1st round picks become starters less than 60% of the time

DarrylS said:

Always thought the the whole draft prognostication was an invention of the NFL to perpetuate its brand and make money during the down time in March/April.. millions are spent on mock drafts and draft publications, lots of publicity for the NFL. It starts with the Combine another NFL invention, then on to college pro days and individual workouts..

Never understood how anyone can predict what will happen in the third round on as there are just too many variables..

Then there is Mel Kyper who for some reason has become an expert about guessing..

I enjoy the outcome, but the process seems somewhat convoluted and tilts heavily towards the interest of the league, rather than the teams.

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The mock drafts are useful to some degree. It's not about predicting the future, but understanding how certain teams may prioritize need vs. value.

As Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Mock drafts treated as a plan are useless for all the reasons you list, but as a planning exercise, can be helpful.

jmt57 said:

Then there is draft position. Is lumping a number one and number 32 pick together fair, when numbers 32 and 33 are given completely different criteria?

What happens when a player's career is curtailed by an unforeseen injury? Why is that placed in the same negative category as a guy who had neither the skill nor temperament to succeed?

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I agree with your entire post, and especially these points right here.

I'm sure the likelihood of drafting a starter in picks 1-5 is higher than drafting a starter through picks 28-32. Grouping success rates by "rounds" is totally arbitrary.

Another thing that makes it really hard to compare is that there are factors beyond just the player's skill/upside. The coaching he receives also molds him into the players he ultimately becomes. The Patriots/Seahawks/etc have superb coaching staffs.

Is it unreasonable to think that a player that "fails" in, say, Cleveland might succeed in New England/Seattle? In fact, you see this all the time, where a draft pick busts, reaches FA, signs a one-year "prove it" deal with a good organization, then becomes a respectable player.

Jimmy Garoppolo is a hot commodity right now. Would he be so coveted if he didn't go to New England and sit behind Tom Brady for the last 3 years? Or if he didn't have the NE coaching staff teaching him?

Statistical analysis is football is hard. One of the reasons I like baseball is because it's largely about individual pitcher-vs-batter matchups. It makes it much easier to isolate performance and attribute it to a specific player. Football is so much more complex and team-driven that it's hard to know who to assign value to. This is a criticism you often hear of PFF -- they don't even know what a player's assignment was on many plays, who on earth do they know if they player did "good" or not?

SlowGettingUp said:

Some interesting statistics in the following article from a Chief's site.

OL (83%), LB (70%) and TE (67%) have the lowest first round "bust" rates.
QBs are first round or bust (with one or two notable exceptions of course!)

DL's have highest first round bust rate - only a 58% chance of becoming a starter. But that's a lot better than the second round, where success rate drops to a mere 26% (about the same as 3rd round and actually worse than 4th round for some reason).

What stats tells us about the draft by round

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You forgot kicker. First round starter rate is 100% (Janikowski). Ok, just kidding, now for my serious remark..........

Thanks for passing along those stats as they are very interest.

To be honest I would have expected OL and DL to have the highest hits. Apparently I was on the money with one of those thoughts and could not have been more wrong with the other.

convertedpatsfan said:

Interesting thoughts. Some additional food for thought. Have you considered using Pro Football Reference's AV vs. Chase Stuart's draft value chart (which uses the average AV per draft slot)? So if we know the average career AV of the 56th pick is 9, then we can see if a player has exceeded that average or not.

So we aren't measuring short term starter vs long term backup or whether a guy played because he was good or his team sucked. Just whether he exceeds the average for where he's selected. Because a guy drafted in the 7th round who makes the team and plays a bit is a successful pick in comparison to most 7th round picks.

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Thanks for the Chase Stuart link. That's interesting.

Note that the statistics probably get distorted some because teams are slower to cut players drafted in higher rounds. Some players take a couple of years to become decent NFL-caliber players; if they were drafted in say Round 2 they will likely get those years, while if they were a 5th Round choice they will likely not.

There is another distorting paradox at work too - you have to be a better player to become a starter on the Patriots than you do on say the Browns.

GodBrady said:

Is it unreasonable to think that a player that "fails" in, say, Cleveland might succeed in New England/Seattle? In fact, you see this all the time, where a draft pick busts, reaches FA, signs a one-year "prove it" deal with a good organization, then becomes a respectable player.

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It is completely reasonable to think that coaching can make or break a player's career but you are judging the organization, not the player, on a player's success and the value the organization spent to gain that success.

SlowGettingUp said:

Note that the statistics probably get distorted some because teams are slower to cut players drafted in higher rounds. Some players take a couple of years to become decent NFL-caliber players; if they were drafted in say Round 2 they will likely get those years, while if they were a 5th Round choice they will likely not.

There is another distorting paradox at work too - you have to be a better player to become a starter on the Patriots than you do on say the Browns.

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I think that is looking at the player instead of the organization. Patriots Draft at pick 32, get player who becomes a starter for x amount of years compared to Team Y draft at pick 22 for a player who never becomes a starter and is cut after three years. That scenario would point to the Patriots being better than Team Y from an organizational standpoint which doesn't necessarily reflect on the player himself. I think.

Tony2046 said:

It is completely reasonable to think that coaching can make or break a player's career but you are judging the organization, not the player, on a player's success and the value the organization spent to gain that success.

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Of course, but what I'm saying is usually the success is attributed to the general manager and his draft ability, rather than the organization as a whole.

GodBrady said:

Of course, but what I'm saying is usually the success is attributed to the general manager and his draft ability, rather than the organization as a whole.

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OK I agree with that and include the Head Coach as well which is what I mean when using the term organization.

Just so I'm not missing something I need to ask why do you differentiate between GM/HC and the organization?

GodBrady said:

Of course, but what I'm saying is usually the success is attributed to the general manager and his draft ability, rather than the organization as a whole.

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And by the way I think your original point is important and could be used to create another judgment tool to compare team's with.

Team A drafts player A - Team A cuts player A - Team B signs Player A - Player A starts for Team B - etc... Tough to chart but interesting .

Interesting thread. I used to get into the draft much more heavily than I do now. Some of this is related to the lack of 1sts the past two years but it's also due to the monotony of the draft sites and publications, which say the same things about the prospects over and over and over. It's also become so much about the measureables and while I realize the talent has to be there I think the person/player becomes much more important in the pros. And as far as Belichick goes I believe that weighs heavily into his draft decisions, he has his misses but he's builds teams filled with leaders and winners, and that's why they are so successful.

Tony2046 said:

Thanks for the Chase Stuart link. That's interesting.

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I think it's worth reading the links on how he calculated it, as I think it's career AV above average, which I think is around 2 per season. I don't remember all the specific info, but it's more than just AV comparison.

convertedpatsfan said:

I think it's worth reading the links on how he calculated it, as I think it's career AV above average, which I think is around 2 per season. I don't remember all the specific info, but it's more than just AV comparison.

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That's it exactly. His original chart still overvalued undrafted FA's or low round picks so he used above 2AV value which flattened out both ends of the scale as opposed to the JJ value system which seems to over value high round picks and undervalues mid round picks.

Interesting stuff. Thanks

convertedpatsfan said:

The mock drafts are useful to some degree. It's not about predicting the future, but understanding how certain teams may prioritize need vs. value.

As Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Mock drafts treated as a plan are useless for all the reasons you list, but as a planning exercise, can be helpful.

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I am more skeptical, Mock Drafts, are a creation of the NFL to increase fan interest for more than the 20 game season, a whole industry has emerged leading up to, during and then evaluations of the event.. then there is the actual draft which has turned into a three day media circus.. the NFL has done a good job from turning a seasonal professional sport to a year round event..

Tony2046 said:

For discussion purposes. I put together a draft analysis last year and just updated it . It compares all the teams from the AFCE. I think it shows that BB has been quite a bit better than the other three teams. More first team all pro selections, Pro Bowl selections and similar amount of total games played despite picking later in each round than the other teams.

I do agree that it is tough to fully grade each GM completely. I haven't looked up which picks were traded for players or to move up etc... and wouldn't know what the results were for those transactions.

I also have to add that Brady's Pro Bowl and All Pro selections might throw this chart off a bit because of who he is. The Goat.
So for an FYI, Brady's All Pro selections are 2 and Pro Bowl 12.


Draft Years 2000-2016
View attachment 16895

New York Jets All-Time Draft History | Pro-Football-Reference.com

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I would like to see the success rates of teams in drafting players relative to their projected draft positions.

Suppose you assign each draft pick a "value score" that is the difference of their pre-draft ranking and their draft position. A positive score shows a player picked at higher than anticipated value (Laramey Tunsil, Myles Jack) and a negative score shows a player picked at lower than anticipated value (Deion Brancg, Tavon Wilson). For example, Devin McCourty was ranked around 40th on most prospect lists in 2010, but was drafted 28th overall, giving him a score of -12.

I would predict that Belichick drafts would tend toward the "high reach" end of scoring. I wonder if a similar trend would apply to other teams as well.

Do you really think Belichick's looking back at his drafting and thinking...well, the first round only has a 60% success rate, so...

I doubt it. I imagine he looks at what he could have done better to avoid failures in the future.

In the end, it is OKAY to be critical! It's okay to wonder what the hell he was thinking on some of the picks he made! I can pretty much guarantee he doesn't excuse himself by looking at the success rate of other GMs around the league. He evaluates it by his own high standards and I think it should be acceptable for fans to do the same.

stinkypete said:

I would like to see the success rates of teams in drafting players relative to their projected draft positions.

Suppose you assign each draft pick a "value score" that is the difference of their pre-draft ranking and their draft position. A positive score shows a player picked at higher than anticipated value (Laramey Tunsil, Myles Jack) and a negative score shows a player picked at lower than anticipated value (Deion Brancg, Tavon Wilson). For example, Devin McCourty was ranked around 40th on most prospect lists in 2010, but was drafted 28th overall, giving him a score of -12.

I would predict that Belichick drafts would tend toward the "high reach" end of scoring. I wonder if a similar trend would apply to other teams as well.

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That is pretty much what Chase Stuart does. @convertedpatsfan posted the link earlier. Draft Value Chart

But Chase Stuart doesn't care about where Devin McCourty was ranked prior to the draft. He looks at where a player was drafted and what kind of success that player achieved during a five year window. Devin McCourty would be a plus value player.

Good stuff Pete.

I count 8 solid "hits" among those selections, so a lot more (40%) than you would expect from 3rd-round picks.

SlowGettingUp said:

I count 8 solid "hits" among those selections, so a lot more (40%) than you would expect from 3rd-round picks.

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If you count Brissett it's nine.

Tony2046 said:

If you count Brissett it's nine.

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Who am I missing after these eight?
Mallett, Brissett, Hobbs, Ryan, Ridley, Harmon, Thuney, Valentine