The Class Play - How to Analyze a Draft

Sam Bruchhaus brings on Tej Seth to discuss how to grade a GM's process after the draft.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcometo the class play. After the draft,
Tas and I were together in Detroit, as many of you know if
you watched along, and now weare back in our respective homes ready to
cover the post draft period. Tajetell us about the draft and tell us
about kind of the recovery of threelong days of you know, covering the

(00:26):
best prospects in the world for football. I am so glad that we got
to hang out together at the draftwith Ben Brownshan sayed, it was a
really really good time. As Isaid on stating scheme yesterday, like I
was really surprised by how many peoplein the metro Detroit area showed up just
to see someone read a couple ofnames off of a note card. But

(00:47):
it was still like an awesome experienceto be down there, you know,
being in the media room with youand Ben and Sean and seeing you guys
cook and as we probably follow alongwith Eric and Thomas's live show, and
then on Friday doing a little bitof work at the beginning of the draft
and then being able to head downand really see what it looked like was
also a lot of fun as well, So you know, anyone going to

(01:07):
Green Bay next year or I thinkPittsburgh is rumored to be the year after
that. Liked, would definitely recommendthe experience. Yeah, I'm excited,
and I really loved Detroit Tage.I mean there was good food, good
people, obviously the football people goingon, all kinds of fun people to
be around, great talks, greatdiscussions, and obviously a lot of young

(01:30):
men made their way into the NFLover the three days of this weekend.
But we are here to kind ofgive a sense of how to grade process
in the post draft period. Tajekind of walk us through, you know,
like what are your general approaches tohow to how to draft and then

(01:53):
kind of how to evaluate that.Yeah, so that is a really good
question. And I think when wethink about like how we would do a
draft if we were, you know, running a team as a general manager,
like, we are really big onthe wisdom of the crowds approach.
So I would definitely take into accountmy scouts inputs and and my draft models,

(02:14):
but it would start with the priorof what your ranking is on the
contensus big Board, and that's reallywhere I would start with the draft,
and then I would move players upand down depending on all the other information
I'm receiving based on you know,whether there's certain red flags about a player,
or there's a player that's like undervaluedand shows up really well in our

(02:35):
analytical models, or a scout hasidentified like I would definitely take as much
information as I can into account andreally try to have a methodological way to
a methodolical way to go about,you know, like putting together a draft
board. And how I really evaluatea draft when it's done is I look
at a couple of things. Ithink the trades that you made, especially

(02:58):
if you're picking up future picks,should definitely be included in your total compensation
from the draft, as well aslike did you hit some of the easier
things to hit on, like inthe first round? Did you try to
take a premium position if you hadthe roster availability for it and then there
was the player availability for it.Also, you know, did you try

(03:19):
to move back at times when whenyou had the opportunity to Like all those
things that I think can really betaken into account when measuring how GM's draft
Taje. I think that was afantastic summary, and I think if we
want to boil it down a littleall the way to the rules, or
you know, just generally the draftbacks about the draft I think are our

(03:40):
listeners could kind of get a legup because folks, as you know,
the draft is really governed by theCBA and the collective bargaining agreement that the
players reach with the team, theowners and Roderkadild at the league office and
so tay. Some of the keydraft backs that I think are just to
start with a number one, thereare a predetermined number of picks in the

(04:03):
draft that there's complex formulas. Typicallyit's one per team per round. Then
obviously people trade and back and forth, and there's some competitory picks, which
our colleague Eric Eager has written verydiligently about on our website. And then
I think something that goes kind ofover people's head is there's also a predetermined

(04:25):
list of players that can be selectedin any given draft. And I think
that a lot of people kind ofthink of the draft as more of college
recruiting, where there's so many highschool players playing high school football each year
that are available to play college footballthat there's kind of a base The base

(04:46):
rate is pretty close to you knowhow many good quarterbacks there's going to be
and how many good running backs.That's not necessarily the case in the NFL
because there are a predetermined amount ofplayers in the threshold is a lot smaller
because there's only thirty two teams ratherthan you know, one hundred or two
hundred college fbs and fcs and soforth teams, and so you're really limited

(05:11):
to who is going in the draft. And you can kind of see that
change a lot because you know,Tage, this year we had what six
quarterbacks go in the first round,and in previous years we had just can
you pickt go in the first roundof the draft, And that makes a
huge difference in the value of thedraft. And kind of to that greater
point, those predetermined players and thosepredetermined picks, they also have predetermined salaries,

(05:35):
Tage, and so what are howdo you think kind of the salaries
given that you know, we're dealingin this confined space by the rules where
the picks are set and the draftand the draft e's are set, how
does the salary kind of play intoit? Right? Yeah, I mean
there is a rookie wage scale whereyou when you get drafted, you kind

(05:57):
of have a set structure to yourcontract that you're going to be to play
on. First round picks get fouryears plus a possible fifth year option that
is on the team's discretion on ifthey want to pick it up or not
after your third season, and thenany other round after that will just get
the standard four year contract that theywill play on, you know, for

(06:18):
at least their first four years,and sometimes that gets moved around because of
suspensions and stuff. But I thinkthe thing that's like pretty under discussed in
the public NFL discourse is how steepthe rookie wage scial is, especially compared
to performance curves, but even justin general. When you look at like
the twenty twenty three rookie wage scale, the number one pick, which happened

(06:42):
to be Rice Young, was goingto get about a little over forty million
dollars total on his entire four yearsof his rookie contract. When you go
down to the number five pick,you're already at thirty million dollars, so
you already have a two point fivemillion dollar drop. You get to the
number ten pick and you're at twentyfive million dollars, so another drop there

(07:06):
in regards to to like how youknow how steep that is. But then
like you keep going throughout the firstround, and by the time you get
to the middle of the first round, most players are getting between fourteen and
sixteen million dollars over the course oftheir rookie deal. So you're talking about
a number one pick that's going tobe making around ten million dollars a year,

(07:29):
whereas the number sixteen pick is onlygoing to be making around four million
dollars a year, So a sixmillion dollar difference per year, which does
add up over the four years.And you even look at just the signing
bonuses this year, so like whatis guaranteed, and the Bears will be
giving twenty five point five million dollarsin signing bonus to Caleb Williams, while
the Vikings will only be giving twelvepoint seven million dollars to JJ McCarthy and

(07:53):
number ten overall, so you're you'realso getting half of that value as well,
which kind of it's an advantage whereif JJ McCarthy is fifty percent or
greater or better more productive than CalebWilliams, he's going to be generating more
value per dollar on his contract,right, And when you're talking about that.

(08:15):
You're talking about surplus value, whichhas been a very well studied thing
by economics professors, by draft analystsand so forth and so on, and
when you consider that surplus value,obviously it takes several years to reap said
surplus value, but it really comesdown to your valuation on draft day,

(08:35):
and that takes us into some keyassumptions that are kind of abstracted away from
you know, the facts, thehard facts of the CBA or the hard
facts of just the reality of drafting. But there are assumptions that obviously can
be tested and probably have some flawshere or there, But in general,

(08:56):
I think it's a good approach froman analyst point of you, as a
third party, who's someone who's notin front office to think of. And
I think the first one tage isthat no team knows any other true valuation
of any given player. So youlook at two players this year that kind
of showed the flip side of thecoin here tage, and it's like bo

(09:18):
Nicks. A lot of people goinginto the draft said that the Broncos loved
bo Nicks, and so a lotof people valued him, as you know,
at the twelfth pick in the draftjust because they thought the Broncos would
pick him. That was kind oflike give or take the over under,
but there was less understanding of MichaelPennox's true valuation in the draft, and

(09:41):
so he pops up at eight andit's a shock, But clearly the Falcons
think they can reap some type ofsurplus value there, whether that's this year
or in three years or or somethinglike that. And so that fluctuation valuation
is what causes a lot of thedifferences in how we look at at the
draft at the beginning. And obviouslythose two players are at the top of

(10:05):
the draft and their quarterbacks, sothe surplus value has much more variation there.
But then you look at the backend of the draft, and the
reason why the consensus big boards orthe mock draft edps or something like that
are substantially different is because of similarto that curve, it gets a lot
flattered towards the back end of thedraft, and the expectation of how those

(10:28):
players and the valuation of those playersit kind of flattens out, and so
then you have teams that may havethink they're getting a huge deal, or
teams that think they like someone's droppedto them or or are passing on several
players because they don't want to seethem anymore, and that could cause up
to like around going down and thenand then finally kind of based off of

(10:52):
that valuation, the kind of assumptionthat I like to take is that coaches
have a predetermined scheme which will minimallychange based on the players that they draft.
And free agency is before the draft, so obviously they already have an
idea of what free agents and playersthat are coming back from the year prior

(11:13):
will slot in. I think agreat example of this is how Patrick Mahomes
was drafted, you know, middleof the first round, then all of
a sudden he sits for a year, and his second season he becomes the
best quarterback in the league almost immediately, but it took kind of a year
to realize that a scheme could bebuilt around him, they had the right
players in place, so forth andso on to realize that he could reach

(11:35):
that top potential. And so Afinal piece, which I think is really
one of the easiest pieces to gradetage, but we'll focus on the assumption
right now, is we don't reallyknow actually what any given selection for future
years will be traded to or fromUS because of performance, and that kind

(11:56):
of deals with that steepness curve thatyou were talking about, right, Tay,
Yeah, no exactly. I meanI think when you look at just
the sheer uncertainty in the draft,and you can go through every single draft
of the past couple of years andalmost always find a player who was taken
in the top ten, who scoutingreports had as labeled like a high floor

(12:18):
or maybe even a can't miss prospects. Sometimes that ended up not working out
in the NFL, and there's somany reasons for this. You know,
sometimes you're taking a player who mighthave spent their entire life in like a
thirty to fifty mile radius and theyhave to all of a sudden transfer to
a new city they've never been tobefore. You know, Scheme also plays

(12:39):
a huge role, like you mentioned, like some players are either drafted by
an older gen that changes over aftera year and are put into a scheme
that they might not be fit into, or even the current regime that drafted
them the current coaching staff didn't knownecessarily like how to best utilize their skill
set, or the player himself.You know, for a couple of reasons

(13:00):
like doesn't end up working out inthe NFL, Like there's so many changes
that happen when a player goes fromcollege to pro that it makes it really
hard to predict. Yeah, Ithink a great example of that is the
Bears this year, where they tradeback, they trade the Panthers trade up,
they swap kind of first round picks. The Bears decided to go with

(13:20):
the first round pick later that's theirmajor addition, and they add DJ Moore,
who we kind of knew the valueof. We knew he was probably
a top flight receiver. He obviouslyplayed extremely well this year, but they
felt that was a fair value plussome other pieces, and now all of
a sudden, they're sitting at thefirst pick in line to get Caleb Williams,

(13:41):
where last year, you know,Bryce Young didn't perform up to that
standard of what you would want tosee from a first round pick, and
the Panthers were one of the worstteams in the league. And so it
just there's so much variation on whatcan happen in ain't giving year, especially
in an injury laden game like football, where you know a first round pick

(14:03):
could be substantially more valuable if it'sin you know, one, two,
three, four, five, ratherthan if it's back and near that second
round and where the curve kind ofstarts to platten. Now, so now
that we've kind of settled those things, we can really get in the meat
and potatoes tage, and you kindof to summarize what we've done so far

(14:24):
with the assumptions and the facts ofthe draft. There's really two things that
we kind of want to grade herewhen we're looking at how a general manager
or a staff or even the coachesas well play into their duties on draft
day. And the first is playerevaluation, which we've discussed kind of a
little bit earlier on, which isreally hard to grade because you know,

(14:48):
we know how well people perform,but we don't know kind of the backgrounds
of what went into it, includinginjuries and personal reasons and all these other
stuff. So, as a result, has the this long grading period basically
until a player gets their second contract, which can happen three four years later,
particularly for first round picks where there'sa fifth year option, and so

(15:11):
you know, you don't really knowhow well you've drafted until five years later,
and who knows given the short termsof general manager's seats, how if
they'll be there, if the coachingstaff will be there. There's a lot
turnover in the NFL, So playerevaluation really hard to grade. The second
is pick management, which is reallyeasy to grade because we have an idea

(15:33):
of how valuable each pick is andthat basically is locked immediately after the draft
ends. So starting out with theharder one because I think there's more meat
and potatoes there to kind of rollthrough from a high level analyst perspective,
Tase tell us a little bit abouthow we can apply some player evaluation just

(15:54):
using the wisdom of the crowds thatyou talked about right after the draft ends.
Yeah, So again, like youmentioned, player evaluation is the toughest
thing and probably all of football,especially projecting it from college to pro.
But if we do use the wisdomof the crowds approach and then kind of
compare that to where players were actuallydrafted, we can glean some information from

(16:18):
it. So the first thing,the high overview is just like the actual
position that the player plays, andthere's players taken in the first round that
will inherently have more value than playersor than other positions just because of the
position that they play where if you'retaking obviously a quarterback, but positions like
offensive tackle, receiver, anything onthe defensive line, cornerback, those have

(16:42):
a better chance of generating that surplusvalue for you then positions like linebacker,
running back, or offensive guard,just because of what they're paid on the
open market and how often those positionsactually reach the open market at the top
of their position group. But thenthe other thing that happens when we're looking
at the residual or the difference betweenwhere you're actually taken compared to the contensus

(17:06):
big board is whether or not youwere a steal or a reach. And
really good research by Timo Risque atPFF and some other people have found that
when a player is taken past theirconsensus big Board ranking, so they fell
in the draft further than we wouldhave thought, they are more likely to
live up to their actual draft positionthan their consensus is big board ranking.

(17:30):
Because that is multiple teams in theleague telling you that they don't see this
player as highly as the public seesthis player. And there could be a
lot of reasons for this. Therecan be medicals, there can be character
concerns, you know, combination,but that's what's happening. When steals happen.
When a reach happens, that playeris more likely to live up to
their consensus Big Board ranking than theirdraft position because it only takes one team

(17:55):
to reach. And when a reachdoes happen, the chances are that player
doesn't have any of those concerns becausethe team feels feels comfortable, you know,
taking them ahead of where we expectedthem to. But even though that
they were taken ahead of there,the wisdom of the crowds is right here
in a sense where they will mostlikely to perform like their consensus Big Board

(18:15):
ranking. Yeah, I'm glad youbrought that up, because that kind of
became a flashpoint this week with FoxSports. Is Nick Wright talking about Howie
Roseman and I think we'll get moreinto how the Eagles approach a draft uh
in our in our second segment wherewe're talking about pick management. But one

(18:37):
of the things that he said isthat you know, you're looking at the
steals quote unquote, that the Eaglesget tage and a lot of times those
are guys who are dropping, andthe Eagles stay tight to the consensus Big
Board and and probably have a differenta little bit different valuation of how these
players are, and so you endup with some pretty good players Jordan Davis

(19:00):
who's performed pretty well, but aslike, you know, a two down
player, bigger guy, and thenyou have some people who don't play as
well, and that's kind of howthat goes from there. But the kind
of concepts from a higher level thatyou're kind of introducing here, tass I
don't want you to hit on justa bit until we before we kind of
talk about a little parts of thisis that it's really hard to have a

(19:23):
good draft, but it's really easyto identify when someone had a poor draft.
And so you look at some ofthese and the reason why that is
is you look over history basically backuntil twenty thirteen. Our friend Argia man
On, who's on the show lastweek or this weekend rather has put these

(19:44):
together like in terms of the actuallike goodness of drafting, gms have really
struggled to get over like the sixtiethpercentile on average of outcomes of players.
And so tell us why, likeyou, you know, we kind of
outlined why it's hard to really havea good draft or a good draft over
be a good drafter, but whyit's easy to identify, you know,

(20:07):
if there's something wrong with the draft. Yeah, no, I think I
think you bring up a good pointthere where it's like, I think it
is really hard to be a gooddrafter just because of the sheer variants in
each pick. Again, like goingback to the chart that we're referring to,
that that we can post on Twitter, Like there's gms, even the
top gms, you know, BillBelichick, you look at our own Thomas

(20:32):
de mitchrov, Brett Veach, MickeyLoomez, you know, the Will McClay
Jerry Jones combination in Dallas, likethat's the top five. They've all had
their draft misses. You know.Sometimes it happens in the first round,
sometimes it happens in the second.But like you can point to any of
them and find out, you know, find some some particular draft misses.

(20:52):
But I think when you look atthe other end of things, you can
have like a not sound process inthe draft, and you can sort of
like a like a bad drafter justbecause it's kind of easier to reach on
a bunch of players and and youknow, take a lot of these players
ahead of where they're supposed to goor or be the team that takes the
players with these these bad medicals orbad character concerns, and like that doesn't

(21:17):
work out for you. Like there'sso many avenues to mess up a draft,
whereas I think that the avenue toget a draft right, you need
a lot of things to happen.But it's still easier to to see in
your mind how you can have agood process even if the results don't turn
out exactly how you would hope,right, And and you start using this
word process, and I think that'swhat a lot of people who may not

(21:41):
follow the analytics closely but maybe reallygreat at scouting or something like that,
kind of get confused about because youknow, you're a big lines fan and
and and Brad Holmes kind of broughtthis up in the pre draft, but
you know that there's like this ideaof we just want good players on our
team, and we wantlayers who fitthe scheme. But as we've kind of

(22:03):
outlined, and as I put ina quote tweet that I that I just
put out sharing our sharing our stream, it like it really doesn't end up
in the long term that way.Like it's really difficult to get over the
fiftieth percentile. And so as aresult, kind of the teams who have
seen a lot of success in thedraft have built this kind of process of

(22:26):
pick management page. And so there'sa there's a lot of good conversations here
that have a lot of good researchby people in the community, including discount
rates, including trade charts, includingyou know, future outlooks on drafts and
stuff like that. And so today'swalk me through kind of generally how a

(22:47):
team would probably approach a trade chartand how that would allow us to grade
the team's draft or at least theirmanagement of picks. That second element that
we're talking about. Yeah, thereare ways to approach a trade chart.
I think that when you take theplayers taken at each slot in the draft,

(23:08):
you can map it to a coupleof things. If you have some
type of all encompassing metric like awins above replacement or war approximate value a
V, which is like what ProPro Football Reference uses, like, you
can use kind of like those metricsto kind of see like what each draft
slot is going to be from ayou know, expected war standpoint. And

(23:30):
I think that that's like one goodway to go about it. Another way
is to use what the league tellsus about these players, which is like
their second contract value. So you'llhave a little bit of a less sample
of that because you have to startfrom the twenty eleven New CBA until now,
and a lot of players taken recentlylike haven't gotten second contracts yet.

(23:51):
But like, that's also another wayyou can go about it. But the
overall conclusion of a lot of thesetrade charts is that Jimmy Johnson curve is
too steep because it was based offof the rookie wage scale in the late
nineteen hundreds and that's a lot differentto what the scale looks like now.
But also just like kind of howthese players develop over time and the confidence

(24:18):
interval being so wide for a lotof these players that are taken. So
that's like kind of a way toget the expected value of each selection.
But then you can also factor intothe trade chart what the rookie wage scale
is for each of those spots andyou can get projected surplus value. And
so that's really where this comes intoplay. You know, stuff like Don

(24:38):
Baldwin has done or Timo risque Agenaat PFF has also looked at like if
we take what we think a player'sactual value will be over the course of
their four year rookie deal, andthen we subtract what they're actually being paid
on that rookie deal. How muchsurplus value are we getting at each slot.
And this is where like the Loser'sCurse by Richard Taylor and Kate Nasty

(25:02):
comes into play, because you're takingthese these players at the top of the
draft top five, especially if you'retaking a non quarterback in the top five,
and you're putting them on one ofthe more expensive contracts at their position,
and you're hoping that they can liveup to that expectation. Whereas when
we see that big rookie wage skilldrop off past pick ten, if you're

(25:23):
taking a player there that is,you know, has a forty to forty
five chance of becoming as good asthe same player at the position taken a
couple spots earlier, they're getting paidhalf as much amount of money, So
if it ends up not working outfor them, it's a lot easier for
you to manage versus taking a playerin the top five that that ends up

(25:44):
not providing much value for your team. Oh, I think you're muted,
Sam. It's interesting to see howteams approach those two things that you said,
tage, surplus value, and likelike just looking at the trade charts

(26:10):
and the Jimmy Johns the difference inthe trade charts because you picked up on
something quickly this year in which youknow, it seemed as if the Eagles
were making moves where like the tradecharts were a little different. You know,
like maybe they're using a different tradechart than someone else who is trading

(26:32):
with Jimmy Johnson. And that's areal place where people can kind of pick
up on value when it's literally whenliterally you're kind of convincing your your partner
in the trade or or not convincing. Maybe it's just two different approaches or
two different timelines that they are winninga trade and you think you are massively
winning a trade tage and and soit's really interesting. Are there any other

(26:55):
kind of evaluations that you can seelike that? Yeah, I think like
the main question, and like thisis like a point I wanted to bring
up with you is like if youlook at like a lot of these surplus
value charts, like the one thatBen Baldwin has, like it would tell
you straight up that like pick twelveis going to provide more surplus value than

(27:15):
like pick number two, especially ifyou're taking non quarterbacks or quarterbacks at that
position. Like if you were inlike a draft room and you were explaining
to the GM, you know,like, yeah, we do see pick
twelve just like just having more valuethan pick two because of the rookie wage
scale and our projections, Like howdo you go about kind of like explaining

(27:37):
that. Yeah, And I thinkJake here has a good point, and
I think it's a good point towalk into an explanation of you know,
the actual trade charts. But hesays, should we talk more about trades
in terms of the distribution of possibleoutcomes rather than the averages? And I
think that's a really good point becauseI think at the position player level,

(28:00):
the differences may or may not bethat big. And I think your flatter
curves, like your Ben Baldwin curve, where as you said, you know,
pick two is quite similar in termsof raw value as a pick twelve
or a pick fifteen, but asa result, you get much less surplus
value because you're paying more for it. But then you look at the where

(28:26):
quarterbacks have been going, and thering actually did a great piece on this
about how now quarterbacks are pretty muchall shoved up into that first portion of
the draft, and that distribution getsway wider, and especially if you're a
team hunting for a quarterback, whichtypically A the worst team the worst teams
in the league are, and bthe teams that really want to get better

(28:49):
and are likely to trade up wantto do. You have to consider that
distribution stage and you really have toconsider the upside risk is well as the
downside risk, where as when you'rejust looking at position players, there's not
necessarily that great upside risk. Yeah. No, that's a great point.
Like I think when you look atlike research done by Michael Lopez talking about

(29:15):
like the distribution of outcomes that thatJake brought up, Like the steepest draft
curve that we have is your yourprobability of finding a star, like a
player who is a perennial pro bowler, all pro type player, And that
is much steeper than the draft curvewhere it looks like at the average values

(29:36):
that we can expect from each slot, and it makes intuitive sense, right,
Like when teams want to build theircore of players, you know that
that's often going to happen at thetop of the draft. That's usually the
players that were highly athletic, highlyregarded all the way from high school until
until they got to the NFL.And so like, if you're looking for

(29:56):
blue chip players on your roster,like that's the spot to find. And
then if you're looking at players thatcan be good to great most of the
time and fill out areas of yourroster without you know, putting you behind
in salary cap, like, Ithink that's like where the next wave of
picks often comes in. Like theten to thirty three range is a lot
more valuable there if that's what you'relooking for, Yeah, for sure.

(30:18):
And I think that the current setupof how the draft is set up both
from you know, just a mediaperspective of you have your Day one prospects,
which probably includes the twenty best playersthat people think are really really valuable
will probably start and make a hugeimpact Day one. Then you get into
kind of the later hours of Dayone and into Day two, and that's

(30:42):
kind of another similar class of playerswho are probably very good players but have
some type of flaw or medical issue, but are still expected to make an
impact. And then you get intoDay three or rounds four or five,
six, and seven, where it'skind of very flat curve, a lot
of variation how people view things,and to Jake's point, the distribution is

(31:06):
a lot smaller. But do youhave a higher draft grade? And I
think when we're talking about draft grades, and I think that something that Eric
and Tom, Eric Eager and Thomasde Mitchroll on the Summer Sports Show do
a really good job of talking aboutis there are a lot of personal aspects
stage to this. And and youknow, we talked about how at least

(31:26):
public facing draft grades kind of struggleto show a significant relationship. And you
know gms over time have a struggleto get over the you know, fifty
to fifty fifth percentile, and someof the best to ever do it are
in that range or slightly slightly higher. But but it, you know,

(31:47):
football is a people game. Andyou also, I think really need to
have a third grade alongside kind ofyour draft pick process management and your player
evaluation, which are these kind ofungradeable subjective things tage. And so I
just have a couple of questions here. I'd love to get your thoughts.
You know, Number one, isyour staff happy with your picks Number two?

(32:08):
Have you managed media and fan expectationsnumber three? Does the coaching staff
have guys that they're excited to coach? What are your kind of thoughts on
that tage? I'm so glad youbrought this up, because this is like,
this is another thing that I thinkis pretty underdiscussed in the whole draft
process. Talking to some friends atteams, you know, post draft and

(32:28):
kind of like what they shared aboutsome of their picks. Like I heard
from a couple of teams where it'slike, yeah, like our safeties coach
was really keen on this player thatwe took in the third round, and
our GM wanted to give him theopportunity to coach this player, you know,
or our wide receivers coach really wantedthis player in the sixth round because
he coached him in college and kindof knows what his skill set is.

(32:51):
And like, I think, Ithink that type of stuff is so important
in the post draft process where roundsone and two, GM and head coach
should be consulting with a lot oftheir staff, but that should be in
their control because those are players thatyou really want to have an impact for
you. But then it's like everyonecan kind of get their own, you

(33:12):
know, bite at the apple laterin the draft, especially on Day three,
where I think, like you mentioned, like you want to make sure
your coaches are showing up and gettingthe opportunity to coach players that they're excited
about. And I think like theRavens had a good point about this,
where they have a percent chance ofbeing available at each pick model, and
so when they took Roger Rosengarden,they knew that there was an eighty percent

(33:37):
chance that he was going to bethere, so they didn't feel like they
had to go trade up and gettheir guy, or they didn't have to
reach to go to to get,you know, another player in that spot.
Like I think, as long asyou're not doing stuff like that where
you're not reaching, you're not tradingup massive capital to really get players your
position, coaches want to if they'reavailable at the spot that that you're picking

(34:00):
at and they were expected to goaround that area anyways, giving your coach
the opportunity to have his input andto be heard, I think can can
benefit everyone. Yeah, and stickingto the rules, Tage. You know,
we talked about kind of the highlevel rules, but there are these
kind of nuances that lend yourself totry to grow the people in your staff

(34:22):
and the coaches in your staff.And a big part of player acquisition is
the draft, and obviously the playerscontrol the outcomes of the game. And
so there's this twenty twenty resolution JCtwo A in which came about in order
to increase diversity in the coaching andstaffing ranks. And we've seen the forty
nine ers actually really take advantage ofthis, probably not as like you know,

(34:45):
a strategy, but they've really identifiedsome great minority talent and have been
able to invest in them and reallybuild them up, whether that's through the
draft like Quessiadopha Mensa who went tothe Vikings or Damika Ryans who's the head
coach at the Texans now. Butthey've actually received compensatory picks for this.

(35:07):
And so though you know, likeinvolving your staff, like building your staff
up, developing your staff through theseactual like draft problems or actual play problems,
or you know, allowing them tohave a little bit more rain and
making sure they're happy and keeping themin the building, especially if you've identified
them as being a talented staffer thatactually can come back to you and have

(35:30):
like a third round like you couldget a third round pick, which is
which is pretty fantastic. And I'mglad that the NFL has done that because
I think not only does it improveorganizations and encourage investment, but it also
is kind of a tangible thing thatmakes you want to better your staff.
And so we kind of set upthis great frameworktage where you know, first

(35:53):
you have your player evaluation, whichis, you know, really really difficult,
the most difficult thing in football Ifar has a long hard to do,
hard to grade, takes a longtime to grade, but it probably
has a great effect on winning.And then we have these things in the
margins that give you more shots atthe bat, which is number number one.

(36:15):
You can you know, manage yourpicks well and you can get more
shots. You can trade back andadd capital. Later, you can look
at the things that you mentioned likesurplus value and positional value and things like
this to ensure you're getting the rightreturn in certain places. And then next
you can really just invest in yourfolks and obviously very subjective, but culture.

(36:37):
Whenever anyone cites a good organization,they cite culture and build up your
coaches and and and really give theleeway to to your scouts and make them
feel as if they're part of theprocess and appreciate what they're doing. Yeah.
No, I'm really glad that youtouched on a lot of those points
and kind of like what it takesto bring up members you know in the

(36:58):
South leak. Something you've told mebefore that like I think the listeners would
love to hear about is like thelike how the Saints have really put an
emphasis on that where you look aroundthe league and there's so many coaches or
gms or high ranking front office membersthat that like we're a part of the
New Orleans organization at one point.Yeah. And I think going to looking

(37:22):
at that chart that Argent put together, Mickey Loomis is very high on there,
and obviously that's why he's had,you know, a twenty year plus
career. But I think and Ithink it's lending itself to very steady ownership.
I mean, the Vincents have ownedthat organization for going on, I
think like twenty five or thirty yearsnow, and they have an approach and

(37:45):
it's pretty much worked, particularly sinceyou know, two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven, Now alot of that is credit to Drew Brees,
and a lot a lot can getironed over when you have the best
quarterback perhaps in history, or atleast the top five quarterback and history on
your team. But they put togethergreat defenses, They've had great running backs,
they've had great wide receivers and offensivelines that have protected people. And

(38:07):
I think a lot of that canbe put forth so that they understand that
the evaluation period for GM is notnecessarily five years. It's like ten years,
because that's two like really deliberate draftcycles of players coming in and out
in for your periods. And youcan kind of see that in how they

(38:29):
hire and how they retain people.I mean, you have guys like Ky
Harley, who had been there forabsolute years. He's still there and has
looked at as you know, acap genius, someone who can really manage
a lot of things, and theywere kind of really early on adding in
void years and getting creative with restructuresand stuff like that. You also look

(38:49):
at someone who came up through thescouting ranks, Terry Fontno, who's now
the GM at the Falcons and haskind of a different approach where he's really
based on scouting and the guys thathe likes, but was crucial to some
of those great draft picks that theyhad Ryan Ramcheck and Kamara and Mike Thomas
all kind of Ramcheck was first roundpick, but like guys that they picked

(39:10):
up in Day two that ended upbeing real impact players. And I think
that we're kind of starting to seethat come take a hold of this longer
approach, And I think this isone of the high level takeaways you can
take the listeners can take away fromthis is that it's really hard to grade
a draft in one years. It'sa little easier to grade in five years,

(39:32):
but it's quite easy, Like wecan really get a feel in seven
years. It's just a matter ofgetting to that seventh year and having the
patience to and trust to understand that, you know, a head coach or
a general manager has his head inthe right place, which is really difficult
in the National Football League. Butthat's why we love football, because it's
a game that kind of tests teststrust and strength and kind of the morals

(39:58):
that we view as an American society, which is which is why it's America's
gang. Yeah, that is true, and I mean, you do bring
up the point there where it's like, yeah, if you're a GM and
you take you have your full draftclass, you really hope you survive your
tenure as a GM to be ableto see kind of like what you put
your all your effort into four yearsfrom now, but even like that that

(40:21):
like seven eight year mark where youhope that a lot of the players you
took in a draft are still playingthen. But then like every GM has
it as a different timeline, andthat's really where it comes to, you
know, like discounting future picks andhow much we should do it. I
think that we can agree that currentlyNFL gms undervalue future picks. You know,

(40:44):
there's a around like a forty fivefifty market discount rank, which was
done by by Joseph Hefner on Twitter, and he found that, like they
they there is a very strong discountrank when they're trading future picks. There's
some arguments to be made that thefuture pick discount should be zero percent,
but I only think that's applicable ifyou're the owner of a team that's also

(41:07):
making the decisions, because you shouldhave as long of a tenure making decisions
as you want to I think ifyou're a GM, where each year is
a little bit more uncertain to you, as if you'll have that job anymore,
future picks can't be discount and zero. It has to be somewhere in
between zero and what it currently is. But I think like someone like Howie

(41:29):
Roseman in this draft who ended uptrading for three future picks win you know,
two on day two and one onday three, I think he knows
that he's going to be around nextyear to be able to use those,
so he could he could make alot of those trades. Quaisia do Famenza
is someone who traded away a lotof future capital to move up twice to

(41:52):
get Dallas Turner, and I thinkhis GM tenure is a little bit more
uncertain, so he puts a heavierdiscount on those picks with making his trade
up because he doesn't know if he'llbe around to make those. So when
when you have that survival curve,that that is saying like you know you
have a you have an eighty percentchance of being the GM next year,

(42:12):
sixty percent of you after that.Like that's I think where that some of
the discount can come into play.But it is clear that that teams are
undervaluing future picks right now just becausethey're trying to win in the current season,
and they probably are a little bitmore overconfident and how their team is
actually going to perform relative to marketexpectations. And that's why two years ago

(42:36):
we ended up with the Lions andthe Seahawks both having top six picks in
the draft that weren't even their ownright. The Rams and the and the
the Broncos overestimated how well they weregoing to perform, and it ended up
ended up being huge for both ofthose teams. Yeah, and if draft
analysts love talking about the Eagles somuch, but I think the reason why

(43:00):
is obviously it takes a lot oftalent to keep your job. But if
we're just looking at sheer consistency,they've pulled the trigger on several coaches.
But you know, Jeffrey Laurie,I think bought the Eagles in ninety four,
so he's been there for almost thirtyyears now. Roseman was there during

(43:23):
Reed's term, he was there duringPeterson's term, he's now with the current
head coach, Siriani. I mean, you get this consistency. And another
great example is the Cowboys. Youknow, people make fun of Jerry Jones
all the time, but the realityis is Jerry Jones has owned and been
the de facto general manager of theCowboys for forty years and he's done pretty

(43:49):
well at drafting and as a result, you can look at kind of their
decision making in this very very longterm view, and of course, in
the NFL, long term thinking helpsa lot because there's a lot of edges
that the CBA can give you.And I think your kind of breakdown of
discount rates is another kind of piecethat we have to look at in the
subjective column, because really, whenyou're getting to your discount rate, you're

(44:15):
really testing the limits of your jobsecurity, and that's what kind of goes
into the calculation of those discount rates. And obviously there's different philosophies. You
know, Mickey Loomis at a jobfor twenty years and never trades back.
Ever. It's just a philosophical thing. But it is interesting the flexibility that

(44:37):
having your job for longer, orat least knowing that you'll have a job
for six to seven years, cancan bring the approach of definitely yeah,
and like I think yeah, Imean Trent Balky was another guy in this
draft where you know, maybe hisfeature is a little bit more uncertain than
Howie Roseman, but like he wassomeone who put an emphasis on getting future

(44:59):
picks. Kevin Cole out a reallygood table yesterday on like the NFL Draft
surplus value added in this year's draft, and he had different columns for the
trades that you made, the positionsthat you took, and then how many
reaches you had. And the Eaglesadded twenty two point eight million dollars of
surplus value. Trent Balki and theJaguars were second at twenty two point one.

(45:21):
The Cowboys did a really good jobwith thirteen point four million, and
the Cardinals were also at the topthere. Oh sorry, the Bills were
at the top also with which onepoint two, Cardinals with eleven point two
to round out the top five.So that was really good to kind of
see like how some teams added valuethrough trades, whether it's trading back a

(45:42):
couple of times like the Bills did, trading for future picks like the Eagles
and Jaguars did. Like those arethe edges to be had in the draft
right now, and I think thosegms did a pretty good job on picking
up on them right. And soto summarize for the listeners of the viewers,
we've done a lot of cool conversationsand I thank you Taye for kind
of joining me on this because Ithink this is a really cool thing to

(46:04):
talk about and something that we canreally kind of build a coda of of
how we want to look at thisas a community, as an analytics community,
as a company at Summer Sports.And that's looking at you know,
Number one is how good are youat valuing players? It's very difficult to
be very good, but obviously overa long period of time you can kind

(46:25):
of pull away from the pack.Number two is how you manage your picks.
And I'm really glad you highlighted TrentBalky because you know, that's a
team that's seen ups and downs.Obviously the Cons on them, they've seen
several regime changes over the cons ownership, but he really made the decision that
he was going to, you know, buy into the long term thinking and

(46:47):
hopefully it pays off for him.But it certainly looks like they have a
couple of good players and should havea couple more draft picks and having Trevor
Lawrence is certainly helpful a former numberone pick and then three are these kind
of subjective evaluation things of you know, risk tolerance based on how you feel

(47:07):
about your job, like very subjective, really hard to grade that we can
get a sense of it. Maybewe can put like a green light,
yellow light, red light grade onit, but it's really hard to tell.
Am I developing the staff through myprocess? Am I listening? Are
they happy? Like again, verykind of up in the air thinking,

(47:29):
But it is important that you havea happy staff, a hope, happy
coaching staff, and that those peopleare getting developed and in the long term
it may actually have some tangible elements. And I think a good team to
look at is the Bears here tokind of summarize this all into one because
last year, you know, theydecided to take a long term view despite

(47:51):
really struggling, they traded back,gained a lot of picks, and gained
a wide receiver one. Then we'reable to get kind of their guy at
at QB one pick one in CalebWilliams. Despite having you know, an
okay year, like an average yearfor a rebuilding team. I think it
was seven wins that they won.They added Keenan Allen. They add a

(48:14):
couple of pieces in free agency atMontes Sweat via trade, they had a
Roma Dunze at nine, and allof a sudden, people were really excited.
The fans are really excited, thestaff's really excited, and we felt
that they performed pretty well in thedraft exactly. Yeah. I mean I
think they have had like it's beenyou know, some luck has to be

(48:36):
involved in some of this. LikeI think the Falcons were a team that
did have a or sorry, thePanthers were a team that had you know,
like a low win total last year. You know, getting the number
one pick from that, I thinkwas was you know, something that was
a little bit lucky for the Bears, but still like an overall good process.
Like you mentioned where when they weremaking the trade back from number one

(48:57):
last year, they probably felt betterabout this year's quarterback class. You know,
teams were probably a little bit overeager to take quarterbacks this year because
of how they felt about next year'squarterback class. So all of that is
intertwined. And then like picking upDj Moore in the trade was also a
really good job by Ryan Poles,and and like this this whole kind of
process you know, has has hadgood results for them, and I think

(49:21):
like it'll be looked on, It'llbe looked back on pretty favorably from the
bear's perspective when it's all said anddone. I agree, Taje. This
has been a fantastic conversation. Ithink given all the hard work that we
put in, and especially you putin on some of the writing and the
draft guides and the player profiles andstuff like this, it's really good to

(49:42):
kind of take a step back andlook at how some of this stuff that
we work so hard on and someof the stuff that we cover so well
ends up doing. And so Ithank you for having this conversation with any
any last words, Yeah, Imean thanks thanks for bringing me on to
talk about this. It was alot of fun to it to go over
a lot of these topics, andI appreciate you putting the notes together ahead

(50:05):
of time when I when I waslacking on that. So I'm glad we
were able to do it. Yeah. All good And if you if you
have one takeaway from this, uhSam Schwartztein hopped in there. The takeaway
here is just learn how to waitfor years. I think that's a great
I think that's a great summary.And but given how hard it is,
uh, it causes problems and that'swhy we love football. Tage. Yes

(50:29):
for sure. So from Tay Sethand Sam Brookhouse of Summer Sports, thank
you for joining the class Play podcastand we hope you join us again soon.
Have a good one.