2019 Draft by the Numbers: Part II
Ranking the Draft Boards
by David Perkins | May 3, 2019
The National Football League’s annual draft is over, fans are cheering or jeering, and asking endless “Whys?” The hope of the new season has taken on a full rebirth, and fans can now catch a glimpse of the “bigger picture,” as espoused by their favorite organization. While the draft is still fresh in our minds, and before we forget the nauseating number of mocks, grades and analysis, I want to flip the draft season on its head. Because for the next 3 years, we will hear about how good, bad, and ugly the 2019 draft was, and be inundated with re-drafts, and more draft grades. UGH!
So, before we tar and feather GM’s for not drafting our favorite player (the surefire Hall of Famer), and before we vomit profusely over Kiper and friends talking endlessly about why the Chiefs draft stinks — oops too late — let’s grade the draft boards, into whom we put so much pre-draft faith.
How good are the draft boards?
I utilized the services of 7 ranking systems to create the Perkins Compilation Big Board (for lack of a better name), and then added Gil Brandt’s Top 150 for fun. The web sites/draft services used were: Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Draft Analyst, The Draft Network, Draft Scout, Drafttek, Fanspeak, and Gil Brandt. You probably read many of the same. For each of the draft boards, I used the last available big board just before the draft, then compiled the top 300 players from each site (other than Brandt’s with only 150). So that is the basis for this analysis.
The Top 50 Picks
All 8 sources had their top 50 picks actually drafted between #1 to #254, so they all score 100%. You expect professional(?) sources to get 50 picks right. Enough said.
The Top 100 Picks
This is where the rubber starts to meet the road. This table indicates how many top 100 rankings were actually drafted.
Gil Brandt knocked it out of the park with a near perfect score of 99%!
The Top 150 Picks
Since the talent level degrades over time (by pick and round) one expects the draft boards to have the same difficulty in ranking players after Round 3 as teams have drafting the talent. A fact proven out by illustrious hits in and after the 3rd round (like All Pro’s Travis Kelce, Jamaal Charles, Albert Lewis, and Kevin Ross, to name a few).
Brandt again had 95% of his top 150 drafted! Outstanding! Draft Scout and Draft Analyst also proved their chops, breaking the 90% mark.
The Top 200 Picks
Brandt drops out of the running, but I couldn’t help myself.
Draft Analyst ties CBS at the top despite the law of averages catching up to each source. Drafttek and Fanspeak, sources that I would classify as being run by fans without the sharpest eye for football talent, increasingly fade.
Then There Were the Misses
This table indicate the # of misses (undrafted players) in the top 200 for each draft board.
Fanspeak missed the most at 15 players, meaning 8% of their top 200 failed to mesh well with the other 6 boards. We want perfection from our draft boards right? And we got it. I was stunned by CBS Sports, who did not miss a single player! Again this means every single one of their top 200 players were ranked as a top 300 player by at least 2 more sources.
The Worst Ranking
Now this is fun! This table shows the highest (or worst) drafted player in each tier. Or put another way: How many players did it take to get the top 50 or 100 or 150 players drafted?
Interpretation: It took Mack Wilson drafted at #155 for Bleacher Report and Draft Analyst to have all top 50 drafted.
See the #206 – that was Kelvin Harmon falling to the Redskins. Remember there was enough concern about his neck injury, that all 32 teams passed about 6 times on him. Gil Brandt won the Top 50 Worst Award (or Best Award) when Connor McGovern was drafted #90, fulfilling his top 50. Meaning his latest drafted player was #90 with #155 the next lowest, so Brandt beat the other boards by 65 selections!! Most draft boards had to wait for Caleb Wilson at #254 before rounding out their top 100 and top 150. And as a reminder, all sources had players not drafted between #51 and #150 (with Brandt having only 7 no-shows overall).
Largest Deviation: Quality of Big Board
We reviewed the Hit%, Worst Ranking, and Miss %, each insightful in their own right, but neither providing a “quality” snapshot of a big board. The next table (omitting the nitty details) indicates the average deviation from the actual position for an entire tier group. The quality of the big board depends upon the deviation from the perfect score (a perfect score being ranks and draft matching exactly) or to say it statistically, “What was the width of the range in which the picks were actually drafted?”
Interpretation: Brandt’s Top 50 picks were drafted on average within 5 spots of his ranking (the lowest deviation).
Brandt wins each tier group hands-down.
Conclusion: based on the numbers
My quest to even undertake this analysis, stemmed from the fact that I, like a lot of fans, crave the best information and data possible. Plus, there is only one way to determine who is full of baloney (Kiper) and who to listen to (or read), and that is to compile, analyze, and interpret.
Note: Honestly, I have not reviewed Kiper’s pre-draft Big Board. It is just easier to poke fun at the talking hair! LOL. (bad analysis, I know)
The top 150 picks cover the entire first 4 rounds, and since we all know the first 4 rounds offers the greatest likelihood of finding instant and near instant impact players, the first 4 are the most valuable.
After careful consideration of the data over the first 150 picks, Gil Brandt is the man. The guy is a genius, even though “retired” from football. Draft Analyst, Draft Scout, Bleacher Report and CBS, take the next 4 spots, with Fanspeak and Drafttek picking up the rear. To put it in perspective, Brandt for the most part is 2x as good as the next four.
The biggest problem is: we can’t run mocks with Brandt’s big board, at least not yet. But maybe we can all write to Fanspeak, and get them to expand their list of big board options, and improve the accuracy of our mocks at the same time!!
For that matter, First Pick could use some help as well.
If you have a favorite big board that I did not use, please share. I am always looking for better information. In fact, it was Ransom who shared info from The Draft Network, that got me to look their direction.
What say you AO?
David Perkins — ArrowheadOne
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