Without the acquisition of Foles and Ayers I'd have assigned a grade of C-. With those two additions a B- seems fair to me. That must mean that I hate the Rams and I've given up on them right.
Let's ignore the fact that Gurley is recovering from a knee injury and may never be the player he was before the injury and let's pay no attention the
math that says he has a much greater than normal chance of suffering another knee injury in the future. Let's also ignore the fact that all our O-lines draft picks might have been picked higher than their talent level warranted. Furthermore, let's ignore the fact that we have really really crappy backup plans for any injuries at LT and the depth at the other G and T positions suck too. Furthermore, let's ignore the fact that we have no proven options at C and that we didn't even try to lock in the only player with any experience at OC who many think will win the job. What I can't ignore is the
math concerning our draft picks. Ignoring
all that
math isn't possible for me.
Doesn't mean we can't beat the odds though.
Havenstein - approximately 33% chance of being a total bust and an even greater chance of being only a marginal starter.
Brown - approximately 40% chance of being a total bust and an even greater chance of being only a marginal starter.
Donnal - approximately 50% chance of being a total bust and an even greater chance of being only a marginal starter.
Wichmann - approximately 80-90% chance of being a bust and an even greater chance of being only a marginal starter.
http://datascopeanalytics.com/blog/the-chance-of-a-bust-in-the-nfl-draft/
The chance of a bust in the NFL draft
May 1, 2012
With the 2012 NFL draft officially complete, the fans of every NFL franchise are dissecting their teams draft picks looking for hidden gems and potential busts. Intuitively, early picks in the draft have a much higher propensity to succeed in the NFL as we showed
last week. What about the chance that a pick will be a bust? It’s been well
covered that, out of the four times in NFL draft history a QB has been chosen 1 and 2, only once have both QBs been successful (1971: Jim Plunkett and Archie Manning). We decided to expand the search and look at all picks over the last 50 years and determine the average chance an NFL draft pick will be a bust.
What is a “bust?” We'll look at it two different ways. First, a bust is a player that ends up with a
value score of less than 5 according to
pro-football-reference.com. A value of less than 5 is equivalent to a marginal role player that has limited game experience and contributes little to no value to an NFL franchise. Here it is in a visual:
You can see from about round 6 (pick 160) and later, the percent chance of failing on a draft pick is over 70%. With such a low hit rate, NFL teams should focus their decision making on players that fit their current schema and can be a strong contributor on special teams.
Now, with early round picks, the expectation is a lot higher than just contributing on the field. With a first or second round pick, an NFL team is expecting a player that can come in,
start, and contribute for years to come. With that in mind, our second method for setting the bar for a “bust” is that the player starts for less than one year or plays less than 40 games in their career. Here's the same visual with the different way of measuring busts:
A couple of interesting notes from the graph.
First, picking at the end of the second round only gives your team a 50% chance of finding a starter.
Going towards the end of the round 3, your chance of finding a starter falls to ~30%. Using this criteria and our
draft value chart from last week, let’s evaluate a couple of the trades from Friday.
- The Browns trading out of pick 67 to the Broncos for picks 87 and 120. The Browns increased their chance of getting a starter from 41% to 49%. On a pick value basis, the Browns increased their pick value from 259 to 299. All in all a fairly even trade for both sides but I give the edge to the Browns.
- What about the Cowboys and Rams trade in the first round? The Cowboys traded away picks 14 and 45 for the 6th pick in the draft from the Rams. From a “starter” perspective, the Cowboys decreased their chance of picking a starter from 88% to 85%. From a pick value perspective, the Cowboys decreased their value from 1141 to 779. From a stat point of view, looks like the Rams got the better of the deal but once again a fairly even trade.
Another interesting note, in the later rounds, an NFL team has a really slim chance of finding the next Tom Brady in round 6 or Donald Driver in round 7. The data shows that finding a starter in round 6 or 7 is only 10 - 20%. Further strengthening the argument to search for players that are effective on special teams in later rounds. Finally, see pick 148 on the graph (highlighted in blue). In the past 50 years, only two players picked 148 have started more than one year and played in at least 40 games. Best of luck to Chris Greenwood of the Detroit Lions, the 148th selection of the 2012 draft. According to the data, you are the true Mr. Irrelevant.
