I hope you are ready for another long and engaging read! This time I'm combining my usual Draft Analysis with a new component we'll examine Draft Grading. There has been some amount of debate about the validity of grading draft picks right after they are made, so this seems to be the perfect opportunity to research that. I won't conclude with a definitive statement on grading, but this can be the first data point... unless someone out there is researching this.

For this exercise, I have taken the span of 2018 to 2020 and chosen 7 teams - the Vikings, and 3 of the best and worst drafting teams from that stretch. Representing the positive half will be the Eagles, Chiefs, and Bills. Representing the bad half will be the Jets, Cardinals, and Texans.

Hindsight Grade Determination

Like my past articles, I will determine the grade each player will receive by two factors - their AV (Pro Football Reference's Actual Value, a stat that gives players points per playing snaps and recording counting stats) and PFF Rating (Pro Football Focus rating that determines the quality of play). I then use a table that judges the player depending on where they were drafted. They will receive a rating from A to F, and this has been predetermined from the big article I published last year. I will show you an example:



For this example, let's take Alexander Mattison. Over his 4 year span with the Vikings, he totaled 15 AV or 3.75 AV per year, and notched a 6 on the PFF scale (below average). Going by the rubric, his AV grade is a D+ and his PFF grade is a B, and I combined the two grades to make a C as the final hindsight grade.

I did the trouble of going through and giving grades to all 160 players on these 7 teams over 3 years - yup, it was a lot of work! But not even close to the end, because I need to compare Draft Grades from the time right after these grades concluded. I have taken grades from two sources - my own draft board, and Walterfootball.com. I turned my draft board into grades by giving a rating based upon the draft pick number compared to my board's total number. For example, Jalen Reagor was #38 on my board compared to being taken at #20 by the Eagles, earning them a D by my grading. Meanwhile, Justin Jefferson was #18 on my board and went #20, and I gave the Vikings an A. Any player who was taken at a slot above automatically gets an A (it didn't happen that often).

As for Walterfootball, they give out letter grades every year, making it easy to plug in the grades without having to do any conversions. It's still horrid navigating their awfully designed website with no AdBlock, though. If there is another source anyone would like me to examine their grades, please let me know!

Finally, I did an Excel VLOOKUP to assign points to each letter grade and quantify how accurate our grading was. For each pick, I calculated the difference between the points of the hindsight grade and my/Walt grade. For example:

CB Cameron Dantzler - Hindsight grade: C+ (3.33 points)
Danchat's grade: A (5 points, difference of 1.67)
Walt's grade: A- (4.66 points, difference of 1.33)

I averaged out the difference of every pick, though I removed rounds 5 through 7 for several reasons - the majority of those picks are busts and one can easy give an "F" to every pick and be the most accurate, my boards didn't have several of the late players and could not make accurate grades, and finally Walt's grading system doesn't give out anything lower than a C past the 5th round.

Finally, the grading scale for the difference:

0 points would be immaculate
1 point would be heavily correlating with the hindsight pick, being consistently accurate
2 points would be exactly in the middle, having just as much right as wrong
Anything above 2 points would suggest an inverse correlation, meaning the grades are more often wrong

Here are the results:

Danchat Avg Diff: 1.64 points off per pick
Walterfootball Avg Diff: 1.87 points off per pick

So I can conclude that my own draft grades have some correlation with being aligned with the hindsight grade more often than not, but not anything crazy. Walt's grades are less accurate, but are still a bit more often right than wrong. I am confident in saying that my grades are not as pointless as some claim, but the data here is not conclusive and would need to be backed up by a larger dataset.

Now, let's dig into some of the team grades and give out some praise / roast some stupid teams.

First, the Vikings:



I averaged a 1.4 while Walt averaged 2.07, so my grades were considerably more accurate - case in point the 1st round CBs Hughes and Gladney were panned by me, while Walt gave them As.

These classes are rather lackluster as you'd expect with a GM who was one more draft away from getting canned, the primary successes are Jefferson and O'Neill. Defensively only Armon Watts (rotational DL) and Marcus Epps (100% of value gained with Philly) got anything higher than a C, resulting in zero decent starters and leading our defense to be barren of talent from any homegrown talent prior to 2022. The strategy of using late round picks as lottery tickets did not fly, as the only Round 5-7 pick to become a starter was KJ Osborn, with Epps and Carlson thriving elsewhere.


Next let's examine the Eagles:



I've sorted this by hindsight grade, to appreciate how much was accomplished with non-1st round picks. Despite their two 1st rounders being massive flops (Reagor/Dillard), Howie Roseman still found several starters in the mid rounds, including Hurts in the late 2nd round (which Walt declared to be the worst draft pick in Eagles history!), finding an Ertz replacement in Goedert in the 2nd, finding a quality pass rusher in the 4th in Sweat (with one of the Sam Bradford picks!), and even a franchise LT in the 7th round! A team can overcome early busts if they can develop their later round picks well.


Now let's check out the tire fire that is the Cardinals, the current (heavy) favorite to be picking #1 in 2024:



Is it any wonder this team is in such bad shape? Kyler Murray, despite his warts, has been the one thing warding away oblivion. His contract extension might go down as one of the worst contracts in NFL history, but as a #1 pick he is a success in being able to elevate the team as much as he has. Aside from terrible coaching, they refused to fire GM Steve Keim (he was GM for 10 YEARS!!) and they were rewarded with bad draft after bad draft. The classes above are embarrassing despite having high draft capital. Even some "successes" are barely so - RB Eno Benajmin was released despite playing well and is a minor success for a 7th round pick, C Mason Cole was far better with the Vikings and Steelers than he was in Arizona, an "F" does not truly justify how bad Josh Rosen was, and while perhaps Isaiah Simmons could be a very good player, for a top 10 pick he plays like a tweener who can't quite handle linebacker or safety.

It took long enough for the Cardinals to reset the organization, but they have a long ways to go. I feel less confident about them compared to the Dolphins and Bears tank-jobs - at least they didn't have a QB on tab for about $50M per year for the next several years (hilariously, they back-loaded the deal to try and win in 2022, making things even worse for them in the future).


Finally, let us conclude with the Bills:



This is a very strong unit, crafted well by the new regime that entered in 2017. The only true early round flop was G Cody Ford, with every other 1st to 4th round pick being a moderate success at worst. Outside of the smash hit of Josh Allen, they hit on several key positions that allowed them to spend their money on other positions - finding multiple CBs, DTs, RBs. Even a few players who did nothing there like Wyatt Teller, Isaiah Hodgins, and McCloud have ended up providing some value elsewhere, a sign that the Bills were drafting good players.


Alright, that's enough for now! Let me know if you want a rundown of the 3 teams that I didn't cover, or any other classes that I could cover... if it doesn't take me too much time! Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.