Patriots Are Among the NFL’s Best at Maximizing ‘Value’ in Accumulating Draft Picks
The Patriots are famous for moving up and down the draft board during the annual NFL draft, but data from analytics site Football Outsiders shows that there’s a method to Bill Belichick’s madness.
“In a world where draft picks are just lottery tickets, teams like the Patriots accumulated more tickets for years, while teams like the Raiders consistently gave those picks away,’’ Football Outsiders’ Andrew Healy wrote. “The players the Patriots have picked over the years have actually underperformed their draft positions by a little bit, but the extra value in the picks the Patriots acquired gave them enough Rob Gronkowskis to balance the Ras-I Dowlings.’’
Using a draft value chart to weigh the value of the picks acquired through trades and compensatory selections, Football Outsiders took data from 1997 to 2014 and tracked the net value gained by each team. Over Belichick’s 15 years calling the shots, the Patriots gained 122.8 points in value, good for an average of 8.2 points per season.
Bill Barnwell did a similar study for Grantland and profiled Belichick’s best draft-related trades, which is well worth your time.
The only active NFL general manager with better stats in draft value accumulation is Trent Baalke of the 49ers, who has overseen four drafts for San Francisco and acquired an average of 10 points in value per season thus far. Howie Roseman of the Philadelphia Eagles acquired an average of 8.3 points in draft value in his five seasons as general manager between 2010-2014, but Eagles head coach Chip Kelly is now the man with the final say on personnel moves in that organization.
From 2010 through 2014, the Patriots were the best team in the NFL in acquiring draft value, averaging an 11 point net gain over that span. Belichick has become a master of the compensatory picks process, and his success in accumulating draft picks (the Patriots have nine in 2015) has enabled him to make low-risk moves for players like Akeem Ayers, Jonathan Casillas, Chad Ochocinco and Albert Haynesworth over the years.
The draft value charts place value on the draft picks themselves and pay no attention to the players selected with those picks. This is because, as FootballPerspective.com’s Chase Stuart notes, the NFL draft is still a bit of a crapshoot, even for the smartest teams.
So whether the Patriots trade up for the next Chad Jackson (like in 2006) or the next Rob Gronkowski (like in 2010) doesn’t matter for the sake of assessing the value of the picks at face value.
With the first round of the 2015 draft on Thursday night, there’s a chance the Patriots could move out of the 32nd pick, which holds value because of the fifth-year team option first round contracts are ear tagged with under the NFL CBA. But whether the Patriots move down, up or both over the course of the three day draft event, the data shows Belichick knows what he’s doing when it comes to getting good value in draft capital.
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