Post by MidwinterViking on Apr 17, 2023 11:29:53 GMT -6
In planning for the 2023 draft, I wanted to figure out my own opinion on: should the Vikings trade up or trade down in the draft?
It turns out the answer is “Yes, they should defiantly do one of those two things.”
In the draft I’m mostly interested in the odds of finding a really good player, the type of guy that a team can’t usually acquire via trade or free agency because they’re getting second contracts from the team that drafts them. I started with looking at the odd of a pro-bowl player being available at each position in the draft over the last 10 years. This view uses a 5 pick moving average (i.e the player was available at the draft position or taken within the next 5 picks).
That’s a shockingly predictable curve for pro-bowl participation. The R-squared number tells you how much of the variation in data is due to randomness; 0% = perfectly random, 100% = no randomness. An R-squared of 85% means that where a player is drafted is an extremely strong indicator of his odds to make the pro-bowl. If you take nothing else out of this, you should realize that NFL teams are pretty good at identifying talent pre-draft. Hoping to snag a Pro-Bowler in the later rounds is betting against the odds.
What About All-Pro?
Pro bowlers are good solid contributors to the team, generally exceeding the average value of a player picked at that position. But Pro-Bowl rosters get diluted, what I really want is an All-Pro, a player who is at the top few performers for their position, so I looked at how often Pro-Bowlers at each draft slot rise to the level of All-Pro.
This is far less predictable. You aren’t as likely to find pro-bowlers late in the draft, but when you do, there is a reasonable success rate of developing them into All-Pros. My theory is that being an All-Pro is hard, requiring potential + coaching + situation + luck. Elite players can make to a Pro Bowl level on their own, but it takes more things to reach that All-Pro level, many of which have no impact on the draft. Also, there is a small window in the late 1st round that has an unexpectedly high spike of All-Pros, I want to look at that too.
So for the draft, I’m going to be looking only at the rate of Pro-Bowl players and the coaching staff has to make them All-Pros. Time to go pro bowling.
[returns after bowling]
Where to pick?
Is it that simple? Trade up for better odds. Sort of, but the initial chart covered so many picks that it masked a few important trends. Breaking that chart down into three sections shows something interesting: Early 1st Round, Value Zone, Late Draft
Early 1st
The Picks before the Vikings are on the clock show a very predictable view. This is the reason to trade up. The odds of a player being a Pro-Bowler go down steadily through the 1st round. Analysis says: “duh”.
However, how far up to trade is of more interest. Remember this is a 5 pick moving average, so Pick #10 means a Pro-Bowler was picked at 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14. That puts a sweet spot for trading up in the early teens. Point 15 on the chart is influenced by picks as late as #19.
Using the Rich Hill Trade Value Chart, The Vikings trading up from #23 to #12 to the middle of that sweet spot would cost 102 trade points (#23 = 245 pts, #12 = 347 pts), that’s about the equivalent of a mid to late 2nd round pick (#54 = 104pts). Trading up to #5 would require more than double the draft capital, needing 223 pts.
Nothing is certain in the draft, it’s all probability and cost. This says that a 45-50% success rate cost double what a 40% success rate costs. I like the Vikings trading up to 9-15 in the draft, but higher than that I don’t see a good return on investment.
Value Zone
This covers from where the Vikings pick through Pick #70. As predictable as the first 22 Picks were, this is equally interesting for the opposite reason. The scale is different, in the teens to low 20’s for a success rate compared to the early first.
The picture of the full draft hid the fact that there are about 50 guys who performed very similarly, this is the reason to trade down: there might be a slight downward trend, but Pick #65 has the same pro-bowl odds as Pick #25. The low point at Pick #55 is followed by a string of good picks at the end of Round 2, suggesting this is largely random and team-specific.
I did want to look more closely at the spike in the late 20’s – mid-30’s, because the highlighted area lines up with the spike in the above All-Pro Chart. This is a range where there were more pro-bowlers than expected and more of them turned into All-Pros. This is 10 years of data, so 1 guy = 10%; meaning a few players can change things a lot. The players who make up this spike are:
2021 #37 - Landon Dickson - Eagles - OL
2019 #36 - Deebo Samuel - 49ers - WR
2018 #32 - Lamar Jackson - Ravens - QB
2018 #36 - Shaquil Leonard - Colts - LB
2017 #30 - TJ Watt - Steelers - OLB
2017 #32 - Ryan Ramczyk - Saints - T
2017 #36 - Budda Baker - cardinals - S
2016 #34 - Jaylon Smith - Cowboys - OLB
2016 #37 - Chris Jones - Chiefs - OLB
2016 #38 - Xavien Howard - Dolphins - CB
2015 #33 - Landon Collins - Giants - S
2014 #32 - Teddy Bridgewater - Vikings - QB
2014 #34 - Demarcus Lawrence - Cowboys - DE
2014 #35 - Joel Bitonio - Browns - G
2014 #36 - Derek Carr - Raiders - QB
2013 #29 - Cordarrelle Patterson - Vikings - WR
2013 #31 - Travis Frederick - Cowboys - CB
2013 #35 - Zach Ertz - Eagles - TE
2013 #36 - Darius Slay - Lions – CB
Cordarrelle Patterson is a very non-traditional All-Pro. Ryan Ramczyk was an All-Pro without being a Pro-Bowler (he skews the All-Pro Chart a lot). The Pro-Bowl bar for QBs is a bit lower than other positions, so Carr and Bridgewater might influence the data some.
So there is some noise in the data but there are also a lot of great athletes who were put in a great position: Deebo Samuel, Lamar Jackson, Shaq Leonard, TJ Watt, Demarcus Lawrence, Chris Jones, Xavien Howard. The Vikings have the culture to develop guys if they can put them in a football situation to succeed.
The other interesting thing I noticed was the variety of positions in this group. It’s not a bunch of low-value positions premium positions like QB, Edge, CB, WR are all represented.
I would not go so far as to say the Vikings should trade into this Pick #29-36 range, but they should know there are athletes to be targeted here.
Late Draft
This is everything after Pick 70.
There’s nothing here. A few spikes up into the low teens, but everything after that point is mired down in single digit odds of success. Even with multiple picks, you can't count on high performers. Sure, guys will pop up, but that's more a factor of volume, with more than 70% of draft picks falling into this range.
My main take away from this is that the draft is not about the top #100 picks, it’s about the top 70 Picks. Sure enough, in 2021, the Vikings picked at #42, 59, 66, then had a 52 pick gap until their next pick at #118 as the used draft capital to move into the value zone. This year I’ll be watching to see if they pile some picks in before that #70 threshold again.
Just for Kicks, here are the players that make up that outlier blip around pick 150.
Steffon Diggs - WR
Matt Judon - DE
George Kittle - TE
Hunter Renfro – WR
Michael Dickson – P
Matt Gay – K
A single Pro-Bowl season by a Kicker and Punter contributed to that spike. Be sure to keep drafting a punter or kicker in your head when you talk about the hit rate for late round picks.
Where to Pick
Before I looked at this, I was more in the “trade back” camp. However the case to move up into the mid-teens seems just as compelling. Pick #87 falls outside the premium zone but still has some decent trade value. A few trade scenarios to think about:
#23 + #87 has trade value close to pick #17(Steelers) or #18 (our BFF in division trade partner, Lions). This would give up no high value pick and jump in front of the QB needy Bucs at #19.
#23 + #87 to trade down could return a few things:
From the Bengals #29 + #60
From the Steelers: #32 + #49
From the Jets: #42 + #43 (+ Mid 4th value back from the Jets)
#23 + #119 is also in play and could be turned into:
From the Chiefs: #31 & #63 (if the Vikings include a late rounder)
From the Seahawks: #37 + #52
It turns out the answer is “Yes, they should defiantly do one of those two things.”
In the draft I’m mostly interested in the odds of finding a really good player, the type of guy that a team can’t usually acquire via trade or free agency because they’re getting second contracts from the team that drafts them. I started with looking at the odd of a pro-bowl player being available at each position in the draft over the last 10 years. This view uses a 5 pick moving average (i.e the player was available at the draft position or taken within the next 5 picks).
That’s a shockingly predictable curve for pro-bowl participation. The R-squared number tells you how much of the variation in data is due to randomness; 0% = perfectly random, 100% = no randomness. An R-squared of 85% means that where a player is drafted is an extremely strong indicator of his odds to make the pro-bowl. If you take nothing else out of this, you should realize that NFL teams are pretty good at identifying talent pre-draft. Hoping to snag a Pro-Bowler in the later rounds is betting against the odds.
What About All-Pro?
Pro bowlers are good solid contributors to the team, generally exceeding the average value of a player picked at that position. But Pro-Bowl rosters get diluted, what I really want is an All-Pro, a player who is at the top few performers for their position, so I looked at how often Pro-Bowlers at each draft slot rise to the level of All-Pro.
This is far less predictable. You aren’t as likely to find pro-bowlers late in the draft, but when you do, there is a reasonable success rate of developing them into All-Pros. My theory is that being an All-Pro is hard, requiring potential + coaching + situation + luck. Elite players can make to a Pro Bowl level on their own, but it takes more things to reach that All-Pro level, many of which have no impact on the draft. Also, there is a small window in the late 1st round that has an unexpectedly high spike of All-Pros, I want to look at that too.
So for the draft, I’m going to be looking only at the rate of Pro-Bowl players and the coaching staff has to make them All-Pros. Time to go pro bowling.
[returns after bowling]
Where to pick?
Is it that simple? Trade up for better odds. Sort of, but the initial chart covered so many picks that it masked a few important trends. Breaking that chart down into three sections shows something interesting: Early 1st Round, Value Zone, Late Draft
Early 1st
The Picks before the Vikings are on the clock show a very predictable view. This is the reason to trade up. The odds of a player being a Pro-Bowler go down steadily through the 1st round. Analysis says: “duh”.
However, how far up to trade is of more interest. Remember this is a 5 pick moving average, so Pick #10 means a Pro-Bowler was picked at 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14. That puts a sweet spot for trading up in the early teens. Point 15 on the chart is influenced by picks as late as #19.
Using the Rich Hill Trade Value Chart, The Vikings trading up from #23 to #12 to the middle of that sweet spot would cost 102 trade points (#23 = 245 pts, #12 = 347 pts), that’s about the equivalent of a mid to late 2nd round pick (#54 = 104pts). Trading up to #5 would require more than double the draft capital, needing 223 pts.
Nothing is certain in the draft, it’s all probability and cost. This says that a 45-50% success rate cost double what a 40% success rate costs. I like the Vikings trading up to 9-15 in the draft, but higher than that I don’t see a good return on investment.
Value Zone
This covers from where the Vikings pick through Pick #70. As predictable as the first 22 Picks were, this is equally interesting for the opposite reason. The scale is different, in the teens to low 20’s for a success rate compared to the early first.
The picture of the full draft hid the fact that there are about 50 guys who performed very similarly, this is the reason to trade down: there might be a slight downward trend, but Pick #65 has the same pro-bowl odds as Pick #25. The low point at Pick #55 is followed by a string of good picks at the end of Round 2, suggesting this is largely random and team-specific.
I did want to look more closely at the spike in the late 20’s – mid-30’s, because the highlighted area lines up with the spike in the above All-Pro Chart. This is a range where there were more pro-bowlers than expected and more of them turned into All-Pros. This is 10 years of data, so 1 guy = 10%; meaning a few players can change things a lot. The players who make up this spike are:
2021 #37 - Landon Dickson - Eagles - OL
2019 #36 - Deebo Samuel - 49ers - WR
2018 #32 - Lamar Jackson - Ravens - QB
2018 #36 - Shaquil Leonard - Colts - LB
2017 #30 - TJ Watt - Steelers - OLB
2017 #32 - Ryan Ramczyk - Saints - T
2017 #36 - Budda Baker - cardinals - S
2016 #34 - Jaylon Smith - Cowboys - OLB
2016 #37 - Chris Jones - Chiefs - OLB
2016 #38 - Xavien Howard - Dolphins - CB
2015 #33 - Landon Collins - Giants - S
2014 #32 - Teddy Bridgewater - Vikings - QB
2014 #34 - Demarcus Lawrence - Cowboys - DE
2014 #35 - Joel Bitonio - Browns - G
2014 #36 - Derek Carr - Raiders - QB
2013 #29 - Cordarrelle Patterson - Vikings - WR
2013 #31 - Travis Frederick - Cowboys - CB
2013 #35 - Zach Ertz - Eagles - TE
2013 #36 - Darius Slay - Lions – CB
Cordarrelle Patterson is a very non-traditional All-Pro. Ryan Ramczyk was an All-Pro without being a Pro-Bowler (he skews the All-Pro Chart a lot). The Pro-Bowl bar for QBs is a bit lower than other positions, so Carr and Bridgewater might influence the data some.
So there is some noise in the data but there are also a lot of great athletes who were put in a great position: Deebo Samuel, Lamar Jackson, Shaq Leonard, TJ Watt, Demarcus Lawrence, Chris Jones, Xavien Howard. The Vikings have the culture to develop guys if they can put them in a football situation to succeed.
The other interesting thing I noticed was the variety of positions in this group. It’s not a bunch of low-value positions premium positions like QB, Edge, CB, WR are all represented.
I would not go so far as to say the Vikings should trade into this Pick #29-36 range, but they should know there are athletes to be targeted here.
Late Draft
This is everything after Pick 70.
There’s nothing here. A few spikes up into the low teens, but everything after that point is mired down in single digit odds of success. Even with multiple picks, you can't count on high performers. Sure, guys will pop up, but that's more a factor of volume, with more than 70% of draft picks falling into this range.
My main take away from this is that the draft is not about the top #100 picks, it’s about the top 70 Picks. Sure enough, in 2021, the Vikings picked at #42, 59, 66, then had a 52 pick gap until their next pick at #118 as the used draft capital to move into the value zone. This year I’ll be watching to see if they pile some picks in before that #70 threshold again.
Just for Kicks, here are the players that make up that outlier blip around pick 150.
Steffon Diggs - WR
Matt Judon - DE
George Kittle - TE
Hunter Renfro – WR
Michael Dickson – P
Matt Gay – K
A single Pro-Bowl season by a Kicker and Punter contributed to that spike. Be sure to keep drafting a punter or kicker in your head when you talk about the hit rate for late round picks.
Where to Pick
Before I looked at this, I was more in the “trade back” camp. However the case to move up into the mid-teens seems just as compelling. Pick #87 falls outside the premium zone but still has some decent trade value. A few trade scenarios to think about:
#23 + #87 has trade value close to pick #17(Steelers) or #18 (our BFF in division trade partner, Lions). This would give up no high value pick and jump in front of the QB needy Bucs at #19.
#23 + #87 to trade down could return a few things:
From the Bengals #29 + #60
From the Steelers: #32 + #49
From the Jets: #42 + #43 (+ Mid 4th value back from the Jets)
#23 + #119 is also in play and could be turned into:
From the Chiefs: #31 & #63 (if the Vikings include a late rounder)
From the Seahawks: #37 + #52
... and neither is this Chris guy.