Ranking Belichick's drafting ability

I was looking at profootballreference.com's "CarAV" (Career Approximate Value) rating as it relates to drafting. If the CarAV rating is to be trusted, it would seem to be a fair approximation of any given player's worth over his career. I'm sure it's not perfect, but any time I look at it, the rating seems to be in the ballpark of what seems right.

So on the assumption that CarAV is a useful approximation of a player's worth, I've compiled the cumulative CarAV of players drafted by every team since 2000 to 2014, i.e. the Belichick era, to be able to compare his yield with other franchises. (Because I was curious and had a few hours to kill.) Further, I've also separated out the drafts since 2009-2014 after Pioli left the franchise and people generally agree that the drafting improved over the last few previous years.

There are going to be oddities to this, such as:

• If you draft a guy and he goes somewhere else and produces, you still get credit for drafting him, and vice versa. So the Pats get credit for drafting Ted Larsen who never played a down here, and Minnesota gets credit for Randy Moss' production after he leaves the Vikings.
  
• Punters and kickers get credited in this rating, but special teams mavens get zip. Matthew Slater has a career rating of "0" despite being a perennial Pro Bowler.
• Undrafted free agents aren't counted, so Bill gets no credit for BJGE, Randall Gay, Malcolm Butler and others.
• Playoff production isn't counted as far as I can tell.

With those caveats, where do you think the Patriots under Belichick rank over the course of his entire tenure at New England and also in just the last six drafts? Rather than just give out the answer, I'll make a poll for people to chew this out a bit and reveal the answer in a day or two. Slight spoiler: Belichick's ranking for both time periods both belong to only one of the poll options.

Excellent idea.

I think that the person who wrote this article did the same.

http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/2/25/5430150/nfl-draft-history-worst-picks

Also, Massey and Thaler came up with a kind of career valuation for their article a few years ago.

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/malmendier/e218_sp06/Thaler.pdf

I await the answer.

Why not provide the answer so it can provoke discussion instead of speculation on the answer??

You tell us @slam Just let it rip!

Pick top half and you get choices 1 through 4.

A comprehensive study would be valuable on draft success by GMs. The problem is that you have to weight choices by so many variables. Belichick's sustained success means he is always drafting at the bottom of each round, which makes the variable of the quality of players acquired through trading draft choices so important.

slam said:

I was looking at profootballreference.com's "CarAV" (Career Approximate Value) rating as it relates to drafting. If the CarAV rating is to be trusted, it would seem to be a fair approximation of any given player's worth over his career. I'm sure it's not perfect, but any time I look at it, the rating seems to be in the ballpark of what seems right.

So on the assumption that CarAV is a useful approximation of a player's worth, I've compiled the cumulative CarAV of players drafted by every team since 2000 to 2014, i.e. the Belichick era, to be able to compare his yield with other franchises. (Because I was curious and had a few hours to kill.) Further, I've also separated out the drafts since 2009-2014 after Pioli left the franchise and people generally agree that the drafting improved over the last few previous years.

There are going to be oddities to this, such as:

• If you draft a guy and he goes somewhere else and produces, you still get credit for drafting him, and vice versa. So the Pats get credit for drafting Ted Larsen who never played a down here, and Minnesota gets credit for Randy Moss' production after he leaves the Vikings.
  
• Punters and kickers get credited in this rating, but special teams mavens get zip. Matthew Slater has a career rating of "0" despite being a perennial Pro Bowler.
• Undrafted free agents aren't counted, so Bill gets no credit for BJGE, Randall Gay, Malcolm Butler and others.
• Playoff production isn't counted as far as I can tell.

With those caveats, where do you think the Patriots under Belichick rank over the course of his entire tenure at New England and also in just the last six drafts? Rather than just give out the answer, I'll make a poll for people to chew this out a bit and reveal the answer in a day or two. Slight spoiler: Belichick's ranking for both time periods both belong to only one of the poll options.

Click to expand...

Why in the world would you get credit for a player who played elsewhere? You're picking for the Patriots, right?

Considering that your era is comparing 1guy's choices versus other teams that almost all had multiple leadership teams over the same period (I can only think of coughlin as another coach still at same work) ..... It is probable to me he came out #1 just based on that consistency factor. The other teams didn't fire HCs or GMs because they were being better than all others. So those down years are going to drag those other teams down.

It's #1, no doubt in my mind, however I'd like to see the number without Brady. Maybe sans all QB's to be fair. But the argument is always that Belichick lucked into Brady and the Pats have been good largely because of that one pick.

I think it'll be shown that Belichick, even without the grand slam of Brady, will be top-5 at worst on picks. Why? Because he's had more of them, period. Consistently drafting in the bottom 5 but he's known forever that more picks means more chances to hit it big, ala Edelman.

Anyway, #1 without question, without Brady top 5 and maybe #1 even then (excluding all other QB's)

I would say he's in the Top 5 along with Ted Thompson, Ozzie Newsome and John Schneider

Top 5

I think that his true brilliance comes in later rounds. He is ALWAYS able to find some gem there. It's truly uncanny.

He has some flaws (at WR and CB - Malcolm Butler is looking good though) and I think he sometimes put too much emphasis on Special Teams and leadership (not to be confused with character), especially on earlier rounds.

Still, there isn't a single person i'd rather have as a GM or Coach. No matter how mad i get over his decisions/picks (and sometimes i do get frustrated). In a single acronym: GOAT

Alright, for those wondering why I waited, it's because I wanted to see how well perception matched reality. In the case of this board, it matched up pretty well as the Belichick Patriots have been the #3 drafting team since 2000 and the #2 drafting team since 2009 by this method.

See this Excel File if you want a breakdown and if you want to check my spreadsheet formulas and my cutting and pasting skills.

Since 2000
Team Total CarAV
1. SD (!) 1936
2. GB 1915
3. NE 1848
4. CAR 1829
5. Bal 1819
League Average in this time: 1593.2
27 (Tied) DET and KC 1368
29. MIA 1348
30. OAK 1276
31. TB 1090
32. Was 1011

Honestly having SD at #1 made me question any validity of this approach, but they have had some very good teams in the past 15 years, they get credit for drafting two upper echelon QBs in Brees and Eli Manning (PFR has Rivers as a Giants pick. He'd have even more CarAV than Eli), and their list of top players is pretty impressive.

Brees 142
Tomlinson 129
Eli 96
Vincent Jackson 72
Nick Hardwick 68
Eric Weddle 60
Antonio Cromartie 60
5 more with 50+

In comparison, here's the list of Pats draftees with 50+ CarAV in that time frame
Brady 153
Mankins 102
Light 91
Seymour 90
Wilfork 80
Asante Samuel 74
Koppen 72
Branch 52

The bottom 5 teams of that period are the ones you'd expect to be there for the most part. Well, maybe I'm surprised the Dolphins are worse than the Bills.

Now for the recent draftees.

Since 2009
Team Total CarAV
1. SEA 547
2. NE 492
3. CIN 486
4. PIT 476
5. GB 475
League Average in that time period 378.8
28. WAS 303
29. NYG (!) 283
30. NYJ 280
31. CHI 279
32. NO (!) 260

Not surprising to see the top drafters comprised of currently strong teams the bottom drafters be franchises that have all recently suffered dramatic downfalls. That's what parity is supposed to work like. That Belichick has avoided truly bad periods is a testament to his team building.

Worth the wait?

slam said:

Alright, for those wondering why I waited, it's because I wanted to see how well perception matched reality. In the case of this board, it matched up pretty well as the Belichick Patriots have been the #3 drafting team since 2000 and the #2 drafting team since 2009 by this method.

See this Excel File if you want a breakdown and if you want to check my spreadsheet formulas and my cutting and pasting skills.

Since 2000
Team Total CarAV
1. SD (!) 1936
2. GB 1915
3. NE 1848
4. CAR 1829
5. Bal 1819
League Average in this time: 1593.2
27 (Tied) DET and KC 1368
29. MIA 1348
30. OAK 1276
31. TB 1090
32. Was 1011

Honestly having SD at #1 made me question any validity of this approach, but they have had some very good teams in the past 15 years, they get credit for drafting two upper echelon QBs in Brees and Eli Manning (PFR has Rivers as a Giants pick. He'd have even more CarAV than Eli), and their list of top players is pretty impressive.

Brees 142
Tomlinson 129
Eli 96
Vincent Jackson 72
Nick Hardwick 68
Eric Weddle 60
Antonio Cromartie 60
5 more with 50+

In comparison, here's the list of Pats draftees with 50+ CarAV in that time frame
Brady 153
Mankins 102
Light 91
Seymour 90
Wilfork 80
Asante Samuel 74
Koppen 72
Branch 52

The bottom 5 teams of that period are the ones you'd expect to be there for the most part. Well, maybe I'm surprised the Dolphins are worse than the Bills.

Now for the recent draftees.

Since 2009
Team Total CarAV
1. SEA 547
2. NE 492
3. CIN 486
4. PIT 476
5. GB 475
League Average in that time period 378.8
28. WAS 303
29. NYG (!) 283
30. NYJ 280
31. CHI 279
32. NO (!) 260

Not surprising to see the top drafters comprised of currently strong teams the bottom drafters be franchises that have all recently suffered dramatic downfalls. That's what parity is supposed to work like. That Belichick has avoided truly bad periods is a testament to his team building.

Worth the wait?

Click to expand...

*favorites thread*

RayClay said:

Why in the world would you get credit for a player who played elsewhere? You're picking for the Patriots, right?

Click to expand...

Because all I'm doing is summing up production from each franchises' draft picks, which took me a little over an hour since it's just cutting and pasting and summing things up in a spreadsheet. To actually try and go player by player and tease out what part of a career belongs to the team that drafted him and what part belongs to his next team would take me months if not years and is probably not worth the trouble.

TommyBrady12 said:

I would say he's in the Top 5 along with Ted Thompson, Ozzie Newsome and John Schneider

Click to expand...

For my 2 pennies, he does a better job picking up free agents and trading than the Draft. Ironically he makes it hard for himself there by going bargain basement hunting and in the Draft, trades or both. He has had one real nice Draft and five mediocre ones the last six years. Let's pump the brakes on his Draft wisdom. Of course Nick C. has his fingers in this too. It's not all BB's fault.

Quality of players is an evaluation process for sure but instead of picking a player that one might consider "blue chip" in the Draft process and spend half the time making them NFL ready, he'll trade down or pick up an injury discount and try and remold them. Plus those higher rated kids have more than a 50% chance of being a upper value pick.

Now lets' take the Draft for what it is. Most fans of every NFL Team look at the Draft as the end all, be all of roster resurgence. Only upon average 17% of every NFL Drafted player is on the Team in the status of elite player, very good player, serviceable starter, or reliable back up within three years of the Draft. The rest are on different Teams as roster fillers or are out of the league via injury or misjudged talent. These NFL scouts or personnel management, "professionals" are really all limited in success.

"Build through the Draft" is hitting a home run every year for years in a row. You really need a mix and Bill is good at that because he misses some years on Draft day. Look back the last six years.

We have nine players to Draft this year. Think about this. Only two will have a high impact upon average. Some Teams hit is double or triple that and some can't even keep one.

Trades, Free Agency and UDFA finds are what Bill does best. 32 of the players on the NFL Super Bowl 53 Team were Trades, FA, UDFA. That is 40% of the roster . Our Draft this year will more than likely pick up two solid players upon League average, to be determined how good in 2018. If we have an outstanding Draft, perhaps four. More than likely...not.

I, along with all of you on the forum hope beyond all hope that it will be more than a few. Let's face it, good Teams with solid rosters like the Pats might only be able to take a couple to add anyway.

Call it ego or whatever (he deserves that option). For every Gronk, he has had limited success picks in Dowling and I fear Dominique Easley, and the jury is still out on Dobson (hey if people are killing the Vikings for Drafting Clowney and call him a "bust", BB certainly then deserves an arched eyebrow on Easley).

He has wasted picks and we all can choose the ones he has like a Tavon Wilson. a Kevin O'Connell, Chad Jackson and more. We drink a lot of koolaid here but he still is the best coach maybe of all time. He is almost better at getting UDFA's to produce than picks.... so I say no ...mediocre at best in the "actual Draft".
DW Toys

slam said:

Because all I'm doing is summing up production from each franchises' draft picks, which took me a little over an hour since it's just cutting and pasting and summing things up in a spreadsheet. To actually try and go player by player and tease out what part of a career belongs to the team that drafted him and what part belongs to his next team would take me months if not years and is probably not worth the trouble.

Click to expand...

Also, say you draft a JAG, but he can't make your team. But he goes on to produce JAG -like numbers of say +2.0 vCARs elsewhere instead of fizzling out with a ZERO, you should get credit for picking NFL quality talent IMO. Not sure you should get all +20 points if he becomes a star, as you misread the potential draftee's talent obviously, but again, maybe some credit is due.

Harping on missed draft picks here and there is really missing the forest for the trees. So Belichick "missed" on Tavon Wilson. In the same year as Wilson was drafted, the only other team to rank in the top five in both time periods missed on almost their entire draft class. Remember warm camp body Jerel Worthy who couldn't make our team last year? He was Green Bay's 2012 2nd round pick whom they traded up to 51 to get. I'm sure Green Bay fans can name chapter and verse of who'd they'd rather have picked than the people they actually got in 2012. Bad picks and bad drafts happen to everyone.

One thing I noticed from doing this: I did the Patriots' spreadsheet first and used that as a template for the other teams. When I pasted in the new team's information, I had to adjust the formula so that it counted the 2009 and onward players but not the 2008 and previous players. I always had to adjust to account for usually 5 to 10 players fewer than the Patriots had drafted in the same time period. Not once did I have to add fields to the formula. For just one example, the Patriots have drafted 24 more players than the Saints since 2009! That's like three hidden extra draft classes. Baltimore, who love to accumulate supplemental picks had 8 fewer picks. It's like a baseball team who gets an extra inning or two to bat every game. Their averages don't have to be better than the next team to have more runs at the end of the game.

Draft Bust Rates by Value Score:


Draft Bust Rates by Games Played


Both methods clearly show a direct correlation between Pick Number and Bust %.

Drafting at the end of the round carries with it a 20% greater chance that any pick chosen will be a Bust when compared to the chances at the beginning of the round.

Over 15 years, the Average Draft Position of the Patriots is the absolute worst in the NFL at 26th

Over the past 5 years, the Average Draft Position of the Patriots is: 29.8

Over the past 5 years, the Average Draft Position of the Seahawks is: 25

Over the past 5 years, the Average Draft Position of the Broncos is: 22.8

Finally found a site that offers original Draft Position before any transactions.
http://www.prosportstransactions.com/football/DraftTrades/Years/2000.htm

Average Draft Position for the Past 15 Years: 2001 - 2015
Patriots: 26.33
Colts: 24.4
Steelers: 22.86 *
Packers: 22.86 *
Ravens: 22.66
Broncos: 20.93
Seahawks: 20.13
Giants: 19.86

* Double checked to make sure the Spreadsheet was calculating these correctly, draft position of the Steelers and the Packers are exactly tied over 15 years.

Danger Zone said:

Finally found a site that offers original Draft Position before any transactions.
http://www.prosportstransactions.com/football/DraftTrades/Years/2000.htm

Average Draft Position for the Past 15 Years: 2001 - 2015
Patriots: 26.33
Colts: 24.4
Steelers: 22.86 *
Packers: 22.86 *
Ravens: 22.66
Broncos: 20.93
Seahawks: 20.13
Giants: 19.86

* Double checked to make sure the Spreadsheet was calculating these correctly, draft position of the Steelers and the Packers are exactly tied over 15 years.

Click to expand...

Very good work and alot of work. Thank you for your effort.

As far as BB, perhaps he is in a no win ads to where he picks. Still say he makes it hard on himself. I would rather have one "blue chip" who can start versus three you have to mold or force feed into the roster. He has done than many times with lesser talent. He is also guilty of loyalty to players who have limited talent that he keeps around. I am a Bequette fan but I see the writing on the wall and he has held on. Chris White is another example of "you mean there is no one out there with more talent?". There was a DB named James Sanders now out of the League who (in MY OPINION Jack) was terrible. Make note: Out of the League. But yet BB held on to him. Other than White, these were picks in Third and Fourths I believe. I think Boyce might be another example.

If we have nine picks, and we know roster spots are few, doesn't it make more sense knowing your whole Draft is predicated on 17% success rate per NFL league average and you need a couple of "studs" that you Draft "right now" talent? You can't keep all nine! Then why wouldn't you trade as many picks as you could of the nine to say Draft just four high quality kids? Most Teams Draft players with the trust they can start sooner than later. Although I am a fan of under the radar picks, the percentages for the Pats for obtaining a starting OG and CB are higher within the first two rounds.....versus say a Cleveland who can use every pick and force feed some questionable talent.

This might be an example as far fetched as it may seem. As in any trade it takes two to tango:

1st Round (32nd Overall) swap to K.C. for picks #49 (2nd) + #80 (3rd.)
#49
#52
#55
2nd Round (64th Overall) swap #64 + #96 to Phil. for #52
#80 swap picks #80 + #85 to Arizona for pick #55
#85
3rd Round (96th Overall) to Phil.
3rd Round (97th Overall, Compensatory)-pick
4th Round (101st Overall) swap picks #101,#131,#177,#219 to Cincinatti. for pick #85 (3rd)
4th Round (131st Overall)
6th Round (177th Overall)
7th Round (219th Overall)
7th Round (253rd Overall, Compensatory)-pick

At the end we have picks #49,#52,#55 in the second round, and our comp in round 3 and round 7. The area of available picks in Round two about there could be Jalen Collins CB, Armstead DT, Poutasi G/T. Those three could have impact and play right away which is my point. Plus two other "comp."pieces perhaps an Antoine Everett G from McNeese St @ #97, and Tyrell Williams WR Western Oregon @#253.

The task was players that can start immediately and make a difference. Plus less coaching from BB.

DW Toys