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NFL teams know the best way to draft, so why aren't they doing it?
Only a few teams are curious enough to think differently, and even fewer are disciplined enough to act differently.
theathletic.com
A few excerpts relevant to our conversations here:
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Even Nobel Prize-winning scholars have spent decades mulling whether there is a single best way to draft. The answer, they’ve found, is a resounding yes. But only a few teams are curious enough to think differently, and even fewer are disciplined enough to act differently.
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Teams massively overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they heavily overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft.
-The treasured No. 1 pick in the draft is actually the least valuable in the first round, according to the surplus value a team can create with each pick.
-Across all rounds, the probability that a player starts more games than the next player chosen at his position is just 53 percent.
-Teams generated a 174 percent return on trades by forgoing a pick this year for picks next year.
Thaler and Massey suggested that teams should accumulate picks by trading back and into the future more often. The more darts you have, the better your chance of eventually hitting the bull’s-eye.
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The problem for everyone in sports is that nobody wants to admit how random and arbitrary it is,” the former executive said. “Admitting that it’s arbitrary takes away from your specific abilities.
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Even true believers in trading down don’t hold to the dogma 100 percent of the time. Meers, who became the Browns’ director of research and strategy in 2016, said that exceptions are worth making at the quarterback position and if your team needs a star. (my emphasis)
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Another consideration that prevents teams from accumulating more picks is the number of competing incentives among decision-makers. Teams preach collaboration, alignment and shared vision, but their end goals may conflict directly with different segments of the organization.
A general manager might be more focused on his job security over the long-term direction of the organization. A head coach may believe unreasonably in his own ability to mold a player. Coordinators and position coaches want to add talent to their groups, while scouts may quite literally pound the table for the players they unearthed during the pre-draft process.
“Everybody is spitting falsehoods about how good they think a player is because they want one more bullet in the chamber for themselves,” one longtime executive from another professional league said. “That’s reasonable and rational, that they would behave in their own self-interest, but you have to find a way to discount it as a GM."