Is
www.pro-football-reference.com's Career Average rating at all an accurate assessment of a player's worth? It seems to be in the ballpark in terms of rating players' accomplishments, with the notable exception of not counting Special Teams contributions except for kickers, punters, and returners. Poor Matthew Slater rated a zero.
That said, I was fooling around with it in terms of trying to figure out how the Patriots stack up with other teams in terms of amassing talent via the draft by simply adding up the Career Averages of all players drafted in certain time spans when sorted by team. I was surprised to find out that by this admittedly rough scale, the Pats (as far as I could tell) had the highest cumulative Career Average if you totaled up all players drafted during the Belichick regime. I didn't sum up all teams, but compared the ones thought to draft well. The closest one I could find in comparison was Baltimore, which the Patriots barely edged out 1678-1672.
Furthermore, since the last draft by the Pats which you could call "bad" (2008), no team has had a better cumulative Career Average drafted than the Pats, 383 since 2009. I summed up the drafts of 9 teams who have had recent success (and the Jets, just for giggles). Closest I've found is Seattle with 374, and they're thought to be a young team bursting with talent everywhere while the Pats are thought to be just Tom Brady playing with nobodies, if you read other teams' message boards. Others in the 300+ club were Philadelphia (346), Denver (333), and Pittsburgh (325). IND, ARZ, SF, and BAL were in the 200s. The Giants were shockingly poor at 194, worse even than the Jets at 209. No wonder they suck so bad that Coughlin will get canned.
Anyway, I understand that this is a limited and flawed way to assess how well teams draft. The current year's contributions won't be counted until next year, and you get credit if the players you jettison plays elsewhere, like Ted Larsen and Darius Butler. But I think it's at least interesting to think about.
Another conjecture I haven't dug deep enough to confirm or disprove: I think the Pats are the only team to draft at least two solid contributors every year since 2009. (Vollmer and Edelman). 2010 was Gronk and McCourty. 2011 was The most iffy year for us in that regard is 2013, with Dobson on the shelf this year our best contributors are Logan Ryan and Jamie Collins. 2011 was Solder and Ridley (and Vereen, but his CarAve was only 9 which was not enough to count him as a productive player). 2012 was Chandler and Hightower. And this year is Stork and Easley. Can any other team say they drafted at least two players as productive as Logan Ryan or better since 2009?
