Battle Red Blog
The third of a three-part series.
We finally get to the end of the draft series the week of the draft. A large part of this process is a way to help manage all of our expectations. Sometimes we expect way too much. It’s really about shiny examples of stars found in every round of the draft. Tom Brady, Jason Kelce, and Stefon Diggs are not the norm. The question is what is reasonable to expect given the industry standard.
In order to do that, we are taking the entire NFL and the drafts between 2010 and 2019. We stopped there because we wanted to give everyone at least five seasons to fully flesh out how good they would be. Even still, many players from those later drafts are still active. I ran the Houston Texans players from those same seasons through the exact same process to compare the Texans overall grades with the league.
Simply put: four-star players have attended two or more Pro Bowls over the course of their career. Three-star players were labeled as starters for three or more seasons. Two-star players were labeled as starters in one or two seasons. One-star players never made it as a starter. All of this information was accessed at Pro football reference and is easily accessed. Obviously, whether someone is a good starter or not is a different question. No system is perfect, but we will go with this one for now.
Round One: 3.04 average, 111 four-stars, 130 three-stars, 60 two-stars, 19 one-stars
Round Two: 2.11 average, 35 four-stars, 130 three-stars, 89 two-stars, 66 one-stars
Round Three: 2.13 average, 28 four-stars, 114 three-stars, 100 two-stars, 122 one-stars
Round Four: 1.82 average, 11 four-stars, 79 three-stars, 97 two-stars, 166 one-stars
Round Five: 1.64 average, 9 four-stars, 62 three-stars, 76 two-stars, 210 one-stars
Round Six: 1.36 average, 5 four-stars, 30 three-stars, 62 two-stars, 289 one-stars
Round Seven: 1.25 average, 0 four-stars, 24 three-stars, 52 two-stars, 332 one-stars
Keep in mind that this is over the course of a decade. So, once you exit the first round, expecting a Pro Bowl performer is a fool’s errand. We notice the same thing between rounds two and three that we noticed with the Texans in part two of this series. Maybe the additional picks through compensatory selections gives teams an extra opportunity to hit on a good player. Maybe it is just blind dumb luck.
As I mentioned last week, the reason why we do this is to gain some understanding in how and why teams value picks the way they do. The point system might be somewhat outdated. Maybe teams should be valuing third round picks more than even second round picks. Meanwhile, the sixth and seventh rounders weren’t really worth a ton.
Round One: 3.22
Round Two: 2.75
Round Three: 1.79
Round Four: 2.00
Round Five: 1.44
Round Six: 1.50
Round Seven: 1.25
You can compare these numbers with the above for yourself. It makes...
