Whether it be dabbling in the stock market, flipping real estate or something as simple as sports memorabilia, people invest their time, money and resources into ventures with the intention they yield a high return. A $1k investment in Tesla stock just 5 years ago - when the shares were worth around $23/share - would now be worth over $11k. And on the flipside, that $100+ you plunked down in 2021 for an authentic Kellen Mond jersey is worth whatever reduced price TJ Maxx can sell them for on the clearance rack. 

When it comes to investments into players that NFL teams make, the goal is always to win a Super Bowl. But only one team can win the Lombardi Trophy each year and every team is constrained of how much investment they can make into players by a little thing called the Salary Cap. Teams need good football players to help them win, but they don't come cheap and teams that can manage to extract maximum value for what they spend on them will often times be contending not just for their Division and Conference, but ultimately the Super Bowl. 

To help illustrate that, below are the Top 10 NFL teams from the 2022 season in terms of Spotrac's "Value Rankings" (link). Their "Value Rankings" consist of a sum of a team's individual qualifying player "TVS" (True Value Score), which is made up of their current avg salary against production points, which are made up of statistical categories relevant to their position (players need to have played 60% of available snaps to qualify); in a nutshell, it's trying to measure how well a player - and ultimately the team - is producing relative to their salary (ie, managing the cap):



All of the teams (except one, the Browns) that made the Top 10 in terms of "Value Rankings", or producing relative their salaries, made the playoffs in 2022. Further, 4 out of the Top 5 teams were all playing in their Conference Championships: 49ers, Eagles, Chiefs and Bengals. If you want to win, you not only need good football players, but you can't pay out the nose for all of them - teams need to be able to allocate their cap efficiently and maximize the value of good players where they can. 

Notice who's #6 on that list? Per Spotrac, the Vikings are doing a good job of allocating their cap resources relative to the on-field production they're getting from their players. But which players are they getting value from relative their cap investment and which players need to produce more? Let's take a deeper look. 

2022 OTC Valuation
While Spotrac does assign individual scores to players, they don't provide an individual dollar figure of a player's "value" to compare against their invested cap hit. That's where OTC (Over The Cap) comes in. 

OTC has their "OTC Valuation", which calculates the dollar-value being provided by a player based on his on-field performance relative to the current market for his position. OTC primarily uses PFF grades and snap counts, as their article on their "OTC Valuation" states (link): "While snap counts do not tell us much about a player’s performance they are telling us that the coaching staff must see something in that player to keep trotting him out there week after week. Even if the coach is simply forced by circumstance to play someone, there is value to just taking a snap."

I bet most Vikings fans have used OTC a few times to look up a player's contract or cap hit(s), but you may have overlooked their prior season's OTC Valuation figure. Below is Justin Jefferson's profile on OTC - notice the 2022 OTC Valuation figure right underneath the header information:



That 2022 OTC Valuation figure for Jefferson is saying that given his production in 2022 (PFF grades, snap counts, etc.) relative to the current market, Jefferson's 2022 on-field production was valued at $26.7m per OTC. Now compare that to his 2022 cap number of $3.6m and it becomes obvious that Jefferson is yielding just as good of a return relative to his cap investment as Tesla stock would be if you had purchased it 5 years ago. 

While we don't need Spotrac or OTC to tell us Jefferson is out-producing what he's costing the Vikings on his rookie contract, how about the rest of the roster? What was their 2022 on-field "value" vs their 2022 cap hit? How does that 2022 on-field "value" compare to their upcoming 2023 cap hit? Let's take a look.

2022 OTC Valuation vs 2022/2023 Cap: Offense
To illustrate this, I took a stab at estimating the 2023 53-man roster and broke it down by Offense, Defense & ST. I then compared each player's 2022 OTC Valuation figure to their 2022 & 2023 cap numbers and calculated the gain or loss. Even though the 2023 rookies have a 2023 cap, they didn't have a 2022 OTC Valuation so I just left their lines blank. I also included total dead cap when totaling up everything at the bottom, mainly because I wanted to see how much value was generated even when figuring in cap dollars that don't generate any value.



Takeaways:
- No wonder the Vikings were 6th in Spotrac's 2022 team value rankings: their offense generated $148.6m of on-field value and it only cost them an investment of $78m, and that's including $6.6m of dead cap. 
- Even with a big offensive dead cap figure in 2023 of $20.7m (primarily from Thielen & Cook rekeases), they're still generating $38.6m of add'l value above their 2023 cap costs. A big part of that is deferring a chunk of Kirk's cap to 2024+. 
- Outside of Jefferson, Osborn and Hockenson gave the Vikings maximum value relative to their cap hits in 2022. Hockenson won't generate that kind of gain in 2023 as his 5th yr option kicks-in (I believe they can reduce his 2023 cap if they extend him, BTW) but if Osborn, Nailor and Addison play and produce in 2023, they could make up for any slowdown of Jefferson's production given they are all on rookie contracts. 
- The outliers in 2022 were Ham and Reagor. While neither is a surprise, if Ham doesn't produce more than he did in 2022, he'll be generating negative value in terms of his cap cost to the Vikings. As far as Reagor, since his 2023 # is guaranteed, the only way to get any value from him is either to trade him or he produces somewhat in 2023 - both seem unlikely at this point. 
- The OL #'s are definitely somewhat head-scratching: Oli Udoh and Ed Ingram giving great "value" while Bradbury generated negative value? I think this is where the weighing of snap counts comes into play for OTC's Valuation: even though Bradbury's PFF scores were obviously higher than Ingram, Bradbury missed a considerable amount of games/snaps in 2022 while Ingram played every snap and I'm guessing OTC really does weight availability pretty heavily into their Valuations. I can see snap counts definitely having some value and being part of the formula, but I would weigh the performance more heavily than the snap count. 

Overall, with much of the 2022 offense returning in 2023 under the same coaching staff, they should perform better than they did in 2022 and it's possible the total offensive value gained in 2023 ends up pretty close to where it was in 2022. 

2022 OTC Valuation vs 2022/2023 Cap: Defense
I think it's obvious without looking at the numbers that the 2022 Vikings defense didn't generate the kind of value the offense did. And since the rookies on defense have a $0 value now, they key is to look at the 2022 rookies who should improve in 2023 and then the defensive free agents they brought in and see what kind of value they generated for their prior teams. 



Takeaways:
- If you take away the $20.5m in dead cap in 2022 (primarily from Barr & Pierce), they would have generated more value over their cap cost in total. 
- Interior DL is a sore spot: Dean Lowry generated negative value for the Packers last year since his play was only valued at $2.8m but his 2022 cap hit with Green Bay was nearly $7m. While his 2023 cap his lower for the Vikings, you'd still like to see more productive value out of this group as a whole. I do think Tonga was criminally under-valued here, again, probably due to OTC weighing snap-count more heavily as Tonga didn't play a bunch of snaps until the 2nd half of the season. 
- Davenport's availability (or lack of it) has hurt his on-field value which is the reason for the negative value for the Vikes in 2023. If he can stay healthy, it will be a gain for the Vikings. 
- Outside of Metellus and Bynum, the secondary didn't generate much value in 2022 at all. Luckily, the "Donattell shell" is gone and the hope is Flores - even when giving snaps to rookies and 2nd yr players - can turn this unit's value around in 2023. 

Thor Nystrom recently stated on Dustin Baker's VikesNow podcast (link to that here: link), that the Vikings retaining Danielle Hunter could be the key for Minnesota in 2023: if they're able to keep him, the Vikings could compete for the Division again and possibly get to 10 wins, and if they can't, it's probably a bit closer to a straight-up "rebuild" than a "competitive rebuild"...and the numbers above sort of bear that out. The biggest value gain for the Vikings in 2022 and in 2023 is coming from Hunter and if you take that away, they'll be even more in the red than they already are. Even if Hunter is back in 2023+, Flores has to coach-up this unit to a better level than they were in 2022. And Kwesi's 2022 DB draft picks (Cine, Booth, Evans) better stay on the field, or else their cap - even if it's just rookie cap dollars - will be just like that Kellen Mond jersey you purchased in 2021: a sunk cost that'll end up in a heap on the closet floor. 

2022 OTC Valuation vs 2022/2023 Cap: Special Teams



There's not too much to say here: yeah, DePaola's cap hit increases in 2023, but the ST unit as a whole doesn't cost much and they generate more on-field value than their cap hits. If they can bring in another K that can generate more than Joseph's $2.6m 2022 value - whether that's Podlesny or someone else - that'll just be all that much better. 

Conclusion: "Moneyball"
When the Vikings released Kendricks, Thielen and Cook this offseason and took on that dead cap, there was some concern that perhaps they don't have the on-field production / value to replace that veteran talent. Take Kendricks for example: his 2022 OTC Valuation was $8.1m; no ILB on the Vikings projected 2023 53-man roster generated that kind of value. But when you take into account that his 2022 cap number was $13.5m and he was eating up the lion's share of the snaps, you realize that every snap he took, the Vikings as a whole were "losing" value, and the hope is that when those snaps go to Asamoah and others, they'll be able to generate the same rate of return as they did in 2022, just at a higher scale since they'll be taking more snaps. Asamoah generated $0.9m of net value on 121 snaps in 2022, and if he continues to produce that value of on-field net value with 900 snaps, you've made up the difference of what Kendricks generated in 2022. 

When you put it like that, it starts sounding more and more like saebermetics and what Billy Beane implemented in Oakland in 2001 that was the basis for the popular book and smash-hit film, "Moneyball". Beane and then A's Asst GM Paul DePodesta (now the Browns Chief Strategy Officer) used saebermetics to find find low-cost players than generated on-field value. That's basically what Kwesi is doing now in Minnesota - finding low-cost players (relative to the market anyway) who hopefully generate just as much on-field value as other players who costs twice as much. 


Image was taken from a Purple FTW Video: link

So, how did the story end for the Oakland A's during their "Moneyball" era? From 2001-2007, they made the postseason 4 times in those 6 seasons, won 3 division titles and made one appearance in the ALCS, but they generally couldn't get out of the ALDS and couldn't get over that proverbial hump from just a playoff contender to World Series contender. Sound familiar?

Let's hope that Kwesi's time on Wall Street and with DePodesta in Cleveland, combined with a strong coaching staff between O'Connell, Flores and the Asst Staff, can combine into a successful formula that ultimately yields the biggest return of them all: the Lombardi Trophy...