Acme Packing Company
At least, that’s one analytics-based perspective.
Immediate draft grades can be kind of silly (but admittedly fun). After all, none of the players involved have actually played anything yet, and until they do and provide us with some new information, the best grade of a draft is probably the draft itself, or failing that, the consensus boards. I’ve written on this in the past and it’s still true.
However, I do have a soft spot for attempts to grade or quantify the process teams used in the draft, which brings us to this piece in The Athletic by the aptly-named Austin Mock. Mock and company put together a system based on The Athletic’s consensus board, the monetary value of each draft position, the positional value of each player drafted, and accounting for any trades that occurred. They also forced a curve, and so for each A, there must also be an F.
It’s an interesting read that includes some surprising results (the Falcons receiving an A, for example), and Mock does a good job of calling out instances where the system may have a blind spot. And to head this off at the pass, yes, I realize all of the teams at the top except the Packers are kind of bad. Some of you will see the Packers among the Browns, Giants, Titans, and Panthers, and call this entire thing stupid or worrying. Please do not do so, as you should instead be pleased to see the Packers hanging around with teams that possessed so much draft capital and got to juice their numbers with quarterbacks.
The Browns completely ripped off the Jaguars in trade value when they moved back from #2 overall to #5, then they drafted a quarterback who will look like a steal to any system (even if he’s not that good). In this exercise, it’s good to be ranked with them, even if it’s bad to be compared to the Browns in virtually any other context. Anyway, if you cheer for a team in the NFC North, you will definitely want to take a closer look, because the Packers led the division with an A-, while the Vikings (D-) and Lions (F) were among the worst.
I was quite surprised by this because we play close attention to the consensus boards here at APC, and the Packers did a lot of reaching in the conventional sense. I figured that any process-based system would hate their class, but here they’re saved due to all eight drafted players playing premium positions (2 WR, 2 OT, 2-ish Edge, 1 DT, 1 CB). There may be some lost value due to grabbing Anthony Belton well before his consensus number, but there is none of the waste that comes with picking an off-ball linebacker, running back, or specialist either.
In this context, some of those Packer “reaches” make quite a lot of sense. Remember, the consensus board doesn’t adjust for positional value and between Anthony Belton’s consensus board spot (around 100...
