FanPost

What is a draft pick worth?

The 2014 New York Jets season isn’t going to yield any postseason appearances. While there are still six games to go, many of us are looking ahead to the coming offseason with the possibilities and hope it brings.

There’s a good bit of debate already, and there will be much more, on whether certain players are worth an (presumably) early round Jets selection. There are questions surrounding at least two college QBs, who is better, whether either one is worth it, etc. Some people argue we need a player at a certain position. Some people like to refer to the idea of "best player available".

So, I want to delve into what exactly a draft pick is worth. Obviously Peyton Manning was worth a first overall, while JaMarcus Russel wasn’t. That’s lazy though. Anyone can drag up examples as to specific players who were busts or steals. I’m more inclined to look at trends.

Most of us have heard of the traditional draft value chart. It’s a list that assigns a certain number of points to a draft pick at a certain position, and is used as a tool by GM’s to figure out draft day trades to move up or down in draft order. A typical one looks like this:

NFL Draft Value Chart

The folks over at Harvard Sports Analysis, using data from Pro Football Focus, have done some tweaking with the chart based on statistics, and have generated their own chart. They’ve written a whole article on the disparities between the two charts, and it’s worth a read.

Now, there are a lot of different metrics out there that can be used to measure the value of a player. I’m not presenting this one as the end-all-be-all. It’s still a good starting point to use in figuring out what kind of talent the team should reasonably expect from a draft pick.

Based on all the number-crunching done by the experts, the Average Career Adjusted Value of any player at any position is the value 15.03. This means that you can compare the CAV of every player at a certain position. You can compare Jamaal Charles to Arian Foster. You can compare Champ Bailey to Darrelle Revis. You can’t really compare Darrelle Revis to Jamaal Charles though. There are other stats you can use to compare players across positions. This is more of a way to say, "If I draft a player at position X at draft pick Y, I should get a player the quality of Player Z".

So, in order to figure out where a certain player should have been drafted, based on their CAV Over Average, you can look up a player in Pro Football Reference, take their assigned value, divide it by the average of 15.03, and then look up the percentage difference in the provided chart. You can view the chart here.

So, for the first overall pick, you should expect a guy with a CAV of about 74. The examples given by the author of the report I reference include Rodney Harrison. This is not to say that drafting a safety with the first overall pick is the best idea when there was a guy like Marshall Faulk available in 1994, but rather to show you that if you were going to draft a safety with the first overall pick, that you should expect to get a guy like Rodney Harrison, and not a guy like Ed Reed (CAV 108).

I’ll throw a couple Jets players out there for fun. If Ferguson retired after this season, he would have been worth a 5th or 6th overall pick. Darelle Revis would have been worth a 2nd overall pick even if he never played another snap. Mark Sanchez might have been worth an early second round pick, but certainly not the 5th overall.

The premium positions are obviously QB, left tackle, pass rusher, and then wide receiver and corner. At this point in the season, the Jets are projected to get the fourth overall pick. We may draft higher, we may draft lower. But for the sake of argument, we’ll assume we go 4th. That would give us a player with an expected CAV of 56.

If the New York Jets draft a player that hits the average in terms of value at that spot, here are some examples of what we would be aiming to hit at a minimum. These aren’t going to be superstar players, but guys good enough to be pro bowlers and solid contributors to a team that could make it to a Super Bowl. At QB, we could expect a guy with a career like Chad Pennington (CAV 55), Jake Delhomme (CAV 59), or Doug Flutie (51). At Left Tackle, we could expect a guy similar to Ferguson (52), or Joe Staley (51), assuming those guys play a couple more years. At the pass rushing position (assuming OLB for now) Elvis Dumervil (CAV of 48 so far) and Calvin Pace (57) are a couple examples. At WR it’s hard to find good examples, but we have guys with careers like Deion Branch (52) and Ricky Proehl (57). For corners we might expect another Antonio Cromartie (52), Quentin Jammer (53), or DeAngelo Hall (61).

None of these guys are game breakers. They are all above-average, solid players who are possibly pro-bowlers in a good year. They certainly won’t be a liability most of the time. All will have a longer than average career, which is 3.3 seasons. None of them will live up to what we as fans have as expectations for a draft position that high. Which is why it’s important to temper expectations. But these are the kinds of players that help a team to the championship level, with some help from guys that greatly exceed the norms.

I’ll touch on the concept of relative value between positions in another post, if you guys want. There are a few interesting trends to look at.

This is a FanPost written by a registered member of this site. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and not those of anybody affiliated with Gang Green Nation or SB Nation.