Analyzing team success in the NFL Draft

The draft is a little less than a month away. I love this time of year because I'm an eternal optimist, and every team, every fan gets to share in that optimism over what will be the main source of improvement for most teams this year. The draft is a chance to get an infusion of young talent at a reasonable cost. Why wouldn't you be excited about that?

Part of a general manager's duty is selecting the best players in the NFL draft. That's why draft analysis and the mock draft industry are so prolific and successful. That's looking forward. Today, I wanted to take a look back. I wanted to see how each team did from 2013 to 2016, with special attention to the New York Giants, of course. Why did I go back four years? It's mostly arbitrary. The biggest reason I did this was because going back a lot of years will give us a muddled insight on who is drafting well RECENTLY. Another (biased) reason is because 2013 is probably the point in time that I think, along with most people, saw a difference in Jerry Reese and the types of players he drafted. So I wanted to see how well he stacked up to the rest of the group from then on. Now, this is meant to only be a cursory look and just one data set. There are a lot of disclaimers about this project which will be noted below.

Methodology

I looked at how teams did both in drafts as a whole over the past four years and I looked at how teams did specifically in the first round over the past four years. We are going to compare how they did in relation to where they picked as well. In order to further go ahead and explain this, let's take a look at some terminology you'll need to understand what I did.

Approximate Value (AV): This is the system that I used to determine a player's "value." Approximate Value was created by the great football resource site, ProFootballReference. The higher a player's career AV, the more value that player has. This is a method that uses an algorithm for however many yards, points, sacks, etc you are responsible for your team and compared to the average of everybody else. For a full explanation of how Approximate Value is created, including the equations and explanations behind the equations, please visit this site: Approximate Value Explained.

Average Draft Position (ADP): This is, in simple terms, the average (mean) of every single draft pick a team has had from 2013 to 2016. Average First Round Draft Position is exactly that, the average draft position a team has had in the first round from 2013 to 2016. That means if a team picks 1st overall, and then 33rd overall, and so on, you take all of those picks and take the average.

Average Approximate Value (AAV): This is the measure by which I'm going to use to judge draft "success". it's fairly simple, but it's the total approximate value of all the players drafted for a particular team over the past four years divided by the total number of picks that team has made over the past four years. Again, the first round version represents only first round players and picks from 2013-2016.

Disclaimers

Football, in all aspects, be it the draft or the game itself, is too complex, too beautiful, and has too many variables to full qualify in just metrics, let alone just a number like "AV". That's not to say that metrics and statistical analysis are useless...just the opposite. There's beauty in them too, and they tell a story and gives tons of information. Just may not be the entire story, is all.

My analysis has several biases that may impede interpretation. For one, AV is a biased formula because it doesn't (no one formula can) account for everything a player is responsible for and simply just uses tangible results. It also doesn't account for reasons why a player is drafted. For example, AV is very dependent on player starts to record numbers, but teams often draft for depth in the later rounds without having an intention for players to start. That doesn't mean the team "screwed up" but it will be reflected in the results.

This system also has an inherent bias against teams for trading down and gaining more picks. This is natural. More picks, especially in the later rounds, means a lower AAV most of the time since teams don't expect players to contribute right away. Another example of bias is time bias. Draft picks in 2016 often have lower AVs simply because they haven't played enough. That means you have players like Justin Britt having AVs of 24 while Ezekiel Elliot (one of the highest rated rookies) has an AV of 16. You'd take Elliot over Britt all day but it may not necessarily reflect this in the rankings.

Finally, the analysis that was done in relation to the correlation between draft position and AV was linear when in fact we know that it is much more curved. For example, players drafted at No. 1 and No. 200 are not the same talent wise as two players drafted at No. 100 and No. 101. Hell, the line of best fit in the plots below have an r^2 value of less than 0.30 due to the erratic nature of the draft and sample size. I'm sure that the more statistically inclined among us can find more biases in my analysis, but you get the idea.

So, with all that being said, what can we take from this? Well it can certainly give us a general idea of how teams are doing and where they are headed. Teams that are so far above or below the curve can certainly provide helpful (and accurate) information. The teams in the "muddled middle" are a bit more murky.

So that's that. I'll give you my thoughts after the data is presented. There's some good stuff here but interpret at your own risk. Enjoy!

Comparing Total AAV vs. Average Draft Position

Team	Average Draft Pick (ADP)	Picks	Total AV	Average AV (AAV)	Rank	Best Career AV
Arizona Cardinals	119	29	194	6.689655172	9	David Johnson (24)
Atlanta Falcons	127	31	203	6.548387097	12	Devonta Freeman (29)
Baltimore Ravens	127	39	185	4.743589744	27	C.J. Mosley (33)
Buffalo Bills	122	28	172	6.142857143	14	Preston Brown (23)
Carolina Panthers	106	21	167	7.952380952	1	Kawann Short (27)
Chicago Bears	117	29	190	6.551724138	11	Kyle Long (33)
Cincinnati Bengals	132	34	156	4.588235294	28	Giovani Bernard (29)
Cleveland Browns	115	37	148	4	31	Christian Kirksey (14)
Dallas Cowboys	139	33	218	6.606060606	10	Travis Frederick (38)
Denver Broncos	203	30	125	4.166666667	29	Sylvester Williams (23)
Detroit Lions	125	36	214	5.944444444	16	Ezekiel Ansah (30)
Green Bay Packers	133	35	253	7.228571429	4	David Bakhtiari (41)
Houston Texans	128	32	176	5.5	21	DeAndre Hopkins (31)
Indianapolis Colts	146	27	144	5.333333333	24	Jack Mewhort (21)
Jacksonville Jaguars	117	32	242	7.5625	2	Blake Bortles (28)
Kansas City Chiefs	127	32	217	6.78125	8	Travis Kelce & Eric Fisher (27)
Los Angeles Chargers	117	25	158	6.32	13	D.J. Fluker (29)
Los Angeles Rams	128	33	226	6.848484848	7	Aaron Donald (44)
Miami Dolphins	121	32	176	5.5	22	Jarvis Landry (25)
Minnesota Vikings	140	37	203	5.486486486	23	Anthony Barr (25)
New England Patriots	140	36	186	5.166666667	25	Jamie Collins (33)
New Orleans Saints	106	25	151	6.04	15	Brandin Cooks (24)
New York Giants	109	27	185	6.851851852	6	Odell Beckham (32)
New York Jets	122	32	158	4.9375	26	Sheldon Richardson (26)
Oakland Raiders	133	35	249	7.114285714	5	Khalil Mack (36)
Philadelphia Eagles	134	29	160	5.517241379	20	Lane Johnson & Bennie Logan (22)
Pittsburgh Steelers	135	33	186	5.636363636	18	Le'veon Bell (43)
San Francisco 49ers	137	44	179	4.068181818	30	Eric Reid (23)
Seattle Seahawks	151	38	131	3.447368421	32	Justin Britt (24)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	108	26	191	7.346153846	3	Mike Evans (26)
Tennessee Titans	115	33	194	5.878787879	17	Marcus Mariota (24)
Washington Redskins	134	32	180	5.625	19	Jordan Reed, David Amerson, Morgan Moses (19)

Observations

You may be asking why teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans have a later total ADP than the Giants, who actually have one of the earliest ADPs among all teams. That's because a lot of these teams have a ton of late round picks that often number in the 200s. The Broncos have more picks in the 150s and later than they have in the top 100 picks, which helps to partially explain how they are such a ridiculous outlier.

The Panthers nabbed the top spot here thanks to consistently finding usable talent with limited picks. Kawann Short, AJ Klein, Trai Turner, and Kony Ealy all provided roles here along with the good amount of playing time from other draft picks. On the flip side, Seattle's recent drafts have been nothing short of putrid. Their mid-rounds are a barren wasteland of failed picks. Had we analyzed 2012, it would've been a different story. Their 2012 draft class (Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner, Russell Wilson, Jaye Howard, Jeremy Lane, J.R. Sweezy) had an AV of 241. That's almost TWICE as much as their draft classes from 2013-2016 where they had a combined AV of 139.

The Giants also had limited picks, with fifth fewest of all teams, but made use of them with non-first round picks with decent AV like Johnathan Hankins (please re-sign),  Weston Richburg, Landon Collins, and Devon Kennard. With their 2016 draft, they were average, with a total AV of 15, but expect that to explode next year as Paul Perkins, B.J. Goodson, and Darian Thompson settle into starting roles with Sterling Shepard and Eli Apple.

Ozzie Newsome, noted as one of the best draft gurus ever, has been pretty subpar the last four years, with his big hits being C.J. Mosley, Brandon Williams, and Ricky Wagner. His 2015 draft in particular has been poor, with Breshad Perriman fighting injury, Maxx Williams outperformed by several other TEs, and Carl Davis not really having much of an impact.

The 49ers are the epitome of "throw s--- at a wall and see what sticks" according to this, which isn't a bad strategy by any means, with an insane 44 picks in 4 years. This data is biased against this strategy and that shows, though to be fair, a LOT of their picks just didn't pan out.

Comparing First Round AAV vs. First Round Average Draft Position

Team	Average 1st Round Pick	1st Rd Picks	1st Rd Pick AV	1st Rd AAV	Rank
Arizona Cardinals	21.75	4	29	7.25	29
Atlanta Falcons	13.25	4	72	18	7
Baltimore Ravens	20.25	4	54	13.5	15
Buffalo Bills	13	3	31	10.33333333	21
Carolina Panthers	24.25	4	53	13.25	17
Chicago Bears	12.5	4	51	12.75	18
Cincinnati Bengals	22.5	4	22	5.5	32
Cleveland Browns	13.66	6	43	7.166666667	30
Dallas Cowboys	19.5	4	98	24.5	1
Denver Broncos	27	4	40	10	22
Detroit Lions	14.75	4	64	16	9
Green Bay Packers	26	4	39	9.75	23
Houston Texans	16.25	4	63	15.75	10
Indianapolis Colts	23.66	3	26	8.666666667	28
Jacksonville Jaguars	3.25	4	55	13.75	14
Kansas City Chiefs	14	3	61	20.33333333	2
Los Angeles Chargers	13.5	4	62	15.5	11
Los Angeles Rams	10.6	6	119	19.83333333	3
Miami Dolphins	12.25	4	37	9.25	26
Minnesota Vikings	21.7	7	105	15	12
New England Patriots	30.5	2	21	10.5	20
New Orleans Saints	18.2	5	67	13.4	16
New York Giants	12.5	4	75	18.75	5
New York Jets	13.2	5	69	13.8	13
Oakland Raiders	8.75	4	69	17.25	8
Philadelphia Eagles	13	4	39	9.75	24
Pittsburgh Steelers	19.75	4	46	11.5	19
San Francisco 49ers	20	5	46	9.2	27
Seattle Seahawks	31	1	6	6	31
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	6.33	3	56	18.66666667	6
Tennessee Titans	7.75	4	76	19	4
Washington Redskins	13.5	2	19	9.5	25

Observations

The Giants have been very good under Reese in the first round. Any team above the line of best fit is considered to be "above average." Aside from the Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans, no other team with 4 first round picks in the last four years had a better combined AV. Odell Beckham Jr. and Justin Pugh take credit for that, though Ereck Flowers has a decent career AV of 16. Eli Apple ranks 16th in AV from the rookie class with 4, so just about average.

Speaking of the Dallas Cowboys, they wrecked this analysis. They are so far ahead of everybody else and it's thanks, of course, to their monstrous offensive line. Zack Martin and Travis Frederick alone combine for an AV of 72, which is more than all but four teams total. Ezekiel Elliot was the highest graded first round rookie (and tied with teammate Dak Prescott for highest overall) with an AV of 16. The Cowboys continue to be cap strapped and cannot make moves in free agency, but they are still the major force in the NFC simply because they are elite at drafting. That really hurts to say that about them, but at least the Giants beat them twice last year.

On the other end of the spectrum, it's scary to see how little the Bengals have gotten from their first round investments. William Jackson was injured for most all of the year, Cedric Ogbuehi and Darqueze Dennard haven't really fulfilled expectations, and while Tyler Eifert is a really, really good player, he's also fought through injuries.

The Cleveland Browns are following suit with six first round picks with basically Danny Shelton to show for it, though they have high hopes for Corey Coleman.

The Rams are a tremendous example of how this data set really rewards superstars. Aaron Donald has a career AV of 44, and he (along with Alec Ogletree's AV of 31 which essentially is the going rate for a good player that has four years worth of starts) pretty much propelled the Rams into a top 3 spot despite them also drafting Jared Goff (who has an AV of -2), Greg Robinson, and Tavon Austin. Aaron Donald is a monstrosity of a player, so you can almost understand it, but it does raise some questions.

Finally, checking in on our other division rivals, the Eagles and the Redskins, we see poor scores. The Eagles suffer from Marcus Smith, Nelson Agholor and Lane Johnson's suspension. Carson Wentz gives them hope for the future however. The Redskins only had two first round picks from 2013 to 2016 (Thanks RG3!) and they were hurt by Josh Doctson being hurt, though Brandon Scherff (Scherff!) is a good player.

Final Word

Analyzing draft success isn't a cut and dry process. Nor is it completely objective. I'm sure there are data sets and examples out there to support whatever opinion you have. This is simply one lens of many to view Jerry Reese and the other 31 general managers. This one, for what it's worth, seems to have a pretty good opinion of him.