, everything you stated is absolutely true. The reason his surplus value isn't very high, is because of the draft pick that the Chiefs spent on him. It doesn't mean that he was less valuable than anybody, it just means that there was only a certain amount of value extracted from him because his production was only slightly above average for a 1st round pick. 

 

I'm not saying he's not a better player or didn't produce more than Gabe Davis. I'm saying the Bills got a better bang for their buck drafting Davis in RD4 and getting the production they did out of him than the Chiefs got drafting CEH in RD1. While production is factored in, so is the expectation that comes with where the player is drafted. 

 

Moss was drafted about a round and a half later than CEH. No, he didn't produce like CEH did. He had less yards and the same amount of TD in the same number of games his Y/A was about the same and his Y/R was about 1 yard less. Nobody would argue that Moss was more valuable than CEH this year. All this is saying is the Bills got more value getting the type of production they did out of Moss by taking him in RD3 than the Chiefs did by taking CEH in RD1. They're almost equal in terms of surplus value, it's basically negligible. 

 

If the Chiefs were to have taken Moss in RD1 and gotten the production out of him that the Bills did this year, they would have extracted negative value because he didn't live up to 1st round value. Heck, if they took Gabe Davis there and got the same production from him that Buffalo did they would have been penalized as well. It's not trying to tell you that it would have been better for KC to take Moss or Davis in RD1, it's just saying the Bills got a better value taking Moss in RD3 or Davis in RD4. It incorporates production AND where they player is drafted. Davis and Moss aren't more valuable if they're drafted earlier, CEH is EVEN MORE valuable if he some how slips and gets drafted later.

 

Say the Bills take Epenesa in RD3 as opposed to RD2, they would still have gotten penalized for the selection because he wasn't very productive. But the penalization would be less severe because he performed closer to the level expected from a 3rd round pick than the level of a 2nd round pick.

 

The last thing I want to point out is it's not really fair to compare Buffalo's draft class to KC's draft class just using yards, sacks, INTs and what not. You're using rookie class as your line of demarcation which is fine if that's how you're going to break it down for your purposes, but KC had 5 defensive rookies compared to Buffalo's 2 defensive rookies. So yes they had 8.5 sacks and 3 Ints to Buffalo's 1 sack and 1 Int, but you have more players to out there playing and producing than Buffalo does. It would be better to look at that all on a per snap basis or per game basis.

 

Just like comparing CEH total yards to Buffalo's rookie class is tough to do. KC had 1 offensive rookie and BUF had 2. Yes, he had 1,100 yards of total offense on 217 touches and 5 TDs compared to Davis and Moss who had 1,175 on 162 touches and 12 TDs. That's more value out of one player, he also out touched them by 55 touches. Volume and opportunity matters, so again it would probably be better to look at these numbers on a per snap basis or per game basis.

 

Again, as it's laid out above, all I am showing you is the value extracted. Nobody is saying Moss is more valuable than CEH, he would have been a bad pick at 32. His production was just good value for Buffalo in RD3. 

I do understand every single word you’ve said.  It’s just flawed no matter how you slice it.

 

Buffalo’s highest pick was DE Epenesa at 54.  He was clearly outperformed by Kansas City’s DE, Danna, drafted 123 picks later.

 

Each team picked a RB.  Moss went with pick 86.  CEH went with pick 32.  CEH had double the yards in the regular season and equal TDs, but CEH is still adding value in the postseason with a TD on Sunday and will be the feature back in the Super Bowl.  Moss’s production was replacement level from a third rounder.  CEH had 1100 yards in 13 games.  
 

Both team’s best player so far was taken in the 4th round.  Davis was taken ahead of Sneed and, while solid, Sneed’s production as a shutdown corner dwarfed Davis’s 599 yards and 7 TDs.

 

That’s pretty much it for Buffalo’s rookie production unless you want to count a 6th round Kicker who was solid, but KC grabbed a Punter as an UDFA who was also solid, so that’s basically a wash.

 

Then there’s the Chiefs second round pick, Willie Gay Jr. who will be a starting LB in the Super Bowl.  There’s also UDFA Tershawn Wharton who played 50% of the snaps at DT and 2 sacks, and forced a fumble which he recovered.

 

The ONLY thing you can point to that shows some “surplus value” would be the fact that Moss was taken a round and a half after CEH, but he was also vastly outplayed by Clyde.

 

There is simply too large a chasm between the production of the two classes to pretend that Buffalo outdrafted (to this point) Kansas City because of some nebulous concept of “surplus value”.  
 

The Chiefs have impact rookie starters at RB, LB, and CB plus major contributions at DE and DT.

 

Buffalo got a nice #4 WR, a rotational RB, and a Kicker.

 

Any system that grades the latter above the former is laughable.

[JGMcD2]

41 minutes ago, Billl said:

I do understand every single word you’ve said.  It’s just flawed no matter how you slice it.

 

Buffalo’s highest pick was DE Epenesa at 54.  He was clearly outperformed by Kansas City’s DE, Danna, drafted 123 picks later.

 

Each team picked a RB.  Moss went with pick 86.  CEH went with pick 32.  CEH had double the yards in the regular season and equal TDs, but CEH is still adding value in the postseason with a TD on Sunday and will be the feature back in the Super Bowl.  Moss’s production was replacement level from a third rounder.  CEH had 1100 yards in 13 games.  
 

Both team’s best player so far was taken in the 4th round.  Davis was taken ahead of Sneed and, while solid, Sneed’s production as a shutdown corner dwarfed Davis’s 599 yards and 7 TDs.

 

That’s pretty much it for Buffalo’s rookie production unless you want to count a 6th round Kicker who was solid, but KC grabbed a Punter as an UDFA who was also solid, so that’s basically a wash.

 

Then there’s the Chiefs second round pick, Willie Gay Jr. who will be a starting LB in the Super Bowl.  There’s also UDFA Tershawn Wharton who played 50% of the snaps at DT and 2 sacks, and forced a fumble which he recovered.

 

The ONLY thing you can point to that shows some “surplus value” would be the fact that Moss was taken a round and a half after CEH, but he was also vastly outplayed by Clyde.

 

There is simply too large a chasm between the production of the two classes to pretend that Buffalo outdrafted (to this point) Kansas City because of some nebulous concept of “surplus value”.  
 

The Chiefs have impact rookie starters at RB, LB, and CB plus major contributions at DE and DT.

 

Buffalo got a nice #4 WR, a rotational RB, and a Kicker.

 

Any system that grades the latter above the former is laughable.

Yes, Epenesa was clearly out performed by Danna and the Chiefs were rewarded for that. 
 

I don’t understand why you keep bringing up postseason stats, it’s a limited sample size. It’s important in the entire scope of things, but in predicting things you can’t just go off of one game. Nobody in sports analytics incorporates playoff data into anything because it’s so limited. Saying that because CEH’s team has gone further in the playoffs, therefore that makes him a better player is... flawed. It’s like saying Tremaine Edmunds is a better linebacker than Darius Leonard because Tremaine’s team went further and he was a starter. 
 

Once again, I’m not valuing rookie classes in valuing draft classes. If you would like to present a way to evaluate UDFA or a better way to evaluate draft classes, be my guest. You’re still failing to do so, while yelling about yards, sacks, touchdowns and whatever else. The ironic part, is that those numbers are used to calculate Approximate Value. 
 

If you give Zack Moss the same amount of touches as CEH, he produces nearly the same. If Moss touches the ball 217 times he puts up 1000 yards and 9 touchdowns to CEH touching the ball 217 times with 1100 yards and 5 touchdowns. 
 

It’s as much about opportunity as it is performance. Buffalo got more yards and touchdowns on less touches for a 3rd and 4th round round pick than KC got for their 1st round pick. 
 

It’s not a nebulous concept. It’s a concept used in finance, it’s used in baseball (See MoneyBall) as well as various other places. 
 

Just answer this question...

 

You can spend a 1st round pick and you receive the following...

 

217 touches, 1,100 yards and 5 TDs

 

or

 

You can spend a 3rd round pick and a 4th round pick and receive the following...

 

162 touches, 1,175 yards and 12 TDs

 

Which would you rather have? What’s a better bang for your buck? It’s the exact same concept Billy Beane used when replacing Jason Giambi.

Edited January 26, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Billl]

28 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

 

Just answer this question...

 

You can spend a 1st round pick and you receive the following...

 

217 touches, 1,100 yards and 5 TDs

 

or

 

You can spend a 3rd round pick and a 4th round pick and receive the following...

 

162 touches, 1,175 yards and 12 TDs

What an amazing cherry pick.  You just compared the two most productive players from the Bills class.  Scratch that.  You just compared the ENTIRETY of the production of the Bills draft class to one pick from the Chiefs class.  Were all of the Bills apples more productive in 29 games played than one of the Chiefs oranges was in 13 games played?  Sure.  Would any GM in the league, if given the option, take Davis and Moss over Edwards-Elaire?  Absolutely not.

 

That said, the rest of the Bills class to date has netted a roughly average season by a Kicker and absolutely nothing else.  The rest of the Chiefs class has produced a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a DE who played 50% of the snaps.

 

I just don’t get why this is even a conversation.  Without Davis, who had a solid but unspectacular season as a #4 Wideout, the Bills draft has been a total bust.  Again, it’s way way too early to start labeling picks as busts, but if we’re talking about one season of sample size...yikes.

 

Epenesa (who I wanted the Chiefs to draft) just doesn’t look like an NFL player walking out of the locker room, and his performance on the field has been negligible.  So far, he looks like a bad pick.

 

Moss looks like a guy with some power in short yardage but who has no speed and no value catching the ball out of the backfield.  There are 50 guys on practice squads who can do that.  After consecutive drafts taking a RB in the third round, the Bills biggest hole on offense is at RB.  Looks like a bad pick.

 

Davis has looked good.  He doesn’t look elite, but he could turn into a nice piece.  Good pick.

 

Bass...was a kicker taken in the 6th round.  That’s a total waste of a pick.  He’d likely have been available as an UDFA.  If not, Sloman or Blankenship would have been.  
 

The rest didn’t even see the field.  
 

Let’s talk “value” though.  The Bills made selections worth 580 points according to the draft value chart.  The Chiefs made selections worth 1040 points.  If you throw out the first round pick to make a more fair comparison, KC had 450 points.  For the sake of discussion, we can call that even.  Buffalo got the players mentioned above (11 total starts) while Kansas City has a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a productive rotational DE.  How’s that for surplus value?

 

[JGMcD2]

5 minutes ago, Billl said:

What an amazing cherry pick.  You just compared the two most productive players from the Bills class.  Scratch that.  You just compared the ENTIRETY of the production of the Bills draft class to one pick from the Chiefs class.  Were all of the Bills apples more productive in 29 games played than one of the Chiefs oranges was in 13 games played?  Sure.  Would any GM in the league, if given the option, take Davis and Moss over Edwards-Elaire?  Absolutely not.

 

That said, the rest of the Bills class to date has netted a roughly average season by a Kicker and absolutely nothing else.  The rest of the Chiefs class has produced a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a DE who played 50% of the snaps.

 

I just don’t get why this is even a conversation.  Without Davis, who had a solid but unspectacular season as a #4 Wideout, the Bills draft has been a total bust.  Again, it’s way way too early to start labeling picks as busts, but if we’re talking about one season of sample size...yikes.

 

Epenesa (who I wanted the Chiefs to draft) just doesn’t look like an NFL player walking out of the locker room, and his performance on the field has been negligible.  So far, he looks like a bad pick.

 

Moss looks like a guy with some power in short yardage but who has no speed and no value catching the ball out of the backfield.  There are 50 guys on practice squads who can do that.  After consecutive drafts taking a RB in the third round, the Bills biggest hole on offense is at RB.  Looks like a bad pick.

 

Davis has looked good.  He doesn’t look elite, but he could turn into a nice piece.  Good pick.

 

Bass...was a kicker taken in the 6th round.  That’s a total waste of a pick.  He’d likely have been available as an UDFA.  If not, Sloman or Blankenship would have been.  
 

The rest didn’t even see the field.  
 

Let’s talk “value” though.  The Bills made selections worth 580 points according to the draft value chart.  The Chiefs made selections worth 1040 points.  If you throw out the first round pick to make a more fair comparison, KC had 450 points.  For the sake of discussion, we can call that even.  Buffalo got the players mentioned above (11 total starts) while Kansas City has a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a productive rotational DE.  How’s that for surplus value?

 

I used touches for a reason. It’s ok man, you don’t understand how numbers work. If you decided to try and learn rather than push back, it would likely benefit you. 
 

Takes names out of it. You’re telling me every GM in the league would rather have 217 touches 1,100 yards and 5 TDs over 162 touches 1,175 yards and 12 TDs? 
 

I’m taking SUBJECTIVE concepts out of this here and looking at things OBJECTIVELY. It has nothing to do with how Bass compares to a kicker... it has to do with how he compares to the value in the board when the team picks in that round. It’s how well the GM does given the value available at that pick. You’re rewarded or penalized.

 

Now you’re using draft pick points? Come on man. Pick 86 and 128 cost 204 points and pick 32 cost 590. Who got more value for their production? 

[Billl]

1 hour ago, JGMcD2 said:

 

If you give Zack Moss the same amount of touches as CEH, he produces nearly the same. If Moss touches the ball 217 times he puts up 1000 yards and 9 touchdowns to CEH touching the ball 217 times with 1100 yards and 5 touchdowns

This is another gem of an argument.  Moss is a short yardage back.  You don’t get to just double his touches and say he’d have doubled his TDs.  It doesn’t work that way.  Otherwise, John Brown would have thrown 572 touchdown passes if they had let him throw as many passes as Allen did.  If Moss could have put up 85 yards per game as a feature back, he’d be the feature back.  He’s not exactly backing up Thurman Thomas.  McDermott would relegate Singletary to spot duty in a heartbeat if he had a feature back on the roster.

[Billl]

1 minute ago, JGMcD2 said:

 

Takes names out of it. You’re telling me every GM in the league would rather have 217 touches 1,100 yards and 5 TDs over 162 touches 1,175 yards and 12 TDs? 

You’re comparing stats using DIFFERENT POSITIONS.  Of course a WR is going to skew the stats on a per touch basis versus a RB.  
 

Let’s “take names out of it” again.  Would you rather have 240 touches, 1925 yards, and 25 TDs or 378 touches, 2027 yards, and 19 TDs?

 

If you chose the first, congratulations.  You got Robert Tonyan, Jonnu Smith, and David Johnson.  I’ll stick with Derrick Henry.

[Ya Digg?]

21 hours ago, Billl said:

There was a football game played last night.

 

Epenesa had one tackle and no other stats.

Bass kicked 4 FGs and missed a PAT.

Davis had 3 targets without a catch.

If any other rookies played, they didn’t register on the stat sheet.

 

Edwards-Elaire  had a rushing TD.

Sneed played lockdown coverage, made 5 tackles, and had a 15 yard sack.

Danna and Wharton each had a tackle.

Townsend had a punt and held 5 PATs and a FG.

 

Not super interested in any metric that favors the first group.

 

Haha I'm sorry I don't mean to nitpick and I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying, but when I read that part right there it made me laugh out loud - like it's some amazing skill to hold the ball on a field goal or extra point!!  😆

[Billl]

31 minutes ago, Ya Digg? said:

Haha I'm sorry I don't mean to nitpick and I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying, but when I read that part right there it made me laugh out loud - like it's some amazing skill to hold the ball on a field goal or extra point!!  😆

Yeah, that was a passive aggressive joke about not needing a punter. 😇

[JGMcD2]

2 hours ago, Billl said:

You’re comparing stats using DIFFERENT POSITIONS.  Of course a WR is going to skew the stats on a per touch basis versus a RB.  
 

Let’s “take names out of it” again.  Would you rather have 240 touches, 1925 yards, and 25 TDs or 378 touches, 2027 yards, and 19 TDs?

 

If you chose the first, congratulations.  You got Robert Tonyan, Jonnu Smith, and David Johnson.  I’ll stick with Derrick Henry.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. You’re sharp man, it was good going back and forth with you and I did pick some things up. I think it’s unfair you’re throwing this out because it does a good job with more data. I said this year  wasn’t very stable because the sample size is small. 

I would still love some suggestions on how to fix this so it’s not stupid. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Billl]

50 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. You’re sharp man, it was good going back and forth with you and I did pick some things up. I think it’s unfair you’re throwing this out because it does a good job with more data. I said this year  wasn’t very stable because the sample size is small. 

I would still love some suggestions on how to fix this so it’s not stupid. 

I guess I didn’t realize that this was your own creation.  You’re never going to achieve consensus trying to quantify the unquantifiable, but you need it to pass the common sense test.  If I were to put something similar together, I would start by combining methods that are already established.  For example, draft value charts aren’t exact, but they’re pretty good in terms of estimating trade equivalencies.  My step 1 would be to total up the draft value points used.

 

My second step would be to find a measure of determining a player’s contribution irrespective of draft position.  There are plenty of versions of these as well, so it’s a matter of picking your favorite.  For the sake of argument, I’ll go with Pro-football-reference.com and their Approximate Value stat.  It’s far from perfect (I don’t think Fred Warner had a better season than Patrick Mahomes, for example), but it’s a decent jumping off point.  (That said, it has Willie Gay at 4 and Sneed at 3, so even this method is going to be terrible.)

An possibly better, though more tedious, way would be to reference a redraft and assign players values based on the draft chart value of their redraft position.  Here’s one that I found, but I have no idea on its quality.  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2926937-redrafting-the-2020-nfl-draft

It shows Sneed at 25 and CEH at 32, for reference.

 

From there, I would take the sum total of AAV (or redraft score) of the draft class and divide it by the total draft chart points.

 

A quick example using Sneed and CEH would show that 627 points of draft value were used on them in the actual draft.  The redraft positions are worth 1310 points, so they would have a “surplus value” of 109% (they returned 2.09 points of value for every point spent on them).  
 

Justin Jefferson returned 1700 points in the redraft versus the 780 points spent on him, so he had a surplus value of 920 points.  (As  I think about it, I don’t really like the percentage method much, as it really overvalues a seventh rounder who may have had a draft value of 3 points who would have gone in the sixth round with a value of 12 points for a 400% return whereas a Justin Herbert was drafted at a cost of 1600 and a redraft taking him first overall would score him at 3000 points for less than a 200% return.)

 

One note is that UDFAs should absolutely be included in any method and given a draft capital score of 0?

 

 

[JGMcD2]

36 minutes ago, Billl said:

I guess I didn’t realize that this was your own creation.  You’re never going to achieve consensus trying to quantify the unquantifiable, but you need it to pass the common sense test.  If I were to put something similar together, I would start by combining methods that are already established.  For example, draft value charts aren’t exact, but they’re pretty good in terms of estimating trade equivalencies.  My step 1 would be to total up the draft value points used.

 

My second step would be to find a measure of determining a player’s contribution irrespective of draft position.  There are plenty of versions of these as well, so it’s a matter of picking your favorite.  For the sake of argument, I’ll go with Pro-football-reference.com and their Approximate Value stat.  It’s far from perfect (I don’t think Fred Warner had a better season than Patrick Mahomes, for example), but it’s a decent jumping off point.  (That said, it has Willie Gay at 4 and Sneed at 3, so even this method is going to be terrible.)

An possibly better, though more tedious, way would be to reference a redraft and assign players values based on the draft chart value of their redraft position.  Here’s one that I found, but I have no idea on its quality.  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2926937-redrafting-the-2020-nfl-draft

It shows Sneed at 25 and CEH at 32, for reference.

 

From there, I would take the sum total of AAV (or redraft score) of the draft class and divide it by the total draft chart points.

 

A quick example using Sneed and CEH would show that 627 points of draft value were used on them in the actual draft.  The redraft positions are worth 1310 points, so they would have a “surplus value” of 109% (they returned 2.09 points of value for every point spent on them).  
 

Justin Jefferson returned 1700 points in the redraft versus the 780 points spent on him, so he had a surplus value of 920 points.  (As  I think about it, I don’t really like the percentage method much, as it really overvalues a seventh rounder who may have had a draft value of 3 points who would have gone in the sixth round with a value of 12 points for a 400% return whereas a Justin Herbert was drafted at a cost of 1600 and a redraft taking him first overall would score him at 3000 points for less than a 200% return.)

 

One note is that UDFAs should absolutely be included in any method and given a draft capital score of 0?

 

 

Thanks, this is very well thought out.

 

Related to your second step, I did find a measure of determining a player's contribution irrespective of draft position. I did use Pro Football Reference's Approximate Value metric in order to create this. I don't mean to be rude, but you told me you fully understood everything that was laid out in this analysis, but you didn't know that I used AV?

 

What I did was found the average value of a player drafted in each round (I'm toying with switching to median for several reasons). The average value won't be the same each draft, because teams are only selecting from a limited pool of players. What I am trying to do is to see how GMs perform against other GMs in extracting value from the round compared to their peers. After I found the average value of 1st round pick, 2nd round pick, 3rd round pick, etc. I subtracted the player's AV from the average value of a player picked in that round to determine the TOT_NETAV. This is how much better that player was than the average player picked in the same round as them in their draft class. 

 

The Chiefs netted positive value from all their picks, outside of their 3rd rounder who opted out, because he was drafted high and didn't contribute, it penalized the Chiefs pretty significantly. Had he just been Net 0 the Chiefs draft class would have graded out better than Buffalo. It's likely over time, with more data (which makes things more stable) things will lean towards the Chiefs. 

 

I do like the idea of using the draft trade points, but if I am not mistaking those points are based on all-time draft value. I don't necessarily think that fits what I am trying to do, because I believe each draft is its own world. I may try and find a way to incorporate it, and it's something that crossed my mind but I couldn't determine the best way. My issue is the talent level varies, so GMs shouldn't be penalized for drafting an average player in a weak draft, when compared to their peers selections in that same draft, they actually found more value with their picks. Basically each year, GMs can only work with and select the talent made available to them in the draft, historical value of those picks isn't necessarily predictive of what players in a given draft class will do.

 

I can definitely do something with UDFA the more I think about it, it's just harder for me to accumulate the information that I need to. I will have to do most of it by hand.

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Mikie2times]

On 1/25/2021 at 1:34 PM, JGMcD2 said:

I put this together about 2 months ago, but with the season over and AV now updated, I figured it would be a good time to revisit. I agree with a lot of the posters saying that we're missing pieces. Of course we are, but I'm tired of the assertions that we need to draft better. We've objectively been THE BEST drafting team in the NFL from 2017-2019. I don't feel comfortable using a 1 year sample from 2020 just yet, but truthfully at this point it will drop the Bills 1 MAYBE 2 spots overall (I haven't had the chance to break it all down yet, but I will update when I do). 

 

I know people are going to try and rip this to shreds as stupid, but I have read numerous articles using AV as a way to compare draft classes. Many on The Athletic, like this article where they evaluate the Saints 2017 draft class using AV (my original analysis was done almost 3 weeks prior to this coming out, and yes it reflects the Saints having the best draft class in 2017 by a wide margin).

 

Here is my methodology from the original post...

 

Nobody really had a great way to measure success in the draft outside of their perception of a player... I wanted to make an attempt at examining this objectively. Pro Football Reference has their Weighted Approximate Value which assigns a value to a player based on their performance. It's not an all encompassing stat like WAR is in baseball, it definitely has its flaws, but PFR said it's steady to use to measure draft success. I'm going to dive into the results below on the draft, as well as some analysis I have done of the FA signings. Nothing is really over the top, I'm going to take some feedback and try to refine this. I had to do a lot of it by hand in excel and couldn't just scrape everything because different pieces were all over.

 

I chose 2017 specifically because that is when Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane arrived. Some folks want to argue that Beane shouldn't get credit for that draft and FA, which is perfectly fine. I am in the camp that believes McDermott and Beane are in lockstep, they make up the upper management of the football department, therefore the decisions made since 2017 have been made with certain goals in mind. I don't feel the need to omit 2017 because it was scrambled, it's very clear these two are close and the decisions made were made by McBeane in some way, shape or form starting in 2017. 

 

"Sometimes, for example if you want to assess a trade or determine the top draft classes of all time, you need a metric that is capable of comparing players across positions and eras. In baseball and basketball, lots of stats have been cooked up to do this, and they can do so with a reasonable degree of precision. In football, no such stat exists. In most cases, people use "starter" or "number of years as a starter" or "number of pro bowls" as the metric when they have to compare across positions.

AV is intended to be an improvement over those metrics, and nothing more. It is not Not NOT an ubermetric whose purpose is to decide once and for all who the best players in NFL history were." - Doug from PFR

 

The career AV is computed by summing 
100 percent of the AV of his best season,
95 percent of the AV of his next-best season,
90 percent of the AV of his third-best season,
and so on 

 

What I did was found the average value for a player drafted in each round (1-7) in each year (2017-2019) and the calculated what I am calling the Net Drafted Accumulated Value (NETDrAV) for each pick in each round. I only compared each draft to itself. I then found the Total Net Drafted Accumulated Value (TOT_NETDrAV) for each team in each draft and ranked them against each other. Rather than just looking at how much raw value the Bills brought in as compared to the 31 other teams, this gives an idea of how much extra value they extracted in each round as compared to the 31 other teams in the league. 

 

TOT_NETDrAV is the AV that a team has benefitted from directly on their team as compared to players and teams in their draft class.

 

TOT_NETCarAV is just the pure amount of value that players drafted by a given team have produced as compared to players and teams in their draft class.

 

 

Yes, I agree that they're missing something, but this constant assertion that this regime are "average drafters" or that we "have too many busts" is flat out wrong. You are only good or bad by comparison, and they're better than the rest of the NFL. 

 

They've extracted more value than any other team in the league over their first 3 years in the NFL. This will continue to change as players perform, but right now they have a clearly performed well drafting. It's not even debatable, Buffalo, New Orleans and Baltimore have been far and away the best drafting teams in the NFL from 2017-2019.

 

Do we need more impact players? Yes, every team does and actively seeks them out. But this notion that we don't draft well is garbage, complete and utter garbage. 

I really applaud your efforts to evaluate this, that said AV in a sample size this small, used for this purpose, is subject to a lot of problems. It was created to be a one size fits all stat for value of a player across any time in league history and at any position. If you just read on how AV is calculated for football you would understand immediately it can’t be used nor was it intended to be used for this purpose.
 

As a simple example, just the success of a player like Brees, never drafted by the Saints, would automatically increase the AV of any drafted player that stepped on the field for the Saints on offense.
 

Did you not start to notice a pattern of the highest rated teams also being some of the more successful teams the last 3 years? In sum, with AV, if you have a top unit and some draft picks played on that unit, they will get more credit assigned just based on the way AV works, even if what is making it a top unit isn’t players you drafted. Further, if you draft a QB who plays on a top unit you basically go to the top regardless. That last part probably has some validity. That said, I’m certainly not labeling this regime good at drafting based on AV average or one player.
 

You would have a hard time naming more than 3-4 impact guys since 2017.  That said we have drafted droves of role players that have playing time, which certainly helps juice that AV score. 
 

Read for yourselves and decide how relevant this data is in evaluating draft classes.

 

 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index37a8.html

Edited January 27, 2021 by KzooMike

[JGMcD2]

39 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

I really applaud your efforts to evaluate this, that said AV in a sample size this small, used for this purpose, is subject to a lot of problems. It was created to be a one size fits all stat for value of a player across any time in league history and at any position. If you just read on how AV is calculated for football you would understand immediately it can’t be used nor was it intended to be used for this purpose.
 

As a simple example, just the success of a player like Brees, never drafted by the Saints, would automatically increase the AV of any drafted player that stepped on the field for the Saints on offense.
 

Did you not start to notice a pattern of the highest rated teams also being some of the more successful teams the last 3 years? In sum, with AV, if you have a top unit and some draft picks played on that unit, they will get more credit assigned just based on the way AV works, even if what is making it a top unit isn’t players you drafted. Further, if you draft a QB who plays on a top unit you basically go to the top regardless. That last part probably has some validity. That said, I’m certainly not labeling this regime good at drafting based on AV average or one player.
 

You would have a hard time naming more than 3-4 impact guys since 2017.  That said we have drafted droves of role players that have playing time, which certainly helps juice that AV score. 
 

Read for yourselves and decide how relevant this data is in evaluating draft classes.

 

 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index37a8.html

He talks about using it in the exact context you’re saying it’s not supposed to be used. 
 

“Essentially, AV is a substitute for --- and a significant improvement upon, in my opinion --- metrics like 'number of seasons as a starter' or 'number of times making the pro bowl' or the like. You should think of it as being essentially like those two metrics, but with interpolation in between. That is, 'number of seasons as a starter' is a reasonable starting point if you're trying to measure, say, how good a particular draft class is, or what kind of player you can expect to get with the #13 pick in the draft. But obviously some starters are better than others. Starters on good teams are, as a group, better than starters on bad teams. Starting WRs who had lots of receiving yards are, as a group, better than starting WRs who did not have many receiving yards. Starters who made the pro bowl are, as a group, better than starters who didn't, and so on. And non-starters aren't worthless, so they get some points too."

 

I am also pretty confident you didn’t actually read what I wrote. I’m not doing anything based on a team’s AV average. It’s based on how much better a player has been graded via AV than the average player drafted in the same round as them nor does it say they’re good at drafting based on drafting one player. 
 

I think you’re really missing the point, sure they only have 3-4 impact guys since 2017... how many teams have drafted more than that? I’m going to go out an a limb and say not many, and if they have it’s only 1-2 more. And why wouldn’t a team be rewarded for getting value out of the draft? They’re not role players if they’re starting on a Playoff Caliber team... look at excerpt above. Starters on good teams, as a group are better than starters on bad teams. 
 

You’re dismissing the concept of finding role players, but other teams simply don’t do that well. You can’t take for granted the value of finding contributors. While I concede you need impact players, you cannot expect to get them with every pick. The better you do finding contributors in the draft, the more options you have as an organization. Accumulating a lot productive talent with no non-productive talent is better than accumulating some productive talent and some non-productive talent. 
 

That’s unbelievably common in professional scouting... just because a player is getting playing time on a bad team and putting up numbers doesn’t mean he should be rewarded greater than a player on a good team who is facing challenges for touches but is still producing at a high level. The player producing moderately on a great team is more valuable than the player producing well as the only option on a bad team. There are only so many touches to go around. 
 

The final point is that a gave a point of caution to the small sample size and how drafts that the 2017 draft is a much more accurate reflection of the value than 2020, as the 2020 draft is really just a snapshot in time at this moment. 
 

EDIT: More Excerpts 

 

Which teams have done the best jobs of drafting? To answer this, we'd need a tool that measures value across positions. Likewise, this post about how teams are built could be made more accurate. Instead of simply counting a starter as a starter, we could weight the more important starters more heavily, and we could include the non-starters as well. In other words, instead of saying things like "Team X got 4 of its 22 starters in the first round", we could say more meaningful things like, "Team X got 31% of its contributions from first round picks."

 

The value approximation method is a tool that is used to make judgements not about individual seasons, but about groups of seasons. The key word is approximation, as this is the one tool in our assortment which makes no attempt to measure anything precisely. The purpose of the value approximation method is to render things large and obvious in a mathemtatical statement, and thus capapble of being put to use so as to reach other conclusions.

 

 

Win shares is a top-down approach which starts with the number of games a team won, and then attempts to assign credit to players, proportionally based on their statistics.

 

It’s not identical to win shares, but it uses the same methodology. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Big Turk]

5 hours ago, Billl said:

What an amazing cherry pick.  You just compared the two most productive players from the Bills class.  Scratch that.  You just compared the ENTIRETY of the production of the Bills draft class to one pick from the Chiefs class.  Were all of the Bills apples more productive in 29 games played than one of the Chiefs oranges was in 13 games played?  Sure.  Would any GM in the league, if given the option, take Davis and Moss over Edwards-Elaire?  Absolutely not.

 

That said, the rest of the Bills class to date has netted a roughly average season by a Kicker and absolutely nothing else.  The rest of the Chiefs class has produced a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a DE who played 50% of the snaps.

 

I just don’t get why this is even a conversation.  Without Davis, who had a solid but unspectacular season as a #4 Wideout, the Bills draft has been a total bust.  Again, it’s way way too early to start labeling picks as busts, but if we’re talking about one season of sample size...yikes.

 

Epenesa (who I wanted the Chiefs to draft) just doesn’t look like an NFL player walking out of the locker room, and his performance on the field has been negligible.  So far, he looks like a bad pick.

 

Moss looks like a guy with some power in short yardage but who has no speed and no value catching the ball out of the backfield.  There are 50 guys on practice squads who can do that.  After consecutive drafts taking a RB in the third round, the Bills biggest hole on offense is at RB.  Looks like a bad pick.

 

Davis has looked good.  He doesn’t look elite, but he could turn into a nice piece.  Good pick.

 

Bass...was a kicker taken in the 6th round.  That’s a total waste of a pick.  He’d likely have been available as an UDFA.  If not, Sloman or Blankenship would have been.  
 

The rest didn’t even see the field.  
 

Let’s talk “value” though.  The Bills made selections worth 580 points according to the draft value chart.  The Chiefs made selections worth 1040 points.  If you throw out the first round pick to make a more fair comparison, KC had 450 points.  For the sake of discussion, we can call that even.  Buffalo got the players mentioned above (11 total starts) while Kansas City has a starting LB, a #1 CB, and a productive rotational DE.  How’s that for surplus value?

 

 

CEH was nothing special this year. Not sure what he did to deserve the excessive ball washing everyone seems to be giving him. James Robinson and Jonathan Taylor had better years than he did as rookies.

[Mikie2times]

21 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

He talks about using it in the exact context you’re saying it’s not supposed to be used. 
 

“Essentially, AV is a substitute for --- and a significant improvement upon, in my opinion --- metrics like 'number of seasons as a starter' or 'number of times making the pro bowl' or the like. You should think of it as being essentially like those two metrics, but with interpolation in between. That is, 'number of seasons as a starter' is a reasonable starting point if you're trying to measure, say, how good a particular draft class is, or what kind of player you can expect to get with the #13 pick in the draft. But obviously some starters are better than others. Starters on good teams are, as a group, better than starters on bad teams. Starting WRs who had lots of receiving yards are, as a group, better than starting WRs who did not have many receiving yards. Starters who made the pro bowl are, as a group, better than starters who didn't, and so on. And non-starters aren't worthless, so they get some points too."

Like I said, I applaud your efforts to solve what can’t be solved. But instead of using articles or partial sections I encourage you to discuss how AV is calculated in its entirety if you wish to defend against what I’m saying. Not just use partial sections. I’ve read that entire document and all the sub documents on how AV came to be a long time ago. 

 

Look at the Correlation between win % and your list, it’s very strong, now is that because they drafted well or is based on how AV is calculated? It assigns greater value to higher performing units. High performing units can be a result of one player you didn’t draft and 5 you did who are essentially role players. Those 5 players then get assigned much more value then if they played in moderate performing units.
 

Just look at how

many draft picks we started on defense since 2017 in context with it being a high performing unit. That said, who is the star? Tre is for sure, then you have  Edmonds? Milano? Well, you don’t need much more than that once you throw Allen in. QB gets assigned the most points of all. 
 

This regime has a moderate draft record. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s certainly not the best. This analysis is causation/correlation. We are good. We have started a lot of draft picks. Most of those draft picks aren’t primary reasons we are good. They are complimentary players with only a couple qualifying as players we have to retain. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by KzooMike

[MJS]

I remember this from before and really liked your methodology then. I believe we had a conversation about AV used to show the quality of free agent pickups over the same timeframe and I believe you showed that Buffalo shows well with their free agents too, correct? So, great at drafting and great at free agent signings as far as value added is concerned. Beane is clearly a great GM and if he keeps it up he'll be in the hall of fame one day.

 

I think people tend to look at the busts and ignore some of the successes. And they also look at their team in a vacuum, not understanding that EVERY team in the league has draft picks that bust and free agents that don't work out. People assume that the average success rate is much higher than it actually is.

 

Good stuff. I'd like to see this analysis continued for future seasons.

2 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

Like I said, I applaud your efforts to solve what can’t be solved. But instead of using articles or partial sections I encourage you to discuss how AV is calculated in its entirety if you wish to defend against what I’m saying. Not just use partial sections. I’ve read that entire document and all the sub documents on how AV came to be a long time ago. 

 

Look at the Correlation between win % and your list, it’s very strong, now is that because they drafted well or is based on how AV is calculated? It assigns greater value to higher performing units. High performing units can be a result of one player you didn’t draft and 5 you did who are essentially role players. Those 5 players then get assigned much more value then if they played in moderate performing units.
 

Just look at how

many draft picks we started on defense since 2017 in context with it being a high performing unit. That said, who is the star? Tre is for sure, then you have  Edmonds? Milano? What else do we have? Do Edmonds and Milano even count? Well, you don’t need much more than that once you throw Allen in. QB gets assigned the most points of all. 
 

This regime has a moderate draft record. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s certainly not the best. This analysis is causation/correlation. We are good. We have started a lot of draft picks. Most if those draft picks aren’t primary reasons we are good. They are complimentary players with only a couple qualifying as players we have to retain. 

I think you are dead wrong. What metrics are you using to back this up? You are just going by your gut. You are assuming a higher success rate for the NFL than is actual. You are also making huge assumptions with the AV metric that may or may not be true (and are likely false).

[Mikie2times]

9 minutes ago, MJS said:

I remember this from before and really liked your methodology then. I believe we had a conversation about AV used to show the quality of free agent pickups over the same timeframe and I believe you showed that Buffalo shows well with their free agents too, correct? So, great at drafting and great at free agent signings as far as value added is concerned. Beane is clearly a great GM and if he keeps it up he'll be in the hall of fame one day.

 

I think people tend to look at the busts and ignore some of the successes. And they also look at their team in a vacuum, not understanding that EVERY team in the league has draft picks that bust and free agents that don't work out. People assume that the average success rate is much higher than it actually is.

 

Good stuff. I'd like to see this analysis continued for future seasons.

I think you are dead wrong. What metrics are you using to back this up? You are just going by your gut. You are assuming a higher success rate for the NFL than is actual. You are also making huge assumptions with the AV metric that may or may not be true (and are likely false).

Lmao....read the link I posted. All of it. By default, any player on a higher performing unit who starts games gets more AV assigned. So by default any team that performs better has a higher AV assigned to players in that unit. Look at the correlation on his list with win% and do your own research. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by KzooMike

[MJS]

1 minute ago, KzooMike said:

Lmao....read the link I posted. All of it. By default, any player on a higher performing unit who starts games gets more AV assigned. So by default any team that performs better has a higher AV assigned to players in that unit. Look at the correlation on his list as do your own research. 

I've done my research. AV is a good metric. They do their best to isolate each player. Obviously that's not always possible. But their grades match closely, in my opinion, to what we see on the field from these players. And I'm not talking only about Bills players. I haven't actually looked at the grades for Bills players much. But I have looked league wide and at grades for historical players.

[JGMcD2]

23 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

Like I said, I applaud your efforts to solve what can’t be solved. But instead of using articles or partial sections I encourage you to discuss how AV is calculated in its entirety if you wish to defend against what I’m saying. Not just use partial sections. I’ve read that entire document and all the sub documents on how AV came to be a long time ago. 

 

Look at the Correlation between win % and your list, it’s very strong, now is that because they drafted well or is based on how AV is calculated? It assigns greater value to higher performing units. High performing units can be a result of one player you didn’t draft and 5 you did who are essentially role players. Those 5 players then get assigned much more value then if they played in moderate performing units.
 

Just look at how

many draft picks we started on defense since 2017 in context with it being a high performing unit. That said, who is the star? Tre is for sure, then you have  Edmonds? Milano? Well, you don’t need much more than that once you throw Allen in. QB gets assigned the most points of all. 
 

This regime has a moderate draft record. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s certainly not the best. This analysis is causation/correlation. We are good. We have started a lot of draft picks. Most of those draft picks aren’t primary reasons we are good. They are complimentary players with only a couple qualifying as players we have to retain. 

I’m defending against your obviously wrong point that says AV wasn’t designed to be used to evaluate draft classes. I don’t even need to continue after that, because you’re off base. 
 

You can look at the individual years as well if you’d like... in 2017 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Chargers, Texans, Vikings, Panthers). 
 

LAC: Playoffs 1/4 times since 2017

HOU: Playoffs 2/4

MIN: 2/4

Panthers 1/4

 

Combined 6/16
 

In 2018 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Falcons, 49ers, Eagles, Lions). 
 

ATL: Playoffs 0/3 years since 2018

49ers: Playoffs 1/3 years since 2018

Eagles: Playoffs 2/3 years 

Lions: Playoffs 0/3

Combined 3/12

 

In 2019 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Dolphins, 49ers, Raiders, Cardinals). 
 

Dolphins: 0/2

Raiders: 0/2

Cardinals: 0/2

Combined 0/6 

 

In 2020 4/10 teams again didn’t make the playoffs (LAC, CAR, CIN, NYG) 

 

0/4 this year 

 

You’ve got 16 top 10 drafts and they’ve made the playoffs 9 times out of 36 possible chances? 25% of the time they’re making the playoffs and this is favoring good teams? 

14 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

Lmao....read the link I posted. All of it. By default, any player on a higher performing unit who starts games gets more AV assigned. So by default any team that performs better has a higher AV assigned to players in that unit. Look at the correlation on his list with win% and do your own research. 

You really don’t think I sat down and read all of that BEFORE I put all of this together? That’s how I knew exactly where to find everything that eradicated your statement that “It’s not supposed to be used like this.” 

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Mikie2times]

1 minute ago, MJS said:

I've done my research. AV is a good metric. They do their best to isolate each player. Obviously that's not always possible. But their grades match closely, in my opinion, to what we see on the field from these players. And I'm not talking only about Bills players. I haven't actually looked at the grades for Bills players much. But I have looked league wide and at grades for historical players.

I agree AV is an excellent tool once the dust settles. But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.
 

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

1 minute ago, KzooMike said:

I agree AV is an excellent tool once the dust settles. But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.
 

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

 

6 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

I’m defending against your obviously wrong point that says AV wasn’t designed to be used to evaluate draft classes. I don’t even need to continue after that, because you’re off base. 
 

You can look at the individual years as well if you’d like... in 2017 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Chargers, Texans, Vikings, Panthers). 
 

LAC: Playoffs 1/4 times since 2017

HOU: Playoffs 2/4

MIN: 2/4

Panthers 1/4

 

Combined 6/16
 

In 2018 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Falcons, 49ers, Eagles, Lions). 
 

ATL: Playoffs 0/3 years since 2018

49ers: Playoffs 1/3 years since 2018

Eagles: Playoffs 2/3 years 

Lions: Playoffs 0/3

Combined 3/12

 

In 2019 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Dolphins, 49ers, Raiders, Cardinals). 
 

Dolphins: 0/2

Raiders: 0/2

Cardinals: 0/2

Combined 0/6 

 

In 2020 4/10 teams again didn’t make the playoffs (LAC, CAR, CIN, NYG) 

 

0/4 this year 

You really don’t think I sat down and read all of that BEFORE I put all of this together? That’s how I knew exactly where to find everything that eradicated your statement that “It’s not supposed to be used like this.” 

You went this far. Care running number of wins by team from 2017-2020 against your final

roll up? See how lopsided this gets. Team is good, therefor they draft good. You said it yourself.  It follows the same concept as win shares. I can also run that data for you if you like tomorrow. 

[JGMcD2]

8 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

Look at the Correlation between win % and your list, it’s very strong, now is that because they drafted well or is based on how AV is calculated? It assigns greater value to higher performing units. High performing units can be a result of one player you didn’t draft and 5 you did who are essentially role players. Those 5 players then get assigned much more value then if they played in moderate performing units.

This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of value then, he lays it out. Players who start on good teams are much more valuable than players if they start on a bad team. It’s not that difficult. 

[MJS]

8 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

I agree AV is an excellent tool once the dust settles. But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.
 

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

Having elite players is not what that metric is about. Drafting well does not mean that you have a bunch of home grown elite players. You can draft a bunch of average starters and still have good AV relative to other teams. Another team could draft one or two elite players but the rest of their draft picks could be out of the league.

 

I think it makes perfect sense for the most successful teams, by wins and losses, to also be the teams who draft the best. And if you look at the teams on the top of the list, I think they do draft well and those teams are respected around the league for their ability to draft and develop players. Beane and the Buffalo Bills certainly get a ton of respect around the league as well.

 

I think where the metrics might be inflated are actually for the bad teams. They draft players and they start even if they suck because those bad teams have no other choice. So those bad players perhaps get a higher score even though they likely would not be playing at all or even make the roster of some of the good teams. And they try to account for that.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by MJS

[Mikie2times]

7 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of value then, he lays it out. Players who start on good teams are much more valuable than players if they start on a bad team. It’s not that difficult. 

Over the course of a career I agree with that statement. In this small a sample it’s really more about did they play for a good team or not.

 

 

I’m hitting the sack MJS, like I said. I applaud the work. I may not fully agree with how strongly you feel about it’s conclusions but I appreciate how you went about it. Look forward to future posts. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by KzooMike

[JGMcD2]

23 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.

Ironically the Packers have been one of the worst drafting teams over the past 4 years...

 

That AFC Championship numbers is skewed and you know it too. Beane and McDermott traded, cut or let every player walk that was drafted by previous regimes. They have legitimately have 4 draft classes to go off of... and I count 9 players that were listed as starters in the AFC Championship game on Sunday. It's nearly impossible for them to have trotted out a championship roster after purging the roster of past regimes picks and only having 4 drafts to bring in their own guys. 

 

23 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

 

You may very well be underestimating how BAD some teams are at actually drafting players. It wasn't intended to be a mic drop, and I've been perfectly candid about it not being completely perfect or even THE BEST, although I argue it's better than any completely subjective argument someone presents. I've been candid about newer drafts not necessarily being stable because of the small sample size, but the other thing you're not taking into account is each draft is compared to the performance of itself. It's how much more value White provided than drafting the average value of a player in the 1st round of his draft class. So it's not completely unstable either in recent years because you're comparing players with equal time in the league to each other... I would argue that recent drafts actually may favor weaker teams because there is more opportunity for drafted players to come in and play right away...

14 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

Over the course of a career I agree with that statement. In this small a sample it’s really more about did they play for a good team or not.

Yeah, but why wouldn't a rookie/younger player on a good team be rewarded for playing a significant amount of snaps? It's harder to gain the ability to contribute on a competitive team.

 

A rookie/younger guy on a bad team in the short term is likely going to have more opportunities to play right away than not.

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[JGMcD2]

@KzooMike

 

In comparison to Buffalo, this is New England (2017-2019 as I just grabbed it quick). The worst drafting team over the last 4 years (#32). They've made the playoffs as often as Buffalo has, extremely competitive team. They actually have a better record over the last 4 years than we do, they're actually the 4th most winning team over that time span. Belichick has done an absolutely horrible job of finding any sort of value consistently. He pretty much gets 1 contributor each year, but a lot of his early picks are just horrible values. He's done better with guys like Wise (4th), Bentley (5th), Winovich (3rd) than he has with anything in earlier rounds. 

 

 

I'll throw in GB (#23) seeing that they've been in the conference championship the last two seasons. That's a lot success... out of the team's listed starters on Sunday, they had 8 drafted between 2017-2019. 

 

 

Houston (#13). Generally do a pretty good job finding some value, but really propped up by Watson. Rightfully so, he's the most important draft pick they have made and most important player on the field for them each week. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by JGMcD2

[Mikie2times]

5 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

@KzooMike

 

In comparison to Buffalo, this is New England (2017-2019 as I just grabbed it quick). The worst drafting team over the last 4 years. They've made the playoffs as often as Buffalo has, extremely competitive team. They actually have a better record over the last 4 years than we do, they're actually the 4th most winning team over that time span. Belichick has done an absolutely horrible job of finding any sort of value consistently. He pretty much gets 1 contributor each year, but a lot of his early picks are just horrible values. He's done better with guys like Wise (4th), Bentley (5th), Winovich (3rd) than he has with anything in earlier rounds. 

Tee Higgins and Gabe Davis had the same AV in 2020 (6).
 

Higgins had 67, 908, and 6 TD’s with career backups throwing him the ball after Burrow got hurt.

 

Davis had the 2nd best QB in football throwing him the ball according to AV, and went 35, 599, and 7 TD’s. 
 

Devin Singletary is an 8 along with Nick Chubb and his 1000+ yards. 
 

I can do this all day and with way more extreme examples than I used. The point is over a career this stuff balances out. Over this small a sample it just doesn’t. 

[JGMcD2]

18 minutes ago, KzooMike said:

Tee Higgins and Gabe Davis had the same AV in 2020 (6).
 

Higgins had 67, 908, and 6 TD’s with career backups throwing him the ball after Burrow got hurt.

 

Davis had the 2nd best QB in football throwing him the ball according to AV, and went 35, 599, and 7 TD’s. 
 

Devin Singletary is an 8 along with Nick Chubb and his 1000+ yards. 
 

I can do this all day and with way more extreme examples than I used. The point is over a career this stuff balances out. Over this small a sample it just doesn’t. 

Again, that wasn’t your initial issue with the process. You claimed it wasn’t even meant to compare draft classes in the first place. 
 

Again, I never said it was stable over a short time period. I initially only looked at 2017. Which has 4 years worth of information on players, the Bills did well. You picked two players from the most recent draft to prove your point, I’ve already said and agreed it’s not as stable with lack of volume. But again, Gabe is rewarded for producing on a competitive team. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s important, you don’t think if they swapped places their statistic would look similar? 

In scouting it’s very common for these discussions to happen. I’ll use baseball as a better example. John Means is the ace of the Baltimore Orioles. He’s the ace on the Baltimore Orioles because they’re bad. If you take John Means and stick him on a playoff caliber team, is John Means still the ace? No, he’s a #5 starter on a contending team. Is he more valuable just because he’s an ace on a bad team? No, he’s more valuable as a 5th starter on a contending team. 
 

I think a player gaining SOME value because they’re starting and/or contributing on a successful team is more than valid. Gabe Davis is contributing to a better football team and there’s a difficulty in cracking that lineup when there’s talent on the roster. Generally better teams have better players at every position. Don’t get me wrong, Higgins is a great player, but is he contributing more than Davis on this Bills team? Maybe or maybe he looks about the same because he’s fighting for targets with a bunch of players on the Bills roster. 
 

I’m looking now. The Bengals had 566 passing targets. Higgins, Green and Boyd were all targeted over 100 times. After that 59 targets for Bernard and 53 for Sample. Then a bunch of guys getting anywhere from 1-20. 
 

The there’s Buffalo. 572 targets. Diggs has 166 and Beasley has 107. Davis at 62. Brown at 52. Singletary at 50. Knox at 44. McKenzie 34. More mouths to feed. Is Higgins really going to come in and have Davis’ 62 targets and then steal 40 more targets from somewhere else? 
 

On the flip side, is Davis going to walk into Cincinnati and still only get 62 targets with their lack of options? It’s likely going to be around 100 like Higgins. Which in that case he blows Higgins numbers out of the water. 
 

Give Davis the same volume of targets as Higgins and he’s 61/1,034/12. Give Higgins the same volume as Davis and you get 38/521/4. 

 

For every extreme example you find, I can find one too. That happens, that doesn’t mean the process is broken. Flawed, sure, I’m not debating that.
 

As I’ve asked others,  I invite you to find a better way to do this objectively.