Are certain teams better at drafting than others?

April 22, 2013 Draft

On the surface, this seems like an obvious question. Yes, certain teams are good at drafting and certain teams are bad at drafting. It’s easy to think of the Matt Millen Lions or the Raiders at the end of the Al Davis era as terrible drafting teams. With the benefit of hindsight, they were terrible [...]

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Yet another draft value chart

April 4, 2013 Draft

Last November, I provided an updated version of my own draft value chart where I measured the value provided by each draft pick to his Approximate Value over the course of his first five years. A week later I decided another change was needed. While AV measures the value provided by a player, the marginal [...]

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The Time Value of Draft Picks

March 25, 2013 Draft

How do you compare the value of a draft pick this year compared to a draft pick next year? NFL teams have often used a “one round a year” formula, meaning a team would trade a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round pick this year for a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd rounder next year. But to [...]

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The youngest and oldest NFL teams in 2012

March 19, 2013 Statgeekery

Last August, I looked at the 2011 age-adjusted team rosters. I have reproduced the intro to that post below: Measuring team age in the N.F.L. is tricky. Calculating the average age of a 53-man roster is misleading because the age of a team’s starters is much more relevant than the age of a team’s reserves. [...]

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What veterans did the eventual Super Bowl Champs add in the prior offseason?

March 13, 2013 History

Happy New Year to the NFL, which opened for business at 4PM yesterday. It’s been a busy couple of days, as the Seahawks (Percy Harvin) and 49ers (Anquan Boldin) acquired veteran receivers a day before the floodgates opened. The Dolphins made the biggest waves yesterday by signing WR Mike Wallace and ILB Dannell Ellerbe from [...]

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Is Ray Lewis the Best Player to Retire after winning the Super Bowl?

March 10, 2013 Checkdowns

Today’s title gives a pretty good hint as to what today’s post is about. The table below shows the career Approximate Value for the top 50 players whose last game happened to be a Super Bowl victory. For reference, I’ve also includes things like number of games, Pro Bowls, 1st-team All-Pro selections, and number of [...]

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Checkdowns: How the Ravens and 49ers compare to previous Super Bowl teams

January 31, 2013 Checkdowns

Ever wondered which Super Bowl teams were the oldest or youngest? I went and calculated the AV-adjusted age of every team to appear in the Super Bowl. (AV stands for Pro-Football-Reference’s Approximate Value system, which assigns an approximate value to each player in each season; you can read more about it here.) You can probably [...]

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Trivia: Mario Manningham and Brandon Jacobs look to repeat as Super Bowl champions

January 26, 2013 Checkdowns

Last year, Mario Manningham was one of the stars of Super Bowl XLVI, as his great sidelines catch helped the Giants defeat the Patriots (although it wasn’t even his most meaningful catch in that game). As a member of the 49ers this season, Manningham has been placed on injured reserve, but that doesn’t make him [...]

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Checkdowns: Pro-Football-Reference.com releases 2012 AV

January 14, 2013 Checkdowns

It’s Christmas in January. Once the 2012 All-Pro teams were announced (my thoughts here), my buddies Mike Kania and Neil Paine worked through the weekend to provide us with Approximate Values for every player in the NFL this year. For the uninitiated, you can review how AV is calculated here. And if you’re so inclined, [...]

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Creating a Draft Value Chart, Part II

November 19, 2012 Draft

Last week, I took another stab at creating a draft value chart. The biggest modification I made was looking at just the value provided by a player in his first five years to a team. As a result, the graph flattened, compressing the difference between the value provided by the top and bottom picks. I’m [...]

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