Great Draft Analysis Article at Rotoworld: Which teams draft the best?

[KB_fan]

For stats geeks, this is a really interesting article at rotoworld.  It looks at which NFL teams have drafted the best over the past 3 and 5 years.

http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/nfl/62231/71/which-teams-draft-the-best?
 

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With the benefit of hindsight, we can go back and judge whether a draft was good or not, but that’s not the focal intent here. I’m not looking to go back and dissect why or why not Player A was a good or bad pick at the moment. Rather, I want to know which teams have gotten the most profit out of their draft picks and which teams are selecting the most players that contribute.

For that, we’re using Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value (AV) metric. That measure is far from a flawless science, but it’s satisfactory for what we’re looking to accomplish, which is identifying players that are contributing and placing a mark on that total contribution.

 

 

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The Seattle Seahawks are way ahead of everyone in terms of overall return from the players they’ve selected. No NFC team has won more games (including the postseason) over this timespan than Seattle's 60 wins, and their foundation for those wins was acquired through the draft. Stockpiling picks has been the groundwork for Seattle as they've made the third most overall draft picks (47) of this time frame and ranked second in AV per pick. 

The Seahawks' accumulation is so far ahead of the pack because they absolutely demolished the 2011 and 2012 drafts, so those stellar picks have had a longer window to boost that total. In those two drafts, they landed Richard Sherman and Russell Wilson (who ranks first in AV provided per game for players in this study), but they also landed a flock of contributors in K.J. Wright, Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner, J.R. Sweezy and James Carpenter. They’ve started to lose some players via free agency, so it will be interesting to see if they maintain, because over the past three years, the Seahawks rank a concerning 31^st in return from their draft classes.

The Carolina Panthers are all the way over to the left as they’re tied with Chicago and New Orleans for making the fewest draft selections (31) over the past five years, but they’ve gotten the biggest bang for their buck in the entire NFL in terms of AV per pick. The Panthers have dominated the early rounds recently, nailing Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly (who rank third and fifth respectively in AV provided per game), Star Lotulelei, Kawann Short and Trai Turner within the first three rounds. They also hit on the now-departed Josh Norman in the later portion of the draft.

 

It's a 3 page article.... so there's much more, including a look at just the last 3 years when teams like the Seahawks & Denver fell way off the chart, but we continued to ace the draft. 

FUN READING!

 

[TheSpecialJuan]

good stuff. thanks