Value of things: Anatomy of a bad trade

In this space we usually will look at the strengths and weaknesses of the upcoming opponent. Since the Houston Texans do not open their season until September 7th, we will have plenty of time for that later. However, I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about a source we rely heavily on for this feature and to look at a trade we can now funnel into the rearview mirror.

First, we will focus our attention on Pro Football Focus. PFF is a Chris Collensworth owned company that rates players based on their performance. Not to totally geek out here, but we generally have two kinds of information when it comes to sports and performance. There is what I would call crowd sourced or fan sourced information and then there is the proprietary information teams use. We do not know the team sourced information, but it is almost certainly better than what we plebians get in the hinterlands.

In terms of fan sourced information, PFF can be very useful if we acknowledge its limitations. It comes down to someone watching tape and rating the player. Therefore, it is subject to the kinds of biases that any human sourced number is. So, I would never make a decision based totally on one source of information, but by and large it is in the ballpark most of the time.

Understanding PFF

PFF uses what we would call scouting grades for different skills. These grades are then combined into one overall grade. This isn’t universally true, but in 99 out of 100 cases the overall score would be somewhere between 20 and 90. At this point we can make some gross generalizations, so I end up using the general rule of thumb when categorizing players

• 20-50: this indicates a player that probably is at the end of the roster or in danger of being cut
• 50-60: this usually indicates a special teams player or a backup sort of player
• 60-70: this is a bottom tier starter or solid rotational player
• 70-80: this is either a solid starter all the way to a borderline Pro Bowl player
• 80-90: Pro Bowl performer
• 90+: likely the best player at his position

By virtue of the fact that we are looking at the top five players for each team, odds are good we will not see a player under 70 in PFF. If someone with a score under 70 appears as a top five player then that team is likely getting its doors blown off. Generally speaking, teams want to put their best players in a position to make more plays. So, when we see certain position groups dominating the top five then we get a clue as to what the strategy might be for that team.

Anatomy of a bad deal

There are good deals, bad deals, and catastrophic deals. Most deals do not end up in the home run or catastrophic category. They just aren’t important...