[OC] Successful Salary Cap Trends
Feb 20, 2022 8:25:26 GMT -6
Reignman, Funkytown, and 6 more like this
Post by MidwinterViking on Feb 20, 2022 8:25:26 GMT -6
This is a look at how different roster compositions have performed over 2019 – 2021. The purpose is to see if there are specific roster profiles that have produced successful teams - and if so, how close to that profile are the Vikings?
I originally started with QBs only, but found some interesting things when I expanded to look at the rest of the roster. To build this, I downloaded every team’s cap hits for 2019-2021 from Spotrac; then I added the team’s record to every player on that list. So…
Where do teams spend their money?
Are there trends in successful rosters?
Are there trends for QBs?
What do teams do with their money?
Over the last 3 years, here is the cap % teams have allocated by position.
These are the starters, the numbers are not diluted by bench warmers. I didn’t use raw salary dollars since the salary cap is different each year. QB is blacked out because I look at them later; the average for QB1 is 7.6%, but there is no such thing as an average QB1 (as I'll show later).
How to divide the money?
The whole purpose of this investigation was to figure out how to spend cap dollars. The $200M question is: is it better to have a few high dollar guys or a balance of mid-range guys? To see what I could find, I broke down players into 4 salary ranges:
Cheap: <1% of salary cap
Low Cost: 1-3% of salary cap. These are guys I think of as useful role players, no jersey movers.
Medium Cost: 3-6% of salary cap. $6-11M type guys that are solid contributors or notable free agents.
Stars: >6% of salary cap. Core guys and star players. (Designated “Stars” for later)
This will all be based on the assumption that players that sign a second (or later) contract sign for roughly fair market value. I’m sure there are exceptions, but using the top 51 cap hit players for each team that determine the salary cap, that’s 4896 players so a few bad contracts won’t ruin things.
So how many of each guy do you want on your roster and what combination leads to a high win %? I’ll show all of the Cheap, Low and Medium guys first; this is really just to show you that there is no correlation.
Maybe if you look closely, the win % goes down a bit with too many cheap guys. The biggest piece of context I got from these plots is the player count: when building a 53 man roster, most guys will be <1% of the salary cap. This means I can look at player cost two ways to get to a 53 man roster:
Option 1: $208M / 53 man roster = $4M per player, anyone over $4M is high cost.
Option 2: (30 x $1M cheap guys) + $178 / 23 differentiators = $8M per player, a much higher salary for top end difference makers.
The 2nd option makes more sense when I look at the performance of teams based on the number of high cost Star players they have:
What is this!? Out of 96 teams over that time span, a group of 8 teams filtered out at the top; they had no losing seasons between them and a combine win % of a ridiculous .717; these guys are averaging a 12-5 record. The one thing they had in common was that they all had 5 Stars (or more).
Who is in this high roller club?
What players made up their super star core?
Is this something that seems to be repeatable?
How close are the Vikings to joining this club?
I must know!
Successful “5 Star” Club Profiles
Oh… All I have to do is filter the data I already had for QBs to show everyone else? That was easy… I guess I know all those questions. Here are the answers. The 5 Star teams plus the cap hit of each of their Stars.
2019 Vikings (10-6) We made the list!
Stars: Kirk Cousins (QB: 15.4%) Danielle Hunter (DE: 7.2%), Xavier Rhodes (CB: 7.1%), Stefon Diggs (WR: 6.6%), Riley Reiff (LT: 6.2%)
Team take: This team also had a very recognizable core of guys that were below the Star level like Harrison Smith, Thielen, Griffin, Dalvin, O’Niell, Kendricks. The big question with this team was and is: can we take them seriously as a contender if they got pushed out of the playoffs so decisively? And if you can't take them seriously, does the 5 Star theory work at all? If you didn’t know the results, this team would line up really well with the other 7 in this group. Which brings me to team #2.
2019 49ers (13-3)
Stars: Jimmy Garoppolo (QB: 10.6%), Joe Staley (LT, 7.7%), Dee Ford (DE: 7.6%), Richard Sherman (CB: 7.4%), Kwon Alexander (ILB: 6.0%).
Team take: The team that knocked those 2019 Vikings out of the playoffs is also one of the 8. These guys also had guys like Nick Bosa, Emmanuel Sanders, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle. Richard Sherman may have been on the decline as a Star, but there was a lot of talent around him. This defiantly looks like a 13-3 roster. Knowing this team filtered out as part of a top group of high performers makes me look at that loss a bit differently.
2020 Chiefs (14-2)
Stars: Frank Clark(DE: 9.7%), Tyreek Hill(WR: 9.0%), Tyrann Mathieu(8.2%), Sammy Watkins(8.0%), Eric Fisher(7.7%), Chris Jones(7.6%), Anthony Hitchens(6.4%)
Team take: the only team on the list with 7 players. And they are 1 of 2 out of the 8 that do not feature a QB on their Star list, but that’s ok because they also had Patrick Mahomes and, just for good measure, Travis Kelce missed the 6% cutoff by 0.3%. It’s not a matter of affording guys, simply finding 7 of them at a time is a feat, and this team had a lot. No wonder they went 14-2. This team is an outlier in the 96 teams reviewed.
2020 Colts (11-5)
Stars: Philip River (QB: 12.6%), DeForest Buckner (DT: 11.8%), Jacoby Brissett(QB: 10.8%), Anthony Castonzo(LT: 8.6%), Ryan Kelly(C: 7.7%), T.Y. Hilton(WR: 7.3%)
Team Take: I did not expect to see this team. They are arguably the least impressive team in the group, but 11-5 is a fact. Rivers wasn’t great at this point, Brissett would have added no value and I don’t think T.Y. Hilton was a Star at this point (just paid like one). Even the guys below the line aren’t eye popping: Darious Leonard, Jonathan Taylor, Xavier Rhodes, Justin Huston. So what can I learn from this? 5 stars may be enough even if they don't shine very bright. Out of those 35-40 cheap and low cost guys, only 2-5 really need to step up to make 5 stars look good, even if the stars aren’t at the apex of their skill. The 2020 Colts are a very relevant team to learn from.
2020 Packers (13-3)
Stars: Aaron Rodgers (QB: 10.9%), Za’Darius Smith (OLB: 8.7%), Davante Adams (WR: 8.3%), David Bakhtiari(LT: 8.1%), Preston Smith (OLB: 6.8%)
Team Take: The group below the 6% threshold was also loaded with Corey Linsley, Jaire Alexander, Kenny Clark, Aaron Jones. Not to mention the playoff badass Kevin King (BURN!), and budding superstar Jordan Love (hahaha). This was a great roster around Rodgers, it’s fair to wonder if the quality of teammates lifted him from an age related decline, similar rosters lifted Jimmy Garoppolo and old Philip Rivers. It's also fair to wonder if 2020 was really the Packers last, best shot.
2020 Titans (11-5)
Stars: Ryan Tannehill (QB: 11.4%), Taylor Lewan (LT: 9.1%), Malcom Butler (CB: 6.9%), Jadeveion Clowney(DE: 6.4%) , Rodger Saffold(G: 6.2%)
Team Take: 2 teams from the same division in the group of 8, I wish I had appreciate that 2020 AFC South divisional race more at the time! Obviously missing from the top paid is Derrick Henry. I like seeing this team because it’s built differently than others around a power run game. But the formula of working around a limited group of stars still holds. The Titans are the only team with a guard in their top group.
2021 Chargers (9-8)
Stars: Joey Bosa (OLB: 11.4%), Keenan Allen (WR: 8.6%), Mike Williams (WR: 8.6%), Linval Joseph (DT: 6.5%), Chris Harris (CB: 6.2%), Bryan Bulaga (6.1%)
Team Take: what the heck! 6 guys on the Star list. They are the other team without a QB on the list but had Justin Herbert playing at a high level. Not only does this team have the worst record on the list, looking at this pattern and where Herbert is, this feels like the most disappointing team on the list by far. Maybe imports (Linval Joseph & Bryan Bulaga) weren’t carrying their weight? I just know it’s tough to assemble more talent than this; it feels like the Chargers may have missed an opportunity in 2021.
2021 Titans (12-5)
Stars: Kevin Byrd (8.2%), Derrick Henry (7.4%), Taylor Lewan (7.3%), Rodger Saffold (6.7%), Ryan Tannehill (6.1%)
Team Take: It’s like the 2020 Titans but with 100% more Julio (2.2 cap %)! This is an important entry on the list because I didn’t filter out injuries. When you build the roster, you don’t know who will be injured, so a team has to stand up to normal injury wear and tear. One of the most critical 5 Stars, Henry, missed significant time but things stayed together. Having AJ Brown for $1.5M helped.
Is this trend repeatable?
Looking at the trends from these 8 teams:
Tackles are critical; all 8 have at least 1 and 7/8 have their LT on their paid list.
QBs are necessary but don’t dominate. Rodgers and Mahomes are elite, but the other 6 don’t have QBs that blow your socks off (Herbert might one day, but not now).
Pass rushers are well represented with 6/8 teams having a highly paid pass rusher.
The biggest question on if this is repeatable is if this is real or just a mirage caused by a small data set. I go back to some earlier points. 30+ cheap guys on a team and how many do you need to step up? 5 Stars isn’t enough, but 7 or 8 is; that means if you can get those 5 stars you only need a handful of guys to step up. Finally, flip the numbers around, if there are 23 guys above cheap level and you can get 5 at the Star player level, that’s 20% of the difference makers that are high performing players. This makes sense to me, so I’m going to say this is repeatable. And if nothing else, 8 for 8 says it’s repeatable until the trend breaks.
I also looked at the opposite of this 5 star trend: was there a trend in teams that had a high win % (>.600), but did not have 5 stars and saw a few trends in those 24 teams.
- Nearly all of them had at least a 4th star who was close to the star level cutoff. The two notable exceptions were the 2019 Chiefs (loaded with cheap rookie contract talent) and 2021 Rams (who only really paid 3 players: Stafford, Donald, Ramsey). Several were close to having a 5th Star.
- Several of the best teams on this sub list had big stars were either about to get paid or had artificially low cap hits due to recent extensions: 2019 Ravens, 2019 Packers, 2020 Bills, 2021 Bucs, 2019 Chiefs.
Together this is enough to tell me that this 5 Star approach is real, even if it’s not the only way to win.
What does this mean for QBs in general and Cousins specifically?
The group of teams needed 5 “star players”. Are guys like Cousins, Tannehill, & Garoppolo stars when compared to other starting QBs? No. Are they stars when they are compared to the entire NFL pool players filled with guards, LBs and TEs? Absolutely, yes. So if you need a Star, QB is a good place to find one because there are more Stars at QB than other positions. The 3 years there were 12-17 QBs that qualified as Stars, and Cousins is good enough to make that group.
I originally started with QBs only, but found some interesting things when I expanded to look at the rest of the roster. To build this, I downloaded every team’s cap hits for 2019-2021 from Spotrac; then I added the team’s record to every player on that list. So…
Where do teams spend their money?
Are there trends in successful rosters?
Are there trends for QBs?
What do teams do with their money?
Over the last 3 years, here is the cap % teams have allocated by position.
These are the starters, the numbers are not diluted by bench warmers. I didn’t use raw salary dollars since the salary cap is different each year. QB is blacked out because I look at them later; the average for QB1 is 7.6%, but there is no such thing as an average QB1 (as I'll show later).
How to divide the money?
The whole purpose of this investigation was to figure out how to spend cap dollars. The $200M question is: is it better to have a few high dollar guys or a balance of mid-range guys? To see what I could find, I broke down players into 4 salary ranges:
Cheap: <1% of salary cap
Low Cost: 1-3% of salary cap. These are guys I think of as useful role players, no jersey movers.
Medium Cost: 3-6% of salary cap. $6-11M type guys that are solid contributors or notable free agents.
Stars: >6% of salary cap. Core guys and star players. (Designated “Stars” for later)
This will all be based on the assumption that players that sign a second (or later) contract sign for roughly fair market value. I’m sure there are exceptions, but using the top 51 cap hit players for each team that determine the salary cap, that’s 4896 players so a few bad contracts won’t ruin things.
So how many of each guy do you want on your roster and what combination leads to a high win %? I’ll show all of the Cheap, Low and Medium guys first; this is really just to show you that there is no correlation.
Maybe if you look closely, the win % goes down a bit with too many cheap guys. The biggest piece of context I got from these plots is the player count: when building a 53 man roster, most guys will be <1% of the salary cap. This means I can look at player cost two ways to get to a 53 man roster:
Option 1: $208M / 53 man roster = $4M per player, anyone over $4M is high cost.
Option 2: (30 x $1M cheap guys) + $178 / 23 differentiators = $8M per player, a much higher salary for top end difference makers.
The 2nd option makes more sense when I look at the performance of teams based on the number of high cost Star players they have:
What is this!? Out of 96 teams over that time span, a group of 8 teams filtered out at the top; they had no losing seasons between them and a combine win % of a ridiculous .717; these guys are averaging a 12-5 record. The one thing they had in common was that they all had 5 Stars (or more).
Who is in this high roller club?
What players made up their super star core?
Is this something that seems to be repeatable?
How close are the Vikings to joining this club?
I must know!
Successful “5 Star” Club Profiles
Oh… All I have to do is filter the data I already had for QBs to show everyone else? That was easy… I guess I know all those questions. Here are the answers. The 5 Star teams plus the cap hit of each of their Stars.
2019 Vikings (10-6) We made the list!
Stars: Kirk Cousins (QB: 15.4%) Danielle Hunter (DE: 7.2%), Xavier Rhodes (CB: 7.1%), Stefon Diggs (WR: 6.6%), Riley Reiff (LT: 6.2%)
Team take: This team also had a very recognizable core of guys that were below the Star level like Harrison Smith, Thielen, Griffin, Dalvin, O’Niell, Kendricks. The big question with this team was and is: can we take them seriously as a contender if they got pushed out of the playoffs so decisively? And if you can't take them seriously, does the 5 Star theory work at all? If you didn’t know the results, this team would line up really well with the other 7 in this group. Which brings me to team #2.
2019 49ers (13-3)
Stars: Jimmy Garoppolo (QB: 10.6%), Joe Staley (LT, 7.7%), Dee Ford (DE: 7.6%), Richard Sherman (CB: 7.4%), Kwon Alexander (ILB: 6.0%).
Team take: The team that knocked those 2019 Vikings out of the playoffs is also one of the 8. These guys also had guys like Nick Bosa, Emmanuel Sanders, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle. Richard Sherman may have been on the decline as a Star, but there was a lot of talent around him. This defiantly looks like a 13-3 roster. Knowing this team filtered out as part of a top group of high performers makes me look at that loss a bit differently.
2020 Chiefs (14-2)
Stars: Frank Clark(DE: 9.7%), Tyreek Hill(WR: 9.0%), Tyrann Mathieu(8.2%), Sammy Watkins(8.0%), Eric Fisher(7.7%), Chris Jones(7.6%), Anthony Hitchens(6.4%)
Team take: the only team on the list with 7 players. And they are 1 of 2 out of the 8 that do not feature a QB on their Star list, but that’s ok because they also had Patrick Mahomes and, just for good measure, Travis Kelce missed the 6% cutoff by 0.3%. It’s not a matter of affording guys, simply finding 7 of them at a time is a feat, and this team had a lot. No wonder they went 14-2. This team is an outlier in the 96 teams reviewed.
2020 Colts (11-5)
Stars: Philip River (QB: 12.6%), DeForest Buckner (DT: 11.8%), Jacoby Brissett(QB: 10.8%), Anthony Castonzo(LT: 8.6%), Ryan Kelly(C: 7.7%), T.Y. Hilton(WR: 7.3%)
Team Take: I did not expect to see this team. They are arguably the least impressive team in the group, but 11-5 is a fact. Rivers wasn’t great at this point, Brissett would have added no value and I don’t think T.Y. Hilton was a Star at this point (just paid like one). Even the guys below the line aren’t eye popping: Darious Leonard, Jonathan Taylor, Xavier Rhodes, Justin Huston. So what can I learn from this? 5 stars may be enough even if they don't shine very bright. Out of those 35-40 cheap and low cost guys, only 2-5 really need to step up to make 5 stars look good, even if the stars aren’t at the apex of their skill. The 2020 Colts are a very relevant team to learn from.
2020 Packers (13-3)
Stars: Aaron Rodgers (QB: 10.9%), Za’Darius Smith (OLB: 8.7%), Davante Adams (WR: 8.3%), David Bakhtiari(LT: 8.1%), Preston Smith (OLB: 6.8%)
Team Take: The group below the 6% threshold was also loaded with Corey Linsley, Jaire Alexander, Kenny Clark, Aaron Jones. Not to mention the playoff badass Kevin King (BURN!), and budding superstar Jordan Love (hahaha). This was a great roster around Rodgers, it’s fair to wonder if the quality of teammates lifted him from an age related decline, similar rosters lifted Jimmy Garoppolo and old Philip Rivers. It's also fair to wonder if 2020 was really the Packers last, best shot.
2020 Titans (11-5)
Stars: Ryan Tannehill (QB: 11.4%), Taylor Lewan (LT: 9.1%), Malcom Butler (CB: 6.9%), Jadeveion Clowney(DE: 6.4%) , Rodger Saffold(G: 6.2%)
Team Take: 2 teams from the same division in the group of 8, I wish I had appreciate that 2020 AFC South divisional race more at the time! Obviously missing from the top paid is Derrick Henry. I like seeing this team because it’s built differently than others around a power run game. But the formula of working around a limited group of stars still holds. The Titans are the only team with a guard in their top group.
2021 Chargers (9-8)
Stars: Joey Bosa (OLB: 11.4%), Keenan Allen (WR: 8.6%), Mike Williams (WR: 8.6%), Linval Joseph (DT: 6.5%), Chris Harris (CB: 6.2%), Bryan Bulaga (6.1%)
Team Take: what the heck! 6 guys on the Star list. They are the other team without a QB on the list but had Justin Herbert playing at a high level. Not only does this team have the worst record on the list, looking at this pattern and where Herbert is, this feels like the most disappointing team on the list by far. Maybe imports (Linval Joseph & Bryan Bulaga) weren’t carrying their weight? I just know it’s tough to assemble more talent than this; it feels like the Chargers may have missed an opportunity in 2021.
2021 Titans (12-5)
Stars: Kevin Byrd (8.2%), Derrick Henry (7.4%), Taylor Lewan (7.3%), Rodger Saffold (6.7%), Ryan Tannehill (6.1%)
Team Take: It’s like the 2020 Titans but with 100% more Julio (2.2 cap %)! This is an important entry on the list because I didn’t filter out injuries. When you build the roster, you don’t know who will be injured, so a team has to stand up to normal injury wear and tear. One of the most critical 5 Stars, Henry, missed significant time but things stayed together. Having AJ Brown for $1.5M helped.
Is this trend repeatable?
Looking at the trends from these 8 teams:
Tackles are critical; all 8 have at least 1 and 7/8 have their LT on their paid list.
QBs are necessary but don’t dominate. Rodgers and Mahomes are elite, but the other 6 don’t have QBs that blow your socks off (Herbert might one day, but not now).
Pass rushers are well represented with 6/8 teams having a highly paid pass rusher.
The biggest question on if this is repeatable is if this is real or just a mirage caused by a small data set. I go back to some earlier points. 30+ cheap guys on a team and how many do you need to step up? 5 Stars isn’t enough, but 7 or 8 is; that means if you can get those 5 stars you only need a handful of guys to step up. Finally, flip the numbers around, if there are 23 guys above cheap level and you can get 5 at the Star player level, that’s 20% of the difference makers that are high performing players. This makes sense to me, so I’m going to say this is repeatable. And if nothing else, 8 for 8 says it’s repeatable until the trend breaks.
I also looked at the opposite of this 5 star trend: was there a trend in teams that had a high win % (>.600), but did not have 5 stars and saw a few trends in those 24 teams.
- Nearly all of them had at least a 4th star who was close to the star level cutoff. The two notable exceptions were the 2019 Chiefs (loaded with cheap rookie contract talent) and 2021 Rams (who only really paid 3 players: Stafford, Donald, Ramsey). Several were close to having a 5th Star.
- Several of the best teams on this sub list had big stars were either about to get paid or had artificially low cap hits due to recent extensions: 2019 Ravens, 2019 Packers, 2020 Bills, 2021 Bucs, 2019 Chiefs.
Together this is enough to tell me that this 5 Star approach is real, even if it’s not the only way to win.
What does this mean for QBs in general and Cousins specifically?
The group of teams needed 5 “star players”. Are guys like Cousins, Tannehill, & Garoppolo stars when compared to other starting QBs? No. Are they stars when they are compared to the entire NFL pool players filled with guards, LBs and TEs? Absolutely, yes. So if you need a Star, QB is a good place to find one because there are more Stars at QB than other positions. The 3 years there were 12-17 QBs that qualified as Stars, and Cousins is good enough to make that group.
:format(jpeg)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48980475/wanderlei_silva.0.jpg)
... and neither is this Chris guy.