Trading Future First Round Picks

[DaDitka]

Read an interesting write up over at Football Perspective about the last ten trades of future first round picks

If you've got some time to read it, it's pretty interesting.

Here's the take on the Cutler trade..

7) Chicago trades its 2009 and 2010 first round picks to Denver for Jay Cutler (April 2009)

Trade made by: Jerry Angelo
Picks lost for: Jerry Angelo

Angelo was entering his 9th season as GM in Chicago when he traded for Cutler. He had overseen an NFC Championship squad under Rex Grossman, and decided to go “all-in” by mortgaging the future to fix the quarterback position. In 2008, Chicago went only 9-7 with a defense that ranked 9th in ANY/A allowed and 3rd in YPC allowed. No principal agent problem here, and the trade nearly worked out for Angelo when the Bears reached the NFC title game in 2010. But that was the high point of the Angelo-Cutler era, and the general manager was fired after the 2010 season.

And their final overall conclusion on trading future first round picks...

Conclusion

One thing is clear: in general, trading future first round picks is a poor decision. But most of the time, the impetus for the trade is less a principal-agent problem and more one of overconfidence. General managers see players slipping and believe that they know more than the rest of the NFL. General managers see a “proven veteran” and think that’s worth more than an unproven rookie. Teams want a franchise quarterback, so they see one in the back half of the first round. Teams see a shrinking championship window, and desire to mortgage the future.

On average, these picks don’t tend to work out. In fact, only one of the 18 teams on this list have won a Super Bowl since that trade (although to be fair, only one of the counter-teams that traded for a future first won a title, too). If a general manager wants to trade a future first round pick for a player, he must ask himself why that player is still available this late in the draft. Chances are, the GM isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

[Hiphopopotamos]

I need to find the article - but some mathematician did an analysis of NFL drafting over the last 20 or so years, player performance compared to pick value and what picks were traded up/down, and came to the conclusion that it is nearly a universal truth that trading up is never worth it and that trading down is always worth it.

[malk]

The analysis in the article is quite odd and I hate the line about winning the Super Bowl, that might be the aim but it isn't the way to analyse a trade.

To have a proper look at whether trading away future picks is good or bad you'd need to do a few things. First, discount anything done by Al Davis or Jerry Jones! No, seriously. Then you need to look at the types of trade made. Was it one future first for a 1st this year, was it a future plus current to move up, was it multiple futures to move up or was it a pick or picks for a veteran.

Multiple picks for one isn't going to do your odds of getting a player much good as the hit rate at the top of the draft isn't better than two chances in the middle/bottom. A one for one is a wash and pretty much a bet on how well your team will do that season. Trading for vets is complicated by the salary cap as you lose on the cheap years of a draftee but that wasn't the case as much under the old CBA with top rookies getting silly money.

As for our trade for Cutler, it isn't too much of a stretch to think that we'd target a QB with those picks if we didn't pull the trigger on the trade. 2009 was a good year to miss for top rated QBs and the less said about the 2010 ones the better.

[wab]

If you look at who the Broncos took with those picks, it was a total win for us.