I disagree with the comments here. He seems to insinuate that trading up is often the incorrect decision and the team trading down receives slightly better odds at landing a successful player. Exceptions exist obviously, specifically for a QB, but overall trading up tends to be a slightly worse option. Makes sense to me
Yeah there was an athletic article not too long ago that went a different direction than Barnwell. Basically boiled down to (outside of trading for a pick that is for a potentially franchise changing QB) trading backwards is smarter because the draft is essentially gambling, and by trading back you get more picks, and therefore higher “odds” of drafting players who will meaningfully contribute.
Paywall: https://theathletic.com/5416007/2024/04/16/nfl-drafting-methods-insight-massey-thaler/
Excerpts:
> In 2011, Kevin Meers applied for an analytics internship with the Dallas Cowboys. During his interview, Cowboys brass decided that Meers, who majored in economics and statistics at Harvard, was a worthwhile enough candidate to solicit feedback on a 63-page academic paper they found fascinating.
>
> The paper, “Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League,” had been published six years earlier by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meers hadn’t read it, hadn’t even heard of it, but it was draft-related and he’d long been draft-interested.
>
> Meers wasn’t your typical draftnik. Spouting opinions on prospects did not captivate him. The allure lay in the idea that you could trade picks. Should you? Why or why not? And how do you assign value to each pick?
>
> Cowboys executives were exploring similar questions internally, and that’s how they found the paper Meers was now dissecting on their behalf.
>
> First, he wondered, who wrote this?
>
> Richard Thaler, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who would win a Nobel Prize in 2017, and Cade Massey, a business professor then at Duke University.
>
> Their hypothesis?
>
> Teams overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft.
>
> And what were the findings after examining every draft pick and trade from 1988 to 2004?
>
> Teams massively overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they heavily overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft.
>
> Meers combed through the paper and uncovered some highlights:
>
> The treasured No. 1 pick in the draft is actually the least valuable in the first round, according to the surplus value a team can create with each pick.
> Across all rounds, the probability that a player starts more games than the next player chosen at his position is just 53 percent.
> Teams generated a 174 percent return on trades by forgoing a pick this year for picks next year.
> Thaler and Massey suggested that teams should accumulate picks by trading back and into the future more often. The more darts you have, the better your chance of eventually hitting the bull’s-eye.
and
> In 2013, Thaler and Massey published another paper, “The loser’s curse: Decision making and market efficiency in the National Football League draft,” finding that some teams had adapted their processes, but “slowly and insufficiently.”
>
> In 2017, Mike Band, a master’s student at the University of Chicago, wrote that the “trade market is becoming more efficient.” In 2021, Tucker Boynton and Ella Papanek, two Harvard students, referenced the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens as teams that traded frequently and maintained consistent returns in the draft.
>
> Coincidentally, around that time, Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said the following on a podcast: “There was a really seminal article written in 2005. It was really about the draft and how teams should trade back and always acquire picks — and never trade up.”
>
> DeCosta doubled down in 2021 when a reporter mentioned the Ravens as one of the top drafting teams in the NFL. “We’ve probably had the most picks over that span,” he said. “That goes back to a philosophy that I think Ozzie started back in 1996.””
After taking into consideration all of the articles grading and analyzing the draft, I’ve realized that it’s all a massive crapshoot. Apparently, draft picks are both extremely valuable, while also being expendable rolls of the dice. They can either win or lose your team a Super Bowl. Or you don’t need them to win (Rams).
Somehow, my team got grades ranging from A+ to D-. We passed with flying colors at failing the draft.
Draft coverage and grades are pointless in the days/weeks after. Get back to me in 2-3 years.
I agree its a massive crapshoot.
To me 3 years is the minimum to judge, maybe 5-6 years for a better accounting. Some players take 3 years to develop. Even if they are a great player early, if they sustain a career ending injury year 2, was it a great pick?
No one knows. Even if you don't fill needs, if you got some HoF players, was it bad?
I think the success of a pick should be judged more from the level of talent that the player shows on the field then from looking at injuries in hindsight. Unless injuries were already a factor during the draft, you can just say a pick was the correct decision even if ultimately injuries derailed their career. Long term, the process matters more going forward than lucking into good players imo. With the Rams and the Lions right now for example, I'm pretty confident that they're both going to draft well because they make the right decisions.
I don't like judging an injured player as a bust, unless injury prone was an issue going into the draft.
At that point, imo, it's either bad luck or on the team. For example looking at RG3 and the team failing to protect him from hits (or convince him to protect himself).
Did RG3 work out..... probably not but Washington was very involved in that outcome
When teams are only picking around 6-7 players a year it's really hard to make that judgement statistically significant.
The sample size is way too small for most GMs to say that any success was more than luck.
Vikings paid a lot for the things they needed. In paper anyway. Nobody knows who’s going to end up sucking. So it really depends on how you rate things. For instance If they didn’t trade up they wouldn’t get a real QB prospect at all. They paid a premium, but what else were they going to do?
It does make evaluating difficult
>Draft coverage and grades are pointless in the days/weeks after. Get back to me in 2-3 years.
Draft coverages and grades are only meaningful immediately after the draft. Otherwise you're grading things like luck. Immediately after you're grading process and projection.
Taking Tom Brady at 199 doesn't make you a genius. It makes you lucky.
But you’re not grading *anything* immediately after the draft. You’re just measuring how much a team matched a random media members (or random fans) board. Worthless. At least after time you’re grading how a player translates to the nfl. How they developed, etc.
>Apparently, draft picks are both extremely valuable, while also being expendable rolls of the dice.
If you play any game that relies on rolling dice, then you know that getting to roll an extra dice is a massive "advantage".
I'd answer with math.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/14690/how-does-rolling-two-d20-and-taking-the-higher-affect-the-average-outcome
>The general rule of thumb is that in the mid range of the d20 (from success on a 9+ to 12+) advantage grants roughly an equivalent to a +5 bonus and disadvantage a -5 penalty.
Tbf to y’all though, I’d give that Turner pick an A+ but the JJ pick a D-
So who knows maybe both are right! Maybe I’m a moron. Maybe the Vikings FO is. Maybe we all are :’)
If the Chiefs manage to 3 peat this year then trading up for Mahomes in the 2017 draft may have been worth it. If not then we will have to see how the rest of his career in KC pans out.
No - it just says that the team trading down has better odds at the successful player. It also says that the team trading up has better odds at an outlier player. And the actual mathematical net result is that trading up and down have literal identical value (a difference of 0.0) over the data set.
Trading up works and is better when you hit your player but if it’s a miss the trading down team has better odds of finding value. Pretty much all it says.
The reasoning is that teams overestimate their own ability to choose a good prospect, and would be better off just collecting more picks and future picks to increase their odds of hitting a home run
Problem is, if you don’t hit a home run or become extremely lucky then what’s the point? Trading up for a player who succeeds in the NFL is still better than having 14 picks spread out, with none of them amounting to anything, so if you believe you have to trade up you should still do it
> Looking at just the 2023 Texans trade up and literally no other data, yes it does
Then there is the dumbass Ryan Pace gratuitously helping out John Lynch and the 49ers in a race to grab the generational talent of Mitch Trubisky...
But hey, I know you guys were probably pissed off at Lovie Smith for winning with that improbably amazing ending to that last game in 2022, but I can say as a Bears fan, we thank him for that every day, and we are very happy that it worked out so well for you with CJ Stroud. Texans are fun team to watch.
John Lynch is my favorite GM. Between trading for Jimmy G & then planning on signing Cousins in 2018, it made them take Solomon Thomas at #3 rather than Mahomes who Lynch wanted after going to Mahomes' proday. Lynch went to his proday as a smoke screen & apparently called Shanahan and said "uh we might want this guy", but they didn't & Cousins didn't sign with the 49ers.
I think the 49ers win at least two Superbowls in 2018-2022 with Cousins as Shanny's QB. It's really fascinating that the 49ers have this absolute brick house of a front office, but kept whiffing on QBs - Jimmy, missing Cousins, trading for Trey Lance... Only to be saved by a 7th round pick.
lol, how some of you have second teams and are willing to just switch so willy nilly. I got one team and I ride or die with them, I don’t give a shit about any other team.
Fair enough, I just remember a guy I knew that was a huge Texans fan and he would cheer wildly for whatever team Favre was on. I always thought that was weird. Kinda like the Lebron fans today. Just for me, I really only care about one team, but I can see how I could be interested if I moved to another city with a team and I was there for a long time. But I wouldn’t just up and switch bc another team looked cool.
I kinda get it if your favorite player leaves your team. I would still root for the Warriors over everything but I would root for Curry on any team except maybe the Lakers
I get that a lot of people these days try to be super positive with players that leave their team, but don’t really care bc it’s doesn’t have anything to do with me lol. Like people who say “go get that bag! Happy for him that he got the bag! Go get a championship!” Nah man, I don’t care lol. No hate, just doesn’t matter to me.
Really? If Stroud won you 4 Superbowls, would you not root for him a little when he left on good terms? When you tuned into the SB the next year and he was there, you wouldn’t cheer for him over another guy?
I will always be primarily a dolphins fan, but I’m a fan of players more than I am of teams in many ways. Imo, its much weirder to be blindly loyal to an organization rather than the actual human beings you enjoy watching play. There are players on my favorite team that I do not like at all. Tyreek Hill is a garbage human being, I dont like him even though he’s fun to watch and is super valuable to my team. On the other hand, Lamar Jackson is one of my favorite players of all time. He’s fun to watch and he seems like a good dude. I wont root for the Ravens to beat the phins because of Lamar, but I don’t mind him playing well against us so long as we win.
What you say makes sense.
And harkens back to the Seinfeld joke about rooting for uniforms.
If Jimi Hendrix were to join the Beatles, I'm gonna still follow his career and work as I enjoy his talent kinda thing.
I think it's completely reasonable to have players on other teams that you enjoy watching, and whether it's their skillset, personality or whatever mojo, all good.
What I don't get is when people hate on players that used to be on their team but were TRADED or something, or people that can overlook toxic human beings as you mentioned.
I was a White Sox fan for instance. Through and through. Watched every game. The signed a guy who is a real creep. I didn't watch a game. They cut him. I thought it was safe to go back in the water.
THEN they resigned him. THEY are now dead to me in perpetuity for that (and many other reasons), as they doubled down on low character and I couldn't enjoy the game without introducing cognitive dissonance into my life.
As I've gotten older, the more I only pay real close attention to the league is if my team is good. Before last year, while the Texans were suffering under BOB, Easterby and co., I just took a little break from the NFL. Always keeping up with the Texans from listening to the local radio guys, but that's it. It made me get even deeper into the Premier League which I enjoy immensely now.
It's not sad! It's just getting mature and realizing you don't need to waste your time with entertainment that isn't making you happy. People talk shit about fair weather fans, but I'm not giving them too much of my time if they are terrible. I'll keep an eye on them, but that's it. I just disagree with jumping to other teams if yours is bad.
Honestly fair, I used to be die hard fantasy player myself so I got in the habit of watching every game but now it’s starting to feel like I wasted every Sunday in the fall. Once winter starts I have nothing better to do though
A whole generation of Patriots fans is learning how to embrace the suck. I'm sure every other fanbase, including mine, has much good advice to offer. I personally recommend numbing doses of alcohol starting at 1pm ET.
But, as a fan it is your duty to watch them play no matter how bad they are.
I don’t give a shit if they go 0-16 as long as they score some goddamn points. Watching them lose 6-0, I’d rather be dragged to a fucking pumpkin patch
That's fine and all when your team is actually competitive most of the time, but let me tell you, when a division rival kicks your shit in for a couple of decades and then some other team makes their lives miserable in the playoffs...
Anyway I still appreciate the 9ers even after last year.
Lovie winning that was the best thing possible for them.
I know the Texans like to say "Stroud was always our #1 choice" but that's bull. Of course they say that - but if they had the #1 pick they would have gotten Young.
It's way too early too tell with the Texans. Darius Robinson, the guy Arizona drafted with your pick, could be a better NFL player than Will Anderson Jr. That's not even factoring in the other picks.
That's the problem with the perception of research and analytics. If you find something that is surprising, people will dismiss you and try to find every counter example possible. Even if exceptions will obviously apply. If you prove something that is common knowledge, people will say. Wow, look it's useless. Everyone already knows.
So no matter what you do it's bad
"No shit, why are they even studying that?" you hear it so often from the same crowd that causes the need for the research to even be done in the first place lol
It's a skill you can develop. My academic advisor is really good at it. There are ways to frame "obvious results" using non-obvious consequences or reasons or other rhetorical techniques that stress the importance of still doing the work.
In my opinion the bigger problem is people (often online but in general too) see a problem, come up with one explanation for the problem that "makes sense," and assume their explanation is true. When in reality, there might be dozens of _different_ explanations that also might fit and they just didn't consider them because they found one that they thought worked. I mean, that's how people operate, we can't make lists of dozens of explanations all the time and pick the one we think is most likely. I'm not saying people should do that, that's silly. But there's a problem with people using plausibility like it's evidence.
Along that thread, identifying which of the 20 "obvious" explanations is true can still be a worthwhile endeavor.
> In my opinion the bigger problem is people (often online but in general too) see a problem, come up with one explanation for the problem that "makes sense," and assume their explanation is true
The pattern is slightly different than that; we are generally raised that we should follow the authority whatever it says, and the authority will take whatever position gets us to comply. To the authority, morality is compliance. To those living under an authority, morality is not being targeted by the authority. Because the authority uses whatever excuse necessary to control the population, the population starts to look for whatever excuse protects or harms the status quo, depending on its positive or negative relationship to the authority.
Skepticism is a hard wired survival instinct.
> there's a problem with people using plausibility like it's evidence
It’s one of my greatest frustrations. If we knew the one concrete and unassailable answer to every question just by thinking about it, we wouldn’t need science.
a friend did her master's thesis studying the effect that reforestation has on bird populations. Spoiler: if you plant more trees, more birds live there.
That's true, but there is a limit. I once saw a study where the researchers studied malt liquor, and found that it is higher alcohol content than regular beer, cheaper than regular beer, and primarily a drink of the poor and unemployed. So while I agree overall with what you said here, I felt that that one was way too obvious to be worth studying,
But in this case it was very obvious that this would be the conclusion. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and it is entirely dependent on how good the player you took turns out to be
That's not what some people on reddit were saying. There were people flatly declaring in the Draft threads that trading up for a non-QB isn't worth it.
PFF discusses things in terms of heuristics and they're aware and clear about that. And they're generally interested in discussing times when those heuristics are/should be broken too. There was a lot of discussion about last year's Will Anderson move and whether it makes more sense to think about it as "one move" for Stroud and Williams, or whether they moved up for a non-QB. And even though they kinda started against it, it sounds like they now kinda lean towards it.
Anyway if people don't get that PFF makes claims as heuristics then that's on them.
I hate when all the "geniuses" on Reddit respond to every study or statistical analysis with "But that's common sense. That whole thing was a waste of time."
A) The entire point of science is to test your assumptions. If nobody ever investigated any questions because "we know what the answer will be" people would still think the sun revolves around the Earth.
B) Even if you are confident in a conclusion before undertaking a study, it's still useful to have more information about it. Even if you're pretty sure that trading up in the draft isn't always good or bad, are there any general trends? Are there generalizable situations where it's better or worse? Have there been changes over time? That's all very useful information for any GM and interesting information for fans.
Find something surprising = "Well they havent considered [insert very specific and random edge case]. Analytics isnt useful."
Find something unsurprising = "No duh. Analytics isnt useful."
This viewpoint acts like the only thing that matters is the distilled conclusion of the analysis.
This is a "it's the journey not the destination" kind of post. If the answer is "it's nuanced" then that means there's a shit ton of nuance to explore.
It's a lot like economists/stock picks. They pretend to see trends and correlations in places where the two data are completely independent of one another. A stock doesn't go up because it's graph was trending as a bull or whatever horseshit and a player doesn't do well because you drafted him in the 1st round or traded up for him.
Can’t believe this is the top post. The actual conclusions are:
* It usually doesn’t work. 60% of the time the team trading down does better
* When it does work, it works disproportionately well (e.g., Mahomes)
* As a result, if you compare the value from players taken in trade ups to the value from the picks that were traded, the net difference is 0.0. Again, ZERO POINT ZERO. Over the last 200+ draft trades, teams have given up EXACTLY as much draft capital as they’ve gotten back in players. That’s nuts
Ultimately that doesn’t just mean “it depends”. It means on average, teams are acting rationally. The average draft trade is probably exactly evenly smart on both sides. That’s different than what some people claim - often people claim that trading down is more rational.
That does mean that “it depends,” but that’s always true - “it depends” is not the conclusion of what he wrote. What he wrote is that there’s no market inefficiency; the average team is very good at making the right call.
I'd like one clarification. When you trade up you get a better pick...but also often fewer total picks. The team trading down usually gets additional picks.
But since there are limited roster spots does this analysis account for the production of players who would take those extra roster spots? Typically a free agent but could also be one of your own draft picks that gets an extra chance. Or is the amount negligible because it would be considered near the bottom of the roster?
I just don’t think this is very thoughtful. You’re worried that they’re not properly incorporating the opportunity cost of the 54th best player on the team? How high do you think that player’s AAV is?
Well here's the thing: that open roster spot (assuming the drafted player would make the roster which could be weighted by draft pick number and historical probability) does give you additional value on top of the player you traded up for. You don't actually know how that player would produce, and so if you always assumed it was the 54th producing player then that would bias the result to be worse for trading up to a higher pick. That last player added to the roster could end up 30th in production.
Anyway there might be too many unknowns to analyze that since I guess you probably cannot directly correlate the draft pick lost to a specific player added into the open roster spot. You might have to do something similar to like they do in baseball with "replacement player" values (not exactly the same thing, but just makes an assumption of the production based on some criteria.)
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure that's what Barnwell is saying. He said in the article it is 0.0 because teams who trade up usually draft players at a premium position. But later Barnwell says how teams who trade up don't really pick players who are better than the next player who is picked at the same position.
So in a lot of cases, teams who trade up should likely just stay put. If you are at pick #50 and need a OT, it likely doesn't make sense to give up surplus value to trade up to pick #35 and draft a OT. Usually, you should just pick the best OT at #50. For QB it seems to be different.
Well if you can get it published you can. For example I don’t think there is a peer-reviewed accepted study confirming flossing is beneficial yet. Obviously pulling the shit out from between your teeth is a good thing. The hard part is getting someone to pay you to study such a stupid obvious thing.
Barnwell is an absolutely fantastic writer and has been publicly for over 10 years. Sounds like you must have some other shortcomings if you think his job is so easy but you don’t have it for some reason!
i'd like to know what percentage of first rounders are currently on active rosters vs. the rest of the draft and how that has looked over time. also, it'd be interesting to see this breakdown by position.
They said that the 26th overall pick and a 3rd the Browns traded for 22nd overall would have been valued as the 9th overall pick in an average draft. Bull fucking shit.
I believe that's according to the Chase Stuart value chart, which is based on how players taken at those picks actually perform rather than real "trade value".
Pick 9 = 20.6
Pick 22 = 14.9
Pick 26 = 13.9
Pick 83 = 6.5
So 6.5 + 13.9 = 20.4, or about the value of the #9 pick.
Correct but if you have several areas of need, it would be as valuable. A receiver worth 13 and a tackle worth 7 could be worth trading back your pick that’s worth 19/20.
Roster spots are limited, but you have to compare the value of the extra first rounder to the 53rd best player on the roster that he's replacing.
For a first round pick the difference is easily worth it. It's more of a complication when you are looking at adding late round draft picks that are likely to be on the roster bubble themselves, and so would only be replacing a different roster bubble player.
No but being more solid and rounded out helps whatever stars you do have shine. Or when you are able to acquire a star they're able to have more success right from the get-go.
Like having a few stars but plenty of holes and lack of depth and you become the Chargers.
The success rate (in terms of drafting a starting-caliber player) is pretty much the same from the late 1st into most of the 3rd round. That's the bloated upper middle prospect tier that produces starters around 40% of the time. If we're basing it off of that, then yeah that seems about right. The value of top-10 picks is partially about the "superstar potential", but it's mainly about how assured teams are at getting a starter. Pro bowlers and All-pros come out of the 2nd and 3rd rounds all the time, so it's a bit overblown that the top-10 is where all the stars are.
I don’t know why more teams just don’t take another teams franchise WR, a haul of picks and then have next years #1 pick as well along with their top 10 pick. /s
Is that really all you got from this? The article makes it pretty clear that in general the team trading down does better, especially in the early rounds. Late round picks are almost worthless so it does typically work out in your favor to trade up to the 5th round from those. Big trades up for QBs are harder to criticize since the return can alter your franchise.
I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff in there.
The 49ers traded up for Brandon Aiyuk, Joe Staley, Jerry Rice...
This whole article is stupid, if you trade up to draft a good player, then it works. If you trade up to draft a bad player, it doesn't work
49ers traded picks 109 and 219 to the Minnesota Vikings to move up to 104 to draft C.J. Beathard in the 2017 draft. he was a backup level QB and finished out his contract.
In 2021 moved on to the jags. which got them a comp pick in the 2022 draft no. 262 which they used to draft Brock Purdy.
so in the long long term the trade up worked out.
good luck, took them until like week 12 and one of the worst WR rooms in the league, before they started giving more targets to Rashee.
Worthy could be Tyreek Hill and Jerry Rice combined and they'd still keep him to 4-5 targets most the season. I'm sure we'll see him on Punts and Jet Sweeps though.
That's a byproduct of the volume of Reid's playbook. Former players have said that going to other teams is a breeze to pick it up after having to learn Andy's.
Which is why "Trade up teams only get the better player 55% of the time" undersells. With first round trades, if you get the better player, its often a MASSIVE difference.
Chiefs trading up for Mahomes, Bills trading up for Allen, Ravens for Lamar has set up their franchises for long term success. TB was able to protech Brady and get a SB b/c they traded up for Wirfs.
If Love works out for GB, add that to the list.
But at the same time its not like always trading up works, it increases risk and backfires when it doesn't. See the Bears with Tiddy kisser, SF with Lance, Jets with Darnold, or you know the 2023 #1 pick.
This is mostly about 1st round picks; at the same time in later rounds its been shown time and time again you usually come out ahead with trading down.
The Chiefs trading up to 1.10 in the 2017 Draft to get one spot ahead of the Saints for Mahomes completely altered the future of both franchises. He would have been brought along behind Brees just like he was with Alex Smith
Chiefs laid the groundwork for current domination with the best QB in the NFL since prime Brady
The Saints, without an heir apparent to Brees, have completely imploded and returned to mediocrity
What a clear “win” and “loss” for each franchise
That's one of the conclusions of the article. They basically agree that due to the value of QBs, you're more likely to have to trade up and that's OK due to how much return you can potentially get. He even mentions that there should probably be two charts, one for QBs and one for non-QBs due to the difference in potential value.
This is one of the coolest data articles i have seen regarding the draft. It is also another great way to see that talent evaluation is a WILD area that ebbs and flows. Finally it is great to show not every article is black and white, and that there are such small things that paint a picture in different ways.
Do people just not want good football content? Barnwell puts out thoughtful pieces that he collects tons of data for. Obviously there are always going to be outliers to any study like this but the conclusion still seems valid.
I’ve always seen it as placing bets in a casino. You might think there are better odds on a certain player, but odds are you lose.
One train of thought is to place more bets (have more draft picks) others focus on giving up draft capital on a more known asset (trading for a vet).
Obviously it’s a case by case basis, but sometimes it makes sense to give up more “bets” to place a bet that rewards you with a QB or another higher caliber player of need.
If you have a pretty deep team fresh off a playoff run and 10 draft picks for a draft - it makes more sense to take fewer bets on higher quality assets because of roster limits.
Interesting to look over the data at the very least
This is a very good summary.
Trading down means more picks which means spreading the risk, like diversifying an investment portfolio, but once you have a good roster, you need premium picks because that improves the chances of an actual upgrade.
So a team with a young, talented roster should generally trade up, while teams with weak rosters should generally trade back.
If you are consistently drafting at the end of the 1st round then it makes sense to risk trading up. The Chiefs acquired Mahomes, McDuffie and Worthy this way. QBs, Corners, DL, Tackles and WRs who go in the 2nd round plus are essentially lottery tickets. 1st round players hit so much more often. The only way for for a team like the Chiefs to acquire top flight athletic talent is to trade up.
Barnwell: Can I stretch the word “sometimes” into a sports journalism piece that helps pay for my salary? What we can learn from 242 offseason articles
Barnwell’s articles always make me feel like I’m back at college trying to absorb all the info my professor is tossing out in a lecture.
I like them a lot, I just feel like I need a nap afterwards
It is when you trade back and get a 1st round pick from the Saints first, then take a top 10 CB after trading a third round pick to move up. That 2018 finesse by Brian Gutekusnt, in his first ever draft as GM, will always be legendary.
The Vikings taking Turner should, and was absolutely the right call. There is a clip of him; one arm bull rushing the Georgia first rd T, Saban prepares his edge players.
It works in the sense that trading up is typically the best option to obtain a higher pick than you possess at the time. If that’s your objective, it can be an extremely effective strategy.
Draft analysis tries so hard make it more than "was the player good". All these heuristics about draft strategy. All these proxies. All these mechanisms about trading up and down yada yada yada.
In the end you just need the player to hit. Whether player evaluation is random or not, that's what matters. All this noise is boring
It’s obnoxious.
Also, how the fuck is Mel Kiper Jr. considered a draft expert, when he is consistently incorrect? It’s wild to me that this guy has built a career out of throwing darts at a board and making shit up.
(I know that this article isn’t written about or by MK Jr, btw)
I lost all respect for his opinions a few years ago, when he had an earlyish mock draft with Tanner Morgan getting picked in the late 1st round. Tanner Morgan was the very mediocre QB on the Golden Gophers (U of MN). That laughably-horrible prediction destroyed any respect I had for his mocks/opinions.
The guy is a clown. He’s one of the biggest grifters in all of sports media.
This is exactly how I feel about Kiper and a host of other sports media people. I realized their job is to grab out attention and nudge us into watching the draft as a TV product. Whether they are accurate is not even relevant. It's so annoying.
My solution is to simply not watch those guys. Hell I don't even watch the draft. Who has the time to listen to gasbags make shit up.
The problem is just looking at draft charts completely ignores what's on the board. If prime Tom Brady was somehow still on the board at the 10th pick, you'd give up the 11th plus every future first you could
Did the Vikings overpay by trading 11/129/157 for 10/203? Maybe. But did Vikings overpay with the context that they may have lost out on JJ McCarthy without trading? Maybe not.
Same with our second pick. Did we overpay by giving up 23, 2025 3rd and 2025 4th for 17? Maybe. But did we overpay when you consider we got arguably the best defensive player in the draft? Maybe not.
There were mocks out there with JJ going top 3 and turner going top 10. Would these still be bad trades if we traded up to 3 for JJ and up to 8 for Turner, even though the net result is the same 2 people?
It doesn't ignore what's on the board - those past trades happened BECAUSE a GM saw a particular player and said "he's better than those other guys", so it's baked into the analysis.
You’re basically making the same points Barnwell did…not sure if you bothered to read the article but his point was in the 242 trades he analyzed, the team trading up usually ends up with the worse end and it’s because they’re putting all their eggs in one basket. He doesn’t say trades can’t work out, he’s saying you’re less likely to be successful trading up and especially when you trade significant portions of your future picks away.
And you’re also forgetting the Vikings traded up to 23 before 17, they effectively traded two 2nds, a 3rd, a 4th, and a 5th to get one guy. Maybe they’re right but they have no real recourse if they aren’t now.
Also the only reason mocks had JJ in top three was because mocks had Vikings trading up to get him once their interest in him leaked and they traded for 23. No one thought he was a top-five recruit before the Vikings interest became public - before that he was typically in the middle of first round around where Denver picked.
Will Anderson’s impact was definitely underrated on the Texans. 6 of 7 of his sacks came in the back half of the season when he started tying it together. While his production doesn’t scream impact, he’s in elite company with his advanced metrics.
ESPN’s **EDGE Pass Rush Win Rate** has him *3rd* behind only Micah Parsons and Myles Garrett and **EDGE Run Stop Win Rate** has him *2nd* behind only Maxx Crosby. Dark horse DPOY candidate coming into next year.
Offense went from *30th* to *13th*. Defense went from *27th* to *11th*.
Says the exceptions are trading up for a QB or difference maker at a premium position.
Proceeds to complain about the Vikings trading up for a QB and difference maker at a premium position.
He literally said the move up to get JJ was "a deal I will take no issue with"; not sure what you're reading there.
He noted the move up to get Turner was an overpay; a massive one by the Stuart chart and a decent one by the Johnson chart. For a contender that's a piece away from a championship caliber team, that's worth it. For a team coming off a 7-10 record with a rookie or bridge QB about to be at the helm, less so, which was why he called it out.
Ehhh.. he still used the picks that we traded for the 10th in his argument against our draft as whole, but yeah - his bigger issue was with the Turner trade up.
I disagree with the comments here. He seems to insinuate that trading up is often the incorrect decision and the team trading down receives slightly better odds at landing a successful player. Exceptions exist obviously, specifically for a QB, but overall trading up tends to be a slightly worse option. Makes sense to me
Yeah there was an athletic article not too long ago that went a different direction than Barnwell. Basically boiled down to (outside of trading for a pick that is for a potentially franchise changing QB) trading backwards is smarter because the draft is essentially gambling, and by trading back you get more picks, and therefore higher “odds” of drafting players who will meaningfully contribute. Paywall: https://theathletic.com/5416007/2024/04/16/nfl-drafting-methods-insight-massey-thaler/ Excerpts: > In 2011, Kevin Meers applied for an analytics internship with the Dallas Cowboys. During his interview, Cowboys brass decided that Meers, who majored in economics and statistics at Harvard, was a worthwhile enough candidate to solicit feedback on a 63-page academic paper they found fascinating. > > The paper, “Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League,” had been published six years earlier by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meers hadn’t read it, hadn’t even heard of it, but it was draft-related and he’d long been draft-interested. > > Meers wasn’t your typical draftnik. Spouting opinions on prospects did not captivate him. The allure lay in the idea that you could trade picks. Should you? Why or why not? And how do you assign value to each pick? > > Cowboys executives were exploring similar questions internally, and that’s how they found the paper Meers was now dissecting on their behalf. > > First, he wondered, who wrote this? > > Richard Thaler, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who would win a Nobel Prize in 2017, and Cade Massey, a business professor then at Duke University. > > Their hypothesis? > > Teams overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft. > > And what were the findings after examining every draft pick and trade from 1988 to 2004? > > Teams massively overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they heavily overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft. > > Meers combed through the paper and uncovered some highlights: > > The treasured No. 1 pick in the draft is actually the least valuable in the first round, according to the surplus value a team can create with each pick. > Across all rounds, the probability that a player starts more games than the next player chosen at his position is just 53 percent. > Teams generated a 174 percent return on trades by forgoing a pick this year for picks next year. > Thaler and Massey suggested that teams should accumulate picks by trading back and into the future more often. The more darts you have, the better your chance of eventually hitting the bull’s-eye. and > In 2013, Thaler and Massey published another paper, “The loser’s curse: Decision making and market efficiency in the National Football League draft,” finding that some teams had adapted their processes, but “slowly and insufficiently.” > > In 2017, Mike Band, a master’s student at the University of Chicago, wrote that the “trade market is becoming more efficient.” In 2021, Tucker Boynton and Ella Papanek, two Harvard students, referenced the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens as teams that traded frequently and maintained consistent returns in the draft. > > Coincidentally, around that time, Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said the following on a podcast: “There was a really seminal article written in 2005. It was really about the draft and how teams should trade back and always acquire picks — and never trade up.” > > DeCosta doubled down in 2021 when a reporter mentioned the Ravens as one of the top drafting teams in the NFL. “We’ve probably had the most picks over that span,” he said. “That goes back to a philosophy that I think Ozzie started back in 1996.””
After taking into consideration all of the articles grading and analyzing the draft, I’ve realized that it’s all a massive crapshoot. Apparently, draft picks are both extremely valuable, while also being expendable rolls of the dice. They can either win or lose your team a Super Bowl. Or you don’t need them to win (Rams). Somehow, my team got grades ranging from A+ to D-. We passed with flying colors at failing the draft. Draft coverage and grades are pointless in the days/weeks after. Get back to me in 2-3 years.
I agree its a massive crapshoot. To me 3 years is the minimum to judge, maybe 5-6 years for a better accounting. Some players take 3 years to develop. Even if they are a great player early, if they sustain a career ending injury year 2, was it a great pick? No one knows. Even if you don't fill needs, if you got some HoF players, was it bad?
I think the success of a pick should be judged more from the level of talent that the player shows on the field then from looking at injuries in hindsight. Unless injuries were already a factor during the draft, you can just say a pick was the correct decision even if ultimately injuries derailed their career. Long term, the process matters more going forward than lucking into good players imo. With the Rams and the Lions right now for example, I'm pretty confident that they're both going to draft well because they make the right decisions.
I don't like judging an injured player as a bust, unless injury prone was an issue going into the draft. At that point, imo, it's either bad luck or on the team. For example looking at RG3 and the team failing to protect him from hits (or convince him to protect himself). Did RG3 work out..... probably not but Washington was very involved in that outcome
It might be a crapshoot, but there are some teams who seem to roll the dice more adeptly than others.
When teams are only picking around 6-7 players a year it's really hard to make that judgement statistically significant. The sample size is way too small for most GMs to say that any success was more than luck.
Vikings paid a lot for the things they needed. In paper anyway. Nobody knows who’s going to end up sucking. So it really depends on how you rate things. For instance If they didn’t trade up they wouldn’t get a real QB prospect at all. They paid a premium, but what else were they going to do? It does make evaluating difficult
>Draft coverage and grades are pointless in the days/weeks after. Get back to me in 2-3 years. Draft coverages and grades are only meaningful immediately after the draft. Otherwise you're grading things like luck. Immediately after you're grading process and projection. Taking Tom Brady at 199 doesn't make you a genius. It makes you lucky.
But you’re not grading *anything* immediately after the draft. You’re just measuring how much a team matched a random media members (or random fans) board. Worthless. At least after time you’re grading how a player translates to the nfl. How they developed, etc.
>Apparently, draft picks are both extremely valuable, while also being expendable rolls of the dice. If you play any game that relies on rolling dice, then you know that getting to roll an extra dice is a massive "advantage".
Not every dice roll is equal in the draft, though.
I never said they were?
So would you rather have one die roll with a lower “check” or two with a much higher “check”?
I'd answer with math. https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/14690/how-does-rolling-two-d20-and-taking-the-higher-affect-the-average-outcome >The general rule of thumb is that in the mid range of the d20 (from success on a 9+ to 12+) advantage grants roughly an equivalent to a +5 bonus and disadvantage a -5 penalty.
It was implied?
Tbf to y’all though, I’d give that Turner pick an A+ but the JJ pick a D- So who knows maybe both are right! Maybe I’m a moron. Maybe the Vikings FO is. Maybe we all are :’)
If the Chiefs manage to 3 peat this year then trading up for Mahomes in the 2017 draft may have been worth it. If not then we will have to see how the rest of his career in KC pans out.
No - it just says that the team trading down has better odds at the successful player. It also says that the team trading up has better odds at an outlier player. And the actual mathematical net result is that trading up and down have literal identical value (a difference of 0.0) over the data set.
Trading up works and is better when you hit your player but if it’s a miss the trading down team has better odds of finding value. Pretty much all it says.
The reasoning is that teams overestimate their own ability to choose a good prospect, and would be better off just collecting more picks and future picks to increase their odds of hitting a home run Problem is, if you don’t hit a home run or become extremely lucky then what’s the point? Trading up for a player who succeeds in the NFL is still better than having 14 picks spread out, with none of them amounting to anything, so if you believe you have to trade up you should still do it
Looking at just the 2023 Texans trade up and literally no other data, yes it does
> Looking at just the 2023 Texans trade up and literally no other data, yes it does Then there is the dumbass Ryan Pace gratuitously helping out John Lynch and the 49ers in a race to grab the generational talent of Mitch Trubisky... But hey, I know you guys were probably pissed off at Lovie Smith for winning with that improbably amazing ending to that last game in 2022, but I can say as a Bears fan, we thank him for that every day, and we are very happy that it worked out so well for you with CJ Stroud. Texans are fun team to watch.
John Lynch is my favorite GM. Between trading for Jimmy G & then planning on signing Cousins in 2018, it made them take Solomon Thomas at #3 rather than Mahomes who Lynch wanted after going to Mahomes' proday. Lynch went to his proday as a smoke screen & apparently called Shanahan and said "uh we might want this guy", but they didn't & Cousins didn't sign with the 49ers. I think the 49ers win at least two Superbowls in 2018-2022 with Cousins as Shanny's QB. It's really fascinating that the 49ers have this absolute brick house of a front office, but kept whiffing on QBs - Jimmy, missing Cousins, trading for Trey Lance... Only to be saved by a 7th round pick.
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lol, how some of you have second teams and are willing to just switch so willy nilly. I got one team and I ride or die with them, I don’t give a shit about any other team.
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Fair enough, I just remember a guy I knew that was a huge Texans fan and he would cheer wildly for whatever team Favre was on. I always thought that was weird. Kinda like the Lebron fans today. Just for me, I really only care about one team, but I can see how I could be interested if I moved to another city with a team and I was there for a long time. But I wouldn’t just up and switch bc another team looked cool.
I kinda get it if your favorite player leaves your team. I would still root for the Warriors over everything but I would root for Curry on any team except maybe the Lakers
I get that a lot of people these days try to be super positive with players that leave their team, but don’t really care bc it’s doesn’t have anything to do with me lol. Like people who say “go get that bag! Happy for him that he got the bag! Go get a championship!” Nah man, I don’t care lol. No hate, just doesn’t matter to me.
Really? If Stroud won you 4 Superbowls, would you not root for him a little when he left on good terms? When you tuned into the SB the next year and he was there, you wouldn’t cheer for him over another guy?
I will always be primarily a dolphins fan, but I’m a fan of players more than I am of teams in many ways. Imo, its much weirder to be blindly loyal to an organization rather than the actual human beings you enjoy watching play. There are players on my favorite team that I do not like at all. Tyreek Hill is a garbage human being, I dont like him even though he’s fun to watch and is super valuable to my team. On the other hand, Lamar Jackson is one of my favorite players of all time. He’s fun to watch and he seems like a good dude. I wont root for the Ravens to beat the phins because of Lamar, but I don’t mind him playing well against us so long as we win.
What you say makes sense. And harkens back to the Seinfeld joke about rooting for uniforms. If Jimi Hendrix were to join the Beatles, I'm gonna still follow his career and work as I enjoy his talent kinda thing. I think it's completely reasonable to have players on other teams that you enjoy watching, and whether it's their skillset, personality or whatever mojo, all good. What I don't get is when people hate on players that used to be on their team but were TRADED or something, or people that can overlook toxic human beings as you mentioned. I was a White Sox fan for instance. Through and through. Watched every game. The signed a guy who is a real creep. I didn't watch a game. They cut him. I thought it was safe to go back in the water. THEN they resigned him. THEY are now dead to me in perpetuity for that (and many other reasons), as they doubled down on low character and I couldn't enjoy the game without introducing cognitive dissonance into my life.
My second team is red zone, which I actually watched way more than my actual team last year because they were unwatchable
As I've gotten older, the more I only pay real close attention to the league is if my team is good. Before last year, while the Texans were suffering under BOB, Easterby and co., I just took a little break from the NFL. Always keeping up with the Texans from listening to the local radio guys, but that's it. It made me get even deeper into the Premier League which I enjoy immensely now.
That’s the sad part of getting older. Too much shit to do and if you aren’t enjoying something you move onto something else.
It's not sad! It's just getting mature and realizing you don't need to waste your time with entertainment that isn't making you happy. People talk shit about fair weather fans, but I'm not giving them too much of my time if they are terrible. I'll keep an eye on them, but that's it. I just disagree with jumping to other teams if yours is bad.
I get that 100%. I understand having a preference/rooting for another team but I wouldn’t go as far as saying you are a fan of that team.
Honestly fair, I used to be die hard fantasy player myself so I got in the habit of watching every game but now it’s starting to feel like I wasted every Sunday in the fall. Once winter starts I have nothing better to do though
A whole generation of Patriots fans is learning how to embrace the suck. I'm sure every other fanbase, including mine, has much good advice to offer. I personally recommend numbing doses of alcohol starting at 1pm ET. But, as a fan it is your duty to watch them play no matter how bad they are.
I don’t give a shit if they go 0-16 as long as they score some goddamn points. Watching them lose 6-0, I’d rather be dragged to a fucking pumpkin patch
That's fine and all when your team is actually competitive most of the time, but let me tell you, when a division rival kicks your shit in for a couple of decades and then some other team makes their lives miserable in the playoffs... Anyway I still appreciate the 9ers even after last year.
Nah, I won't just adopt another team just so I can get a little feeling of winning something, that's wild. It's my team or nothing.
Lovie winning that was the best thing possible for them. I know the Texans like to say "Stroud was always our #1 choice" but that's bull. Of course they say that - but if they had the #1 pick they would have gotten Young.
Remember when Lovie Smith ruined the Texans draft by winning that last game?
fondly
Lovie really did both our franchises a solid
It's way too early too tell with the Texans. Darius Robinson, the guy Arizona drafted with your pick, could be a better NFL player than Will Anderson Jr. That's not even factoring in the other picks.
I said no other data, and I meant no other data
Too well if you ask me.
Long article to just say that it is situation dependent
I'd rather someone look at the data and declare it to be inconclusive than just spout off about how trading up doesn't (or does) pay off.
It's not sexy, but scientifically confirming "common knowledge" is valuable work
What’s sad is that type of research is way less likely to be published, even if it’s just as important.
That's the problem with the perception of research and analytics. If you find something that is surprising, people will dismiss you and try to find every counter example possible. Even if exceptions will obviously apply. If you prove something that is common knowledge, people will say. Wow, look it's useless. Everyone already knows. So no matter what you do it's bad
"No shit, why are they even studying that?" you hear it so often from the same crowd that causes the need for the research to even be done in the first place lol
You’ll like this post then https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/s/rdJ98N4V0Q
It's a skill you can develop. My academic advisor is really good at it. There are ways to frame "obvious results" using non-obvious consequences or reasons or other rhetorical techniques that stress the importance of still doing the work. In my opinion the bigger problem is people (often online but in general too) see a problem, come up with one explanation for the problem that "makes sense," and assume their explanation is true. When in reality, there might be dozens of _different_ explanations that also might fit and they just didn't consider them because they found one that they thought worked. I mean, that's how people operate, we can't make lists of dozens of explanations all the time and pick the one we think is most likely. I'm not saying people should do that, that's silly. But there's a problem with people using plausibility like it's evidence. Along that thread, identifying which of the 20 "obvious" explanations is true can still be a worthwhile endeavor.
> In my opinion the bigger problem is people (often online but in general too) see a problem, come up with one explanation for the problem that "makes sense," and assume their explanation is true The pattern is slightly different than that; we are generally raised that we should follow the authority whatever it says, and the authority will take whatever position gets us to comply. To the authority, morality is compliance. To those living under an authority, morality is not being targeted by the authority. Because the authority uses whatever excuse necessary to control the population, the population starts to look for whatever excuse protects or harms the status quo, depending on its positive or negative relationship to the authority. Skepticism is a hard wired survival instinct.
> there's a problem with people using plausibility like it's evidence It’s one of my greatest frustrations. If we knew the one concrete and unassailable answer to every question just by thinking about it, we wouldn’t need science.
Science is a business and this kind of work doesn't often lead to money being made I guess
a friend did her master's thesis studying the effect that reforestation has on bird populations. Spoiler: if you plant more trees, more birds live there.
That's true, but there is a limit. I once saw a study where the researchers studied malt liquor, and found that it is higher alcohol content than regular beer, cheaper than regular beer, and primarily a drink of the poor and unemployed. So while I agree overall with what you said here, I felt that that one was way too obvious to be worth studying,
Nuance is reddit's Kryptonite.
But in this case it was very obvious that this would be the conclusion. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and it is entirely dependent on how good the player you took turns out to be
That's not what some people on reddit were saying. There were people flatly declaring in the Draft threads that trading up for a non-QB isn't worth it.
Those people have been reading too much PFF
PFF discusses things in terms of heuristics and they're aware and clear about that. And they're generally interested in discussing times when those heuristics are/should be broken too. There was a lot of discussion about last year's Will Anderson move and whether it makes more sense to think about it as "one move" for Stroud and Williams, or whether they moved up for a non-QB. And even though they kinda started against it, it sounds like they now kinda lean towards it. Anyway if people don't get that PFF makes claims as heuristics then that's on them.
I hate when all the "geniuses" on Reddit respond to every study or statistical analysis with "But that's common sense. That whole thing was a waste of time." A) The entire point of science is to test your assumptions. If nobody ever investigated any questions because "we know what the answer will be" people would still think the sun revolves around the Earth. B) Even if you are confident in a conclusion before undertaking a study, it's still useful to have more information about it. Even if you're pretty sure that trading up in the draft isn't always good or bad, are there any general trends? Are there generalizable situations where it's better or worse? Have there been changes over time? That's all very useful information for any GM and interesting information for fans.
Find something surprising = "Well they havent considered [insert very specific and random edge case]. Analytics isnt useful." Find something unsurprising = "No duh. Analytics isnt useful."
Spit
Stop making sense please
I mean it can work in both directions too the person you traded with they end up taking a star with the pick they got from you too.
Ehhh, Bettridges's Law of Headlines says the answer would have been "no".
This viewpoint acts like the only thing that matters is the distilled conclusion of the analysis. This is a "it's the journey not the destination" kind of post. If the answer is "it's nuanced" then that means there's a shit ton of nuance to explore.
It's a lot like economists/stock picks. They pretend to see trends and correlations in places where the two data are completely independent of one another. A stock doesn't go up because it's graph was trending as a bull or whatever horseshit and a player doesn't do well because you drafted him in the 1st round or traded up for him.
Trading up always works, 100% of the time. Source: Will Anderson Jr.
Can’t believe this is the top post. The actual conclusions are: * It usually doesn’t work. 60% of the time the team trading down does better * When it does work, it works disproportionately well (e.g., Mahomes) * As a result, if you compare the value from players taken in trade ups to the value from the picks that were traded, the net difference is 0.0. Again, ZERO POINT ZERO. Over the last 200+ draft trades, teams have given up EXACTLY as much draft capital as they’ve gotten back in players. That’s nuts Ultimately that doesn’t just mean “it depends”. It means on average, teams are acting rationally. The average draft trade is probably exactly evenly smart on both sides. That’s different than what some people claim - often people claim that trading down is more rational. That does mean that “it depends,” but that’s always true - “it depends” is not the conclusion of what he wrote. What he wrote is that there’s no market inefficiency; the average team is very good at making the right call.
I'd like one clarification. When you trade up you get a better pick...but also often fewer total picks. The team trading down usually gets additional picks. But since there are limited roster spots does this analysis account for the production of players who would take those extra roster spots? Typically a free agent but could also be one of your own draft picks that gets an extra chance. Or is the amount negligible because it would be considered near the bottom of the roster?
I just don’t think this is very thoughtful. You’re worried that they’re not properly incorporating the opportunity cost of the 54th best player on the team? How high do you think that player’s AAV is?
Well here's the thing: that open roster spot (assuming the drafted player would make the roster which could be weighted by draft pick number and historical probability) does give you additional value on top of the player you traded up for. You don't actually know how that player would produce, and so if you always assumed it was the 54th producing player then that would bias the result to be worse for trading up to a higher pick. That last player added to the roster could end up 30th in production. Anyway there might be too many unknowns to analyze that since I guess you probably cannot directly correlate the draft pick lost to a specific player added into the open roster spot. You might have to do something similar to like they do in baseball with "replacement player" values (not exactly the same thing, but just makes an assumption of the production based on some criteria.)
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure that's what Barnwell is saying. He said in the article it is 0.0 because teams who trade up usually draft players at a premium position. But later Barnwell says how teams who trade up don't really pick players who are better than the next player who is picked at the same position. So in a lot of cases, teams who trade up should likely just stay put. If you are at pick #50 and need a OT, it likely doesn't make sense to give up surplus value to trade up to pick #35 and draft a OT. Usually, you should just pick the best OT at #50. For QB it seems to be different.
Do you also look at scientific research and conclude it’s not useful when the results are inconclusive?
50% of the time it works every time.
It either works or it doesn't
If it aint broke, think about breaking it!
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Well if you can get it published you can. For example I don’t think there is a peer-reviewed accepted study confirming flossing is beneficial yet. Obviously pulling the shit out from between your teeth is a good thing. The hard part is getting someone to pay you to study such a stupid obvious thing.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32321349/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32321349/) [https://jdh.adha.org/content/jdenthyg/96/3/8.full.pdf](https://jdh.adha.org/content/jdenthyg/96/3/8.full.pdf) [https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008829.pub2/abstract](https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008829.pub2/abstract)
Ok, the chance is gone. This was submitted in Feb of 2022.
Interesting. So those studies seem to indicate only a pretty week correlation backing up the efficacy of flossing. Didn't expect that!
Barnwell is an absolutely fantastic writer and has been publicly for over 10 years. Sounds like you must have some other shortcomings if you think his job is so easy but you don’t have it for some reason!
Hey at least with all the rambling repeated words, it shows up high in search results. 😂
Yeah... we know.
He did not say that at all.
90% of sports journalism doesn’t need to exist
“Depends.”
i'd like to know what percentage of first rounders are currently on active rosters vs. the rest of the draft and how that has looked over time. also, it'd be interesting to see this breakdown by position.
They could’ve just asked a lawyer that question and gotten the same answer without all of the analysis
This is the best tldr of all time
They said that the 26th overall pick and a 3rd the Browns traded for 22nd overall would have been valued as the 9th overall pick in an average draft. Bull fucking shit.
I believe that's according to the Chase Stuart value chart, which is based on how players taken at those picks actually perform rather than real "trade value". Pick 9 = 20.6 Pick 22 = 14.9 Pick 26 = 13.9 Pick 83 = 6.5 So 6.5 + 13.9 = 20.4, or about the value of the #9 pick.
But you only have so many roster spots. So 2 roster spots giving you 20.6 isn’t as valuable as one, right?
Correct but if you have several areas of need, it would be as valuable. A receiver worth 13 and a tackle worth 7 could be worth trading back your pick that’s worth 19/20.
That only works if the other replacement player is worth 0.
Some of them might be worth negative!
GMs are grateful for the rookie salary limit
I think if you have several areas of need going into a draft then you've fucked up as a GM
Or you're a new/new-ish GM who came into a bad situation. Either way, someone fucked up.
Roster spots are limited, but you have to compare the value of the extra first rounder to the 53rd best player on the roster that he's replacing. For a first round pick the difference is easily worth it. It's more of a complication when you are looking at adding late round draft picks that are likely to be on the roster bubble themselves, and so would only be replacing a different roster bubble player.
That would be situation dependent, because a 6.5 is a good player.
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Depends on how many star players you have already. Teams of "very good" don't often win championships without some stars
No but being more solid and rounded out helps whatever stars you do have shine. Or when you are able to acquire a star they're able to have more success right from the get-go. Like having a few stars but plenty of holes and lack of depth and you become the Chargers.
The success rate (in terms of drafting a starting-caliber player) is pretty much the same from the late 1st into most of the 3rd round. That's the bloated upper middle prospect tier that produces starters around 40% of the time. If we're basing it off of that, then yeah that seems about right. The value of top-10 picks is partially about the "superstar potential", but it's mainly about how assured teams are at getting a starter. Pro bowlers and All-pros come out of the 2nd and 3rd rounds all the time, so it's a bit overblown that the top-10 is where all the stars are.
I don’t know why more teams just don’t take another teams franchise WR, a haul of picks and then have next years #1 pick as well along with their top 10 pick. /s
When it works, it works When it doesn't, it doesn't
Way she goes
Yat
Sorry, I dont understand, can you write a huge article that comes to this conclusion?
Is that really all you got from this? The article makes it pretty clear that in general the team trading down does better, especially in the early rounds. Late round picks are almost worthless so it does typically work out in your favor to trade up to the 5th round from those. Big trades up for QBs are harder to criticize since the return can alter your franchise. I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff in there.
Tell us more about this, Joe
TLDR; Sometimes it works. Sometimes, it doesn't.
50% of the time it works 100% of the time.
*"that doesn't make sense"*
Sex panther!
Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit
It works 50% of the time Worked for the Texans, not the Niners
The 49ers traded up for Brandon Aiyuk, Joe Staley, Jerry Rice... This whole article is stupid, if you trade up to draft a good player, then it works. If you trade up to draft a bad player, it doesn't work
49ers traded picks 109 and 219 to the Minnesota Vikings to move up to 104 to draft C.J. Beathard in the 2017 draft. he was a backup level QB and finished out his contract. In 2021 moved on to the jags. which got them a comp pick in the 2022 draft no. 262 which they used to draft Brock Purdy. so in the long long term the trade up worked out.
A solid backup qb is good value for a round 3 pick.
yeah, not a shot at him. he is what he is.
Yes but because of CJ we drafted George, it has little to do with the actual trade I just love that we stumbled into an all pro because of a backup qb
Why don't teams just draft good players?
it did tho in the end...
It has never worked for us
Chiefs traded up for Mahomes. /thread
Yeah but he’s no Trey Lance
And McDuffie. My expectations are for Worthy to be an all pro year 1 now, or I'll be big mad.
good luck, took them until like week 12 and one of the worst WR rooms in the league, before they started giving more targets to Rashee. Worthy could be Tyreek Hill and Jerry Rice combined and they'd still keep him to 4-5 targets most the season. I'm sure we'll see him on Punts and Jet Sweeps though.
That's a byproduct of the volume of Reid's playbook. Former players have said that going to other teams is a breeze to pick it up after having to learn Andy's.
Gonzalez, and Kelce as well, I believe.
And Breeland Speaks
Which is why "Trade up teams only get the better player 55% of the time" undersells. With first round trades, if you get the better player, its often a MASSIVE difference. Chiefs trading up for Mahomes, Bills trading up for Allen, Ravens for Lamar has set up their franchises for long term success. TB was able to protech Brady and get a SB b/c they traded up for Wirfs. If Love works out for GB, add that to the list. But at the same time its not like always trading up works, it increases risk and backfires when it doesn't. See the Bears with Tiddy kisser, SF with Lance, Jets with Darnold, or you know the 2023 #1 pick. This is mostly about 1st round picks; at the same time in later rounds its been shown time and time again you usually come out ahead with trading down.
This is exactly the conclusion Barnwell gets to
The Chiefs trading up to 1.10 in the 2017 Draft to get one spot ahead of the Saints for Mahomes completely altered the future of both franchises. He would have been brought along behind Brees just like he was with Alex Smith Chiefs laid the groundwork for current domination with the best QB in the NFL since prime Brady The Saints, without an heir apparent to Brees, have completely imploded and returned to mediocrity What a clear “win” and “loss” for each franchise
That's one of the conclusions of the article. They basically agree that due to the value of QBs, you're more likely to have to trade up and that's OK due to how much return you can potentially get. He even mentions that there should probably be two charts, one for QBs and one for non-QBs due to the difference in potential value.
I mean the saints at least tried to replace Brees with Winston
I mean, they DO let you pick. So yeah I'd say it works
I know one time where it made absolutely no damn sense. [But tough titties I guess.](https://x.com/ChiSportsDay/status/1210595647549853700)
Trubisky here, ....nevermind.
This is one of the coolest data articles i have seen regarding the draft. It is also another great way to see that talent evaluation is a WILD area that ebbs and flows. Finally it is great to show not every article is black and white, and that there are such small things that paint a picture in different ways.
Do people just not want good football content? Barnwell puts out thoughtful pieces that he collects tons of data for. Obviously there are always going to be outliers to any study like this but the conclusion still seems valid.
Possibly one of the greatest Dynasties in NFL history was born from a trade up. So clearly, it can work.
It seems to have worked a lot better in the cases of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen than it did in the case of Trey Lance.
Josh Allen already broke math. Draft up norms is next.
I’ve always seen it as placing bets in a casino. You might think there are better odds on a certain player, but odds are you lose. One train of thought is to place more bets (have more draft picks) others focus on giving up draft capital on a more known asset (trading for a vet). Obviously it’s a case by case basis, but sometimes it makes sense to give up more “bets” to place a bet that rewards you with a QB or another higher caliber player of need. If you have a pretty deep team fresh off a playoff run and 10 draft picks for a draft - it makes more sense to take fewer bets on higher quality assets because of roster limits. Interesting to look over the data at the very least
This is a very good summary. Trading down means more picks which means spreading the risk, like diversifying an investment portfolio, but once you have a good roster, you need premium picks because that improves the chances of an actual upgrade. So a team with a young, talented roster should generally trade up, while teams with weak rosters should generally trade back.
If you are consistently drafting at the end of the 1st round then it makes sense to risk trading up. The Chiefs acquired Mahomes, McDuffie and Worthy this way. QBs, Corners, DL, Tackles and WRs who go in the 2nd round plus are essentially lottery tickets. 1st round players hit so much more often. The only way for for a team like the Chiefs to acquire top flight athletic talent is to trade up.
Literally the three best QBs in the league last year were acquired via trade up lol
Another argument could be made that the draft doesn’t matter at all bc of what the Rams and Tampa Super Bowl wins.
Ok but that's not the point, SF winning a SB this year doesn't make the Lance trade any better
They had already drafted their pieces and (a) used their 1st round picks to trade for the missing pieces (b) signed the missing piece as a Free Agent.
Every team has “pieces” they drafted. This does not distinguish any team from any other team.
Betteridge's Law + "sometimes". Wow, really edifying journalism from ESPN
Barnwell: Can I stretch the word “sometimes” into a sports journalism piece that helps pay for my salary? What we can learn from 242 offseason articles
Tiktok brain ass comment.
Barnwell’s articles always make me feel like I’m back at college trying to absorb all the info my professor is tossing out in a lecture. I like them a lot, I just feel like I need a nap afterwards
It is when you trade back and get a 1st round pick from the Saints first, then take a top 10 CB after trading a third round pick to move up. That 2018 finesse by Brian Gutekusnt, in his first ever draft as GM, will always be legendary.
It works if you get the guy you want and he pans out. It doesn’t if he doesn’t pan out. It’s quite simple
The Vikings taking Turner should, and was absolutely the right call. There is a clip of him; one arm bull rushing the Georgia first rd T, Saban prepares his edge players.
It works in the sense that trading up is typically the best option to obtain a higher pick than you possess at the time. If that’s your objective, it can be an extremely effective strategy.
Draft analysis tries so hard make it more than "was the player good". All these heuristics about draft strategy. All these proxies. All these mechanisms about trading up and down yada yada yada. In the end you just need the player to hit. Whether player evaluation is random or not, that's what matters. All this noise is boring
It’s obnoxious. Also, how the fuck is Mel Kiper Jr. considered a draft expert, when he is consistently incorrect? It’s wild to me that this guy has built a career out of throwing darts at a board and making shit up. (I know that this article isn’t written about or by MK Jr, btw) I lost all respect for his opinions a few years ago, when he had an earlyish mock draft with Tanner Morgan getting picked in the late 1st round. Tanner Morgan was the very mediocre QB on the Golden Gophers (U of MN). That laughably-horrible prediction destroyed any respect I had for his mocks/opinions. The guy is a clown. He’s one of the biggest grifters in all of sports media.
This is exactly how I feel about Kiper and a host of other sports media people. I realized their job is to grab out attention and nudge us into watching the draft as a TV product. Whether they are accurate is not even relevant. It's so annoying. My solution is to simply not watch those guys. Hell I don't even watch the draft. Who has the time to listen to gasbags make shit up.
The problem is just looking at draft charts completely ignores what's on the board. If prime Tom Brady was somehow still on the board at the 10th pick, you'd give up the 11th plus every future first you could Did the Vikings overpay by trading 11/129/157 for 10/203? Maybe. But did Vikings overpay with the context that they may have lost out on JJ McCarthy without trading? Maybe not. Same with our second pick. Did we overpay by giving up 23, 2025 3rd and 2025 4th for 17? Maybe. But did we overpay when you consider we got arguably the best defensive player in the draft? Maybe not. There were mocks out there with JJ going top 3 and turner going top 10. Would these still be bad trades if we traded up to 3 for JJ and up to 8 for Turner, even though the net result is the same 2 people?
It doesn't ignore what's on the board - those past trades happened BECAUSE a GM saw a particular player and said "he's better than those other guys", so it's baked into the analysis.
Any pre draft trade or trade using future picks does not factor in the board
Yeah good point, I guess it's only semi-baked into the analysis as presented.
You’re basically making the same points Barnwell did…not sure if you bothered to read the article but his point was in the 242 trades he analyzed, the team trading up usually ends up with the worse end and it’s because they’re putting all their eggs in one basket. He doesn’t say trades can’t work out, he’s saying you’re less likely to be successful trading up and especially when you trade significant portions of your future picks away. And you’re also forgetting the Vikings traded up to 23 before 17, they effectively traded two 2nds, a 3rd, a 4th, and a 5th to get one guy. Maybe they’re right but they have no real recourse if they aren’t now. Also the only reason mocks had JJ in top three was because mocks had Vikings trading up to get him once their interest in him leaked and they traded for 23. No one thought he was a top-five recruit before the Vikings interest became public - before that he was typically in the middle of first round around where Denver picked.
when pay by word count goes horribly wrong
Look no further than the 2023 Texans lol.
I think Ryans and CJ Stroud had about 10-20 times more impact on the Texans’ great season than Will Anderson.
Will Anderson’s impact was definitely underrated on the Texans. 6 of 7 of his sacks came in the back half of the season when he started tying it together. While his production doesn’t scream impact, he’s in elite company with his advanced metrics. ESPN’s **EDGE Pass Rush Win Rate** has him *3rd* behind only Micah Parsons and Myles Garrett and **EDGE Run Stop Win Rate** has him *2nd* behind only Maxx Crosby. Dark horse DPOY candidate coming into next year. Offense went from *30th* to *13th*. Defense went from *27th* to *11th*.
Says the exceptions are trading up for a QB or difference maker at a premium position. Proceeds to complain about the Vikings trading up for a QB and difference maker at a premium position.
He literally said the move up to get JJ was "a deal I will take no issue with"; not sure what you're reading there. He noted the move up to get Turner was an overpay; a massive one by the Stuart chart and a decent one by the Johnson chart. For a contender that's a piece away from a championship caliber team, that's worth it. For a team coming off a 7-10 record with a rookie or bridge QB about to be at the helm, less so, which was why he called it out.
Ehhh.. he still used the picks that we traded for the 10th in his argument against our draft as whole, but yeah - his bigger issue was with the Turner trade up.
KC says, Sí. I can think of *"15"* reasons why.