Trading picks and charts, Titans
Trading picks and charts, Titans
This is probably a moment to tell you a bit about football history on the web. Doug Drinen is a math freak, a professor of mathematics, and a football history buff. He created the website ProFootballReference.com many years ago. Chase Stuart was one of Doug’s writers. Over time, Doug would sell his wonderful football site. He still writes occasionally, but he is no longer churning out articles and/or stats every single day. Chase has his own site, FootballPerspective.com, and also writes for the New York Times. They are two individuals I have known (or known of) for more than twenty years and I greatly respect their work. ProFootballReference has been used by just about every news organization and football writer.
In basketball, the most fascinating trade ever was when the Milwaukee Bucks traded “their entire team” for Lew Alcindor. Alcindor would later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
In football, the most fascinating trade was when the Dallas Cowboys traded Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for a zillion draft picks.
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The “author” of the Cowboys trade was Jimmy Johnson. Johnson was the former coach of the University of Miami Hurricanes football program. He had recently left the Hurricanes to coach the Cowboys. Amidst the trade talk, it was widely assumed that Johnson’s trade was so successful because of his familiarity with the college players. Since he had just coached or coached against these players, he had an advantage that others didn’t. While there was probably a little bit of logic to this, there was another part that was instrumental here.
The key cog in all of this was a chart that Johnson had used. The chart assigned a numerical value to each pick. Before this time, NFL general managers would trade off hunches and gut feelings. Naturally, there is a large chance that these hunches are wrong. Johnson’s system put an actual value on picks- a hard number. This number gave NFL general managers something tangible to discuss.
To use a 1980s phrase, this was like crack to Doug Drinen. What? A new number for football? A quantitative value for picks? Years later, Chase seemed to become fascinated with this too.
There are a plethora of articles written by either Drinen or Stuart on the subject. I can’t link to all of them here. It is definitely worth your time to google either author. This one, interestingly enough, shows up as a Doug Drinen article on google, yet when you click it appears to be written by Chase Stuart. I will forewarn you here. You will get “sucked in” as they won’t just throw picks at you but give examples and statistics and probability and….they are so well worth your time to read; set aside some time though. It won’t be just for a couple of minutes.
Does the NFL actually use these? Is there proof?
Geoff Krall of EmergentMath did some research on this.
Above is the scatterplot he created. One axis is the traded higher picks and the other axis is the traded lower picks. On his page here, he goes into more detail, but as you can see the data absolutely does indicate the chart is utilized by NFL GMs.
This year’s chart looks like this (Please open it in a new tab) That image is courtesy of USAToday.
Personally, I am not a fan of the number totals within the chart. The two writers I mentioned earlier have gone off on their own tangents in this regard. I prefer a chart developed by Michael Shucker.
Years ago, Shucker wrote a paper on this that is available here. Drinen has written his average value theory and some other theories which try to equate a numerical value to the position and a player’s career. It is amazing detailed work, but I stare at it thinking something is “off.” Stuart has written his thoughts and again, I feel the same. The crux of it all is NFL teams are not drafting a punter with “that pick,” nor a kicker with “that pick,” nor a long snapper with “that pick,” or a fullback with “that pick.” So here I have my admiration for these two writers and their work and this oh so curious “but what is wrong” feeling. One day, I came across Shucker’s chart and things changed.
In the background here, is a gigantic difference between the NFL draft and the NHL draft. The NHL only has three positions- forward, defense, and goalie. An NFL team can have 25 positions or more if a coach has some hybrid role. A team needs a backup quarterback, is that a role or a position? I think it’s a position. For example, the Titans have Marcus Mariota and zero desire to replace him. If they draft a quarterback, he has no chance of “stealing” Marcus’ spot and is thus a backup quarterback, so they drafted a backup quarterback. If I asked, “what is Matt Cassel’s position?” Titans fans would reply “backup quarterback” not quarterback. There is a distinction there. Rather than carry on with this tangent, let’s just roll with that the NHL’s three positions offers a smaller frameset with three positions.
Another way to illustrate the incorrect values on an NFL chart is by doing a pretend trade scenario. Ignore there are 32 teams for a second and please look at that NFL Draft trade value chart. Do you see the value of the picks in the third round? They range from 80 to 265. (Taking a guess here at math) If a team were to have every pick from round three on (every single pick) then they couldn’t trade four rounds worth of picks to equal the first pick in the draft. Picks 3.1,3.2,3.3,3.4,3.5…..4.1,4.2,4.3….5.1,5.2,5.3….6.1,6.2,6.3….7.1,7.2,7.3….all the way to the end, 185 players are not worth one player? I understand only 53 players make the team. This was just to illustrate but one issue I have with the values.
In every draft, there are a select group of gems. It can be eight or five or twelve or…a different number each year. These are the “cream of the crop” players. If a team were to have the last three picks in the first round of the NFL draft, the sum of these picks would be 1810. These three first round picks would only net pick four in the NFL draft according to the chart. Using the NHL chart, the last three picks in round one would only net pick 11 in the NHL draft. The NHL chart lends better to “feel” for me. It’s quite uncommon to gripe about whom the Superbowl champs selected at the end of the first round. Few people are sitting around wishing their team selected that player in round one. On the other hand, this is often the case with players in the top ten.The NHL chart represents this so much better than the NFL chart.
There are issues with the NFL chart. I can go on and on with issues I have. It looks great, but when I start to utilize it, issues arise. Richard Thaler wrote a nice piece about the behavioral biases in the NFL draft here. During the draft, do not expect Jon Robinson’s trades (if any) to be equal. After reading this, maybe “take in” the NHL model to evaluate the trades as well. Issues exist with the model.
Pick 33 opens a whole new can of worms. The rookie contract system offers cheaper players in the later rounds than in the first. It also offers shorter contracts as teams are not afforded the fifth year option with these players. Suppose Jon Robinson selects some player with the fifth pick. He wants that player long term because he is a future stud. What if he trades down to pick 33 and states that the player he wanted fell to him? Is that a shrewd move to save on money? Or does it make you wonder why he doesn’t want this rookie for five years? Or is it not even truly about this player? Each NFL team has roster issues, roster flexibility, cap issues, depth issues, and contract issues. When all of these issues are considered, maybe it is in the team’s best interest to select a player at 33. Pick 33 is complicated.
In time, I believe picks 33 through 36 will become more valuable than picks 29 through 32. Most NFL teams have cap issues. The Titans do not. There are a handful of teams that aren’t near the salary cap when incorporating drafted players’ salaries. The Saints also have two picks in this draft. It is entirely possible that if Jon Robinson was to land a pick between 33-35, the Saints just might give up pick 32 “straight up” for it. Robinson gets to select a player a few picks earlier while the Saints don’t have to pay a second first round prospect for five years. This may not happen in 2017. I am only presenting a scenario. The NFL climate is that the teams that pick early in the second round are lesser teams that don’t have cap issues. At the end of round one are the best teams that are about maxed out against their salary cap. Someday, I think we’ll see this, if not in 2017.
Draft trade scenarios I could imagine:
The Browns have two picks in the first round and two picks in the second. They are the most likely suitor for the Titans. Robinson could try and trade a player to them. They have a weak roster and sorely need upgrades all over. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a straight pick for pick type of trade. Also, don’t forget that several of the Titans free agents have yet to sign elsewhere. If they trade a player away, they could plug a player from last year’s roster right in as a replacement.
I am not convinced the Titans love Kevin Dodd or Austin Johnson. They had considerable value during last year’s draft. If one of them could net a second-round pick this year, I think the Titans might take that.
The Colts probably covet the same inside linebackers, defensive ends, and secondary players that the Titans do. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Titans jump up a few spots to land “their guy” rather than watch him be selected to a division rival.
The Saints have three of the top 42 picks. After acquiring Brandin Cooks, there have been several strong rumors that the Saints were going to give the Patriots their first round pick back in return for Malcolm Butler. Recently, this talk has supposedly subsided. This still presents their desire to add a cornerback. After all of the Titans evaluation, who is their guy? As we saw with Jack Conklin and tackles last year, it might not be the top rated player. The Titans may want the third or fourth rated cornerback moreso than the top-rated cornerback. The Saints are pretty solid at tight end, yet often rumored to select one since Sean Payton often has a quality tight end and this is a favorable draft for tight ends. Again, who is the Titans guy at tight end? There very well could be a trade with the Saints, but it will be one where Robinson targets a specific player. Another scenario would be if one team has already filled that need by already selecting a cornerback or tight end. I imagine Robinson will be more guarded about trading with the Saints than trading with the Browns.
Third round seems ideal. Many have suggested all offseason that Robinson would repeat 2016 and trade back to land more second round picks. Sure, this is possible. After months of looking at prospects and ratings, I see an enormous gap between third and fourth round prospects. That quality of talent drops strongly between rounds. The Titans do have two third round picks, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Robinson try and land more third round picks. The Vikings have two picks via trade and this is also the first year that compensatory picks can be traded. The third round is 42 picks long, not 32 like the previous rounds. I strongly think this will be an area Robinson tries to trade up into.
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