FNQB: How Optimistic can one be about Joe Flacco’s Future?

I have no issue going on record as saying that any time a team wins a super bowl with a quarterback on a rookie contract, there’s no way you can rule the selection poor in hindsight, regardless of the player’s actual performance.  Of course, hindsight arguments aren’t what this blog is about.  It’s about the analysis of contracts such as Joe Flacco’s.

Let’s say that the $19.5 million/year estimate is on point, as well as the $120.6 million total value estimate, with the difference being escalators.  You can ballpark the cap charge of Flacco over the life of the deal at $20 million/year.  That’s about 15% of the salary cap.  And unlike the inflated numbers you see at a lot of positions, quarterbacks are exponentially more likely to earn the full value of the contract than other positions because: 1) the rate of decline is less steep and more easily preventable, and 2) valuation is easier at the quarterback position.

When quarterback deals fail, it is often because the player is getting paid off of speculative value, such as in the Matt Cassel deal, as well as in the Ryan Fitzpatrick extension.  But speculative deals can have great benefits as well, considering the deals signed by Tony Romo, Jay Cutler, Aaron Rodgers, and Matt Schaub.  Flacco is not getting paid off speculation here.  He’s still young, but he’s in the same boat that Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer and Ben Roethlisberger were in when they got their largest contracts, and is in the same boat that Matt Ryan is when he will sign his in the next calendar year.  Matt Stafford’s extension isn’t going to be cheap, either.

Flacco’s performance to date trends to the low end of those comparable to him  but if we’ve learned anything at all from the NFL’s $100 million men, it is that past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.  As dependent as the quarterback position is on other factors, this makes sense.

Consider how I would have ranked the quarterbacks above at the time they signed their deals:

1) Philip Rivers
2) Carson Palmer
3) Ben Roethlisberger
4) Eli Manning

Since the extensions, Rivers and Palmer have had three or so really awful seasons (and Palmer has hit the triple crown: injured, retired, and traded…and is still going to get close to earning the whole contract he signed for).  Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger just had really mediocre seasons, but they’ve performed the best since the contract extensions.

A much better indicator of the success of the contract was the quarterback’s age at the time it was signed, and in that metric, Flacco does very well, having just turned 28.  Roethlisberger signed his the day after his 27th birthday.  Manning, like Flacco, was 28.  Rivers was 3 months from his 29th birthday when he signed a contract with total value in excess of $98 million.  Palmer signed the contract extension the day after he turned 26, and was immediately injured not two weeks later in the divisional playoffs.

Flacco’s durability, of course, is on par with Eli Manning’s, and while it’s subtle to be talking about the absence of injury, Flacco rarely even leaves the field for any reason.  Not only has Flacco not missed a start: he hasn’t been remotely threatened by the injury report.  It’s perhaps up there with arm strength as his greatest asset.  When you combine relatively young with absurdly healthy, you get a quarterback that projects as a top five passer over the next six years or so.  Which is exactly what the Ravens are paying for.

Having italicized the word passer, it’s going to be interesting to see how the changing NFL philosophy of the quarterback position affects Flacco.  Flacco’s improvement over the next three seasons figures to be pretty sharp, and he’ll be on the back two years of the contract when he starts to decline.

I don’t know if Flacco is a good bet to win an MVP (QB rushing yards are going to be a major award consideration heading forward), but I would rank him in my top six quarterbacks over the next five years, along with Robert Griffin, Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton, Andrew Luck and Teddy Bridgewater.  I don’t necessarily know if he’s a better bet than Andrew Luck over the same timeframe, but I do know he has a significant head start on the 2012 1st overall pick.

All of those players will sign deals that exceed Flacco’s $120.6 million, and that’s how you have to look at this deal.  It’s the new benchmark: worth 20% more than when the quarterback class of 2004 signed it’s extensions.  Flacco isn’t even going to be the top paid QB in the NFL for 365 days.  But for right now: he’s worth it.

FNQB: NFL’s Projected $130 million Salary Floor is going to Render Recent SB Winner Roster Models Obsolete

Reports from the ongoing NFL CBA negotiations agree that the next NFL collective bargaining agreement is that the players will now receive 48% of total NFL revenues.  If that sounds like a pay cut from the prior level of 60% of total NFL revenues, it is.  But barely.  The owners are apparently willing to agree to take that $1 billion league expense credit and throw it out, meaning that the 48% of total revenues for the players will actually be 48% of total revenues.

We can do some dirty math and calculate the expected NFL salary cap in 2011.  $9 billion in total league revenues times .48 for the players’ share is $4.32 billion.  Divide that share into 32 teams gives us a per-team cap of $135 million.  That’s a good, accurate projection for the salary cap.  It’s also roughly equal to the salary cap in 2009, which makes some sense.  Revenues have increased, and the owners are saving something in this deal, so $135 million/team is a good salary cap figure that doesn’t put any strain on teams to cut salary after the uncapped year in 2010.

On the contrary, there will be a salary strain on plenty of organizations in 2011.  And it’s not going to be the free-spenders who don’t always compete such as Washington and Minnesota.  It’s likely to be the penny-pinching, player development focused franchises who are wildly successful, as well as the small-market, resource-limited teams that bargain hunt frequently.  Because it also appears that the owners and players will be agreeing to an aggressive salary floor.  This floor is expected to be set at 46.5% of total revenues.  Doing the math precisely the same way as before, we find that the NFL salary floor in 2011 is expected to be set at $130.7 million dollars per club.

You think that’s going to change something?  Understand now that as we currently stand, practically zero teams are in compliance with that salary floor in the uncapped year.  Does that make any sense?  The NFL had a year where the spending of teams was not limited (though player movement was).  The Cowboys and the Redskins exceeded $165 million in salary.  No other team got close to them.  PFT has the list of salaries last year.  11 teams, one-third of the league, exceeded the SALARY FLOOR set by the NFL this year.  21 teams would not have been in compliance with such an agreement in 2010.

Redskins:  $178.2 million.

Cowboys:  $166.5 million.

Saints:  $145.0 million.

Vikings:  $143.4 million.

Seahawks:  $138.8 million.

Jets:  $135.7 million.

Packers:  $135.3 million.

Raiders:  $135.2 million.

Colts:  $133.1 million.

Bears:  $131.9 million.

Eagles:  $131.0 million.

So 2/3rds of the league must change their behavior starting this belated offseason, and spend a higher percentage of revenues on players.  And a number of the complying franchises are playoff teams.  For most of the current playoff contenders, complying with the salary floor essentially means making a big free agent signing who fits the scheme, and rolling over the budget year to year.  There are a number of teams who aren’t all that close to any sort of salary floor (I think the last salary floor sat around $95 million in 2009), and it’s hard to envision the plan for building these teams to included dumping a ton of annual salary into any veteran that can be reasonably expected to make the team.  Take a look:

Panthers:  $110.9 million.

Rams:  $109.1 million.

Chargers:  $108.0 million.

Bills:  $105.3 million.

Broncos:  $102.9 million.

Bengals:  $100.8 million.

Cardinals:  $97.8 million.

Jaguars:  $89.5 million.

Chiefs:  $84.5 million.

Buccaneers:  $80.8 million.

This is going to be tough for these teams.  It cannot be assumed that any of these organizations are going to be serious competitors for the premier free agents, yet, they are all going to need to come up with a way to raise salary by up to $30 million in 2011.  This isn’t baseball.  It is difficult to spend that much money in general.  To do it without hurting ones team almost requires a $70 million total value contract to a franchise cornerstone.  If you’re the Bucs or Chiefs, well, okay.  You can find someone to give those millions to.  But if you’re the Bills, Jaguars, or Bengals?  Being forced to go outside the organization to give the big bucks away is really dangerous because all the good teams will be after the players who can justify that type of money with their checkbooks.  Obviously, this leads to the two main mistakes: overpaying for mediocre talent and creating an albatross contract, or bidding up the price on a number of mid-tier signings, obstructing draft picks.

Despite all the extra money that is going to be in the game for players, I’m not figuring that there are going to be a great number of players who are looking forward to accepting starter money and a backup role.  Not the veterans who will be eligible to get such contracts.  With extra money in the game, veterans will be able to hold their spots longer.  This is good for NFLPA members, but it makes building from youth a lot more difficult for the clubs.  Oh, and did you here they are capping rookie salaries?  This is going to work out great.

When you think about how the recent super bowl winners have been built, the formula is typically a well-built, homegrown defense with a quarterback drafted in the first round, and an intelligently built offensive line that gets the job done.  We’ve seen teams like the Jags and Chiefs — to make a much easier salary floor in 2009 — pay non-elite passers like elite quarterbacks.  That’s the salary floor effect that we’re going to see in spades this year.

It’s not a big deal for the Bucs, who can just give Josh Freeman an $100 million dollar extension before the season to raise payroll: they know he’s their future anyway.  What about the Jags, who even when they keep David Garrard for this season, still need to raise payroll? So they keep Garrard and start him.  They keep Aaron Kampman as he rehabs from another knee injury, because he helps up their salary.  They keep Derrick Harvey, their 2008 first rounder, even though they are no longer sold on him as a starter.  They can go out on the free agent market and finally buy some much needed secondary help.  They extend MLB Kirk Morrison.  The Jaguars become big spenders.  And they only have $15 million to go in order to make the NFL salary floor!  It’s okay: payroll is a marathon, not a sprint.  Teams just have to tough it out.

You can’t blame the players any for wanting a high salary floor to ensure that money pumps through the game, even if teams can no longer build optimally.  My hope is that this results in longer, bigger contracts for young players with plenty of upside, and that teams will now stop giving up on their players so early, if only because they need to make the decision to commit to them earlier then ever.  For the non-rookie players, there is no downside to a high salary floor.  For teams, it’s going to be a problem.  And I just can’t say I’m all that surprised that they don’t see it yet.

FNQB: What Kind of Trouble is Jimmy Clausen Worth?

One of the decisions that the Carolina Panthers will have to make in deciding whether to select a quarterback is whether or not 2010 second round pick Jimmy Clausen is worth playing for another year.  Clausen just wasn’t good at all as a rookie in 2010, but as a rookie playing with many other rookies in a horribly understaffed offense, his performance hardly qualified as a crime against humanity.  Clausen did not offer a great Lewin Career Forecast projection coming out of Notre Dame, but would have conceivably rated highly in this upcoming draft had he been a 4 year starter with, say, a 63% completion percentage.

Suffice it to say, Clausen may have been better off playing in a new system at Notre Dame to show his versatility than leaving for the NFL draft when he did.  The team he plays for now has the first overall pick and is at least considering drafting a quarterback who they believe in more than Clausen.  I wanted to investigate the wisdom of such a decision.  To spend the first overall pick on a quarterback — even one that the Panthers believe in — you would first want to accurately conclude that nothing can be had from Clausen in 2011.

I was able to quickly generate a list of Jimmy Clausen comparable quarterbacks using only Clausen’s stats from his rookie year.  Turns out it was a pretty unique season.  Only rookies and second year players (compared to third and fourth year players) have ever achieved the kind of poor season that Clausen had in 2010 while also limiting an interception rate to a reasonable league average.  The way to describe the careers of the Clausen comparables is that they all went to improve their careers and enjoy some success with the exception of Akili Smith.  Smith had the kind of year that Clausen did as a second year starter, so he can be thrown out.  McNabb, Cunningham, and particularly Carr all make for more sensible comparisions.

Of all comparisons, Jack Trudeau is by far the best for Clausen.  The 1986 second round pick out of Illinois struggled to the tune of an 0-11 record as a rookie on a terrible team.  The next year, the Colts were able to add Eric Dickerson, Trudeau settled in as an above average NFL quarterback for the next four seasons, leading the Colts to the playoffs in just his second year of 1987.  Trudeau did not last in the NFL as a long term starting quarterback like McNabb or Cunningham did, nor did he get the opportunities that David Carr did to succeed.  But Trudeau proves that it would not be unprecedented for the Panthers to get to 9 wins under Clausen next year by adding an offensive difference maker to pair with Steve Smith.

David Carr never did get the Texans to the playoffs, but as recently as 2006, it was thought that the Texans at least had the quarterback position filled.  Carr never materialized as the Texans franchise quarterback for the same reason that Clausen couldn’t win in 2010: indecision with the ball led to too many sacks.  Carr had a solidly above average season as a third year player in 2004, and improved greatly as a player in 2003.  Truth is, if Jimmy Clausen ends up being either Jack Trudeau or David Carr, it would be hard to fault the Panthers for drafting Blaine Gabbert or Cam Newton in this draft.

However, a cursory look at the careers of Donovan McNabb and Randall Cunningham shows exactly why its too early to give up on Jimmy Clausen as a pro player.  In each player’s first season as a starter, they lost more games than they won while posting rate stats near the bottom of the NFL.  Each of the next two seasons, both McNabb and Cunningham threw 20 TDs for the Eagles as 24 and 25 year old players.  If the belief is that Clausen can approach the 20 TD mark in 2011, the Panthers can win a bunch of games with him and there’s absolutely no reason to draft Gabbert or Newton.  The pick, instead, would be best spent on an offensive talent that can help Clausen reach those goals.

Perhaps the best sign that the Panthers are planning on giving up on Clausen is that they aren’t considering drafting either A.J. Green or Julio Jones in that no. 1 slot.  A defensive player at no. 1 wouldn’t make a lot of sense in the context of developing Clausen.  Clausen would still likely fail to lead the Panthers to the playoffs throwing to just an aging Steve Smith.  A defensive player makes sense for the Panthers if Clausen is just holding the QB spot warm while the team rebuilds, but in that case, I would support drafting a quarterback now instead of waiting.  History shows that Clausen should be good enough to lead the Panthers to the playoffs, but that not all of Clausen’s closest comparables were able to do that, and those who didn’t lead teams to the playoffs in their first three seasons didn’t do it later on.

The Panthers should either give Clausen some help and develop him as a pro prospect or replace him now with Blaine Gabbert.  While there isn’t strong evidence that Gabbert will develop into a better player than Clausen, getting Gabbert now buys more time for the coaching staff, and if the Panthers like him enough, I think that looking at Clausen’s closest comps shows that it makes sense for the Panthers to go in a different direction, if they feel Clausen is the next coming of Jack Trudeau or David Carr.

FNQB: How Much $ is a Draft Pick Worth? Part II

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Last Friday, I was able to draw up a pretty good estimate of the market premium spent in free agency to overbid other teams for elite players versus what the same player would make either resigning with his current team, or forcing a trade in which another contender pays draft compensation for his exclusive negotiating rights for a year (i.e. the franchise tender).  I estimated that number at about $8 million in “first three years” money.

What percentage of the total guaranteed money that is really depends on the size of the total contract, which depends on the quality of the player.  Giants DL Chris Canty, who was a target of the Redskins prior to landing Haynesworth, got $22 million of his $42 million in the first three years of his contract, which is a very player friendly deal for a guy who would be best described as a second-tier NFL star.  If there had been no bidding by any of those teams, but rather a trade by the Redskins for the Cowboys’ end (work with me) for a 2nd and a 5th rounder, Canty isn’t getting $22 million in the first three years.  He’s probably getting $14 to $16 million.  His asking price ups from $5 million a season to $8 million a year on the open market with multiple suitors.

One way or another, it’s those valuable draft picks that allow teams to save that money.  The NFL salary cap long prevented franchises from both holding on to their draft picks and using them, and spending mega bucks to outbid the wealthiest teams for the best players.  The Redskins have long tried to leverage their draft choices into cheaper contracts for veteran help, and Haynesworth was a very different route when the team was trying to protect it’s picks after trading for Jason Taylor.

Today, I’m trying to determine the true value of those picks.  It’s established that picks, which all have an inherent expected value in the players they return, can be traded to save money on other contracts.  The tricky part is that the teams that save the most money are the ones that accrue the most picks.  With the exception of the top 5 or 6 picks in the NFL draft, the cost of paying a player’s first contract via the draft is far less expensive than paying a comparable veteran to take that roster spot and lineup spot.  Even in the top five, the expected value of the pick is greater than the expected value of the contract, although the success stories are few and far between, and teams have to be smart — pitfalls in the first five picks of the draft are both well documented and incredibly damaging to the long term welfare of a franchise.

Those are two ways that draft picks provide value.  The third way is through the variance of the players picked: teams that can consistently outdraft the expected value have more value in draft picks, those that are consistently outdrafted by the average have less value.  This analysis will ignore this variable.  By taking the monetary value difference between the contract for a draft pick and a contract for a player who provides the same expected value, and adding the amount saved by trading the pick for a veteran player, while subtracting the difference between those two uses — as not to double count the value — we’ll come to an acceptable “value of a draft pick” figure.  Part III of this analysis will attempt to differentiate value by location in the draft.  Right now, we will concern ourselves with the value of a generic, first round draft choice.

FNQB: Why Ben Roethlisberger May Not Play Football in 2010

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Due to offseason lapses of behavior to which I feel that I should not go into detail at an analysis hub such as Liveball, Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is currently suspended through Week 7 of the 2010 NFL season for various violations of the NFL Personal Conduct Policy.  My thoughts on that matter was that the suspension was justified, if not earned.  A lot of people with sources close to the situation believe that there’s no chance that Roethlisberger will be suspended six games…he’s either going to be eligible after four games, or he’s going to screw up again and be done for the year.

I’m not predicting that Roethlisberger is dumb enough to get himself to an even bigger mess after everything he has put the Steelers through and very nearly ending up as quarterback of the Raiders (though I’m not putting it past him).  My point in this column is more direct: this suspension is terrible for the perception of Ben Roethlisberger’s career, in a specific, on the field, winning games sense.

Roethlisberger has all the sparkling numbers and achievements that one would look for from a professional quarterback, so it might be tempting to assume Ben’s play on the field is far less erratic than his antics off of it.  It also wouldn’t be accurate.  Perhaps the most impressive statistic in Roethlisberger’s career is that, in three of his six seasons, he has averaged better than 8.5 yards per attempt, which is an astounding figure that supports him as being one of the league’s elite young passers.

However, Roethlisberger has always stalled drives with high sack rates.  We can compare the more conventional yards per attempt rankings to Roethlisberger’s net yards per attempt rankings to see just how much the sacks hurt Roethlisberger’s value as a quarterback:

Ben Roethlisberger YPA ranks vs. NYPA ranks

Year	Age	Y/A	Rank	NY/A	Rank
2004	22	8.9	2nd	7.4	5th
2005	23	8.9	1st	7.8	2nd
2006	24	7.5	7th	6.3	8th
2007*	25	7.8	6th	6.2	16th
2008	26	7.0	17th	5.9	20th
2009	27	8.6	2nd	7.2	7th

Source: profootballreference.com

Even this is a bit inadequate to show just how much the sacks hurt the Steelers offense.  Per DVOA, the Steelers passing offense has ranked 7th, 6th, 6th, 7th, 19th, and 7th in that timeframe.  If anything, yards per attempt has overrated the value of Ben Roethlisberger to the Steelers early on in his career when he was a role player in the offense.  It’s not an issue of throwing the football: the Steelers have been a very good passing offense every year but 2008, and that year, the offense threw the football much better in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.  The Steelers have been a consistently strong offense through the air with Ben at the helm.  So what’s the deal?  4 games and he’s back…right?

It can’t be that simple, and it isn’t.  There’s plenty of reason to believe that Roethlisberger, even though most of the Steelers offense runs through him in some way, is at best not a positive influence on the Steelers offense, and at worst, limits offense.  By points scored, the Steelers have ranked 11th, 9th, t-12th, 9th, 20th, and 12th in points scored, pretty consistently in the second quartile as a point producing team, even with considerable contribution from the defense.  Backups Byron Leftwich and Charlie Batch have done just fine in relief of Roethlisberger over the years, and in Dennis Dixon’s one start last year, he was at very least, competent as trigger-man for the Steelers.  The team is consistently excellent year after year at the receiver and tight end positions, and recently has begun to add some quality NFL runners to put the power running game back in Pittsburgh.

Furthermore, beyond Roethlisberger, this team is primed for another super bowl run.  The defense, which certainly was down last year, is still one of the best, deepest units in the entire league.  Special teams could use a boost, and the Steelers might be able to add up to a win by adding a kickoff specialist who can improve on Jeff Reed’s short boots.  However, if the Steelers have one weakness from the perspective of the fans, it’s the offensive line.

How much of a weakness is the OL?  Perhaps: not much.  With regards to running the ball, the Steelers OL ranks above the average in Adjusted Line Yards (explained at above link), and in the top five in “power” situations, which I believe is a pure ranking of an OL’s skill independent of playcalling mix: if the defense knows what’s coming, and you can still create a successful play better than 70% of the time, that doesn’t fit with my definition of a weakness.  There were, however, weak links on the Steelers offensive line, at C with Justin Hartwig, and at RG with Trai Essex.  Then again, first round pick Maurkice Pouncey of Florida will go a long way to fixing both of those issues.  He’ll break in at RG this year, and figures to eventually become the team’s Center.  Unless he’s a huge weakness as a rookie, the entire unit will be just another strength for the Steelers.

Which leads me to the conclusion I’ve been building to: with an eligible Ben Roethlisberger, my methodology projects the Steelers to be the best team in the NFL this year.  They still have four players who rate in the top three at their positions in their own conference on offense: Hines Ward (top six at WR in AFC), Willie Colon, Chris Kemoeatu, and Heath Miller, to go along with great depth at receiver.  On defense though, the Steelers are in an entirely different class: Woodley, Harrison, Polamalu, Hampton, Lawrence Timmons, Aaron Smith, and Ryan Clark, not to mention that they return Bryant McFadden from a year long vacation in Arizona.  The 11 players who rank in the top 3 (or 6, when applicable) at their respective positions in the AFC make the Steelers a juggernaut.

Having Byron Leftwich under center for the first few games isn’t going to change that.  Perception of Leftwich’s meaningless games in Tampa at the beginning of the season are skewed by the fact that Leftwich faced three excellent pass defenses last year, and still performed well, though an 0-3 start doomed him.  In the last two years, Leftwich (5 appearences with 10+ attempts) has accrued 290 passing DYAR.  Among players that he outranks in DYAR in that timeframe, without any consistency in his roll, mind you: Matt Cassel, Kevin Kolb, Bruce Gradkowski, Alex Smith, Brady Quinn, Derek Anderson, Trent Edwards, Seneca Wallace (when you add…rushing?), Matt Hasselbeck, Mark Bulger, Chris Redman, Shaun Hill, Tyler Thigpen, Daunte Culpepper and puts him within ten DYAR of Matt Moore, who has similar playing time.

That list includes SIX starting NFL quarterbacks, and the Steelers certainly have to feel like they are in better hands with Leftwich under center than a bunch of other teams who are in flux at the QB position.  And when you take a passer like Lefwich — who, for all the criticism he gets about not being mobile, has all of one season where is sack rate floated above Roethlisberger’s career best — we could be seeing the beginning of a unstoppable juggernaut offense in Pittsburgh, and the start of something special between Leftwich, and young receivers Mike Wallace, and draft picks Emmanuel Sanders, and Antonio Brown.

With three quality opponents on the slate in the first four games, and an organization that fancies itself well above the level of Ben Roethlisberger, theres not a lot of reason to think that they would move away from Leftwich if he can guide the team to a 4-0, or perhaps even a 3-1 start.  If they do, I think it would signal that they really, really believe in Ben Roethlisberger as a player AND as a person.  I’m just not sure that’s accurate.  I think they believe in him fully as a player, but that’s because they’ve never had a strong alternative to his job.  They wouldn’t this year — Leftwich wouldn’t even be a Steeler — if not for Ben’s own actions.  Age isn’t really a concern here either: Leftwich is 30, but Ben’s already 28.  This decision will have only two elements: football playing ability, and character.  Leftwich’s character is unquestioned, while Roethlisberger’s is um, highly questionable.  On the field, there’s a standard that Leftwich will have to meet: a passing offense that consistently rates in the top ten, scores between 8th and 12th in points yearly, and usually grabs 7-8 yards per dropback.

He’ll have every advantage to meet that standard, and provide the Steelers with the alternative to Ben that they’ve been lacking in order to pull the trigger on a trade that they really want to make.  Three weeks in, some team is going to find itself without any stability at the QB position, in desperate need of a move, and the Steelers could be sitting pretty at 3-0.  If attendance-starved Buffalo, Kansas City, or Jacksonville comes forward at that point with the offer of a first round pick for the troubled Steelers signal-caller, that’s going to be a lot of loot from Pittsburgh’s perspective to get rid of a problem that they hate living with (but currently, can’t live without).

I’m not saying that it will happen, or that it’s bound to happen, but it’s a possibility that Ben has brought upon himself with his actions and suspension.  In my mind, the Steelers are going to be the favorites for Super Bowl 45 with, or without the suspended Roethlisberger on the roster.

FNQB: The Trials and Tribulations of being David Garrard

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Tonight, Friday Night QB takes an in-depth look at East Carolina product and Jacksonville quarterback David Garrard, trying to make some sort of sense out of an offseason that suggests that the eight year pro might be headed towards a do-or-die year not only for his position as NFL starting quarterback, but for his coaches and teammates on the Jaguars, and much more significantly, for Jacksonville as a viable NFL city.

If it is indeed possible to be a darkhorse playoff team playing in the AFC South, the Jacksonville Jaguars just might need to pull out all the stops to stay above the competition this year.  Quarterback David Garrard returns for his fifth year as an NFL starter, and what many believe could be his last chance at succeeding as an NFL passer.  The 32-year old Garrard has been a well above average quarterback over each of the last three seasons, culminating with an overdue pro-bowl berth in 2009.

Problem is, as Garrard’s health has finally begun to stabilize (16 GS in both 2008 and 09), his rate stats have declined considerably and consistently since his excellent 2007 season.  Currently, Garrard is a 61% passer with a 3% TD and a 2% TD rate and a 7.0 yard/attempt passer.  While the emergence of Mike Sims-Walker has brought a vertical element back to the Jacksonville offense, the Jaguars are clearly at a crossroads with Garrard.  He’s the best quarterback on the Jags roster, if only because the Jags have made a significant effort to improve the team independent of the QB.  They loaded up on defensive ends in the 2008 draft, then offensive tackles in the 2009 draft, then defensive tackles in the 2010 draft.  This year, they added defensive field general Kirk Morrison to be the middle linebacker in a defense that already featured plenty of young OLBs already.  The team is still pretty dreadful in the secondary, but that can be ignored — if the passing game can produce points.

That means that the bulls-eye is squarely on Garrard this year.  Specifically, in an eight week stretch between October 18th and December 5th, Garrard will either prove that he belongs in the discussion of the top ten NFL quarterbacks, or he is unlikely to see it through to the end.  Once three years removed from the signing of his 6-year, $60 million extension, Garrard will be easily expendable from a contractual standpoint, especially so if the team has new management the following year.

The expectations simply may not be fair to Garrard.  He needs to perform better than he has over the last two years, when he has ranked in the top 15 and then in the 20 according to DYAR.  He needs, essentially, to weasel his way into the top 12 this year, a year when Jacksonville clearly has no other QB on their roster capable of making it into the top 20.  He’s got an in-prime Maurice Jones Drew as an ally, and two games against the Colts, Titans, and Texans, and one game each against the Chargers, Cowboys, Eagles, and Giants on his schedule.  So in 10 games against above average opponents, Garrard has to drag a young roster to at least a 5-5 record by Thanksgiving, or move over for someone else to fail in his place.

He’s overcome worse.  In 2004, Garrard was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and played the season shortly after, you know, having 12-inches of intestine removed.  He won the team’s Ed Block Courage Award in perhaps the most inadequate situation for presenting such an award.

He also could rely solely on himself to beat Crohn’s.  In Jacksonville, he will need the assistance of teammates that have not risen to the challenge the last two seasons.  He’s got quality second year tackles in Eugene Monroe and Eben Britton, and the Jags are shifting around their interior line, including a position change for their best lineman, Vince Manuwai, from left guard to right guard.  The result could be much needed improved line play.  Special Teams ace Kassim Osgood replaces over the hill WR Torry Holt on the roster, but the guys who will catch Garrard’s passes in 2010 are the same guys who caught them in 2010: Sims-Walker, Marcedes Lewis, Mike Thomas, Ernest Wilford, Jarrett Dillard, Nate Hughes, and Troy Williamson.  If Marcedes Lewis can ever step up and solidify the middle of the field, that becomes a high potential receiving corps.  Right now, it’s a weakness.  Rice product Dillard is likely to get the nod at no. 2 receiver in the Jags’ spread concepts.

Still, Garrard is the part that is needed to make everything work.  This could be a ten win team, but not without a significant improvement from the quarterback position.  Thing is, there is mounting evidence that suggests the QB position is the one that’s easiest to change when ineffective, and the Jaguars are one of the few teams intelligently leveraging this fact into building a juggernaut roster on the cheap with a holdover at quarterback.  All probability states that Garrard won’t be the team’s passer next year if he doesn’t make the playoffs this year.

Too rarely, in my opinion, are the players who are truly deserving of extended opportunities based on all available statistical evidence afforded the opportunity to reverse a downward trend in production, and especially not at Garrard’s age.  That was the story of Jason Campbell in Washington, of Trent Edwards (perhaps) in Buffalo, Chad Pennington in New York, David Carr/Joey Harrington/Patrick Ramsey from 2002, and Jeff Garcia in San Francisco just to name a few.  But with Alex Smith getting an extended look in SF, Marc Bulger and Matt Hasselbeck in STL and SEA respectively, and now Garrard, it appears that teams are starting to trend in the direction of letting the incumbent quarterback fix his own issues while working on the issues with the rest of the team first.  Bulger and Hasslbeck both show that there’s no guarentee that the declining player can ever get it turned around, but teams take big risks all the time.  It’s good that now, a minority is showing a willingness to gamble on what they already have against making the incorrect assumption that the grass is always greener elsewhere.

The Garrard gamble might pay off.  The Bengals were just back in the playoffs last year after a three year hiatus.  Garrard has always managed to give something back to those who have believed in him, never ending a season below league average in production.  If 2010 is the end of the road for Garrard, he’s always going to have his spot in Jags team history as the most popular non-Brunell quarterback to play for a team that has managed to have only two head coaches to this point in history, certainly, an abnormality in the NFL at this time.  And if things work out and Garrard gets the Jags back to the playoffs, it will be one of the best stories in the NFL in 2010: the team that passed on hometown boy Tim Tebow could be the darkest of all horses to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this year.

FNQB: Examining how much Front Offices know about the Draft vs. How Much they Should

When tackling a topic like this, I know I have to be careful to not wade into the deeper waters of psycho-analysis that are out of my level of expertise.  I’m going to be upfront here: this is a tough concept to evaluate.  There’s availability to common information, which all teams have, and my hypothesis (which will be supported below, but I make no attempt to “prove” anything) is that teams do not use enough freely available information when valuing draft prospects, instead relying strongly on historically flawed internal scouting.

There will be no Friday Night Quarterback next week.  Liveball Sports will be covering the NFL draft.

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First, I have to set up a few parameters.  It has been suggested by reputable sources that the NFL Draft is a crapshoot, not dissimilar to a horse race.  To an extent, this is a good analogy, but the data doesn’t hold up to suggest that teams know nothing about the players they are drafting.  Courtesy of research done at Pro Football Reference, and using their AV metric, we can see that the players that are drafted higher/earn the higher grades end up having the best careers.

You can look at that list and see that the difference between the first overall pick and the 6-10th overall picks is about 12-15 AV, the difference between the first overall pick and the end of the first round is about 30 AV, and the difference between the first overall pick and the end of the second round is about 40 AV, or about 2/3 of the total value of the average first overall pick.  From that point on, the difference in AV from the average 65th overall pick to the 97th overall pick (3rd round) is the same as the average difference from the back end of the third round until the end of the draft.

You can take from that: draft positioning matters.  This of course, is not new research, it’s something that has been proven in the past.  It cannot be summarized that the NFL Draft is a crapshoot no matter how much anecdotal evidence can be offered.  Rather, it would be more accurate to say that there is very high variance in draft choice quality.  In the last fifteen years, both Peyton Manning and JaMarcus Russell have been first round draft choices.  Neither is remotely close to the mean AV value for the first overall pick: Russell’s truncated career has produced roughly 12% of the expected career value of the first overall pick, while Manning is a hair over 250% of the expected value for the same pick.  Still, knowing nothing else, the team that holds the first overall pick should not be expecting to draft a player that reaches the heights of Manning, nor falls to the depths of Russell.  The team that uses the first overall pick on a quarterback should EXPECT to get something like Carson Palmer on the polished end, or Michael Vick on the toolzy end.

If you ignore the developmental upside of draft prospects (and no one does this, it’s purely a hypothetical), risk-neutral metrics suggest that you could only draft a player that is more valuable than a Palmer or a Vick (neither of which is a consensus top ten player at his position) through either good fortune or a market inefficiency.  I think that really drives home the point of the NFL Draft: either the averages are depressed by poor decisions, or the averages are depressed by the expected value of high-risk moves which backfire more often than not, but teams are willing to take these risks because great teams are built around a few great players, as opposed to trying to just beat the average pick every time.  In all honesty, it’s probably a mix of both.  There are calculated risks, there are bad decisions, and both contribute to sub-optimal draft outcomes.

I’m proposing that there’s evidence that the risks teams take may be unnecessary: that you can avoid high variance players early in the draft without necessarily avoiding players that might some day be great.  The further down you get in the draft, the less available that these “universal” prospects are, but that’s okay because teams that pick at the back end of the first round and beyond don’t have to spend the mega bucks to take the calculated risks that teams in the top half of the first round do.  The penalty for flat missing on a player at pick no. 24 isn’t much, so it might make some sense (even putting aside the ability to develop players) to take a raw athlete with considerable upside, but for a team picking at no. 9, it’s a poor allocation of assets to make the same pick.

Essentially, the crux of my “teams at the top of the draft don’t maximize” argument is that:

• these teams aren’t selective enough when they are really the only teams that are in position to be, and
• teams make the mistake of assuming that the prospects they know most about have depressed upside compared to prospects they know less about, in other words: teams mistake the absence of information for upside

The second point is the biggest point.  Incomplete information is not anything except incomplete information.  While this statement sounds intuitive and indisputable, you would be shocked how much more productive any team could draft if they treated information they do not have as information they do not have.  Furthermore, I believe I can teach anyone to predict the fortunes of future draft prospects fairly accurately, simply by comprehending a statement that sounds rhetorical.

This gets back to my initial point: the over-reliance on internally-generated scouting reports vs. the freely available information.  Completeness.  An internal report is not an internal report if the person responsible for the report doesn’t come to a bottom line conclusion on the player.  At that point, the decision-makers will evaluate the player on film, and compare their findings to the internal report, all while putting together the big board.  What happens a lot, particularly with underclassman, is that based on a few games (for guys that have only played a year or two), you’re either going to get a positive or negative internal report, followed by a positive or negative grade from the people who will be in the war room.  The higher picks are going to be the ones who get the positive-positive reviews.  Those are the players who are liked by “the organization”, with limited internal dissent.

Limited.  Internal.  Dissent.  This is the common thread with ALL picks who eventually bust.  Positive-positive grades imply that a first-round prospect is a can’t miss.  Sometimes, though, there will be suggestions in the freely available record.  Want proof?  Let’s look at NYJ LB Vernon Gholston’s (2 years, 11 tackles, 0 sacks) college career.

What Scouts See

2006	OSU	47	21	26	0	8	0	0	1	8	0
2007	OSU	37	25	12	0	14	0	0	0	0	0

SACKS = boldface, SOLO TACKLES = Underlined

The Bigger Picture

2005 – no production

2006	OSU	47	21	26	0	8	0	0	1	8	0
2007	OSU	37	25	12	0	14	0	0	0	0	0

2008 – no production (left school for NFL draft)

Notice what happened here when we used freely available knowledge to fill in the full picture.  Without in anyway diminishing Gholston’s accomplishments at Ohio State, expanding the relevant sample just raises a lot of questions about his viability as a top ten pick.  You can say that in 2005, the reason that Gholston had no production is that he was buried on the depth chart behind better players, and you can say that had he come back in 2008 for his senior year at OSU, he would have been even more dominant than he was as a junior; you might actually be right.  You would unquestionably be missing the point:

1. Gholston was the 6th overall pick, a point in the draft where teams should be being super-selective in who they should be taking
2. You’re assuming that you’d be right because your conclusion based off two years of film evidence that Gholston is an elite pass rusher.  In other words, rather than leaving the freely available evidence as the evidence, you’ve now extrapolated into the unknown based on a confirmation bias
3. There is no reason to actually do this.  Gholston is either worth the 6th overall pick based on what he showed in college, or he isn’t.  The projection of “what is” is being skewed by “what could/should have been.”

You want an easy, efficient way to screw up your draft projections?  Start ranking players based on a mix of what they did and did not do at the collegiate level, instead of just on what they did do.  Take Georgia Tech WR Demaryius Thomas for example.  What he did in college: for his two most recent years, Thomas used the advantage of playing in Paul Johnson triple option scheme to run three different vertical routes very, very well, turning plays that the athletic quarterback strings out into long gains.  Prior to his junior year, he was a 15-16 yard per catch guy averaging about 3 catches a game, and 3 TDs a year.  As a junior in 2009, he added an extra catch per game to his average as the GT offense added another dimension, he got in the end zone 8 times on just a handful more catches, and he shot his yards per catch average up to 25.0 per.  He will not play in 2010, having committed his efforts to the NFL in that year.  That’s the complete pre-draft picture on Demaryius Thomas, you tell me how much that’s worth.

This is not suggest that Demaryius Thomas is/isn’t worth a first round pick.  It’s just to point out that if history is any guide, the team that likely picks him will be doing so on a scouting expectation for his ability to adapt his skill set to their offense.  They might be right or they might be wrong.  They might be overdrafting him or they might be getting a steal.  All of this is missing the point, which is that you can just grade Thomas based on what you actually have tape on: the way he ran a few deep routes against one on one coverage.  That ability has a tangible value to an NFL team.  If that’s worth a first round pick to add a dimension to a pro passing game, then a first round grade is justifiable.  The assumptions that internal grading will make about the kind of thing that Thomas can/can’t do is what is going to separate his draft value from his actual value.

Furthermore, calling Ndamukong Suh a “sack master” probably doesn’t follow from the statistical evidence on his career (one 8+ sack season in four years as a starter), however, there’s more than enough there and on tape to show that he’s a dominant force on the interior, and well worth a top five pick.  Again, the key is to not assume anything, and just let the evidence reflect the evidence: the more Suh played, the better he got.  He’s not the best defensive athlete in the draft, and he doesn’t have to be.  The evidence suggests that he may not be an 8-10 sack DT in the NFL.  It does not suggest that he’s isn’t a guy who can fit in anyone’s scheme, be a force on the interior, and make plays far more often than he misses them.

In my estimation, Ndamukong Suh’s 2009 season was not any more or less dominant than was Demaryius Thomas’, or was Jimmy Clausen’s, but there’s a reason that Suh grades out as an elite talent in this draft, Clausen grades out as a nice player who could help a bunch of teams and wouldn’t help a bunch of others, and Thomas is a guy that just does a few things well, and probably only helps a small handful of teams.  Will front offices take them in that order?  Chances are that they will, but also that they are willing to inflate the value of all of these players on their big boards because of what they’ve done most recently.  What they’ve accomplished recently shouldn’t necessarily matter that much more than what they’ve shown they can do at other points, but it’s certainly projected differently.

If you don’t assume that Jimmy Clausen would have a spectacular 2010 season at ND, or you don’t assume that Sam Bradford would have a necessarily healthy 2010 season at Oklahoma, it’s hard to project either as a top five pick.  Again, there’s nothing to suggest that they aren’t capable of replicating their most impressive season to date, but that’s exactly the point: assumptions = bad.  Just don’t include them in your draft projections.  If you need to fill in the blanks to make general sense of a guy’s career in your head, just use a basic, run of the mill, regression to the mean expectation.  Generic numbers can substitute for lack of information for perspective reasons.  If they look completely out of place with the rest of a guys’ career, well, good.  If you add an 8 game season of slightly above average production to Sam Bradford career’s figures, you get something resembling Rex Grossman’s career.  Then you would apply the film evidence of Bradford’s supreme accuracy, and poise in the pocket, and the synthesis of everything gives you an accurate projection.  If that’s a first overall pick to you, then he’s worth it.

Due to an aversion to the freely available stream of information, and a wrongheaded assumption that their internal evaluation methods know best, I believe that the average value of a high draft pick gets depressed by an artificially high bust rate.  Teams should not be required to project the best players in the first round and the worst players before anyone plays a down (this requires them to be more accurate than self-interest requires), but on the contrary, the difference between good prospects and bad prospects should seemingly be more apparent than it has proven to be.  The efficient, self-interested team should be highly selective when dealing with a big money slot, and more accepting of the fact that a questionable college prospect is not necessarily the one that has the most impressive upside.  In most cases, the best prospect is the one with the best resume.  The complication of this fact is — I believe — the cause of the great variance in the quality of the players in the top 15 picks.  In an efficient NFL draft, the highest variance players would be selected later than they currently are.