Reaches?

Discussion in 'NFL Draft' started by Gut, May 4, 2008.

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  1. utdtitans

    utdtitans Camp Fodder

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    Kiper doesn't know everything, but he knows a lot more than any of us. In a sense I think sometimes he knows more about where a player is valued to go more than some scouts. He talks with scouts from every team across the league and they give him info that they wouldn't give other teams. By no means is he always right. I think if say 17 teams think hayes was a 7th rounder then kiper wouldn't look into him much even if the rest of the teams thought he was worth a 4th.
     
  2. TNRADMAN

    TNRADMAN Starter

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  3. Ubiq

    Ubiq BAMF

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    Good post, but apparently you haven't gotten the memo. People on this board don't listen to facts, only their blind assumptions.

    Thanks for sharing the information though.
     
  4. Gut

    Gut Pro Bowler

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    Amusing...

    I didn't get the memo either. Which FACTS are we not listening to???

    And btw, taking the avg ranking in terms of order and not QUALITY is a great way to mislead people. Order is not nearly as valueable as quality. And even that only matters if you give credence to the value of those sites you're taking your information on.

    So assuming you did have great faith in all of those sites, find in what rnd they graded those players and do the same thing. That would be a better argument than saying we drafted the 5th best rb after 4 were taken...but reach implies you know the value of the pick...which you can't know from an order except that he's somewhere after the 4th rb and before the 6th one. Or to make it easier to understand. If the first 4 rb's were all considered first rnd players and the next 3 were considered 7th rnd players, CJ wouldnt be a reach in rnd 1 because he was the 5th player off the board, right? This is why this type of analysis (order is bad unless you're trying to prove that CJ is better than the guy who was drafted after him since you're arguing one guy vs another guy...not what rnd either should have been drafted in).

    A little statistical analysis goes a long way...

    Gut:)
     
  5. Gut

    Gut Pro Bowler

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    Tj...

    I can tell you the Pats and Baltimore do 2 things. They give each player a rnd grade (with all sorts of extra quantifications such as symbols for character or medical red flags) and stack the board (meaning which players are rated higher than the others in each rnd.

    I don't think they value a player as an early 4 or late 4 comparatively, but merely in the 4th, these are the players we want from best to worse.

    I do think they estimate where players will go based on other teams drafting strategies and team needs.

    Hope that helps.

    Gut
     
  6. Soxcat

    Soxcat Pro Bowler

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    To a large extent the draft is a poker game. Sometimes you can call a bluff and get the hand other times you miss the guy you really wanted because some team takes the guy you wanted ahead of you before your next pick. The problem is the vast amount of time nobody is going to know because no team is going to say they were high on a guy they missed and will usually always say the guy they drafted was the guy they targeted all along.

    Also, as the draft progresses teams can look at the earlier picks of the teams ahead of them and really get a feel of who those teams probably won't pick because they already took certain positions earlier in the draft. If you study the needs of teams ahead of you, who they drafted not only in the current draft but even the draft a year before (for example if the Saints used a 1st rounder on Meachum the year before they might be less inclined to go WR early). A lot of WRs had already come off the board in the 2nd and 3rd rounds so even if the Titans were high on Hawkins they didn't need to pull the trigger earlier or trade up. That might be why Hawkins lasted as long as he did and why the Titans waited to draft him picking Hayes instead.

    A rare exception was Stevens, a guy many fans were scratching their heads on after we picked him (I didn't know much about him). Baltimore actually called him to tell him he was going to be their pick. The Titans picked him right before their pick. If not for that phone call we would have never know Baltimore was high on the kid.
     
  7. Gut

    Gut Pro Bowler

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    Good post.

    :)
     
  8. TNRADMAN

    TNRADMAN Starter

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    If you draft according to need and have ranked your needs by position then it is only logical that you would take the best player left on your board at that position when your turn comes around. This of course means that you may not draft the best available player regardless of position. My contention is that the Titans, for the most part, took the best player available at their priority position of need when it was their turn to pick.

    Your statistical argument against using the average ranking would be valid if the number of picks taken per round was a nonlinear function or bimodal. However, in reality the number of picks per position per round is not weighted toward the early or later rounds. For example, in this year's draft:

    DE (# of picks/round)=4/1, 4/2, 4/3, 3/4, 0/5, 5/6, 4/7
    RB (# of picks/round)=5/1, 2/2, 4/3, 1/4, 5/5, 5/6, 5/7
    CB (# of picks/round)=5/1, 5/2, 4/3, 8/4, 4/5, 1/6, 3/7
    WR (# of picks/round)=0/1, 10/2, 5/3, 5/4, 2/5, 6/6, 7/7
    TE (# of picks/round)= 1/1, 3/2, 3/3, 3/4, 2/5, 2/6, 2/7
    OLB (# of picks/round)=2/1, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/5, 3/6, 5/7
    QB (# of picks/round)=2/1, 2/2, 1/3, 5/4, 2/6, 2/7

    This illustrates that there were players with a grade worthy of being picked in every single round at pretty much every position. Therefore, mean ranking is in general a pretty good indicator of quality.
     
  9. Gut

    Gut Pro Bowler

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    Um...

    Two problems. First, most teams have multiple needs...not one so which player they take has not only skewed the quality of a position, but changed where other teams will draft that position given there own need or not need. And logic does not dictate here as different teams do and don't follow your example. Some take BPA, some take best need available, others do something in between. So if 4 teams jumped early on RB because they were flying off the board and knew they could get a first rnd quality WR in rnd 2...are the RB's correctly valued or not?

    So you're suggesting that the Titans #1 priority position to draft was RB???

    WR looks heavily weighted towards the last rnd (7 taken) vs the 1st rnd (none taken), no?

    And I fail to see how this method could predict what rnd CJ should have gone in since we know teams don't take the best player available. If you use the same method, you'll find that several WR's were 'under' drafted because they had 1st rnd grades but then didn't get picked til rnd 2...? So this method doesn't work properly.

    Not by rnd....and this is further dminished by the fact that a 2nd rnd pick could be the first or last pick of the rnd. Is the first pick in the 2nd really that much different than the last pick in the first? Not in reality. So even this concept is very vague. Is Cj worth a top 5 pick in rnd 1 or the last pick in rnd 1. BIG difference!

    Gut
     
  10. The Playmaker

    The Playmaker pineapple pizza party

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    It shows that the Titans drafted a player they knew wouldn't be available in the 2nd. Since a WR had not been drafted yet they thought that their would be a quality WR their next pick. They guessed wrong and traded up in the fourth to get Manningham but he was chosen and in panic they picked Hayes.
     
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