Drafting: how important is it in building a winner?

Way too much time on your hands to do all that breakdown, but great staistical look at how drafts pan out for each team.

Goo for you.

i mean, spoon feed me! ;-)

As a lab guy its all about the data!

Natalya has clearly and regrettably shown that we are below the NFL average in every single category. :( That makes it tougher to win for sure because the draft is very important. This FO we have now I feel has a better eye for talent than in regimes past. So these numbers may improve.

About the Pats and their #’s. Since they are a, if not the, dominant francise throughout the time period listed, (spit, spit, cough, gag, it burns to say it even) we have to consider the fact that their FO can basically pick and choose who they want. EVERYONE wants a ring so EVERYONE wants to be a Pat particularly then (cough, cough, cough, sorry it just burns). The drawing power of winning superbowls makes for a team that has quality everywhere and a waiting list of quality to get in times of need. This makes the environment for developing draft picks very difficult as they take time to groom and when surrounded by tons of talent and depth who would want to invest the time needed into them. I certainly would invest my time in film analysis and concentrate on winning more superbowls!!

doesn’t NE usually have more picks than most teams each year? They stockpile draft picks, but they can’t stockpile extra space on their roster. A lower % for NE makes sense.

Questions-

Does anyone think that the fact that NE has the lowest percentage has to do with the fact that they stockpile pics and are essentially playing the numbers game?

 Do more picks not result in more overall turnover in your roster if you are drafting well?

 Is NE’s overall philosophy behind this?

Sure they add key free agents which we could certainly do more of but they also let guys with plenty of gas in the tank go sooner and more often than any team in the NFL. Because of all the draft picks they can always find someone younger and more importantly cheaper to take that guys place. They also use this to trade some of these guys only to add more picks and keeping the cycle going.

a) the Brady pick was huge and made up for some misses elsewhere. Wilfork was also a big ‘hit’ as was Seymour.
b) they’ve added choice FA’s like Moss, Welker, Rodney Harrison, and others.
c) the cameras :-)

and this is just more proof that there is no “one way” that makes a great team, a great organization makes a great team by doing whatever it takes to do it, draft, FA, trades, whatever works at that time.

It’s the same when evaluating players or teams.

What makes a great team, running and D, passing and D, or balanced O, D and ST, well if your the 2000 Ravens the answer is a good ST, a historically sick D, an unstoppable ground game with an efficient pass game with a big play HOF TE S Sharpe.

If your the 2009 Saints its a good ST a sick passing attack and an opportunistic D.

What makes a great player, speed, strength, quickness, instincts, football acumen, motor, working harder than everyone else. it’s a combination of several things, always, it’s never just the “one thing”.

Great post Natalya.

What does

% Still on Roster

If you’re referring to the 2008 roster then it should say “% still on roster as of //08” and not what it currently does which leads to a conclusion that you’re referring to the current roster.

I’ve got other questions so please clarify this so I can get to them.

1 19(19) Vernon Carey
4 6(102) Will Poole
5 28(160) Tony Bua
6 9(174) Rex Hadnot
7 20(221) Tony Pape
7 21(222) Derrick Pope

1 2(2) Ronnie Brown
2 14(46) Matt Roth
3 6(70) Channing Crowder
4 3(104) Travis Daniels
5 26(162) Anthony Alabi
7 2(216) Kevin Vickerson

1 16(16) Jason Allen
3 18(82) Derek Hagan
4 17(114) Joe Toledo
7 4(212) Fred Evans
7 18(226) Rodrique Wright
7 25(233) Devin Aromashodu

1 9 (9) Ted Ginn Jr.
2 8 (40) John Beck
2 28 (60) Samson Satele
3 7 (71) Lorenzo Booker
4 9 (108) Paul Soliai
6 7 (181) Reagan Mauia
6 25 (199) Drew Mormino
7 9 (219) Kelvin Smith
7 15 (225) Brandon Fields
7 28 (238) Abraham Wright

Add all the picks and you’ll get 3731. Divide that by the 28 picks you’ll get an average of 133, two more then you’re listing at 131.

Good post.

;-]

nice post, btw

At what point in the evolution of the roster are you making a comparison too? The beginning of 08? The end of 08?

Statistics are pointless if your not going to be specific in what your researching.

Obviously most of those 08 picks would be on the roster at the beginning of 08 but those numbers drastically change if your referencing the final 08 roster.

If you had just given me a clear answer at the top of this post instead of being sarcastic then I could have used this time a bit more productively instead of confirming your incorrect calculations.

You’re not specifying if these numbers take the practice squad or inactive players into consideration. In either of those cases I still can’t replicate you’re 41.2, I’m getting a number closer to 35% and that’s the closest I can get to your average for players “still” on the roster which I’m still guessing means players still on the roster in 08.

The easiest way I can relay this is that there were 37 picks between 07-08. If 15 were still here that makes it 40.5 and if 16 were still here it puts it at 43.2 so unless half a player was still here on the roster you referenced in 08 then your numbers just don’t make sense.

You’d clarify me on any of this but I’m sure it’s easier to just make a sarcastic remark, ignore the mistakes and allow the masses to keep admiring all the pretty numbers.

it will always be 50%, cause the number of losses will always be the same of the number of wins when you add.

No correlations can be proved as stated. It could be interesting to run a math study using linear regression to find some correlations =)

Great post! Rec’d

I think it is difficult to draw a conclusion on draft picks and winning % during a relatively short span. The winning % could be affected greatly by players drafted prior to the sample period. That would put them in their prime. I think a better conclusion could be drawn looking at win % for a couple of years after a four year window of drafts.

And while I admire your dedication, I wouldn’t even think about trying to disprove you. I can’t believe people even have the time to do that. In any case, we need to draft well to do well. The problem we have had is really bad drafts for years and years. I am hoping that we come out of this draft with some answers at a few positions. Given the last few moves by the front office they really need to come out of this thing with an OLB and a NT at the very least. I am even willing to give some of the guys they drafted last year a shot to come back and prove they can get the job done. I still think they need to show us something in free agency. They seem to be really good at making free agency blunders. Given that, maybe we do need to just stick to the draft.

Multifactorial, multifaceted.. Drafting and being successful are such complex items in the NFL. There is no single correlated object that says, X statistic leads to Y result.

Very, very well done. Informative, interesting. Clearly did your research. Rec’d

If the ON THE ROSTER and STARTING %‘s are a % of the number of draft picks this isn’t going to give you what you are looking for. However if the % was of the players drafted on the roster, this would be more accurate in showing how well a team does in comparison.

Example
Roster size is 53 how many of the 53 were from the teams own draft and how many are starters.

Reason
When New Orleans drafted Ricky Williams they trade all there draft picks. If the % was to judge success of the draft it would be 100%. Since he was a on the roster, a starter and a pro bowler, but how did the rest of the team do?

Vice versa New England usually gets a high number of compensatory picks which are usually late round picks. Should they be penalized for having 4 7th round picks? Truth is if they had one of those four work out they did well.

In the end it would look like this
team 1 had 14 picks and kept 7
team 2 had 7 picks and kept 4

Team 1 of 7 picks 4 starters
Team 2 of 4 picks 2 starters

Team 1 of 7 picks 1 pro-bowler
Team 1 of 4 picks 0 pro-bowler

That is a one year look but expand that to four or five years and then to winning percentage. It will show you who is building through the draft. Which teams have the most home grown or drafted talent?

Although you can build through the draft and be bad at it. Oakland 121 picks 46% on the roster 0 pro-bowlers.

It is correct to say that successful teams use draft, FA and trades to build there team. It’s incorrect to state that you cannot correlate one factor to being more important than another. As this chart shows on average close to 50% of any teams roster is from the previous 4 years draft. If teams maintain any players from previous years draft then over 50% of it’s roster is from it’s own draft. Then add on undrafted rookie FAs.

Since the majority of players on any team are coming from the draft or undrafted FA, then drafting has to be the most important part of building a team.

but I think the numbers are a bit skewed because some of the more successful teams had built their cores prior to the time period used in the statistics. For instance, Tom Brady was drafted in 2000(or 2001, can’t remember exactly), and he’s been a HUGE part of the Patriots success over the years. Indy drafted Manning in 98, and he is the main reason for the Colts success lately.

I still think that drafting well over the years leads to a successful team. It’s not just over a short period time, because you may only get 2-3 starters per draft. But over 8-10 years, with a couple highly successful years (4+ starters) thrown in, and suddenly you have 25-30 players making up the meat of your team that were drafted. Add in some FA pickups, maybe a superstar in a trade, and you’re looking at a perennial contender. So even though the statistics here may not back it up, looking at teams like Pittsburgh, New England, Indianapolis (and the older dynasties like San Francisco and Dallas), building the core of your team through the draft is still the best way to go about things, and supplementing those draft choices with smart FA pickups and trades leads you from “contender” to “champion”

Good post, and always a nice discussion to have regarding how to build a team.

rec’d by me, even though it’s late lol