It's from WCG. There's a Part 1 and a Part 2. https://www.windycitygridiron.com/2022/ ... ket_mylist.LT2_3 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 12, 2022 8:05 amAny chance you can post a link to the article that you are interpreting for us? My main issue is that while you project a failure rate of 50% for first round picks, you never define either success or failure so there is no way to check the math. The problem lies in the fact that perception and draft location / expectations play a huge part. So how about Stephan Paea? Drafted in the second round (53rd overall) played 4 years for the Bears and then signed with another team and played for 3 more seasons. Was that a successful draft pick or not?Bearfacts wrote: ↑Tue Apr 12, 2022 7:32 am Don't know that best place to post this so I chose here because it's part of the plan.
Just read something from a guy dealing with draft metrics which to a certain degree I do understand from a professional standpoint. They aren't a substitute for good judgement but they can help you make better decisions by taking emotion out.
To summarize it his findings tend to indicate more draft picks have a higher correlation coefficient for success than fewer picks. So either trading back to acquire more picks or simply accumulating them however improves the probability of success since the draft is truly a random process. No matter how well you scout no one can accurately project college performance into NFL performance with perfect accuracy as we've often learned with Pace's higher draft picks.
Also, more higher picks are not a surety of consistent success because the failure rate of highly drafted players is still around 50%. So even having a 1st round pick doesn't significantly improve your odds although having multiple 1st round picks may if only based on more draws from the well early on. The counter to this comes when a GM trades lower round picks and/or future picks to trade up for 1st round picks or multiple 1st round picks giving up quantity for hopefully better quality. But does it work?
Based on the metrics probably not unless you get very lucky.
The overall best approach seems to be one of acquiring more picks in each draft to improve your chances of winning yet at the same time using a higher pick(s) on that one impact type player you feel is who you really want most of all. If we apply this to this years draft the best approach Poles might take is trade down with one of his two 2nd round picks or possibly both adding more picks in rounds 3-5 where better values may be had and also adding picks to increase the probability of success.
Some teams seem to live by this philosophy doing it as often as they can. NE would be a good example and Balt. another.
What may work even more to his advantage is if Poles can define several players he would be happy to have in round two and is willing to trade back accepting whichever is there for him at that pick. He could then add more picks in the middle rounds which is really where he stands a good chance of finding even more core type players to re-tool with. But.....he still can draft two starter caliber players in round two. He just has to allow himself multiple options as opposed to "falling in love" with a specific player.
This may have been Pace's biggest downfall. He was always too willing to overpay in order to trade up for a player he did fall in love with and several of them didn't pan out. So not only was one pick wasted on that player but at least one or more were also wasted trading up for him. Anthony Miller would be a prime example of this type of move. If Poles is much wiser he'll do the opposite especially in this draft where there is significant depth at positions he needs to draft for.
While I'm not wholly sold on the idea of metrics alone IMHO they do provide a good core strategy from which to base decisions on when it's clear you could go one way or the other. One huge advantage is it can help take emotion and/or favoritism out of the decision process as long as whose ever making the final call is willing to follow it and not allow emotion to overrule. No GM will ever be perfect in any draft but if he can improve his odds via metrics I'm all for it because I've found myself that it works much better than flipping a coin or throwing darts but it's also not as easy to do as you think. Emotion is a powerful force.
Some of it gets into a lot of detail but as he should the author does go into his methodology and his approach. What I've found most helpful is how well is conclusions for each approach correlate with their success. Here's his statement on failure rate.
This trend is largely due to the fact that the draft is a 50-50 proposition. Statistically-speaking, over 50% of first-round picks bust within their first four years in the NFL. Still, teams appear intent on valuing a few high draft picks over many more lower ones in the hopes that they actually know what they’re doing.
How I define success vs failure may not be the same as the author or others do so there will always be a caveat of some sort to go along with most anyone's opinions about this topic and a specific player or players. Defining failure will nearly always be a subjective determination unless we choose a set of reliable standards to measure against and that itself can be subjective. With some players it's very obvious (eg: Kevin White) and with others it's no so obvious (eg: Mitch Trubisky).
My own opinion as it relates to Paea is that he somewhat under performed his draft status but was a failed pick? No.
