Draft Reaction: Minnesota selects S Harrison Smith

The Minnesota Vikings are having a great first day of the draft.  It was not anticipated that the Vikings would get back into the first round to address their defense, but I think they were able to adjust their expectations for the safety level of their defense when Mark Barron ended up going with the 7th overall pick.  Harrison Smith was the next guy up on most draft boards, and given the night to re-set their boards, the Vikings diagnosed their issue: they could not wait until the next day to land the player they needed the most.

So the trade up they pulled with the Ravens — who missed out on Kevin Zeitler and can wait on Peter Konz — was nifty for both sides.  And then they made the pick.

Notre Dame improbably puts two guys in the 2012 first round.  And the Vikings add two guys to their team that help them compete in the NFL’s toughest division, the NFC North.

Minnesota Vikings Process Points: 11

Draft Reaction: Minnesota selects OT Matt Kalil

The Minnesota Vikings had Matt Kalil targeted all along.  Just as we all thought.

The Vikings need a corner (or two corners) in this draft badly.  They were able to sell Morris Claiborne as a smokescreen.  But in their free agency plan, the Vikings never addressed left tackle.  They had only incumbent Charlie Johnson to play the position.  And the Vikings were not interested in trading outside of the top five at any point.  It was Kalil all along.

Kalil made the very most sense because of positional value.  The Vikings have their left tackle.  No one else in this draft is getting a pro-ready left tackle.  They’ll get full process points for this move.

Kalil doesn’t come without some red flags relating to his strength.  He might not ever be a top ten LT in the NFL.  If he’s not, this pick will be a slight reach.  However, it was a risk worth taking for the Vikings, who can now use Christian Ponder’s nifty footwork to work the ball down the field on play action.  And what better spot for a tackle who has some flags with his run blocking than to the team that employs Adrian Peterson and his $50 million contract.

Minnesota Vikings Process Points: 7

The Minnesota Vikings are unlike the other teams picking at the top of the 2012 NFL Draft

I’m working on a list of power rankings sorted by Approximate Value rating.  And without divulging too many details of how well teams project towards next year, I can point out maybe the most interesting thing about teams rated by the sum of AV for their roster: the Minnesota Vikings do not even rate close to the bottom.

The Indianapolis Colts, following the retirement of Kerry Collins and the impending release of Peyton Manning, rank on the bottom.  That can’t be too surprising, since they have the first overall pick following a 2-14 regular season.  The St. Louis Rams rank second to last, and they pick second in the draft.  Those pesky overachievers, the Seattle Seahawks, score third from the bottom, comprising the only three teams to score below 300 in combined 3-yr AV totals.

The other teams at the bottom of the AV list can also be found near the top of the NFL draft.  Washington, Cleveland, and Tampa Bay surprise no one by being rated where they are,  The Cincinnati Bengals probably don’t come to mind when you think of teams without established talent because they made the playoffs this past season.  But when you consider how young and unproven the talent that drove them to the playoffs this past season was, it’s hard to say there is a great difference between the Bengals and the Tampa Bay Bucs, who don’t look out of place at all near the bottom of these rankings.

What didn’t make sense, at least to me, was the team picking in the top seven that didn’t show up in the bottom 16 teams.  The Minnesota Vikings rate, by this one measure, closer to being a playoff team than to being a team that deserves to be picking at the top of the NFL draft each of the last two seasons.  That’s a bit problematic, wouldn’t you say.  These rankings are incredibly consistent with results as suggested by the NFL standings, and then you have the curious case of the Minnesota Vikings.

The Vikings are older, and certainly not the team they once were in 2008 and 2009.  But there is being an aging team who is still around, and there is being an aging team that needs to start jettisoning its established talent for the younger players of tomorrow.  Minnesota’s veterans can still play.  DE Jared Allen was a legitimate contender for defensive player of the year.  DT Kevin Williams has a ton of football left.  LB Chad Greenway has enjoyed a better career than you probably suspect he has.  CB Antoine Winfield is still around.  And if you are beginning to believe that the perceived strength of the Vikings is just that the declining defense happens to employ a lot of old guys…well, yeah, thats true, but none of the guys listed there have had the impact that RB Adrian Peterson and WR Percy Harvin (who has quietly enjoyed a similar start to his career as has Peterson) have had on opposing defenses.

Now, some of the optimism for the 2012 Vikings should be tempered because of how serious Peterson’s knee injury was at the end of the the 2011 season.  The Vikings have simply failed to replace the contributions of Brett Favre at the quarterback position from 2009.  Christian Ponder doesn’t exactly have a lot of expectations riding on his shoulders after the the Vikings won just three games last year, but there’s a lot of potential here riding on improved quarterback play.  Ponder has a great opportunity to be the NFL’s breakout player in a season where simultaneously the Vikings defense rebounds from an awful 2011 performance on the back’s of its established vets.

All of this will be dependent on a strong draft class and being able to overcome a treacherous road through the NFC North next year, but the Minnesota Vikings are an early playoff darkhorse in the NFC next year.

Robert Griffin III Pre-Draft Value and Game Theory

“I promise you he’ll be the second pick. Could even be first. I can’t promise you that, but Luck and Griffin are going 1-2 in some combination.”

–Mike Lombardi on the B.S. report, transciption via B/R

The NFL draft is more or less a strategic game.  It’s an important one, and the winner of it isn’t always rewarded with the best draft, because there are a lot of post-draft factors that determine the success of a class.  And winning this game is relative anyway.  Some battles are already won and lost on the day the players declare.

There are essentially just six players in the Robert Griffin game.  There are the potential sellers: the Rams and Vikings, there are the potential buyers: the Redskins, Seahawks, and Dolphins, and you have the most important player, the Cleveland Browns, the only team in position to both buy and sell.  The game could theoretically be expanded to include the Tampa Bay Bucs and the Washington Redskins as sellers, but then we’re getting into situations that have less than a 10% chance of occurring.  I will stick to the most likely six players in this discussion, and treat the Redskins as either a buyer or a non-player.

Michael Lombardi is typically wired into the inner-workings of teams’ thinking with regard to the NFL draft, but I believe I can use game theory and a couple of reasonable assumptions to prove that he’s not accurate in the above quote, and then I will be proven right as things break down.  I don’t think it is likely that Robert Griffin goes second overall after Andrew Luck goes first, but I think the Washington Redskins ultimately determine how able the Rams are to trade their pick.  And the story on the Redskins is that they want Griffin and are looking to name their price, but aren’t going to overpay for the Heisman trophy winner.

And even though Mike Shanahan has a tendency to go-it-alone on football decisions, I think his evaluation of Griffin as clearly the second best QB in the draft, but in a normal year, should be available at the 6th pick, is a lot closer — I think — than Lombardi’s assertion that he’s only not going to go no. 1 because Luck is going to force him to go no. 2.

This is relevant to the St. Louis Rams.  It makes sense for the Rams to begin with the assumption that everyone is going to trade up for RG3.  There are four potential buyers who are more likely to want RG3 than the Rams (or Colts): Cleveland, Washington, Miami, and Seattle.  Here’s the problem: Cleveland and Washington don’t really want to consider a trade up for RG3.  They certainly have the ammo to pull it off, but they talk, and Washington and Cleveland are not going to compete with each other for RG3.  Seattle remains an RG3 longshot because if you’re the Rams, you don’t really want to take a year where you “earned” the second overall pick, and end up not picking in the top ten.  The Rams are going to fall in love with a player they want, and even though they could pick up mulitple first round picks to move out of the top ten, the value of the 2012 first rounder declines so much with that move it is almost not worth doing.

If Miami wins the coin toss and picks 8th overall, things get really interesting.  I could see the Rams being willing to drop down six spots — thinking the draft might be deep enough to offer an elite talent at no. 8 (some are, most aren’t) — and pick up Miami’s first round pick next year plus multiple additional 2012 picks to do so, headlined by a third rounder.  There are multiple problems with the Miami scenario: Miami is going to be very active in the FA market as well as the trade market in the weeks leading up to the draft, and if they make a splashy move such as signing Peyton Manning, they will need their first round picks the next two years a lot more than they need RG3.

To recap: for Miami to be a serious player for the second overall pick, a couple of things need to happen.  Miami must fail to acquire a veteran who they feel would be a significant upgrade over Matt Moore in 2012.  St. Louis must feel that the draft is so deep with elite talent, that picking at no. 8 (or 9) would be preferable to reaching for someone they like at no. 2.  There is no doubt that St. Louis would much rather pick at no. 4 or no. 6.  I do think it is likely that if Miami doesn’t end up getting into the RG3 mix, someone else like Seattle or a mystery team (Denver? Kansas City? Philadelphia? New Orleans?) would be interested.  Let’s say Miami makes no acquisitions and that the end up being the third player in this game.

I’m not ruling out an aggressive move from the Seahawks, I just don’t think it’s likely.  So if the Rams are certain to trade the second pick to a team to take RG3, as Lombardi suggests, either the Dolphins are going to need to get really desperate (which is probably more likely than them not getting desperate in free agency first — this is where understanding game theory comes in), or there needs to be a Cleveland-Washington competition for RG3.

But if free agency eliminates all teams but Washington and Cleveland for Griffin (Flynn to Seattle; Manning to Miami; Alex Smith and Mark Sanchez stay), I don’t see how Lombardi’s position looks likely.

Let’s assume that Lombardi is completely correct, and Cleveland and Washington have both been hiding plans to give up an entire draft to the Rams and get RG3.  Well, now St. Louis opens the bidding at multiple first round picks plus a second and a third.  Neither franchise wants to pay that price and it’s an easy bluff to call.  Cleveland is (still hypothetically) willing to package both first round picks for RG3, and possibly throw in their third rounder.  That is both 1) a higher price than the Redskins can or will match, and 2) still significantly overpaying the market.  So Cleveland wins the bidding for Griffin.  That means the Rams get that price for Griffin, right?

Well, sure, according to Lombardi.  But unless Cleveland is wreckless, why would they overpay the market by so much?  There are no other bidders at that price.  The Rams cannot execute a trade if they don’t have any other offers.

If Cleveland holds out to not put the third rounder in, what collateral would they have that would allow them to hold the Rams hostage as the clock winds down?  Well, they have this: the Vikings pick third, and Cleveland picks fourth.  If Roger Goodell was to suddenly outlaw draft pick trading, there is a very high probability that Cleveland would be able to select Griffin at fourth overall.  That is the mock draft consensus.  And in actuality, that’s is the “true pre-draft” value, of Robert Griffin.  Competition can drive that price up, but as we’ve seen, free agency is going to limit the price of competition.

Back to the Rams.  Now let’s say Cleveland, knowing all of the above, is willing to fork over their two first rounders — no more — for RG3.  The Rams have three strategic plays: accept Cleveland’s deal, decline Cleveland’s deal and use the draft pick, or decline Cleveland’s deal and trade the pick to someone else.  Washington is probably willing to offer their first round pick next year (remember: the assumption is they really value the chance to pick RG3), but that by itself isn’t better than the price Cleveland will play.  The Redskins can probably throw in an additional 2012 pick to go over the top of Cleveland.  But ultimately, you’re looking at a couple versions of the same value for the pick, and declining Cleveland’s best offer to take someone else’s best offer is probably more spiteful than rational.

To be honest, if St. Louis can actually get both of Cleveland’s first round picks to move from second to fourth, I expect them to do it.  It would make the current talk of two first rounders and two thirds (or a second and a third) seem like hot air, but it is.  I just happen to think that two first rounders is a high water mark for what the second overall pick is worth to teams.  There won’t be fierce competition for it, and like every trade up in recent memory, the buyer is going to be able to name their price.

The biggest problem from the Rams perspective is that all of the analysis above is predicated on acceptance of Lombardi’s assertion that teams are truly willing to get the no. 2 pick and spend it on Robert Griffin.  If that’s not informed speculation, they have no actual trade offers for the second pick, and will just be using the pick on best available player.

The Minnesota Vikings are reportedly willing to trade the third overall pick, and that is incredibly problematic for the Rams.  If Cleveland was willing to trade two firsts for the second overall pick, and the Vikings are willing to give the third pick to them for just a first and a second rounder (or maybe a first and a third), then all they have to do in order to ensure getting RG3 is to make sure that they always have best offer for the no. 2 pick, and that the Rams can’t do business with someone else, in this case the Redskins.  They have a huge advantage there picking inside the top four.  The Rams, obviously, want the 4th overall pick, but can’t afford to part with the second pick without being adequately compensated for their trade down.  So the Rams want to do business with the Browns more than any other team.

But the Browns don’t want to actually trade anything of value to the Rams unless the Rams get a solid offer on the table that makes sense to them.  Right now, they don’t have such an offer.  And so the Browns, not the Rams, are in the driver’s seat on RG3.  If the Browns make a trade with the Vikings after the Rams pick Justin Blackmon, Matt Kalil, or whoever, then they are on the clock to take Griffin.  If they don’t trade, they are still the team best positioned to take Griffin.  Mike Mayock said in a conference call today that the Rams should be “thrilled” to get a package of the 4th and 27th overall picks for the second pick, which means they are unlikely to receive that.

In fact, the more digging into the situation you do, the more you realize that the entire plan for the Rams and the Vikings to trade down is predicated on two things: the Washington Redskins being interested, and competition from a desperate team somewhere else in the draft.  If one of those things doesn’t occur, then the highest Robert Griffin can go is 4th to either the Browns, or whoever the Browns select as their trading partner.  It is, actually, very safe to pencil Robert Griffin in as the 4th overall pick in the 2012 draft, because if the Browns do not take him, they will likely trade the pick to someone who will.  The Browns hold the key to who gets Robert Griffin (because the Browns hold all the cards and the first crack at him), but the Redskins are the team that determines how much the second and third picks are worth.

Lets do this exercise again with one assumption: let’s say that the Redskins have an identical grade on Robert Griffin and Ryan Tannehill, and therefore will give up nothing to go up from sixth overall, and would flip a coin to determine which to take at sixth.  In this exercise, we don’t assume the Browns will take him at fourth overall, but we know that the Browns determine who will get him.  This is just an example to show how the Redskins lack of interest would affect the value of picks 2 and 3 in this draft.

Without the Redskins, the ability to land two first round picks for pick no. 2 becomes something of a pipe dream for St. Louis.  Just like the last scenario, enough desperation from Miami could create a scenario like the one suggested by Lombardi where Griffin is definitely going to go second overall, and then it is just about weighing the value of Cleveland’s offer against Miami’s, but that desperation was always possible.  In the absence of a competitive trade offer from the Redskins, Cleveland’s pick at 4th remains the most viable landing spot for Griffin.  And Cleveland can let the board come to them, knowing that if the get overbid, they conceded the price to another suitor.

But now, without Washington trying to position itself in front of Cleveland, the Vikings and Rams are in direct competition for the right to field offers to jump Cleveland.  Without Washington involved, there is no reason for anyone but Cleveland to pay market rate to move up.  If St. Louis is being unreasonable, you can try to acquire Minnesota’s pick.  Or vice versa.  If St. Louis bows out, and takes Blackmon, Cleveland is still going to get action on RG3 at the 4th pick.  Minnesota might be able to leverage a cheap swap of picks and pick up a third or fourth rounder for their troubles, but with Washington out, it’s Cleveland’s show.  A one team show.

There’s still a good chance Robert Griffin winds up with someone else besides Cleveland.  It just means that teams that are going to jump Cleveland in order to get RG3 aren’t going to be able to do so on their own merits, because Cleveland can offer so much more.  The fact that teams are already negotiating trade up terms relative to what Cleveland can offer means that since the cost of RG3 is roughly equal to what Cleveland is willing to pay for him, it’s more cost efficient to cut out the middle man and assume that with Griffin likely to slide out of the top two or three picks, the most direct trade you can make is to compensate the Browns for not having Griffin on their team.  Essentially, the game theory suggests that whatever RG3 is worth to the Browns, teams will let the board come to them, and then any team can opt to pay the Browns THAT PRICE, and use the fourth overall pick on RG3.

The Browns hold all the cards anyway, and the Rams and Vikings have no choice but to involve the Redskins.  Griffin is likely to be the 4th overall pick in the draft.  It is anyone’s guess who will actually hand the card to Mr. Goodell with Griffin’s name on it.  But we can establish even two months out that Griffin isn’t likely to go until fourth overall, and that any team willing to trade a first rounder to jump the Browns in the 2012 draft is probably willing to give that price to the Browns as a means to the same end.

2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame Electorate: Instant Analysis

The 2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame class isn’t going to be known as an all-time great class.  It did not elect a first ballot player, though two players who were overlooked with last year’s class will be receiving their Hall Calls rather shortly.  Which is nice.

What follows is a quick, dirty analysis of the job the Hall voters did this year.  It’s not really meant to pass judgement on the careers of some players I have little memory of.  But the Hall of Fame should have standards, and it’s those standards that will be in the crosshairs of this article.

Chris Doleman

Doleman has been eligible since 2005, and really should have been a first ballot hall of famer.  It did not help that he was a bit of a mercinary, playing for three different teams in the last five years of his career.  Of Doleman’s 150 career sacks, he didn’t quite get 100 with the Minnesota Vikings, and split 44 sacks between the 49ers and Falcons.

What often gets lost is Doleman was a long time centerpiece on some really excellent defensive units, whether those be San Francisco’s, or Atlanta’s, or Minnesota’s.  Wherever he went, great defense followed.  And that’s a better framing of his career than his 150 career sacks which by no means should be an automatic number.  Doleman was almost certainly a better player than contemporary Mark Gastineau, who may have played home games in New York.

Doleman’s career was longer, though as is the nature of pass rushing, the sack totals weren’t always consistent.  There are probably too many pass rushing ends in the hall of fame already, but that doesn’t mean that Doleman having to wait seven years to get into Canton wasn’t a huge oversight.

Willie Roaf

Willie Roaf is somewhat fortunate his credentials in a relatively short Hall of Fame career met minimum standards for a left tackle because if he had played a little longer at a declining rate, Roaf could have easily gotten backlogged with guys like Walter Jones and Orlando Pace who have changed the standards for induction as we know it for OTs.  Roaf’s career was closer to Gary Zimmerman’s than it was to Jones or Pace.  Remember that when trying to figure out why exactly Jason Whitlock accused Peter King of irritating Jason Whitlock racism or whatever that was.

Roaf had a hall of fame level career, at least by the established standards, but we should remember his election in eight years when we’re complaining about how there were too many pedestrian offensive tackles in the Hall of Fame.  Roaf’s career was anything but pedestrian, but by becoming the 26th offensive tackle in the Hall — a number that can reach 30 within four years — he is a nice reminder that the easiest way to be remembered as an all time great football player between 1952 and 2002 was to have played the selfless position of offensive tackle.

Curtis Martin

I guess what I don’t understand is who could have possibly bumped Curtis Martin from last year’s ballot.  Martin retired with 14,101 rushing yards, and it’s not like he did something like hanging on too long in order to get there.  He pretty much lit it up into his mid thirties, then left the game with his best days not all that far in the rear view mirror.  He retired with more rushing yards than all but three players in NFL history.  He played part of his career in Boston, the rest of his career in New York.  This was an easy election.

The electorate has always had high standards for running backs, or at least they did until they elected Floyd Little — who was the Terrell Davis of his day, except was not nearly as good as TD.  What’s interesting now is whether or not Tiki Barber, who had pretty much the same career as Martin, will get enough support to get in.  He played in New York, which always helps, but a lot of his career value is more hidden in terms of receiving yards than Martin, who was the more obvious pick of the two.  Tiki was eligible this season, but I have no doubt that because he unofficially un-retired before the vote, he probably hurt his hall of fame chances significantly by doing so.

Cortez Kennedy

The Hall of Fame now has two…Seahawks?!  Yes!

Cortez Kennedy was going to need a year on the ballot like this in order to get in.  John Randle getting in really helped Kennedy because Randle was a much better player.  Furthermore, Kennedy needed to get in this time around because a year from now, Warren Sapp becomes eligible and if there was any doubt about Warren Sapp’s hall of fame credentials, this election should end that.

The far more interesting case is how much this benefits Bryant Young.  Young will also be eligible next year and while he’s certainly not going to go in front of Sapp, he’s arguably has the best career of all non-Sapp eligible defensive tackles, and pretty in-arguably has the best remaining case among DTs who aren’t eligible to be elected by the veteran’s committee, this side of Warren Sapp.  Also eligible in 2013: Ted Washington.  I don’t know if anyone thinks of Ted Washington as a Hall of Famer, but his case looks a lot better with Cortez Kennedy in.

Jack Butler

Was a defensive back for the horrid Steeler teams of the fifties.  At the end of his career, he performed a minor miracle and helped the Steelers achieve winning records in back to back seasons.  As far as typically questionable veteran committee picks go, Butler is actually a departure from the norm.  He was by all accounts a really good defensive player on an awful team.  His career ended prematurely because of a knee injury, or he probably would have been elected a lot sooner.

The discussion about Butler really can’t be separated at this point from the final member of the class, so I’ll end it here and move on to…

Dermontti Dawson

Do you remember when electing lineman for the pro bowl became an exercise in taking the starter from last year, and electing him again the following year?  That trend was started by Dermontti Dawson.

That may sound harsh, but it is not intended to be.  When you speak of great interior offensive lineman of the 1990’s you can’t forget Dermontti Dawson.  But this is not as small of a group as maybe it sounds like.  Dawson is the third interior offensive lineman elected to Canton from this group.  Dawson did not get the call as quickly as either Bruce Matthews or Randall McDaniel.  The reason for this?  Matthews and McDaniel were much better players.

But the thing that really makes Al Davis turn in his grave is that one of his own players — who no one really ever made a public hall of fame case for — likely had a better career than Dermontti Dawson.  I’m talking about Steve Wisnewski.  You could make the argument either way as to who had the greater career, but as much as Davis’ rants about how ridiculous it is that Cliff Branch and Ray Guy are continually overlooked by the voters, but at least he’s not going to have to wake up tomorrow in a world where Dermontti Dawson is a Hall of Famer.

The bigger issue here is that Dawson’s election does nothing to dispel the notion that the simplest way to get elected to Canton and Hall of Fame immortality is to at some point have played football for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  This is why the discussion of Jack Butler, Hall of Famer, is unavoidable considering that 1/3 of this class played every snap in their career for the Steelers.  Furthermore, if you selected an all-NFL team from only the 1990’s, I’m pretty sure Dawson would have been at best second team.  I mean, at the risk of being crass on an analysis blog, you might want to start fitting Maurkice Pouncey for that gold jacket right now.  After all, it’s tough to find stuff in his size.

The only proposed solution I have to the inherent biases in the voting process would be to turn over the entire electorate every four to six years or so.  It’s not to slight the current electorate or to say they don’t generally take their job seriously enough (they do), but there’s no valor in having a single member of the committee vote for 18 straight years.

Other Complaints

The other issue is clearly, we have to figure out what the standards of a hall of fame receiver are.  Since the 1980’s, passing stats have exploded.  And since 2004, the voters have inducted just three receivers, somehow: Michael Irvin, Art Monk, and Jerry Rice.  Cris Carter, Andre Reed, and Tim Brown apparently do not make the cut, but thankfully we have decided that Dermontti Dawson, Floyd Little, and Charlie Sanders are all worthy of induction.  Turning over the electorate is a very simple solution and would justify a decision to be made on a guy like Cris Carter one year, and then have the complete opposite decision made the next year and put in a worthy Hall of Famer.

Overall, this was a class without a slam dunk inductee, and the electorate and veterans committee put in some of the better players in pro football history.  There’s not too much to complain about, and I’ve said my peace.  Hopefully we’ll get Sapp, Carter, Brown, and Reed in next year so we can finally move past this silly standard with wide receivers that no one can understand.

How valuable is having a draft pick at the top of the first round?

There are two very unique outputs from the waning weeks of the 2011 NFL season.  These two outputs are not unrelated.  First, there have been a good percentage of awful performances by quarterbacks over the last three or four weeks.  Secondly, there has been more discussion about doing ‘whatever it takes’ to position oneself to draft at the top of next year’s NFL Draft than ever before.

So, naturally, it’s the teams that are suffering from awful performances by their quarterbacks that are talking about getting into position to draft a more different quarterback in April.  But realistically, not all the teams that are in position to draft a new quarterback are going to draft one.  There are a lot of different variables that the fans of teams don’t account for when pushing for their own teams to lose out.  Is it really more valuable to a franchise to pick higher in the first round?

The short answer is that yes, it is, because draft resources are so finite and valuable.  Teams pay more to higher draft picks (though not quite as much on a marginal basis as in the prior CBA).  But the additional cash outlay ends up being money well spent because you are paying for additional control of the results of your draft.  You can have the best scouting resources and methodology in the league, as well as the league’s premier decision makers, but it’s going to be much easier for a team drafting six picks ahead of you to produce a great draft even if they don’t have your personnel resources.

Anyway, I did a study using 10 years of draft data from 1997-2006, and then I compared the average career Approximate Value of the players in the data sets, while testing the variable of which part of the draft the picks were made in to determine how valuable high picks were.  I will share with you some of the more unscientific observations of my findings.

The team with the first overall pick matters, but only because of the “generational talent”

In 80-90% of all years, having the first overall pick is not a particular advantage.  In general, there are a finite number of elite talents in every draft, some years there are just two or three, and in other years, there are seven or eight.  But every five years or so, the NFL produces a player such as Peyton Manning, Michael Vick, or you know, Andrew Luck (it’s an interesting debate whether or not there may be a second generational talent in this draft, such as RGIII or Trent Richardson).  In years where there is a well known generational talent, having the first overall pick is probably more than 150% more valuable than having another random pick in the first round, and perhaps 100% more valuable than having any other pick in the round (second overall, in this case).

Overall, the first overall pick came out about 55% more valuable than a random pick in the first round.  However, in most years, it’s worth pointing out that there’s no discernible difference in having the right to choose between the player who goes first overall and the player who goes third overall or even the player who goes fifth overall.  Plenty of that might simply be a reflection of who is doing the choosing: you don’t get the first overall pick by building a bunch of division winning teams.  But if there are a group of elite talents in any given draft with an abnormally high rate of success, the ability to pick one over another does not overtly increase the value of a draft pick.

There is no trend that shows having the second or third pick is more valuable to a franchise than having the fourth, fifth, or sixth pick

And it’s this finding that makes the fact that there are so few trades into the top five picks so interesting.  Teams that have the first, second, or third picks typically don’t have a lot of serious suitors for their picks.  Instead they get a selection of buyers offers, which they typically pass on to pick the players they like the best.  In some years (2007 for example), there are one or two top picks but by fourth overall, teams are picking from their favorites from a second tier of players.  Even then, no incentive exists for teams to pay to get a top two or three pick.

Additionally, in no draft during this study did the first and second overall picks both become elite players.  The best no. 2 overall picks in the sample: Donovan McNabb (105 career AV), Julius Peppers (97 career AV), and Leonard Davis (64 career AV)?  Michael Vick was the first pick in the Davis draft, but Davis hardly qualifies as an elite professional.  The best third overall picks in this study: Andre Johnson (73 career AV), Shawn Springs (62 career AV), and a near tie between Larry Fitzgerald (58) and Chris Samuels (57).

Generally speaking, top five picks did just as well as top three picks over the sample I looked at.

Top 10 picks do well for the money compared to Top 5 picks

But at some point, there is a drop-off between the expected return on the tenth overall pick and on a top five pick.  Elite performers rarely make it through the first nine picks, and the elite performers who do make it that far seem to be likely to fall further.  For every Willie Anderson or Terrell Suggs, there is a JJ Stokes or a Dunta Robinson.

But having a top ten pick is definitely still an advantage compared to having a random pick in the first round, to the tune of having a random pick in the top ten being worth about 20% in total career value more than a random pick anywhere in the first round.  Compared to the average top five pick, it’s actually a bargain (dollar for dollar) to pick between 6th and 10th.

The cost of contending for the playoffs is meaningful

Teams that pick below 11th in the first round receive, on average, a 11% lower return in career AV than a random pick anywhere in the first round.  That means that teams that win at least seven games are more likely to “lose” value in the first round compared to the rest of the league, all else equal (all else is hardly ever equal, and smart teams capitalize on other teams who won’t pick in the top ten).  So yeah, the Philadelphia Eagles are incurring a significant cost in terms of future franchise value because they are winning games after starting the season 4-8, and are now a three step process away from winning the NFC East and making the playoffs.  One more win will force the Eagles into the middle of the first round.  Their last two first round picks, DE Brandon Graham and OL Danny Watkins, have yet to produce a successful season between them.

I did not discover a particular cost paid by teams who pick 21st or lower, meaning that once you are competing for the playoffs, there’s no cost to your franchise (at least in the NFL draft) for making it.  The average 15th overall pick does minimally better than the average 26th overall pick.

How to rebuild a franchise by picking high every year

If you keep picking in the top 6, 7, or 8 for multiple years in a row, and you keep connecting on elite draft performers, that’s the simplest and easiest way to go from worst to first in the NFL.  However, that leaves one conundrum unsolved: pieces for the passing game, offensive skill talents.  There is a premium on these performers compared to other elite performers, and at least in the case of receivers and quarterbacks, a high bust rate exists in the top ten.

In my estimation, drafting receivers and quarterbacks down the board in the first round makes the most sense because that is where the values are found at those positions.  The problem is that to get to the point where you are winning games and picking in the middle of the round (as opposed to trading down), you have to be able to get some sort of meaningful production out of your current passing game.  And it’s teams that are winning and getting production from their passing offenses that are the least likely to make the changes to their passing game using draft picks, and that could be skewing the values we see in the numbers around this part of the draft.  With receivers and quarterbacks being so highly drafted early in the first round, this could be creating the effect which makes all top ten draft picks look the same from a value perspective.

To test this effect, I isolated offensive skill positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) from the rest of the draft and increased the sample size by two years to help offset the effect of a smaller sample.

There is no difference in the value of QB/RB/WR/TE beyond the tenth pick compared to all positions, relative to having a random pick in the first round

That does dispute my prior assumption that teams should target QBs or WRs later in the first round because their is better value.  If the need is at other positions, and the value is at other positions, teams should take the best player available according to need.

There is a big difference between having a top five pick and top ten pick when isolated to just offensive skill positions

There it is.  The players that really make a difference for franchises and who have elite draft grades: the quarterbacks, the receivers, the runners: teams who pick in the top five or six do not leave these players for other franchises to have like they do at other positions.  That’s why Julio Jones and A.J. Green went so quickly in the 2011 draft, and it’s also why there was a run on quarterbacks around the turn in the first ten picks in this past draft.  The natural risk associated with these positions means that this pushes sounder draft prospects at other positions such as defense and offensive line down the board towards the next five picks, where it makes sense to pick the remaining elite prospects.

There was a very large difference in the quality of QB/RB/WR/TE picked between 6th and 10th, and all other positions.  Of course, this sample did not include Adrian Peterson’s selection from 2007, but did include all of Matt Millen’s picks at skill positions.  In fact, this study over the course of ten years may have great insight into why Millen had so little success in the draft.

No team consistently picks in the top five in the NFL draft.  Top ten, sure, but a two win variance in finish can be the difference between picking 3rd and picking 9th, even if the team isn’t any better.  From 1997 to 2006, teams who selected QB/RB/WR/TE between 6th and 10th in the NFL draft received the production of a random QB/RB/WR/TE taken anywhere in the first round.  It was not a profitable use of a top ten draft selection compared to other positions.  And Matt Millen was one of the biggest perpetrators of that phenomenon.

Conclusions

There is a meaningful value to having a top ten pick as opposed to not having a top ten pick in terms of being able to land one of the elite talents of the draft.  But on average, if that elite talent plays offense and can throw or catch footballs, the stock of the player is driven up inside the top five or six picks.  Even elite pass rushers, on average, are not selected quite as high as players who affect quality of a team’s passing offense.  Players who play these positions come with an inherently high level of draft risk, but the opportunity to draft players on this list is rare and valuable.

And it suggests that the right to choose between Darrius Heyward Bey and Michael Crabtree may seem like it has an obvious answer, but that the differences between the two players are far more marginal than one may realize.

The Return of Friday Night QB: What T.J. Yates, Christian Ponder, Andy Dalton, and Tim Tebow prove about NFL team behavior

The NFL is already flush with young quarterbacks, and this is a trend that will continue through the next two drafts.  I know that much for certain.  What’s far less clear is exactly what role those young quarterbacks will have on the NFL playoff picture and the NFL postseason.  It is certain that they will matter, just not to what degree.

Offensive coordinators in pro football have an entirely different job now than they did even five years ago.  In a world where the ability to hold your position for three consecutive years is rare, it is more critical than ever before to avoid having dismal quarterback play.  You can not select a quarterback in the first round, or even be part of an organization that selects a quarterback in the first round, without being held accountable for the quarterback’s performance in his developmental years.

Lets look at the state of two struggling franchises: the Jaguars are undergoing some pretty significant organizational changes right now because Blaine Gabbert has not been good as a rookie and the Jaguars have lost games in a year where they have undergone a fantastic defensive transformation back to the top of the league.  The offensive coordinator of the Carolina Panthers on the other hand, Rob Chudzinski, is now on a short list of potential head coaching candidates for the upcoming season because of the work that he has done with Cam Newton.  It would not at all surprise me to see Chudzinski running the show in quarterback rich places like Indianapolis or St. Louis next year.

The Panthers, you may have realized, have the same record as the Jaguars this year.  But with two equally touted college quarterbacks, one franchise has turned their pick into a must-see rookie of the year candidate, and the other franchise appears to be just playing their pick for lack of a better option.  As far as building an organization, the Jaguars have been as good if not better than the Panthers at building a foundation for the future.  They have the defense, they think they have the quarterback, and many of the pieces are already in place, pending the next coach because the current staff is taking the fall for the losing.  The Panthers staff has created a culture of optimism based around Cam Newton, and though the optimism is probably no better founded there than in Jacksonville, the Panthers’ coaches are going to get better gigs than the Jags coaches next year.  Style points do matter in the NFL.

Style points are why Tim Tebow is regarded as lightly as he is around the league.  It’s hard to actually make the case that Denver’s passing offense has been a total disaster since Tebow took over.  The Broncos have 13 total offensive touchdowns in exactly 13 halves of football since Tim Tebow became the quarterback, and Tebow personally accounted for 11 of those 13 touchdowns.  Tebow has fumbled 5 times and thrown just one interception.  For Tebow to have numbers like that and still significantly limit the passing game, he would have to be doing a lot worse than 45.5% completion and 6.0 yards per attempt.  Whether or not Tebow’s historically low interception rate and relatively low fumble rates are sustainable is a different topic, but his value to the Broncos is pretty obvious.

Tebow has fundamental issues caused I believe by a changed throwing motion that has really hurt his arm strength and accuracy to the outside of the football field.  But we’re forgetting the whole reason that Tebow’s throwing motion was changed in the first place: he was a 23 year old rookie under Josh McDaniels, and was widely criticized prior to the NFL draft based on what I believe to be a non-essential trait of success or failure: that elongated throwing motion.  The whole idea with coaching up his throwing motion was that it would positively affect his draft status (and it did).  I think Tebow actually regressed as a rhythm/accuracy passer from year one to year two.  But because this is year two of Tebow, I think there is a ton of final judgement being done on him as a passer, and I can understand why very little of it is positive.  Tebow has shown some ability to place the ball when the throw is within a certain range of arm talent, but down the field and to the edges of the defense he needs a significant window to make the throw.

Even in the case of Tebow, a coaching staff got fired because they built around a whole concept of loading up for the future, and the owner in Denver (Pat Bowlen) did not give ample opportunity for Josh McDaniels and his staff to succeed after multiple early failures.  The changes in the organization have really hurt Tebow as a passer.  And the Broncos may now have to make a decision on his future as is, meaning that if they decide he’s not good enough from the pocket to lead the Broncos, they may have to go back to the drawing board and find someone who is.  The quandary that Tebow has put the Broncos in by running this offense really effectively is pretty much the only thing Tebow can do at this point to save his job.  He’s incredibly limited as a pocket passer, and I just don’t think that was the case even one year ago.

Christian Ponder and Andy Dalton had very divergent college careers, and both could have easily gone anywhere between the first and fourth round in the 2011 NFL draft.  The Vikings fell in love with Ponder at no. 12 overall, making him a common choice for most overdrafted player based on his perceived draft stock.  Andy Dalton got picked 35th overall by the Cincinnati Bengals, who opted not to take him 4th overall based on his perceived draft stock.  The Vikings weren’t willing to gamble on Ponder being there later, and the Bengals won their gamble.

And it might surprise you to learn that, according to Total QBR, Dalton and Ponder have been almost the same player.  I can attest that Dalton has been tested a lot more early in his career, but Ponder is being forced to improvise to save his offense, and he’s enjoying at least moderate amounts of success.  Both Jay Gruden (offensive coordinator – Bengals), and Bill Musgrave (offensive coordinator – Vikings) have put in great work to be able to have rookies lead teams.  It’s hard to say how Dalton and Ponder will do down the road since both are looking up at much stronger organizations in their own division that they will have to play every year, and Dalton is 0-2 against the Bengals and Ravens while Ponder went 0-2 against the Packers.

But 2012 will be a big year for both quarterbacks and their coaches.  The Bengals are set up really nicely for the future, because they have a ton of draft picks and the Steelers and Ravens are aging rapidly.  The Vikings, however, could be playing for Leslie Frazier’s job as soon as next season.  And who knows if Musgrave will stay as offensive coordinator for Ponder or take a better opportunity.  As much as both franchises have the right to be optimistic after landing quarterback high in the draft that could lead their franchises well into the future, no team is ever more than 365 days away from cold, dark uncertainty.  Even if the Bengals make the playoffs this year, it does nothing for them if they fall off the map next year unexpectedly.

All of this brings me to Houston quarterback T.J. Yates, the real point of this article.  Yates was a sixth round pick who is probably most famous for being around for practically forever at North Carolina.  The guy who may be most sympathetic to Yates’ plight around the NFL would have to be Browns quarterback Colt McCoy.   The NFL is a backwards league in many ways, but here’s one you might not have thought of.  Tim Tebow is getting tons of criticism for the style of his play, but understand that the criticism is not unfounded, because Tebow is also getting a very legitimate chance to win games, a chance that Tebow would never have gotten if he were a 5th or 6th round pick.  T.J. Yates, like McCoy, is precisely that.

The only reason either got a shot as a first year player was due to injury.  And unlike first round quarterbacks, mid-round quarterbacks don’t get a chance to screw up.  If they struggle in their first opportunity as a rookie, they end up on a backup QB career path or out of the league entirely.  Look at Titans’ QB Rusty Smith, who literally got one game to prove himself in the NFL, and was shut out by a historically bad defense.  I feel confident in saying that Rusty Smith will never play in the NFL again.

But the whole idea with drafting quarterbacks in the middle rounds is the idea that “developmental prospects” exist.  However, this is patently untrue.  The difference between middle round quarterback selections and high selections is not the level of development required to turn them into a reliable starter, it is the level of confidence the coaching staff would have to play you as a rookie.  It’s almost a curse to have to play as a rookie, but sometimes its necessary: you can’t earn a roster spot through preseason performance alone.

A lot rides on Yates for the Texans.  If he plays really, really well, the Texans could have a situation on their hands similar to what the Patriots had with Tom Brady and Drew Bledsoe ten years ago.  If he plays poorly, no one in the league is ever going to go out and get T.J. Yates to solve their quarterback issues again.  For this opportunity, T.J. Yates had roughly four months from the end of the NFL lockout to the present day to prepare to define his career as an NFL quarterback.  He becomes the second quarterback in modern history to get drafted in the sixth round or later and have a legitimate chance to win the super bowl before the age of 25 (Yates will turn 25 in May).  He is old for a rookie, and the Texans need to trust him in order to go deep into the playoffs.

To conclude, the primary factor of judging a rookie quarterback is his ability to play quarterback as a rookie.  First round picks seem to be able to get two years to show their worth to an organization, everybody else is on a game by game basis.  I think this is part a factor of teams having more options at the quarterback position than ever before, and part of it is that some smart coaches showed that you could win right away with rookie quarterbacks, and so the tolerance for losing because of a rookie passer is now a relic in the NFL.  Just ask Jack Del Rio.

Specific Predictions about the NFL that will seem smart on Halloween

Back on July 25th, I wrote this article about the Buffalo Bills.  I’m feeling pretty good about having done that right now.  Bolstered by that confidence, I’m going to make a couple of predictions about the NFL landscape three weeks from now on Halloween, and what I will expect it to look like.

The Indianapolis Colts will rattle off a pair of road victories behind Curtis Painter

This is the toughest part of the Colts schedule coming up: three straight October road games against the Bengals, Saints, and Titans.  And the Colts are 0-5 and potentially in the driver’s seat of the “suck for Luck” bandwagon.  But Curtis Painter has played quite well.  And the Colts offense has looked really good.  And they have a really good run defense.  The Colts are going to win some road games here, and while I don’t know if they can handle the Saints in the SuperDome, I don’t think that game will be a blowout and I think they will win 2 out of 3 in this tough stretch.  The Colts will enter November 2-6, decidedly out of the playoff race, but no longer the front runners for Andrew Luck.

The Cleveland Browns may replace the Colts in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes

The Browns are heading out to Oakland this week coming off a bye, a long road trip where I think most observers are expecting them to get beat up a bit despite the bye week.  Then it’s home against Seattle before heading right back to the Bay Area to play the 49ers.  The schedule makers could not have been crueler.  And I’m not sure that the Browns have an easy win here.  Obviously, the home game against Seattle is the one where, when we look back at it after the season, the Browns need to win to stay in the race, but the Browns (who still have the belief of the public) and the Seahawks (who never did) are pretty much the same team.  And if the Browns think they can win any of these games without playing their best game, they are mistaken.

So what’s realistically the easiest win here?  I don’t think it is the Seahawks.  I think it’s this Sunday at Oakland because Oakland (who is way more talented than Seattle) will give you mistakes that the NFC West front runners will not.  So if the Browns lose at Oakland, I probably will not pick them against Seattle, and then things could get ugly.  Colt McCoy really needs to play a good one this week.  And keep in mind: the Browns are really just a McCoy injury away from being the Miami Dolphins, perhaps the obvious front runner for the first overall pick.

The Minnesota Vikings can make a move in the NFC

It’s not going to be easy for the Minnesota Vikings to get back into the playoff race after beginning 0-4, and the fact is they already are four games out of second place.  But third place in the NFC North can get you into the playoffs, and the Chicago Bears have been really bad this season.  And there is no better time for the Vikings to get the Bears at Soldier Field than right now, when the weather in Chicago is still pretty nice (at least it’s nice here on Friday), and the Bears could be without defensive cornerstone Julius Peppers, and they’re on a short week coming off a brutal loss, and even the basic tenets of which the Bears have built their team (defense) are failing them.  For the Bears, this is a horrible time to draw the Vikings at home, in a game which every Bears fan predicting 8-8 or better circled as a ‘W’ at the beginning of the season.

In the coming weeks for the Vikings: home against the Packers (maybe the toughest Sunday matchup the Packers will have this season), and at Carolina.  4-4 is not unreasonable.  At at 4-4, I would expect the Vikings to be knotted up with the Falcons, Bucs, and Cowboys for the mythical seventh seed in the NFC, just a game out of the playoff picture with the Redskins and Giants fighting it out in the NFC East.  But first things first: the Vikings have to get this one, or they’re better off playing Christian Ponder the rest of the year.

The Week 7 Texans-Titans winner will have a stranglehold over the AFC South

The Texans might not have a play to go on the road and beat the Baltimore Ravens this week: if the Ravens are who we think they are, that is.  And a loss will drop the Texans to three and three, and will inspire “here we go again” feelings within the fanbase.  But here’s the bigger problem for the Houston Texans: the Tennessee Titans are idle this week.  And a loss to the Ravens will set up a must-win road test against the Titans for the upper hand in the AFC South.

But hey, when you lose a game at home to a team that can’t figure out how to get exactly 11 players on the field, this is the hand you are dealt sometimes.

Here’s what is going in favor of the Texans right now: we don’t really know how good the Titans are.  They went out and got pulverized in Pittsburgh by a team that the Texans handled fairly easily.  So there’s a good chance that the hot start by Titans’ quarterback Matt Hasselbeck was a mirage, and that the Texans will handle business inside the division fairly easily.

If they don’t though, I think the hypothetically 3-4 Texans will be looking for a new defensive coordinator.  Because their current one will be the head coach.

The Atlanta Falcons are in trouble, and that will become apparent this week

The Falcons are at home this week against the Panthers, with a trip to the Lions waiting in the wings.  And they are looking at a 2-5 start with losses to the Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Bucs, and possibly the Panthers as well.  Their offensive MVP to date has been Michael Turner, and because of wear and tear, I’m not sure they can count on his productivity over the long haul.  The guy they need to count on is Matt Ryan, but the evidence that he’s better than he has played this season is incredibly limited.  I don’t think he’s been bad at all, but this is who Ryan is and has been since a magical rookie year.  Roddy White is great, but his rate statistics have declined every season he’s been with Ryan because he’s a one-man show.  Tony Gonzalez is going to suffer from a lot of the effect that Turner is going do.

And the defense is helpless to handle exciting players like Cam Newton and Steve Smith, and Matt Stafford and Calvin Johnson, and that more than anything is why the Panthers will win this week, and why the Lions will win next week, and the Atlanta Falcons — the one seed in last year’s NFC Playoffs — could hit the bye week this season at 2-5.

And finally a prediction…

Only one team will make the playoffs with fewer than 10 wins: the AFC South Winner

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: Having No Quarterback is Not an Excuse for Lack of Offensive Improvement

This article is about the Washington Redskins and the Cincinnati Bengals, but really, it’s about 17 different NFL teams.  This is about teams that try to win without established play from the quarterback position, and why its imperative to realize who is and isn’t being hurt by the inability to develop a quarterback.

The trends in the game strongly show that the “haves” in the game get production out of their quarterback position, while the “have nots” often do not.  The correlation isn’t as perfect as some would lead you to believe, but it’s there and it’s at least very clear.  The NFL’s have nots in the last decade have included the Lions, Redskins, 49ers (post-Garcia/Owens), Cardinals (pre-Warner/Fitzgerald), and the Vikings in the NFC, and the Raiders (post-Gannon), Texans, Bills, Dolphins, Browns in the AFC with the Bengals as sort of a weird Rorsach test.  The evidence shows that even the most moribund of franchises come out of the doldrums with a good QB year (such as 2007 Anderson, 2008 Warner/Chad Pennington, 2009 Favre).

But far too often, we mess up the cause and effect of quarterback play and team performance.  The Lions and Redskins both endured some of their worst seasons (2006, 2009 for Washington; 2004, 2008 for Detroit) with some of the best QB play in recent memory by either franchise.  The problem here is that good but not great QB play is almost not correlated at all with wins and losses, but where wins are, we find ways to inflate the true performance of the QB.  What was the difference between Kyle Orton and Josh Freeman’s 2010 seasons?  I think Freeman was a bit better in the pocket, but one QB won 3 games and lost 10 (and his job), and the other won 10 games and lost 6.  And Freeman was, at best, marginally better (though the *promise* of future dominance is a big concern here).  Freeman ended up on the Top 100 list of NFL players in 2011, and Orton is possibly going to lose his job to either Tim Tebow or Brady Quinn.  Is that outcome really following all the available evidence?  Not until wins and losses are included, it isn’t.

There have been “have nots” with very efficient QB play in recent years: the Redskins under both Mark Brunell and Jason Campbell, the Bengals under Carson Palmer, the Vikings under Daunte Culpepper, then Brad Johnson, and later Brett Favre, and the Dolphins under Chad Henne.  The Rams had a lean period from 2004-2006 with Marc Bulger still playing well.  Meanwhile, teams win all the time with below average QB play.  The Jets have taken Mark Sanchez to the AFC Championship game in consecutive years.  Ignoring future development potential (a major consideration, I admit), the Jets would have been better off (and were with Favre and later Brunell) with any of the names listed in this paragraph above over Sanchez.  They won though, making this a moot point and Sanchez a cult hero.  The Giants won a bunch of playoff games including the greatest team of all time (not to win the big one), the 2007 Patriots, simply because a developing Eli Manning stopped throwing picks in the playoffs.  Like people feel can happen with Sanchez, Manning DID develop.  The Cowboys made it into the playoffs in 2003 with Quincy Carter at the helm.  Jake Delhomme and Michael Vick both won enough games to take the AFC South in 2003-2005.  The last decade of Bears and Ravens teams featured many, many playoff runs with zero year to year consistency at the QB position (Flacco may, finally, be a keeper).  Getting Jay Cutler to be the franchise QB hasn’t exactly gotten the Bears any closer to the goal of winning the super bowl.  They still knock on the door every year.  Kurt Warner, very possibly, isn’t a hall of fame caliber quarterback if he doesn’t join the NFC West division just as it enters the leanest period since realignment.  And look back on Donovan McNabb’s career through the prism of his 2010 season, and consider how long he may have lasted if the NFC East wasn’t such a pushover division before Eli Manning and Tony Romo and Joe Gibbs.

The quarterbacks who played for the “have not” teams didn’t fail to win because of any personal flaw in there game, perhaps short of simply not being transcendent players.  Throughout Vince Young’s career, the relationship between his performance and playing time has been inverse.  Young actually was a transcendent college player, and the more he developed in the NFL, the larger of a pain in the ass he became.  For Cutler, at least it’s the opposite: he’s a pain in the ass when he’s not playing well, but a good face of the organization when he is.  Matt Leinart hasn’t played…at all.

The factors at play here don’t obviously have a lot to do with the quarterbacks themselves.  It seems to have more to do with the organizations.  A couple specific types of organizations have failed.

Organizations that lack overall resources to succeed

You probably didn’t realize that this made any difference in the NFL where every team can spend to the salary cap if it so pleases, but a number of orgs simply don’t have a lot of their own resources.  The Cincinnati Bengals, the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings, and to a lesser extent, the Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and San Diego Chargers (and for a very long time, the New Orleans Saints — though the environment there may have permanently changed for the better) simply have a bottom line that affects their football decisions.  None of the teams that have won with poor quarterback play over the last decade (the Bears, Ravens, Giants, Jets) have any sort of resource problem what-so-ever.  Those organizations more or less print money.

But think of the three or four most financially insoluble franchises of the last ten years.  The Bengals had the first overall draft pick once and picked Carson Palmer.  The Bills have never had the first overall pick.  The Vikings have never picked higher than 7th in the last decade.  The Raiders picked 2nd overall in 2004 taking Robert Gallery and 1st overall in 2007 taking JaMarcus Russell.  And think how frequently impaired these rebuilding projects have been:

• After winning 11 games in 2005, the Bengals tried to build up a competent defense through the draft exclusively.  While they were eventually successful, the 2009 playoff version of the Bengals was dealing with a damaged goods Carson Palmer at QB, losing TJ Houshmandzadeh  in free agency, a declining Chad Ochocinco, and having to rebuild the entire OL on the cheap (making a rare sign-ability pick in OT Andre Smith in 2009).  More directly, the Bengals have long tried to find a Moneyball-style market niche in players that other teams avoid due to character concerns.  These moves haven’t often paid off.  The approach has cost them their franchise QB to retirement.  This does NOT happen to franchises with resources.
• The Buffalo Bills have never picked higher than third in a recent NFL Draft, and never once were able to offer anything resembling a trade up to position themselves for a quarterback since 2004, when they traded their 2005 first round pick to draft…JP Losman.  The 2004 Bills were the best Bills team since the Jim Kelly days, so they ended up trading the 20th overall pick in the 2005 draft, which could have easily been Aaron Rodgers.  Since Losman busted, that’s really not all that relevant.  Here’s who the Bills HAVE passed on since 2004 at QB: Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler, Brady Quinn, Joe Flacco, Josh Freeman, Jimmy Clausen, Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert, and Christian Ponder.  Would any of those players have prevented the Bills from being another resource-limited franchise that cannot develop a QB?  Each player on that list outside of Quinn and Gabbert would have been considered a reach when the Bills selected, and the Bills have done a good job of being selective regarding their quarterback in the current market conditions.  They just haven’t drafted well enough to improve outside of the QB position.
• The Minnesota Vikings push the limits of the salary cap every year, which they can do because of revenue sharing, and has allowed them to maintain a number of defensive superstars such as Kevin Williams, Jared Allen, and Antoine Winfield, while still drafting very good players on that side of the ball such as Chad Greenway and EJ Henderson.  DC (now HC) Leslie Frazier has generally made very good decisions on his side of the ball.  But the limited resources of the Vikings — which includes a sale of the franchise and the inability to land a new stadium — have cost them offensive stars such as Randy Moss and Daunte Culpepper, who actually have been adequately replaced in the short term with Nate Burleson and Brad Johnson.  Then those guys left and what was left was some sort of bastardized west coast offense build by Brad Childress that both featured and refused to feature Tarvaris Jackson at quarterback.  The Vikings should have been dominating the NFC North between 2005 and 2009, between the primes of Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, but the Chicago Bears in many ways just out-resourced the Vikings for that opportunity.  There’s no other logical reason that the team with the best offensive and defensive players in their division in 2007, 2008, and 2009 won the division just twice and won just a single playoff game.
• There are no question the Oakland Raiders often acted erratically under Al Davis over the past decade, and rarely have they built anything positive, but the Raiders have done a far better job of resource-limited franchises of spending to win based on their scheme.  Even the Raiders, however, departed from wise spending during the Lane Kiffin era, not allowing Kiffin to pick his QB in the 2007 NFL Draft, and then unjustly spending on defensive players Kiffin asked for to save a job in 2008 that Davis was hardly committed to.  The Russell mistake is well documented, as is the Randy Moss error, but why did the Raiders go after DeAngelo Hall and Gibril Wilson in 2008 free agency when the team had done nothing but draft players in the secondary over the drafts leading up to this one?  And worse, when the Raiders released Hall after jettisoning Kiffin, they moved back to a man coverage scheme where Hall could have excelled.  The Giants could have overcome such a waste, but the Raiders just are right now.  The Raiders regathered their resources after that season and have seemed to have gotten it right: no team in the NFL is loaded like the Raiders are now, although to this day, the Michael Huff pick in the 2006 draft is going to set the franchise back as much or more than the JaMarcus Russell pick as the team passed on a transcendental DL in Haloti Ngata who fit the Raiders scheme.

Meanwhile in 2009, the Lions and Bucs both started streamline rebuilding projects that have produced far improved organizations who use their resources wisely.  The Chargers, for all the crap that general manager AJ Smith takes, have been doing this for years and are still a model organization.  The point is that you can win with limited resources in the NFL, but conventional wisdom is almost always designed to get teams off track.  And as the next section proves, even having resources doesn’t ensure success once a team has a quarterback

Organizations that are Poorly Managed

This is where it makes sense to introduce the cases of the Washington Redskins, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Miami Dolphins.  Even when these organizations hire good people (Bruce Allen, Marvin Lewis, Bill Parcells), they cannot seem to sustain any sort of meaningful gain from it.  Because for these three organizations, hiring good people is the abberation, not the rule.  And so short term gains remain just that, short.

Parcells, prior to leaving the Miami Dolphins, was able to restock his team’s roster at quarterback by picking up Chad Pennington and adding Chad Henne in the draft, and doing so in a manner that allowed him to add Jake Long with the first overall pick in 2008 to bookend Vernon Carey as the AFC’s top offensive tackle tandem.  Ignoring the high efficiency backs that Miami already possessed, the Dolphins were flat handed the structure of an elite offense and an attacking 3-4 defense that had all meaningful parts in place, could develop talented, low-cost role players, such as Cameron Wake, and had high efficiency receivers in Davone Bess and Brian Hartline who went undrafted, and provided punch to the Dolphins offense without cost.

So you tell me: how did that team end up closer to the resource-less Bills in overall results than the AFC playoff bound New York Jets?  After the sale of the team from Wayne Huizenga to Stephen Ross, and the departure of Parcells (who wouldn’t have helped the ‘get over the hump’ process anyway), the Dolphins have managed to sink to one of the worst run organizations in football.  Sparano has voluntarily taken the ideal QB situation of Pennington-Henne and has added Tyler Thigpen to the mix, not-so-inadvertently (but completely unnecessarily) making QB a question mark in 2011.  The team traded for Brandon Marshall in 2010, who cost them two second round picks — which the Dolphins treat like candy on Halloween anyway — and Marshall hasn’t done anything to improve the offense while undermining his quarterback.

The Dolphins have at least managed to not sabotage their infrastructure: that defense looks like the early favorite for the best in 2011.  But the offense is a mess despite every advantage one could possibly have, and I can’t see the Dolphins winning in 2011 even if they feature the leagues best defense.  It will all be put on Henne, but the criticism belongs higher up.  On Ireland and Ross.

The Cincinnati Bengals have something to prove in 2011, that they can win without Carson Palmer at quarterback.  But they’re not just fighting common perception that teams can’t win in the NFL without an established quarterback, they’re also fighting their own organization.  It is possible that the Bengals turned over a new leaf starting with the 2011 NFL Draft, picking AJ Green and Andy Dalton with their first two picks.  But the team is proving unwilling to turn it’s most valuable asset, Palmer, into picks and players that can help the Bengals win in future season.  Meanwhile the team is all too ready to do exactly that what it won’t do with Palmer with star receiver Chad Ochocinco, but Ocho has virtually no value as a trade piece.

It’s very clear looking at the Bengals roster that they plan to rebrand themselves as a ground-first team, which is a good idea, but it also seems like the team is just waiting for the end of the lockout to make 28 year old RB Cedric Benson the highest paid player on their offense, which is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that Benson is a 28 year old RB.  The team may not be able to afford Jonathon Joseph at corner, who is an impending free agent.  The resource limited Bengals are just poorly managed enough to seriously consider spending the balance of those resources on Benson.  They may be able to win in 2o11 behind a strong offensive line and a renewed passing game, but I don’t know if the trigger man of the offense can be either Jordan Palmer or Andy Dalton this year.  I think they need a third party.  And I don’t know if the Bengals have a plan to win in 2011.  Which is expected, because these are the Bengals.

Remember: the Bengals did not win when they had a quarterback (and a passing game).  As good a pick as AJ Green is, keep that in mind when evaluating the career potential of Andy Dalton in Cincinnati.

Really though, this point is about the Washington Redskins.  It’s about Mark Brunell and Jason Campbell.  It’s also about Donovan McNabb, Rex Grossman, and John Beck.  It’s about Dan Snyder, Vinny Cerrato, Jim Zorn, Mike Shanahan, and Bruce Allen.  It’s about the quarterback “excuse.”  The defeatist Dolphins complain that not having a quarterback is holding them back, and have for a decade, save 2008.  The Bengals have their finger on the button, ready to pull the same excuse.  But no team has been worse than the Washington Redskins at pulling the quarterback excuse to place the blame anywhere but on themselves.

Like the Dolphins, an ownership sale really did hurt the team’s ability from a resources perspective to lock up that quarterback situation.  The year was 1998, and the Redskins — for a couple of critical months, at least — were resource limited.  The quarterback in question was Trent Green, who signed in St. Louis as a free agent, and followed around Dick Vermeil for the rest of his career.  So the Green thing fell apart for the Redskins because of a resources situation.  And as written above, teams should get a pass, within reason, for being resource limited.  And it cost the Redskins Green.

What then, is the excuse for: Brad Johnson, Patrick Ramsey, Mark Brunell, Jason Campbell, and Donovan McNabb?  Because it’s now 2011.  And the Redskins are still using the same “quarterback barren” excuse that died after Johnson replaced Green in 1999 twelve years later.  And five physically capable quarterbacks have walked through the doors in Washington, enjoyed a successful-mini career, and mind you, the Redskins organization is in no better shape than the day they brought Jeff George in to “solve” the problem that never existed in the first place.  Johnson, Ramsey, and Campbell all cost the Redskins first round picks.  McNabb cost a second and a fourth.  Brunell cost a third and a fourth.  None were apparently worth a commitment.  And the product of those ten years were a lot of losing, three playoff games, and an offseason debate as to whether John Beck or Rex Grossman is more deserving of succeeding McNabb.

You could argue that no team has had more resources than the Redskins under Dan Snyder, and it’s almost inarguable that no team has done less with it’s available resources than the Redskins.  This proves that while teams lacking resources are always struggling to sustain, teams with resources will be no less likely to fail if managed poorly.  I’m trying to think of any other team that has the sheer quantity of quarterbacks come through that would either go on to enjoy more wins (Johnson, Campbell), or had come from very successful programs with no real success (Brunell, McNabb).  Tampa Bay, maybe?  They had Freeman, Garcia, Johnson, and…Griese/Gradkowski?  Chris Simms is too much of a stretch.  What about Denver?  Griese, Plummer, Cutler, Orton, Tebow?  The Giants had Kerry Collins and Warner, and culminated with Eli Manning.

It is somewhat fitting that the 2010 Washington Redskins’ front office was comprised of the personnel guys for the only two other teams not able to establish quarterbacks with a comparable level of talent coming through the organization at the position.  It’s fitting really.  And it leads me to the big point: under no circumstance is instability at the QB position ever a good excuse for not making offensive improvement.  It never is.  Good quarterback play, by itself, never solves organizational issues.  Organizations that turn themselves around typically do it with the combination of good quarterbacking and something else.  If the Saints, perhaps the most recent example of an organization that turned itself around, had made the NFC Championship game in 2006, but failed to hire Gregg Williams in 2009 and had languished any further on defense, it’s not clear if Sean Payton would still have a job and if Drew Brees would still be worth an enormous salary.  The Saints found offense, but they also controlled the next step in becoming a super bowl champion when the organization stopped shooting itself in the foot.  The Jaguars, who did not bother to retain Williams after the 2008 season, have declined on defense since.

I would almost be wasting my time to remind you that when the Redskins made the playoffs twice in three years in the middle of this decade, Williams was calling their defense, and the Redskins were using their considerable resources to get him pieces.  Unfortunately, a poor year by the defensive unit in 2006 caused the Redskins to…get this…blame it on the quarterback (Brunell), and make a change there.  The Redskins blew up shortly after Williams left as an organization, and Jason Campbell was left with the task of picking up the pieces.

Teams that have resources, in particular, should win.  The Redskins should win.  The Dolphins should win.  The Cowboys should win.  The Bears should win.  The 49ers should win.  The Titans should win.  The Broncos should win.  The Texans should win.  It’s the natural order of professional football.  Whether these teams have a quarterback or not, or are simply in between quarterbacks, it’s not an excuse.  Twelve teams make the playoffs each year, and not all of them do it with great quarterback seasons.  However, for organizations that don’t do very much well, they typically find fault with the QB position very quickly relative to other positions.  But having an abundance of resources means that if you address all your issues at once, there is enough time and money and coaching and scouting to go around to create a winner.  Teams like the Bucs and the Chargers have to streamline operations specifically because there aren’t enough resources to do everything at once like a large market team can do.  But when teams like the Redskins and Dolphins push past a decade of incompetent decision making, despite the ability these teams have to error and recover quickly, you do have to glance over and chuckle when people want to point out that the quarterback situation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.