Note: Pictured above are, #98, NT B.J. Hill from North Carolina St., #8 CB/S Kyzir White from West Virginia, and #32 ILB Rashaan Evans from Alabama. Each could be available between pick numbers 54 and 124. The significance of that will soon become apparent.
Rebuilding. It sounds like a dirty word to many of us who call ourselves Kansas City Chiefs fans. While Head Coach Andy Reid addressed the media yesterday at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, I think the interview that owner Clark Hunt had with the KC Star during the Super Bowl may tell us more about the building process of the team than anything Reid revealed in Indy on Tuesday.
Hunt said in February that “we’re not in rebuilding mode” but obviously there are holes on the Chiefs roster and most of those are on the defensive side of the ball right now. So, how do you “build” your defense without being in “rebuilding mode?
Let’s begin with a few things owner Clark Hunt revealed about this team. He said:
- “I will look back and say it was a successful season.”
- “We were in a very tight cap situation last year… we weren’t able to do much from a free-agent standpoint.”
- “… we do [currently] have holes in the roster, at starting positions and backup positions, that we’ve got to fill…”
- “You don’t want to put yourself in a rebuilding mode, and certainly, as a two-time division winner, we’re not in a rebuilding mode.
- “A lot of the issues that we had this year defensively were about personnel and the lack of depth.”
As Hunt recognized that there were holes to fill he also said about building that, “… I’m not sure you can do that intelligently in one year.” I’ve mentioned this idea previously, that the Chiefs are in a two-year re-building process, so it’s a good idea to look at how the offense has seemingly moved past the defense over the past two seasons.
As we examine where each of the Offensive starters came from, it will give us a better idea about what to expect of the 2018 Chiefs on the defensive side of the ball. One point I will mention here about an Andy Reid comment on Tuesday is that, he likes several of the Chiefs younger players and wants to give them a chance to start. So, that will be an important element of this team we’ll see on the field this year.
Sometimes I work on these charts and something jumps out at me that I hadn’t expected. Sure, I was certain that we’d find that the offense is made up of many players from all over the map as far as differing draft rounds are concerned but I didn’t expect to only find two 1st round picks on the list. Two. That’s it.
One of the reasons that jumps out at me is that the Chiefs don’t have a first round pick in this draft and many fans are worried that it means they won’t be able to find players who will make an impact or become starters. Kareem Hunt, Travis Kelce, Mitch Morse, Parker Ehinger, and Chris Conley (he at least got starters snaps with 540) each became starters the first year after they were drafted.
The three players on offense — thus far — who have had the greatest impact are Travis Kelce (3rd Round), Tyreek Hill (5th Round), and Kareem Hunt (3rd round). In other words, the Chiefs have proven they are perfectly capable of finding difference makers in others rounds than the 1st or 2nd rounds. That bodes well moving forward… if they can hit the playmaker-jackpot again… on the defensive side of the field
Another meaning of this charted info is that the Chiefs will need to rely upon their evaluations framework more than ever. Projecting the success of first round picks is a lot easier (except when it comes to Dee Ford) than for the second and third day choices in the draft.
I was reading where the evaluation “framework” is so much more expansive than what fans realize: there is not only a room that evaluators have to examine a prospect’s IQ and personality… and room for evaluations of their on-field skills… a room for cap liabilities and responsibilities… but also — and perhaps biggest and most important room — a room for projections and best guesstimations about what other teams needs are and what they will do in the draft.
Do you know the Sun Tzu quote? “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
So, let’s take a peek at how the defense is presently constructed:
Notes about the Defensive Origins chart:
- Allen Bailey is still on the roster so he gets the nod here at DE.
- Tanoh Kpassagnon was mentioned as an OLB on Tuesday by Andy Reid and since he also mentioned he was wanting to start some of his younger players who he believes in, he gets the nod here too.
- Even though Ron Parker has been rumored to being released, he’s also still on the roster so he gets the nod here as well at SS.
- I believe the Chiefs will make a move to strengthen the ILB position but, until that happens, Ukeme Eligwe gets the nod.
With Eric Berry representing the lone 1st round pick on the defense now that St. Peters is in L.A. the fact remains for the Brett Veach team of evaluators to get this draft right. After all, this is his first draft to be the lead evaluator. The buck stops with Veach now.
From a numbers standpoint, of the 25 offensive and defensive players mentioned above, 8 (approximately one-third) of the players did not come as a result of the Chiefs drafting them.
- Of the players who were drafted by the Chiefs, their average draft position was 2.9 overall.
- Of the Offensive players drafted by the Chiefs, their average draft position was 3.2.
- Of the Defensive players drafted by the Chiefs, their average draft position was 2.6.
Without getting too Pythagorean (or embarrassing myself because it’s been too many years since I took a Master’s level Statistics course) the Chiefs have a standard deviation score here on their successful hits on draft picks. The average of all starters (players with starting snaps) is 2.9 but we’ll round that off to the beginning of the 3rd round for the sack of the conversation. Question: can we say that the Chiefs are currently only able to produce starters at “the beginning of the third round and there only?” No, not at all, because there is something called a standard deviation.
For example, the Combine uses this approach when taking three tries on the 40-yard dash. Let’s say the first time by a WR is 4.2 and the second run is 4.5 and the third run is 4.8. They’ll usually take the middle score. That’s not the median score, nor is it the average score (necessarily). It’s the score that represents the approximate middle of a runners capabilities. Plus, 4.2 and 4.8 also represent the upward and downward limits too. We use this method in education all the time to get a feel for… a learner’s ballpark abilities… which becomes very helpful when lesson planning because you don’t want to plan lessons that are way out of their league, nor lessons that would bore them to tears.
So, the other two scores are very important because they represent the standard deviations. So, let’s say a starter drafted by the Chiefs is usually taken at the beginning of the 3rd round, however, the variance for that is one whole round which is their standard deviation (could be more, could be less). What I’m trying to say is… the Chiefs have a very good chance of drafting two-to-three starters between picks 54 and 124 because their middle score is 65 (as in the 65th pick in the draft, which is the first pick of the third round) and any player taken a whole round — before, or after (approximately) — is their standard deviation.
Note: I haven’t done the actual math but, that’s the basic idea.
Don’t forget that these Chiefs found an offensive lineman, Zach Fulton, who started as a rookie, in the 6th round of the 2014 draft (193rd overall) and Parker Ehinger, a 4th rounder, started his rookie year as well. Also, RG Laurent Duvernay-Tardif eventually became a very good starter and was taken in the 6th round too.
After all the wrangling this offseason — so far — the Chiefs have 5 mid round selections: 54, 78, 86, 122, and 124. The Chiefs actually have a number of well positioned choices (who are going to all be great value picks as opposed to those high-dollar top-shelf 1st-round draft-picks cuz we all know the Chiefs will take all the cap help they can get right now), any of which could turn into playmaking starters like: Kareem Hunt, Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, Justin Houston, Chris Jones, and Steven Nelson. There’s no reason to think the Chiefs can’t produce a group of dominant defensive dynamos in this draft.
Clark Hunt said about last season, “We won the division — only the first time in the history of the franchise we’ve won two division championships in a row.” Now, if they can just win this draft, then three-in-a-row will look a lot more like a possibility.
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