Draft analysis - Defense
John Viveiros
I decided to look into how certain positions fared in the draft, and
came up with the following generalized results. For the analysis, I
only had full drafts for the years 1990, 1992-1997, and first rounds
from 1988-1997. For a listing of impact players, I used the PFW
listing of blue-chip players from the ESPN website (with a couple
alterations).
Here are the chances of picking up impact players in the draft, by
position and round for the defense (offense was in another post):
DL:
#1-10 overall - 50%
Rest of first round - 40%
Rounds 2-5 - 10%
Rest of draft - 4%
DL ANALYSIS: Maybe there are just a lot of great defensive linemen,
but DL is a great position to draft almost at any time in the draft.
40% of the late first round DL choices become impact players, the
highest rating of any position. Oddly enough, in rounds 2-5, there is
a reverse trend in the data, with history giving twice as much chance
of finding an impact DL in the 5th round (15%) as in the 3rd round
(7%), but I feel this is probably a statistical anomaly. If not, then
teams are reaching for DL's in the early rounds (2 and 3) but picking
up guys who just "make plays" later on. Defensive tackle is a
specific position where there were a number of undrafted free agent
impact players: John Randle, Tony Siragusa, and D'Marco Farr.
LB:
#1-5 overall - 50%
Rest of first round - 30%
2nd round - 33%
3rd round - 10%
Rest of draft - 3%
LB ANALYSIS: Besides the probable statistical aberation of having a
better chance of picking up an impact LB at #50 than at #12, it seems
clear that the data is saying that 2nd round linebackers are among the
best bargains of the draft. Fully one-third become impact players.
Almost every other position is in the 10% range. While the data say
otherwise, we can all think of impact linebackers found in the late
rounds - Zack Thomas, Ed McDaniel, Bryce Paup, Lee Woodall, and Jessie
Armstead.
DB:
#1-30 overall - 50%
2nd round - 33%
3rd round - 20%
Rest of draft - 2%
DB ANALYSIS: Probably the best late-first-round pick, DB's are fairly
successful anywhere in the first round. I guess that scouts can
pretty much figure how good a DB will be by watching him in college.
The numbers are pretty high for the 2nd and 3rd round, also. In a
year like this one, where PFW has 11 DB's going in the first two
rounds, you can probably figure that 5 of them will become great
players. Assuming another 5 will be chosen in the 3rd round, there
ought to be 6 potential all-pro DB's coming out of this year's draft.
Time to load up!
John Viveiros
xxjj...@prodigy.net
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