Draft Analysis - 2021
No depth chart this week, but we've still got content coming - it's draft analysis time! They say you should give a draft class three years before making judgements, meaning it's about time to judge the 2021 season. I'm going to be following the methodology I used in my past draft article here to judge how success the picks were, and also judging how accurate the grades I gave each pick were.
The rubric:
And here are the Vikings' picks:
(grade on the left is my draft board's grade, on the right is the Hindsight grade)
Rick Spielman's swan song was generally a disaster outside of the A+ selection of Christian Darrisaw, and the savvy pick of Bynum in the 4th round. I don't think a team has ever whiffed on 4 3rd round picks before! My draft board approved the Davis and Jones II picks, but had Surratt and Mond far lower than where they went, meanwhile the Day 3 picks were goofy. Spending a 4th on Nwangwu when it was widely known he was a KR-only was highly questionable, Robinson was another failed pick in the vein of Danielle Hunter, chasing a toolsy pass rusher with poor play in college, ISM was a possible deep threat but more of a return man, and the Davidson pick is the kind of guy you take in the 7th round. I still get the Twyman pick even in hindsight as he was a very good college football player.
The elephant in the room here is the class itself - the 2021 draft was messed up by the COVID pandemic as many players opted to stay in college another year, causing this class to be a shallow one. This was widely speculated at the time, and going through this class - yeah, it gets real barren. There's a point somewhere in the 3rd round where the quality plummets, which makes it all the more frustrating that Spielman continued to collect late round picks in a top-heavy class. Let's compare the team's final grade to the others:
* = team did not have a 1st round pick
Normally I believe a D+ would put them near the bottom, but many other teams had bad drafts, confirming our suspicions.
There's also a notable correlation between teams that are good right now and who had strong 2021 drafts. The Chiefs came out with 3 starters with #58 being their highest pick in the most top heavy class in recent memory, the Lions came out with 3 high quality starters between the 1st-3rd, and the Broncos (George Paton's first class) landed 4 starters.
Three of the worst classes have flagship players with major injury woes, with the Jets LT Becton, Panthers CB Horn, and Titans CB Farley. The Giants didn't land a single average starter, only having ED Ojulari as a mediocre rotational pass rusher.
Let's go round by round now:
(grade on the left is my draft board's grade, on the right is the Hindsight grade)
The first round has its fair share of hits, with a handful of blue-chip players escaping the top 10. The middling QBs like Fields and Jones are considered to be minor successes because of their play time and stretches were they weren't "bad". The round itself drops off after about #25, with everybody after that mostly being 2nd round caliber.
The difference number (which explained in the previous article is the correlation between my grade and the hindsight grade) is 1.18, which means the grades were heavily correlated to what actually transpired. Following the consensus boards was far safer than freelancing - not a single player who was given a C or lower ending up getting anything higher than a C.
Only 5 players got above a B, with 12 getting a D or below. The difference stat is at 1.86, meaning that the correlation between grades is weak. We will reach a point where my grades mean nothing because so many picks fail - there are no adjustments for how weak a draft class is.
This round sees a whopping 23 D to Fs and only 8 above a B. The difference is now at 2.1, meaning my grades are more often wrong than right.
The first 3 rounds see just 36 players receive a B or better. Of those picks:
5 iOLs
3 CBs
3 EDs
2 DTs
3 LBs
4 Ts
2 QBs (one being Mac Jones...)
2 RBs
2 Ss
1 TE
5 WRs
The class's main strength was 9 offensive linemen. Every other position underachieved, with several not having hits until the second round (LB, TE, S) or even the third (DT).
20 Fs! This round has provided nothing and this looks like the normal year's 6th round. St. Brown, Bynum, and Stevenson are the biggest finds here.
I got tired of keying in Fs so I kept them empty. This is the rare situation where a kicker in the 5th round actually worked out, since this is more like the average year's 7th round. The 49ers found both Hufanga and Lenior here, while the Raiders got a starter in Hobbs. The DBs class had some Day 3 hits, at least.
This is basically a UDFA list now. A handful of these players turned into good backups. Trey Smith is the runaway success here, as teams were scared off by his heart problems. But there wasn't much risk using a higher pick on him since these past few rounds have been so devoid of talent.
The 7th round is an actual ghost town, with only Jonathon Cooper and Will Fries starters at the current moment. Even when the bar is "Awful" on the PFF scale, most of these players couldn't crack any time.
Takeaways - this was a bad class to begin with, but it doesn't excuse Spielman's poor haul. Going 1 for 10 on the 3rd-7th round picks is a sign of a front office that was not good at evaluating talent, period. I can forgive some busts, but there were decent players available in that third round. There were a few good WRs that they passed on, Davis over Meinerz, Surratt over Deablo and Jones, etc. The QB pick was pretty much doomed because this class is basically Trevor Lawrence and nobody else.
One more note - a while back I had noticed there was a pattern with Vikings prospects failing who happened to have poor PFF grades in their final year of college. For this draft class:
LB Surratt - 205 out of 205 players on my board
WR Smith-Marsette - 197th / 205
ED Robinson - 188th / 205
G Davis - 186th / 205
That's 4 picks from the 3rd-5th round who didn't even play that well in college. Not a good strategy there!
I'll leave the analysis there. Please elucidate me with your thoughts and what can be learned from the mercurial 2021 draft class!
The rubric:
And here are the Vikings' picks:
(grade on the left is my draft board's grade, on the right is the Hindsight grade)
Rick Spielman's swan song was generally a disaster outside of the A+ selection of Christian Darrisaw, and the savvy pick of Bynum in the 4th round. I don't think a team has ever whiffed on 4 3rd round picks before! My draft board approved the Davis and Jones II picks, but had Surratt and Mond far lower than where they went, meanwhile the Day 3 picks were goofy. Spending a 4th on Nwangwu when it was widely known he was a KR-only was highly questionable, Robinson was another failed pick in the vein of Danielle Hunter, chasing a toolsy pass rusher with poor play in college, ISM was a possible deep threat but more of a return man, and the Davidson pick is the kind of guy you take in the 7th round. I still get the Twyman pick even in hindsight as he was a very good college football player.
The elephant in the room here is the class itself - the 2021 draft was messed up by the COVID pandemic as many players opted to stay in college another year, causing this class to be a shallow one. This was widely speculated at the time, and going through this class - yeah, it gets real barren. There's a point somewhere in the 3rd round where the quality plummets, which makes it all the more frustrating that Spielman continued to collect late round picks in a top-heavy class. Let's compare the team's final grade to the others:
* = team did not have a 1st round pick
Normally I believe a D+ would put them near the bottom, but many other teams had bad drafts, confirming our suspicions.
There's also a notable correlation between teams that are good right now and who had strong 2021 drafts. The Chiefs came out with 3 starters with #58 being their highest pick in the most top heavy class in recent memory, the Lions came out with 3 high quality starters between the 1st-3rd, and the Broncos (George Paton's first class) landed 4 starters.
Three of the worst classes have flagship players with major injury woes, with the Jets LT Becton, Panthers CB Horn, and Titans CB Farley. The Giants didn't land a single average starter, only having ED Ojulari as a mediocre rotational pass rusher.
Let's go round by round now:
(grade on the left is my draft board's grade, on the right is the Hindsight grade)
The first round has its fair share of hits, with a handful of blue-chip players escaping the top 10. The middling QBs like Fields and Jones are considered to be minor successes because of their play time and stretches were they weren't "bad". The round itself drops off after about #25, with everybody after that mostly being 2nd round caliber.
The difference number (which explained in the previous article is the correlation between my grade and the hindsight grade) is 1.18, which means the grades were heavily correlated to what actually transpired. Following the consensus boards was far safer than freelancing - not a single player who was given a C or lower ending up getting anything higher than a C.
Only 5 players got above a B, with 12 getting a D or below. The difference stat is at 1.86, meaning that the correlation between grades is weak. We will reach a point where my grades mean nothing because so many picks fail - there are no adjustments for how weak a draft class is.
This round sees a whopping 23 D to Fs and only 8 above a B. The difference is now at 2.1, meaning my grades are more often wrong than right.
The first 3 rounds see just 36 players receive a B or better. Of those picks:
5 iOLs
3 CBs
3 EDs
2 DTs
3 LBs
4 Ts
2 QBs (one being Mac Jones...)
2 RBs
2 Ss
1 TE
5 WRs
The class's main strength was 9 offensive linemen. Every other position underachieved, with several not having hits until the second round (LB, TE, S) or even the third (DT).
20 Fs! This round has provided nothing and this looks like the normal year's 6th round. St. Brown, Bynum, and Stevenson are the biggest finds here.
I got tired of keying in Fs so I kept them empty. This is the rare situation where a kicker in the 5th round actually worked out, since this is more like the average year's 7th round. The 49ers found both Hufanga and Lenior here, while the Raiders got a starter in Hobbs. The DBs class had some Day 3 hits, at least.
This is basically a UDFA list now. A handful of these players turned into good backups. Trey Smith is the runaway success here, as teams were scared off by his heart problems. But there wasn't much risk using a higher pick on him since these past few rounds have been so devoid of talent.
The 7th round is an actual ghost town, with only Jonathon Cooper and Will Fries starters at the current moment. Even when the bar is "Awful" on the PFF scale, most of these players couldn't crack any time.
Takeaways - this was a bad class to begin with, but it doesn't excuse Spielman's poor haul. Going 1 for 10 on the 3rd-7th round picks is a sign of a front office that was not good at evaluating talent, period. I can forgive some busts, but there were decent players available in that third round. There were a few good WRs that they passed on, Davis over Meinerz, Surratt over Deablo and Jones, etc. The QB pick was pretty much doomed because this class is basically Trevor Lawrence and nobody else.
One more note - a while back I had noticed there was a pattern with Vikings prospects failing who happened to have poor PFF grades in their final year of college. For this draft class:
LB Surratt - 205 out of 205 players on my board
WR Smith-Marsette - 197th / 205
ED Robinson - 188th / 205
G Davis - 186th / 205
That's 4 picks from the 3rd-5th round who didn't even play that well in college. Not a good strategy there!
I'll leave the analysis there. Please elucidate me with your thoughts and what can be learned from the mercurial 2021 draft class!
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... and neither is this Chris guy.