Team Draft Assessment Challenge for the Decade

slam said:

We have 8 valid guesses so far, and the gap between the best guess and the worst guess so far is over 40 points!

Should I reveal the answers soon or give people til the end of the week?

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Let's hear it not like anything else is going on.

I think this is tricky because players drafted by bad teams have more opportunity to play and those teams also draft higher do the answer may be counter intuitive.
Also teams that trade a lot will have an advantage. Plus the players drafted at the beginning of the period mean much more since they have 10 years to accumulate points

So with all of those factors my wild guess #1 is the 49ers for a combination of success plus a bunch of early picks.
Last I’ll have to go with the jete because they are the jete.
I’ll put the patriots at 5.

Ring 6 said:

I think this is tricky because players drafted by bad teams have more opportunity to play and those teams also draft higher do the answer may be counter intuitive.
Also teams that trade a lot will have an advantage. Plus the players drafted at the beginning of the period mean much more since they have 10 years to accumulate points

So with all of those factors my wild guess #1 is the 49ers for a combination of success plus a bunch of early picks.
Last I’ll have to go with the jete because they are the jete.
I’ll put the patriots at 5.

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I'd be surprised if the 49ers are in the top 15-20

Jets are definitely bottom 3-5 if not the worst.

BaconGrundleCandy said:

I'd be surprised if the 49ers are in the top 15-20

Jets are definitely bottom 3-5 if not the worst.

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49ers and patriots will be very close

Ring 6 said:

49ers and patriots will be very close

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We'll see w/e OP is done with the drum roll. SF was as bad as it gets for a good 5-6 years. Like jets & Cleveland bad.

BaconGrundleCandy said:

We'll see w/e OP is done with the drum roll. SF was as bad as it gets for a good 5-6 years. Like jets & Cleveland bad.

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Sure but that gave their picks an opportunity to play and accumulate stats. That’s why I guessed them. They have made the playoffs 4 of the 10 years which is better than average, most was at the beginning of the period when they did it heavily with draft choices then when harbaugh left they sucked and got a lot of high draft picks.
The criteria isn’t really an assessment of the quality of their drafting. A bad team that puts 8 draft picks in the field will our pace a good team that only gets 3 on the field even if the 8 aren’t good enough to play on the good team.

OK folks, since people want to get to the fireworks factory, here we go. First, the ranks of each team.

Summary Rank Total CarAv
SEA 1 1288
NE 2 1081
GB 3 1050
CIN 4 1018
DAL 5 999
KC 6 994
PIT 7 982
LAR 8 979
HOU 9 976
CLE 10 969
DEN 11 969
BAL 12 967
PHI 13 945
MIA 14 931
MIN 15 918
WAS 16 914
SF 17 909
CAR 18 889
BUF 19 886
DET 20 872
NO 21 860
OAK 22 848
TB 23 843
TEN 24 823
IND 25 817
ARI 26 807
ATL 27 804
JAX 28 774
LAC 29 760
CHI 30 747
NYG 31 728
NYJ 32 643

Seattle is first and by a LOT. Many people guessed Seattle, so the general sense they drafted well is accurate. They killed the first three years of the decade, going 2nd, 1st and 1st from 2010-2. Then two very poor years followed by five squarely mediocre years so far. They may return to the pack, but so far they are ahead by a good deal.

Team #2? Your New England Patriots. This may shock the people who bleat that the Patriots can't draft because Cyrus Jones HaHaHa! But they killed a good deal of the decade.

Pats rank by year:
2010 - 3
2011 - 6
2012 - 12
2013 - 19
2014 - 16
2015 - 4
2016 - 4
2017 - 32
2018 - 26
2019 - 29

It isn't just quantity either. The Pats are 9th in terms of sheer number of players drafted, and 6th in average value per draft pick. That's even after the penalized picks, and picking at the back of each round. They're 6th! Sorry we haven't drafted 8 All Pro WEAPONZ. But up until this year we had a completely homegrown OL that was one of the best in the league that collectively made only as much as Chandler Jones alone, so maybe Bill knows what he's doing?

I expect our ranks in more recent years to improve a bit, by the way, as we rely more upon young players and older folks cycle out. Jimmy G and maybe Brissett will earn value if they keep healthy and playing. Maybe Stidham as well? 2017 we'll stay last, though. That's the year we traded out of much of the draft and only have Deatrich Wise to show for it.

In last place are both NY teams, with the J-E-T-S in absolute last. The Jets have just under half of Seattle's haul.

Here's a link to a Google Spreadsheet with the data:

Please check my work!

And so, here are the results of the guessing game:

Poster / Best Score /Pats Score / Worst Score / Total
jmt57 Seattle 0 4th 2 Jets 0 - 2
TB_Helmet Seahawks 0 6th 4 Jags 4 - 8
betterthanthealternative Cowboys 4 11th 9 Giants 1 - 14
pazrul72 Packers 2 9th 7 Cardinals 6 - 15
Ring 6 49ers 16 5th 3 Jets 0 - 19
masterbouncer Seahawks 0 8th 6 Browns 23 - 29
BaconGrundleCandy Seahawks 0 8th 6 Browns 23 - 29
ALP Seahawks 0 16th 14 Dolphins 19 - 33
aluminum seats Ravens 11 12th 10 Bengals 28 - 49

Read 'em and weep! BaconGrundleCandy, if you went with the Jets and not the Brown as your worst guess, your score would only be 6.

Link to the Spreadsheet you can view in its own window:

Some statistical oddities and notes:

Seattle is the only other team in the top 10 of both # of picks (1) and CarAV per pick (2). NE was 9th and 5th.

New Orleans had the fewest picks but made sure to nail them, with the highest CarAV per pick. That equates to 20th overall.

On the flipside Min and SF were 2nd and 3rd respectively in number of picks in the decade, but were 31st and 30th respectively in CarAV per pick. That was good for 13th and 16th overall.

The Patriots were 2nd for the 1st half of the decade, and 15th for the 2nd half. Seattle was 1st for the first half, 10th for the 2nd half. The top 3 teams for the 2nd half as it stands now are Cleveland, KC, and Indy. Bottom 3 are NYG, ARI, and NYJ. Yes, the Jets sucking is statistically proven.

But Muh Belichick the GM is the devil narrative!

This is fantastic OP. Thanks for posting and for compiling all the data!!

seeing the patriots ranks over the decade really speaks to how fans are saying our recent drafts have sucked

they in fact have

Great work.

Should've went with my gut.

Had Sea, GB & NEP top 5. Right there with Pitt & Balt. Way off on Cleve. Thought 49ers would be a lot worse but middle of the pack isn't that bad I guess.

Would love for you to go through my grades if you ever wanted to. I always love feedback from others. You obviously don't mind doing a little work.
Not the biggest deal at all. Again I just like the feedback. Plus despite the importance of the draft not many are held accountable or given proper credit.

Pats supporter on me if you or someone else wants to.

I’d love to see the results with UDFA’s signed right after draft. Basically, the same thing as a late rounder.

Butler, Andrews, Jones, Jackson come to mind.

Cincinnati at #4 seems like an outlier.

venecol said:

Cincinnati at #4 seems like an outlier.

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It's odd looking, but they're #4 in terms of number of picks, but 23rd for points per pick. They're not good at drafting any particular pick but they have a lot of picks and have relied on their draft and not free agency (since they're cheap as heck).

Also, their drafts early in the decade were pretty good. Geno Atkins, AJ Green, Dunlap, Kevin Zeitler, and Andy Dalton. Those drafts powered winning seasons from 2011-2015, which is easy to forget about. They've been poor drafting from 2014 on, so their ranking should fall as time goes on.

Top Ten:

• Surprised that Cincinnati and Cleveland made it in that high.
• Expected Baltimore to be in there, maybe Minnesota too.

Bottom Ten:

• The Jets were my pick for the bottom immediately. Didn't have to think about that choice at all.
• Not surprised by NYG, TB, Indy or most of the others.
• I would have guessed Oakland, Wash and Detroit would be in the bottom ten too, rather than Atlanta, Tennessee or the Chargers.

jmt57 said:

Top Ten:

• Surprised that Cincinnati and Cleveland made it in that high.
• Expected Baltimore to be in there, maybe Minnesota too.

Bottom Ten:

• The Jets were my pick for the bottom immediately. Didn't have to think about that choice at all.
• Not surprised by NYG, TB, Indy or most of the others.
• I would have guessed Oakland, Wash and Detroit would be in the bottom ten too, rather than Atlanta, Tennessee or the Chargers.

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I definitely weighed "how they were at drafting" too heavily.

Love the journey but always been a results guy.

Cleveland is funny. They've had 15 first round picks, which is 4 more than anyone else. But there are so many busts and disappointments among them. The Patriots' maligned 2nd round picks score higher than Cleveland's 1st round picks. However, even busts like Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden get enough playing time to earn stats, so by sheer volume they're higher than we think but that's different than making moves that help the team win.

Nailed it! Great job putting this together