Immediate draft grades can be kind of silly (but admittedly fun). After all, none of the players involved have actually played anything yet, and until they do and provide us with some new information, the best grade of a draft is probably the draft itself, or failing that, the consensus boards. I’ve written on this in the past and it’s still true.
However, I do have a soft spot for attempts to grade or quantify the process teams used in the draft, which brings us to this piece in The Athletic by the aptly-named Austin Mock. Mock and company put together a system based on The Athletic’s consensus board, the monetary value of each draft position, the positional value of each player drafted, and accounting for any trades that occurred. They also forced a curve, and so for each A, there must also be an F.
It’s an interesting read that includes some surprising results (the Falcons receiving an A, for example), and Mock does a good job of calling out instances where the system may have a blind spot. And to head this off at the pass, yes, I realize all of the teams at the top except the Packers are kind of bad. Some of you will see the Packers among the Browns, Giants, Titans, and Panthers, and call this entire thing stupid or worrying. Please do not do so, as you should instead be pleased to see the Packers hanging around with teams that possessed so much draft capital and got to juice their numbers with quarterbacks.
The Browns completely ripped off the Jaguars in trade value when they moved back from #2 overall to #5, then they drafted a quarterback who will look like a steal to any system (even if he’s not that good). In this exercise, it’s good to be ranked with them, even if it’s bad to be compared to the Browns in virtually any other context. Anyway, if you cheer for a team in the NFC North, you will definitely want to take a closer look, because the Packers led the division with an A-, while the Vikings (D-) and Lions (F) were among the worst.
I was quite surprised by this because we play close attention to the consensus boards here at APC, and the Packers did a lot of reaching in the conventional sense. I figured that any process-based system would hate their class, but here they’re saved due to all eight drafted players playing premium positions (2 WR, 2 OT, 2-ish Edge, 1 DT, 1 CB). There may be some lost value due to grabbing Anthony Belton well before his consensus number, but there is none of the waste that comes with picking an off-ball linebacker, running back, or specialist either.
In this context, some of those Packer “reaches” make quite a lot of sense. Remember, the consensus board doesn’t adjust for positional value and between Anthony Belton’s consensus board spot (around 100 on the Athletic) and his actual draft spot (54th) there were multiple quarterbacks, safeties, and other lower value positions taken that the Packers simply did not need or want. Additionally, as our Justis Mosqueda has noted, it seems that there were many teams in on Belton early, and he may have been underestimated by the media relative to how NFL teams viewed him.
On the other side of the rankings, the Lions earned their F mostly through poor value trading, and in particular, in their trade up for project wide receiver Isaac TeSlaa in the third round. The Lions reached on four players, including all of their picks in the first three rounds, they took lower-value positions (two guards and a safety), and of course the bad trades. And I think this makes some sense.
The Packers took an athletic project receiver of their own in TCU’s Savion Williams, but that pick did not require a trade-up, and Williams was selected in the general area of his various consensus spots. TeSlaa was picked 17 slots ahead of Williams despite a lower ranking, and he cost Detroit draft capital. It seems like poor process went into the pick, and the system sees it.
The Vikings had the fewest picks of any team in the league and so there’s no surprise they did not grade well, but they also reached quite a bit and used their first-round pick on an interior offensive lineman (though they do really need those).
The Bears finished with a B-, and no write up. Alas.
I always appreciate that the Packers seem to have a very process-oriented method to how they draft. Their position-stacking is interesting, if nothing else, and their rigid use of athletic testing indicates to me at least that they’ve done the work.
Analytics isn’t everything and you need to have some nuance about these things. After all, you can’t make the whole team out of QBs and edge rushers, but at a high level, if your team routinely struggles in these types of analyses, they will probably struggle on the field as well.
