The self-perpetuating cycle of really bad teams

patchick · Mar 9, 2015

Watching the Jaguars bid big money on good but not great free agents, I found myself contemplating this cycle:

- Draft badly, so you lose a lot of games
- Having drafted badly, your young players aren't worth big money to retain so you have a ton of FA money you're required to spend
- Have trouble attracting top FAs because of losing record
- Overspend for FAs who aren't good enough to make much of a difference
- Pricy, low-talent roster underperforms and locker room turns toxic...making it less likely that future draft picks will flourish

IMO it all starts with missing on high draft picks. As we sit here wondering how the Pats can afford to keep all of McCourty, Solder, Hightower, Jones and Collins, take a look at who Jax picked much higher in those same drafts:

2010: Trade for (Devin McCourty + Aaron Hernandez + Taylor Price) at #22 vs. Tyson Alualu #10
2011: Solder at #17 and trade for (Shane Vereen + most of Chandler Jones) at #28 vs. Blaine Gabbert #10
2012: Jones at #21, Hightower at #25 vs. Justin Blackmon #5
2013: Trade for (Jaime Collins + Logan Ryan + Josh Boyce + most of LaGarrette Blount) at #29 vs. Luke Joeckel at #2

To sum up: the Patriots spent 3,878 draft value points and reaped McCourty, Hernandez, Price, Solder, Vereen, Jones, Hightower, Collins, Ryan, Boyce and Blount.

The Jaguars spent 6,900 draft value points and reaped Alualu, Gabbert, Blackmon and Joeckel.

patsinthesnow · Mar 9, 2015

Teams stuck in cycle for what seems like forever:

Jaguars
Titans (#1 seed in AFC in 2008....what happened)
Browns
Raiders
Rams
Redskins (a couple playoff seasons but for the most part they fit your description)
Bills (is this the year?)

The Seahawks hit grand slams on two draft picks (Wilson and Sherman) and went from this cycle to a powerhouse, proving any team can break out of the cycle if they can nail a few picks. Trading for Lynch proved to be one of the best trades of the 21st century too.

hwc · Mar 9, 2015

Bad teams gotta be bad....

Concussion Protocol · Mar 9, 2015

patsinthesnow said:
Teams stuck in cycle for what seems like forever:

Jaguars
Titans (#1 seed in AFC in 2008....what happened)
Browns
Raiders
Rams
Redskins (a couple playoff seasons but for the most part they fit your description)
Bills (is this the year?)

The Seahawks hit grand slams on two draft picks (Wilson and Sherman) and went from this cycle to a powerhouse, proving any team can break out of the cycle if they can nail a few picks. Trading for Lynch proved to be one of the best trades of the 21st century too.

The Seahawks were never really in this cycle. Only 2 really bad years in the last 15 or so.

2008 was a strange year. Panthers and Titans come from out of nowhere to have great seasons, flop in the playoffs, and disappear again.

JMC00 · Mar 9, 2015

patsinthesnow said:
The Seahawks hit grand slams on two draft picks (Wilson and Sherman) and went from this cycle to a powerhouse, proving any team can break out of the cycle if they can nail a few picks.

And the got Lynch for a 2011 4th round and 2012 5th round draft pick.

ForThoseAboutToRock · Mar 9, 2015

It's interesting to me that teams in FL and other 0% income tax states can't or don't seem to leverage their advantage for better outcomes with FA's. Perhaps it did just happen with Suh.

Put another way, I guess the Jags have been so poorly managed that their FA advantage is lost in a sea of ineptitude.

mayoclinic · Mar 9, 2015

The vast majority of FAs aren't good enough to make a difference, and teams vastly overspend for them in the hopes of getting out of this cycle, but instead only perpetuate it. Even aside from the really bad teams, look at Miami in 2013 and who they have already cut this year. Teams that are trying to get "over the top" also get caught up in this process.

The paradox is that there is a ridiculous amount of value in free agency for those patient enough to wait it out.

BradyFTW! · Mar 9, 2015

The Bills paying 5/45 for Jerry Hughes is an excellent example of why crap teams continue to suck. They learned literally nothing from Mark Anderson, and apparently don't realize that they're paying $9M AAV for a guy who's probably worth half of that. A bunch of guys would be just as effective on a line with Dareus, Williams and Williams.

In short, paying a premium for a guy who could've had for pennies on the dollars a season or two ago is generally bad strategy. There have been examples of it working out (Edelman coming immediately to mind), but at $9M per year, the gamble is way too high for a generally losing bet.

FreeTedWilliams · Mar 9, 2015

Some teams just have never, ever found their QB, and if you don't have that, then you are screwed!

Look at the patriots history, they had a few winning seasons in the seventies and the eighties. They had a trip to the Superbowl in 1985 (ouch, that still hurts). But they were the team who drafted Tony Eason instead of Dan Marino (at least they weren't the idiot tema who drafted Ken O'Brien ahead of Dan Marino). If you don't have a QB, you have nothing in the NFL and you have to continue to keep searching for one until you finally find one! Teams that have been historically bad, have never really found their franchise QB.

The Pats hit a home run, when they finally had the #1 pick in 1993. If you are only enough to remember back then, their was considerable debate as to who to take Bledsoe or Rick Mirer. Imagine the tailspin if Parcels had missed on that one. The Pats were lucky to find Brady 7 years later. Because they haven't had to go "in search of" a franchise QB since 1993, they can afford to concentrate on the rest of their roster.

hwc · Mar 9, 2015

mayoclinic said:
The paradox is that there is a ridiculous amount of value in free agency for those patient enough to wait it out.

The bad teams don't have the management talent to identify good value. They have owners and GMs who watch SportsCenter and rely on the ESPN TOP100 list for selecting free agents and Mel Kiper for draft analysis. It's fantasy football for the perennial crap franchises.

I didn't truly appreciate how great we have it as Pats fans 'til I started listening to Sirius NFL radio year round and really understanding how cycle of despair for bad teams.

mayoclinic · Mar 9, 2015

BradyFTW! said:
The Bills paying 5/45 for Jerry Hughes is an excellent example of why crap teams continue to suck. They learned literally nothing from Mark Anderson, and apparently don't realize that they're paying $9M AAV for a guy who's probably worth half of that. A bunch of guys would be just as effective on a line with Dareus, Williams and Williams.

In short, paying a premium for a guy who could've had for pennies on the dollars a season or two ago is generally bad strategy. There have been examples of it working out (Edelman coming immediately to mind), but at $9M per year, the gamble is way too high for a generally losing bet.

Again, to reference a thread that I recently started:

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...m-building-free-agency-and-the-draft.1117697/

A cardinal sin is to pay premium money for a player who is eminently replaceable. Brooks Reed, Jabaal Sheard or Akeem Ayers would all thrive on the Bills defense. Brian Orapko or Jason Worills would probably be upgrades. Jerry Hughes is a complementary piece being paid like he is a cornerstone.

JackBauer · Mar 9, 2015

BradyFTW! said:
The Bills paying 5/45 for Jerry Hughes is an excellent example of why crap teams continue to suck. They learned literally nothing from Mark Anderson, and apparently don't realize that they're paying $9M AAV for a guy who's probably worth half of that. A bunch of guys would be just as effective on a line with Dareus, Williams and Williams.

In short, paying a premium for a guy who could've had for pennies on the dollars a season or two ago is generally bad strategy. There have been examples of it working out (Edelman coming immediately to mind), but at $9M per year, the gamble is way too high for a generally losing bet.

Don't forget $40M for Parnell McPhee! He and Shea McClellin are really going to bring the heat this season for da Bears /sarcasm.

Tunescribe · Mar 9, 2015

patchick said:
Watching the Jaguars bid big money on good but not great free agents, I found myself contemplating this cycle:

- Draft badly, so you lose a lot of games
- Having drafted badly, your young players aren't worth big money to retain so you have a ton of FA money you're required to spend
- Have trouble attracting top FAs because of losing record
- Overspend for FAs who aren't good enough to make much of a difference
- Pricy, low-talent roster underperforms and locker room turns toxic...making it less likely that future draft picks will flourish

IMO it all starts with missing on high draft picks. As we sit here wondering how the Pats can afford to keep all of McCourty, Solder, Hightower, Jones and Collins, take a look at who Jax picked much higher in those same drafts:

2010: Trade for (Devin McCourty + Aaron Hernandez + Taylor Price) at #22 vs. Tyson Alualu #10
2011: Solder at #17 and trade for (Shane Vereen + most of Chandler Jones) at #28 vs. Blaine Gabbert #10
2012: Jones at #21, Hightower at #25 vs. Justin Blackmon #5
2013: Trade for (Jaime Collins + Logan Ryan + Josh Boyce + most of LaGarrette Blount) at #29 vs. Luke Joeckel at #2

To sum up: the Patriots spent 3,878 draft value points and reaped McCourty, Hernandez, Price, Solder, Vereen, Jones, Hightower, Collins, Ryan, Boyce and Blount.

The Jaguars spent 6,900 draft value points and reaped Alualu, Gabbert, Blackmon and Joeckel.

It's not all personnel, though. Good coaching can make a huge difference. The Pats won Super Bowl 36 with what largely was a waiver wire team.

Ice_Ice_Brady · Mar 9, 2015

A lot of this is a result of the media, who perpetuates the idea that if you have cap space, you are going to improve if you spend all of it, regardless of the value. This might be true if your franchise was competing for only one year, but they fail to look at the long-term consequences of overpaying; even if you can afford it this year, it may greatly limit your ability to spend next year when you need to re-sign your own players (which, by the way, is the only time it makes sense to pay a lot of money since you already know the player's value to your team).

I saw a headline the other day, just the headline, on the Suh signing... it read "Worth Every Penny." How many times will this Groundhog Day-like myth continue to repeat itself from supposedly insightful writers. The media loves big names, big contracts, and other versions of sensationalism, so it is the teams own faults for buying the praise in February and pointing the finger in December.

hwc · Mar 9, 2015

Tunescribe said:
It's not all personnel, though. Good coaching can make a huge difference. The Pats won Super Bowl 36 with what largely was a waiver wire team.

No question. Are all of these draft bust QBs horrible QBs. Or were they poorly developed by the situations/coaching at the NFL level? Does Brady become Brady without Belichick never asking him to do more than he was capable of doing at a particular moment in time? Without the off-season Belichick Defense U film study course that Brady got as a rookie?

BradyFTW! · Mar 9, 2015

JackBauer said:
Don't forget $40M for Parnell McPhee! He and Shea McClellin are really going to bring the heat this season for da Bears /sarcasm.

I like McPhee and think he's a genuinely disruptive player, but that's just too much for him even before you consider how the Bears are going to miscast him as a 3-4 edge rusher and probably drag him down to near-replacement-level performance accordingly. There is a very specific role that he plays well, and I'm pretty sure that anything else will be an unmitigated disaster on that contract.

Mike the Brit · Mar 9, 2015

Considering this makes me think how successful the NFL have been at establishing parity.

Ten or so years ago only the Browns from the list above would have been classed as a basket case. On the other hand, the Saints, Cardinals and Bengals were bywords for failure. What's more, their ownerships appeared not to care -- keeping fat on the revenue sharing whether they were competitive or not.

I'd say only Al Davis and Snyder have been such toxic owners that their franchises couldn't succeed (though Woody J surely hasn't helped the cause). Seems to me that the message is that what matters is having a decent coach and a quarterback. Everything else is more or less fixable. Throwing draft pick after draft pick into the search for a quarterback keeps a team down like nothing else.

patchick · Mar 9, 2015

Tunescribe said:
It's not all personnel, though. Good coaching can make a huge difference. The Pats won Super Bowl 36 with what largely was a waiver wire team.

No question, there are multiple parts to developing a talented roster.

BTW, one thing that really leapt out at me as a Pats fan: the Jags only trade up in the first round, not down.

PatsGuy · Mar 9, 2015

One important factor cited in Suh's decision to reject the Raiders is the 13% state tax vs 0% in FL

DarrylS · Mar 9, 2015

Tunescribe said:
It's not all personnel, though. Good coaching can make a huge difference. The Pats won Super Bowl 36 with what largely was a waiver wire team.

I agree how many times have other teams overpaid for our guys only to see them flounder?? See Chung for example.

If you take a player recognize his strengths and then put them in a position to be successful is the way Pats do business, in the Jerry Hughes case will the same be said if they convert him into an standup role??

The self-perpetuating cycle of really bad teams

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