How the Patriots got where they are: College draft edition

[203Pat]

Just keep us going to the SB and they can draft who ever they want. I am sure the Browns have a much better individual draft for whatever that is worth.

One could easily make an argument our recent drafts are the reason we didn't go to the Super Bowl this year.

 

[randomk1]

How would you assign players to different tiers? Honest question. You need some way to quantify their value.

(Also, hilarious that Gronk has an AV of 69!)

Similar to what was posted before.

Gronk, Sherman are S tier players - game changing elite talent 7 points
Long term starter ,team leader, etc- A tier 4 points
Solid starter - B tier 2 points
Rotational player - C tier 1 point

QBs get like double the points and obviously some sort of bonus or penalty based on average draft position.

 

[TB_Helmet]

Similar to what was posted before.

Gronk, Sherman are S tier players - game changing elite talent 7 points
Long term starter ,team leader, etc- A tier 4 points
Solid starter - B tier 2 points
Rotational player - C tier 1 point

QBs get like double the points and obviously some sort of bonus or penalty based on average draft position.

Sure but you are manually assigning those grades, right? You'd have to do that for every player in the NFL if you want to compare our drafts to other teams. It's a qualitative exercise and everyone who makes those assignments will have different results, and there will be arguments. At least Career AV attempts to assign a value to a player that doesn't have any bias.

NFL needs something like Wins Above Replacement. Does that exist?

 

[Kasmir]

No matter how weak AVR might be, it's better than subjective blather. The problem it addresses is that of objectively scoring foresight using hindsight.

Poster as poster here evaluates a draft with hindsight information unavailable at the time of the draft and assumes that BB's drafts suck. Well no ****, everyone's drafts suck by that measure! Question is, does BB do better than his competition based on the opportunities presented at the time of the draft. None of you trolls have ever produced a shred of evidence that helps at all to answer that all important question.

This AVR analysis -- however flawed -- at is an important attempt in that direction.

Note also that since no one is alleging that AVR as a system was created to make Belichick look good, the fact that it suggests he's actually good at talent evaluation correlates with his actual real world historic success.

Especially given that the AVR based study doesn't weight for opportunity, i.e. doesn't take into affect the lower draft positions. Using the usual draft value chart for the first round, the bottom 10 teams' picks are worth an average of 671 points vs a 32 team average of 1158 points.

So Belichick has been picking in the first round at a 1.72x first round investment disadvantage vs the average NFL team in the last decade, and yet despite that handicap his performance by this system is still Top Two. Remarkable.

Kerry Byrne at Cold Hard Football Facts did the same analysis 10 years ago, and the Pats were #1 then, too, with a different set of draft picks in a different decade.

The elephant in this room is the growing war between Brady fans vs Belichick fans for attribution of the success of the past 20 years. Brady fans tend to talk down Belichick to talk up Brady.

And vice versa.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

@Deus Irae I didn’t see it addressed here, but it may have been and missed. Is it fair to include UDFAs here? Because the Patriots have done pretty well there. I know it isn’t technically the draft, but it’s essentially part of the same draft strategy as you are finding rookies and signing them to multi-year contracts.

David Andrews (2015)
Jonathan Jones (2016)
Adam Butler (2017) - not a star player but solid
JC Jackson (2018)
Jakobi Meyers (2019) - granted, this one isn’t looking so strong now

 

[Kasmir]

Sure but you are manually assigning those grades, right? You'd have to do that for every player in the NFL if you want to compare our drafts to other teams. It's a qualitative exercise and everyone who makes those assignments will have different results, and there will be arguments. At least Career AV attempts to assign a value to a player that doesn't have any bias.

NFL needs something like Wins Above Replacement. Does that exist?

Extra credit if you score a maximum hindsight penalty strategy , i.e. punishing every pick that falls below the best AVR hindsight choice available at the pick. So every pick by every team including the Pats in 2000 gets dinged for missing Brady.

In data science terms, it's a score based on recall priority over precision, i.e. asserting that it's more important to avoid missing on drafting great players than it is to avoid drafting busts.

As usual, pick your poison.

It would be interesting to see which strategy best correlates with winning superbowls. My guess is that a precision strategy (avoiding busts) better predicts average AVR, but a recall strategy (not missing on Brady's / Mahomes' etc ) better predicts superbowl wins.

Note also that a recall strategy absolutely needs to score undrafted free agent misses. The precision strategy doesn't need to -- you don't care as much if an undrafted free agent busts.

 

[Deus Irae]

@Deus Irae I didn’t see it addressed here, but it may have been and missed. Is it fair to include UDFAs here? Because the Patriots have done pretty well there. I know it isn’t technically the draft, but it’s essentially part of the same draft strategy as you are finding rookies and signing them to multi-year contracts.

David Andrews (2015)
Jonathan Jones (2016)
Adam Butler (2017) - not a star player but solid
JC Jackson (2018)
Jakobi Meyers (2019) - granted, this one isn’t looking so strong now

My original notion was to break things down into 4 groups:

Draft (through first contract)
Trades
Free agency
Re-signees (2nd contract, plus)


I was going to include the UDFAs in with the free agents, as they really aren't draftees. But, given how little interest this stuff has generated, I doubt I'm going to bother covering either free agency or re-signees (free agency would be a real pain in the butt), so you might as well have at it.

In the alternative, however, you are more than welcome to take over the reins and do the free agency and re-signee threads.

 

[Kdo5]

First round picks get 5 year deals (yeah, year 5 can be skipped). Beyond that, we're looking at a 4 year window. So here are the Patriots picks within that window.

2015 first round pick, and then 2016-2019 picks:

Malcom Brown

Cyrus Jones
Joe Thuney
Jacoby Brissett
Vincent Valentine
Malcolm Mitchell
Kamu Grugier-Hill
Elandon Roberts
Ted Karras
Devin Lucien

Derek Rivers
Antonio Garcia
Deatrich Wise
Conor McDermott

Isaiah Wynn
Sony Michel
Duke Dawson
Ja'Whaun Bentley
Christian Sam
Braxton Berrios
Danny Etling
Keion Crossen
Ryan Izzo

N'Keal Harry
JoeJuan Williams
Chase Winovich
Damien Harris
Yodny Cajuste
Hjalte Froholdt
Jarrett Stidham
Byron Cowart
Jake Bailey
Ken Webster

This is what the Patriots have gotten out of those last 4+ drafts.

Big yikes. Isaiah Wynn (well aside from Thuney) is the only guy on that entire list that I’d say has the potential to be a very good player. And no I’m not including the punter. Everyone else is a JAG or bust.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

My original notion was to break things down into 4 groups:

Draft (through first contract)
Trades
Free agency
Re-signees (2nd contract, plus)


I was going to include the UDFAs in with the free agents, as they really aren't draftees. But, given how little interest this stuff has generated, I doubt I'm going to bother covering either free agency or re-signees (free agency would be a real pain in the butt), so you might as well have at it.

Andrews, Jackson, and Jones were good pickups in UDFA, but I don’t know if that’s really better than an average team in UDFA over five years. Meyers and Butler are more reflective of roster talent and depth, and would likely not be on the roster or have as much playing time if the team had a typical Patriots roster.

 

[DarrylS]

And roughly how much of that core was drafted between 2015-2018? Because, as far as I can tell, the core that was responsible for those championships was Brady and the base built from 2009-2013. Simply put, you don’t have a vacuum of talent on the offensive side of the ball if you’re drafting well there in recent years. Just doesn’t happen.

You assume that the only way to build this team and judge it is by the draft... the reality is when you pick at the lower end, this team took more risks that is probably should have.. but after with success with players like Gronk and Hernandez they may have been too ****y. Somehow in the midst of this ineptitude they went to three Superbowls in a row...

Have difficulty denigrating the Patriots draft in light of the overall success of this team..

 

[203Pat]

But other teams draft bad players too!! Obviously every team is going to miss on picks. I don’t know why it always has to turn into a league wide comparison instead of looking at things in black and white. The last 4 drafts have yielded almost no quality starters. Plain and simple.

All the “hindsight is 20/20” stuff is obvious. Yes of course you don’t know who is going to be a bust and who will be a stud but that being said a RB in the first round is always going to be stupid as far as I’m concerned. There were also a lot of people who didn’t like the Harry pick at the time of the draft with the other guys who were still on the board. The same way that a lot of people didn’t like us taking another corner in the second round or understand why we took another running back in the third. It’s all well and good to complain about people using hindsight to evaluate the draft but at the same time a lot of people haven’t agreed with some of our high picks right off the bat.

 

[aluminum seats]

No matter how weak AVR might be, it's better than subjective blather

Bingo. Lacking any metric to dig into and analyze, for better for worse, threads like this will always devolve into, I give this guy an A, I give this guy a C… Michel was good last year in the playoffs, no he’s no good… Just a bunch of subjective opinions, all of which is fine, it’s most of what this board is, but it is what it is.

 

[JarOfMayo51]

Just keep us going to the SB and they can draft who ever they want. I am sure the Browns have a much better individual draft for whatever that is worth.

If they keep drafting like they have been, they will never see another SB after Brady leaves

 

[JarOfMayo51]

The elephant in this room is the growing war between Brady fans vs Belichick fans for attribution of the success of the past 20 years. Brady fans tend to talk down Belichick to talk up Brady.

And vice versa.

I don't think its a Brady vs Belichick, I think people just see what a pile of steaming **** the last 4 drafts have been which has caused a massive deficiency of talent on the offensive side of the ball

I don't see anyone asking to replace Belichick, we just want them to draft some real players that can come in and save this roster from collapsing into the abyss... because Brady covers up A LOT of the poor drafting over these last couple years, and this most recent year saw the wheels come off in the wild card round against the Titans where they could only manage to score 13 points

 

[203Pat]

Bingo. Lacking any metric to dig into and analyze, for better for worse, threads like this will always devolve into, I give this guy an A, I give this guy a C… Michel was good last year in the playoffs, no he’s no good… Just a bunch of subjective opinions, all of which is fine, it’s most of what this board is, but it is what it is.

Nothing subjective about a first round RB averaging south of 4 ypc and less than 1000 yards in his second season.

 

[JarOfMayo51]

You assume that the only way to build this team and judge it is by the draft... the reality is when you pick at the lower end, this team took more risks that is probably should have.. but after with success with players like Gronk and Hernandez they may have been too ****y. Somehow in the midst of this ineptitude they went to three Superbowls in a row...

Have difficulty denigrating the Patriots draft in light of the overall success of this team..

This thread is literally about how the DRAFT has contributed to where the Pats are right now.

They won 3 superbowls, maybe they could have won 4 or 5 if they drafted better. Looking at the list of talent they've drafted over the last 4 years is inexcusable how bad it is

 

[Kasmir]

But other teams draft bad players too!! Obviously every team is going to miss on picks. I don’t know why it always has to turn into a league wide comparison instead of looking at things in black and white. The last 4 drafts have yielded almost no quality starters. Plain and simple.

All the “hindsight is 20/20” stuff is obvious. Yes of course you don’t know who is going to be a bust and who will be a stud but that being said a RB in the first round is always going to be stupid as far as I’m concerned. There were also a lot of people who didn’t like the Harry pick at the time of the draft with the other guys who were still on the board. The same way that a lot of people didn’t like us taking another corner in the second round or understand why we took another running back in the third. It’s all well and good to complain about people using hindsight to evaluate the draft but at the same time a lot of people haven’t agreed with some of our high picks right off the bat.

There's nothing wrong with using hindsight to evaluate a draft; in fact it's ultimately the only way. Whats's wrong is comparing your hindsight to BB's foresight. You need to compare how he did with his opportunities with how other drafting teams did with theirs.

 

[aluminum seats]

Nothing subjective about a first round RB averaging south of 4 ypc and less than 1000 yards in his second season.

Ok. And someone else might talk about an outstanding playoff performance or potential future performance. Or pull another player out of the list and look at a couple of numbers associated with him. Point is without anything systematic it’s just people bantering about different players, again which is fine, it’s sort of what we do here.

 

[gobesmug]

This thread is reactionary. The pats won the SB last year, went 12-4 this year and lost against a bad matchup in Tennessee.

The offensive woes occurred when Andrews went out for the season, Wyn got hurt, and our #2 Wr couldn't kick his drug habit. The remaining cap got sucked up to AB who didn't disclose pending legal issues which ruined any chance of trading for a good vet because there was no cap room.

Trading Michael Bennett, who would have been really helpful against Tennessee, also hurt.

Before the regular season started this was a Superbowl contending team. The circumstances above is why the pats are not playing next Sunday.

 

[captain stone]

That's a pretty bad group. The only one who I would even say grades as an A or even close is Thuney.

Bailey and Winovich

What exactly did Wino do during the post-Boogermen fraud of a schedule to deserve an A?

And giving Bailey an A is a joke...or did you not watch the Tennessee game?