Using this
https://www.nflmockdraftdatabase.com/big-boards/2024/consensus-big-board-2024
As my source. And just giving -1 point for every spot we reached, and +1 for every spot we ‘saved’ This is also highly unscientific, each spot is not worth nearly the same. Reaching 20 spots on a prospect in round 1 is very different from 20 in round 6.
JC Latham, picked at 7, consensus big board spot is 19 (-12)
T’Vondre Sweat, picked at 38, consensus big board spot of 73 (-35)
Cedric Gray, picked at 106, consensus big board spot of 99 (+7)
Jarvis Brownlee Jr, picked at 146, consensus big board spot of 125 (+21)
Jha’Quan Jackson, picked at 182, consensus big board spot of 215 (-33)
James Williams, picked at 242, consensus big board spot of 187 (+55)
Jaylen Herell picked at 252, consensus big board spot of 198 (+54)
That gives us an overall score of +57 by this (awful) metric I designed because I was bored.
I’ll note that I could possibly improve this by adding multipliers to earlier round picks. Could also use ratios of the pick to big board spot, but that would probably swing things into overvaluing the early picks too much.
I wouldn’t try to get any valuable insight from the +57 alone, but if you think consensus big boards have any merit, then it looks like in the early rounds we tended to reach, but in the later rounds, we found some value.
7 comments
Typo in title fml.
My take away from this draft is Ran likes the letter J
I think a lot of the picks made sense. I think the only one that I would say was a reach was Sweat, but Ran did say in his presser that they saw a run on DT’s and decided they didn’t want to risk losing Sweat who is one of the only true NT’s in the class (with any upside that is). People want to say that NT isn’t valuable, but a lot of top-tier tackles in the league play a lot of that 0 to 1T defensive tackle and it really opens up their defenses (think Kenny Clark, Derrick Brown, etc.)
Should divide by consensus to give a relative index
Would be interesting to look at the data compared to the classic trade value chart (since a reach earlier is probably more pronounced in relative terms compared to taking a guy in the 5th who’s considered a 7).
This draft seemed a lot more of a position “need” draft. Last year Ran preached a “best player available” draft. Be interesting to see what the team would have looked like if we went best player available approach this year. A lot more analytics approached this year IMO.
I’d be curious to see a study on how these consensus big boards perform vs. actual GMs. Like, this study assumes consensus big boards are more accurate talent evaluators than GMs, thus giving the draft a negative score if GMs “reached” on picks relative to the big board. I’d be curious to try to figure out, historically, when a GM “reaches” compared to consensus big boards, does that typically mean the GM actually did reach, or was it the consensus big board that was just sleeping on the player, and the GMs beat the big board more often than not, so to speak. The hard part would be coming up with the metric to evaluate if the pick ended up being a good pick or not.