Post by MidwinterViking on Feb 25, 2022 20:34:03 GMT -6
MonsieurShite:
It's a very interesting read, but defining "stars" simply as anyone making >6% of the cap is extremely bizarre.
The "QB deadzone" mentioned is the glaring market inefficiency in the NFL. Pretty good QBs shouldn't make anywhere close to what elite QBs make, but they do, and often make more.
The Chiefs moved on from Alex Smith and won a Super Bowl. The 49ers are moving on from Garoppolo, and we'll see what happens. So at least a few teams have learned that overpaying a non-elite QB does nothing but cap your team's upside.
It's a very interesting read, but defining "stars" simply as anyone making >6% of the cap is extremely bizarre.
The "QB deadzone" mentioned is the glaring market inefficiency in the NFL. Pretty good QBs shouldn't make anywhere close to what elite QBs make, but they do, and often make more.
The Chiefs moved on from Alex Smith and won a Super Bowl. The 49ers are moving on from Garoppolo, and we'll see what happens. So at least a few teams have learned that overpaying a non-elite QB does nothing but cap your team's upside.
"Bizarre"? You're welcome. If you want to read something everyone has already thought, might I suggest this alternative site:
A flock of squawking parrots that have been hanging out in a bar near a football stadium
But really, that's a good call out, I'm actually a bit surprised that nobody called me on the 6% threshold earlier. In the word doc draft on my local PC I called them "6%ers" but then I realized if I called them 6%ers, nobody would know what I was talking about. I also couldn't use a straight $ amount since the the data crossed multiple years. I figured any player that earns a $12M contract will probably be recognizable as a "star".
The obvious follow up question is why 6%? That seems arbitrary. The reason is the question I was originally asking was "Is it worth it to spend big on a player or manage for depth?". To get a picture, I had to pick a threshold and I wanted something that would produce a small number of outliers. Cheaper than 6% and there started to be too many teams to make a conclusion; the "high cost / star" chart would start to blend with the unhelpful medium cost chart from the original post. Higher than 6% and the trend still held, but the guys were just more expensive.
_User_Profile:
Great content, and it’s a subject I’ve considered before as well when considering which positions are most important, but rookie contracts ruin everything. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I believe Washington was a bottom 10 team in cap spend because they had Chase Young and Sweat on rookie deals, and yet clearly they invested a lot of resources into that position group, and it was an above average group, but it doesn’t show up at all when using cap spending as a metric.
This is obvious, but team building occurs in two ways - FA and the draft. Success in FA is limited by the cap capital which is equal across the league, and draft success is limited by draft capital, which is equal across the league. The only way to get a leg up on your competition is by getting more cap capital now (via void years or below market value rookies) OR by using future picks now (trading for other players that can contribute today)
Great content, and it’s a subject I’ve considered before as well when considering which positions are most important, but rookie contracts ruin everything. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I believe Washington was a bottom 10 team in cap spend because they had Chase Young and Sweat on rookie deals, and yet clearly they invested a lot of resources into that position group, and it was an above average group, but it doesn’t show up at all when using cap spending as a metric.
This is obvious, but team building occurs in two ways - FA and the draft. Success in FA is limited by the cap capital which is equal across the league, and draft success is limited by draft capital, which is equal across the league. The only way to get a leg up on your competition is by getting more cap capital now (via void years or below market value rookies) OR by using future picks now (trading for other players that can contribute today)
- What is the impact of rookie deals on salary averages?
- What is the impact of rookie performance on record?
The first is easy, rookie deals on salary averages don't actually change that much. Since every position will have rookies, the average salary of all positions will be deleted roughly the same.
The 2nd is a bit trickier. In theory, a team could have low performance on the parts of their high cost players masked by great rookies (or low cost vets outperforming). To be clear, this could absolutely happen, but I don't think that is what is driving this. If I use a 4 year contract time frame, each team will have ~28 rookies (7 rounds * 4 years). Over 28 picks, it's not a question of 1 or 2 rookies swinging things, a 10-20% hit rate on draft picks is 3-6 players, and of that group, an even smaller number will be hit at a super star level (1 or 2 per 4 year window). So elite drafting could get you a player or two (i.e. Justin Jefferson), but that advantage will also disappear as soon as that player hits their second contract. Short version: there's enough data that a team would have to be extremely good with drafting to stand out in this way.
... and neither is this Chris guy.