Friday, March 23, 2007

Teams Drafting Running Backs or Wide Receivers Early in the Draft

This post follows these two: http://jklisk.blogspot.com/2007/03/teams-drafting-quarterbacks-or.html and http://jklisk.blogspot.com/2007/03/building-team-right-way-early-in-draft.html.

Following the same format, here is the data for the Running Back and Receiver Teams.

RUNNING BACKS
Year N-1: 44 . . . 0.325 . . . 5.2 . . . 1 . . . 0
Year N : 44 . . . 0.477 . . . 7.6 . . . 19. . . 6
Year N+1: 43 . . . 0.490 . . . 7.9 . . . 14 . . . 5
Year N+2: 40 . . . 0.469 . . . 7.5 . . . 14 . . . 5
Year N+3: 40 . . . 0.491 . . . 7.9 . . . 16 . . . 2
Year N+4: 40 . . . 0.439 . . . 7.0 . . . 9 . . . 1

WIDE RECEIVERS

Year N-1: 37 . . . 0.382 . . . 6.1 . . . 4 . . . 2
Year N : 37 . . . 0.488 . . . 7.8 . . . 11. . . 5
Year N+1: 37 . . . 0.481 . . . 7.7 . . . 13 . . . 2
Year N+2: 33 . . . 0.482 . . . 7.7 . . . 12 . . . 5
Year N+3: 30 . . . 0.473 . . . 7.6 . . . 8 . . . 1
Year N+4: 28 . . . 0.550 . . . 8.8 . . . 10. . . 4

Friday, March 9, 2007

Teams drafting Quarterbacks or Offensive Linemen Early in the Draft

This is a continuation of this post, http://jklisk.blogspot.com/2007/03/building-team-right-way-early-in-draft.html. To start, here are the results of looking at teams drafting QB's and OL's in the first 12 picks of the NFL draft, since 1978.

Year N-1 represents the year before the player was drafted. We would expect the records this year to be poor, because the team would not be drafting in the top 12, barring a trade. Year N represents the rookie year immediately following the draft. Year N+1, N+2, N+3 and N+4 are the next 4 seasons following the rookie year of the drafted position in question.

The numbers presented are as follows for each year: the first number is the number of qualifying teams who drafted a player in the top 12 at that position; the second number is the team combined winning percentage for that year; the third number is the average number of regular season wins for the teams in question, assuming a 16 game schedule; the fourth number is the number of subject teams who qualified for the playoffs in the year in question; and the fifth number is the number of subject teams who advanced to the conference championship game or Super Bowl.

So, if you look at the Teams drafting QB's in Year N, that tells you that there were 41 teams who have drafted a QB in the top 12 since 1978, they combined for a 0.371 winning percentage in the first season following the draft (5.9 wins on average), and that 4 out of 41 made the playoffs, and 1 out of 41 advanced to at least the conference championship (Pittsburgh 2004).

One minor problem did present itself. There were 4 expansion teams who had no record the year before the player was drafted. However, to account for the general quality of these teams, I treated them as a "2-14 team" the year before the draft in question, which I think is a good approximation of the talent level on the expansion roster at the time the position in question was drafted.

Here are the numbers:

QUARTERBACKS
YEAR N-1: 40 . . . 0.286 . . . 4.6 . . . 3 . . . 3
Year N: 40 . . . 0.379 . . . 6.1 . . . 5 . . . 1
Year N+1: 37 . . . 0.470 . . . 7.5 . . . 11 . . . 4
Year N+2: 36 . . . 0.486 . . . 7.8 . . . 12 . . . 2
Year N+3: 33 . . . 0.485 . . . 7.8 . . . 12 . . . 7
Year N+4: 31 . . . 0.474 . . . 7.6 . . . 8 . . . 4

OFFENSIVE LINEMEN
YEAR N-1: 49 . . . 0.362 . . . 5.8 . . . 2 . . . 0
Year N: 49 . . . 0.402 . . . 6.4 . . . 4 . . . 1
Year N+1: 48 . . . 0.404 . . . 6.5 . . . 7 . . . 3
Year N+2: 47 . . . 0.455 . . . 7.3 . . . 13 . . . 6
Year N+3: 47 . . . 0.472 . . . 7.6 . . . 17 . . . 3
Year N+4: 46 . . . 0.513 . . . 8.2 . . . 16 . . . 6


For baseline comparison, the chances of a randomly selected team making the playoffs over this entire time period is about 39%, and the chances of a team making the conference championship is about 14%.

Teams drafting QB's were worse on average the year before the draft in question. The OL teams won slightly more games in the rookie season, but the QB teams showed more improvement. The QB teams outperformed the OL teams in years 2-4 in terms of winning percentage, percentage of teams making playoffs, and percentage of teams advancing to the conference championship. The OL teams were better in terms of winning percentage in year 5, and slightly better or roughly equal in terms of playoff teams and championship teams that year.

The conventional wisdom is that teams that draft QB's are in for a rebuilding project. This appears true for the first year, but after that, it is actually the teams drafting OL that have taken longer to build to respectability and competing for championships.

Next up will be the RB and WR teams.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Building a Team the Right Way Early in the Draft

I am going to predict that, leading up to the NFL draft, you are going to hear many draftniks and fans say that (insert bad team name from last year here) should draft OT Joe Thomas and not take a QB or RB early in the draft, because you build the team the right way by going for offensive line, and some variation on QB's being more risky, and RB's being fungible.

Off and on over the next month and half leading up to the draft, I am going to try to look at the history of the draft to see whether this actually holds water. My guess, based on a quick review of the early first round draft picks over the last 25-30 years, is that it does not. In my opinion, a big part of the rationale for this is the same situation noted by Doug Drinen in his post "Reputation and Information", re-posted here http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/wordpress/?p=243. Except, it is the opposite side of the coin, since we don't have many meaningful stats on offensive linemen, the bad ones may not be perceived as bad as other positions where we have more statistics to measure.

Who is the bigger bust, Ryan Leaf or Robert Gallery? No-brainer, you say? I was at the KC-SD game at Arrowhead in 1998 when Leaf went something like 1 for 15. He was definitely a disaster. But living in an AFC West market, I have seen more than enough of Gallery as well. His performance in the season opener against San Diego was every bit as much a disaster, as he served as an express highway to the quarterback all game long. Could the Raiders horrible performance over the last few years, and inability to keep a qb standing for more than 2 seconds this year, have anything to do with drafting Gallery with their high pick a few years back?

Well, those are but two isolated examples. I am going to try to incorporate all the evidence, great pick, so-so, or bust. How to do it is the problem. As Drinen's article points out, it is not going to be possible to compare positions by raw statistics, because some QB/RB have lots of data, while others have little direct data. And I don't think Games Played or even Games Started is a viable option because of the differences in position, and how they are utilized. If a quarterback and offensive lineman are equally bad, the lineman will probably start more games. Take Mike Williams at Buffalo for example. If the Tackle is bad, he can move into the guard spot to see if he works there. He would have to be worse than roughly 5 other players to get benched. He may still get benched, but out of necessity and depth, he is probably going to start more games than a similar QB.

So, that leaves us with something that I think is the best we have at this point: wins and losses, and how the team performed in the years after a pick of a certain position was made. It is by no means perfect. One player alone does not determine a team's future. Nor is a team's success directly tied to the quality of one pick. If we have enough data points, some of that stuff will even out. Acknowledging it is not perfect, I am going to try to look at each position by the following method:

Look at all top 12 picks in the NFL draft since 1978 (the year of passing liberalization and expansion to 16 games), look at the record the year before the pick, and gauge the team's success over the next 5 seasons, by win-losses, percentage of team's making playoffs, and percentage advancing to at least a conference championship game.

I will not have the time to look at each individual's career with the drafting team. So, if the Packers start getting good at the end of the 5 year's after Tony Mandarich is drafted, even though he is out of the league, so be it. I guess I am not looking at how good the player drafted was directly, but rather, what the effect of drafting a certain position has on the franchise over the next five years.

Anyway, I will try to start with QB, OL, and RB, and move on to the others.

Lineup Placement

In the Royals first spring training game yesterday, former first overall pick and top prospect Alex Gordon was in the lineup in the 7th spot. The commentators on sports radio whb 810 stated that this is probably where he was going to start the season. I don't know if they were basing it on inside information from the manager, or if it was speculation. This does, however, pass for conventional wisdom. Start the rookie out lower in the lineup so that there is no pressure on him.

I'm just not sure if it is a valid point. Presumably, if Alex Gordon is routinely hitting in the 7th spot, it is because the "when healthy" regular lineup will be 1) CF DeJesus; 2) 2B Grudzielanek; 3) RF Teahen; 4) DH Sweeney; 5) LF Emil Brown; and 6) 1B Ryan Shealy. Now, I have no problem with the first 4 in the batting order, with the big assumption that Sweeney is healthy. But if Gordon is as good as all evidence is indicating, based on his minor league numbers, college career, draft status, and ranking in publications like Baseball America, then he is a better hitter than both Emil Brown and Ryan Shealy . . . right now.

The Royals are clearly not the Yankees, and do not have a lineup full of proven stars. If he is the better hitter, then I think he should be in the 5 spot from the start. It will be moot in a few months when he moves that direction, but I do not see the benefit of starting him off in between the two aforementioned hitters, and the strikeout machines that are John Buck and Angel Berroa.