Was asked to post the 2010 2nd round table, so here it is.  Still waiting for FA news.  I think it’s best to ignore the “rumors”, hence no speculation here.  In general though, my FA plan would be:

– Add depth (everywhere) with low-priced veterans on 1-2 year deals.

– Add a NT. Doesn’t have to be a great one (not many of those in the NFL), but a huge need if the team is moving to a 3-4.  This wouldn’t preclude taking one in the draft, but even then you need a back-up and it would be nice to not be overly reliant on Dixon.

– MAYBE add one marquee guy, as long as he is relatively young (<26-27).  Plenty of cap space, so if the team loves a guy like Smith or Long then take a shot.  Key is to pick the one they really like and let the others go.

– Don’t tie up cap space beyond this year.  This is a massive transition for the Eagles, and the fact is that Howie/Chip themselves don’t know how it’s going to shake out.  They key is to bolster the roster while maintaining cap flexibility for the next couple years.  With so many moving parts, it’s impossible to say who fits and who doesn’t, so throwing big money around is very risky.

Conversely, if you preserve space until the rest of the foundation is together, you have a much clearer picture of where your needs are and which impact FAs fit the team best.

Patience is the key, though it remains to be seen if the Eagles new front office has any.

Oh, and I wouldn’t consider, even for a moment, giving up the #4 pick for Revis.

Now the 2010 draft table:

As noted by a commenter yesterday, TJ Ward has had a pretty good start to his career and was drafted 1 spot after Nate Allen.  This system has Ward as one of the biggest reaches; he had one of the lowest included prospect ratings.

– Taylor Mays presents an interesting case.  His aggregate scouting rating was pretty good, hence the high rating here.  However, I remember a LOT of commentators downgrading him.  He may be a good case of why the system needs more sets of ratings.  My guess is there were a lot or scouts who did not score him as highly as ESPN or NFL.com.

– Torell Troup looks like a big mistake by the Bills, though injuries have wrecked his career, so its hard to judge him.  It’s worth noting that Terrance Cody and Linval Joseph were both ranked significantly higher and available at the Bills pick.

– Regarding Cody (since he came up yesterday as well), he’s been pretty inconsistent, and was supplanted by Kemoeatu in the starting line-up, but PFF actually graded him better last year than Kemoeatu.

Also, I realized I didn’t do a good job of showing the big picture.  No individual player’s ranking will be perfect in any system.  The goal is to create a system that, overall, does a better job of valuing players.  Here is a table showing the actual first round of 2010 with the PVM top 32.  We’ll delve deeper into this type of comparison some other time, for now you can analyze/compare them and make up your own mind.

One last note:  This system is by no means a finished product.  To that end, if you have an idea for improving it, please let me know.  No pride of ownership here, I just want to create the best system possible.

As of this writing, the Eagles haven’t made any FA news, so I’ll continue with our draft talk. Today we will look at the 2010 NFL Draft (B-Graham year).  For those of you who noticed, I’ve skipped 2011 for two reasons:  2010 is more interesting, and I can only find 1 set of prospect ratings for 2011.

I haven’t really emphasized this yet, but a MAJOR part of the PVM ranking system is the consensus prospect ratings.  The average rating is far more important than the PVM adjustment.  As a result, if I have only one set of ratings the rankings will not be nearly as valuable.  To that end, if any of you know where I can find 2011 prospect grades/ratings (numerical), please either email me, tweet me, or respond via comments.  I still hope to find another set to work with (right now I only have ESPN’s).

In the meantime, here are the top 32 prospects for 2010 via the PVM system.  For these, I used ESPN and NFL.com ratings, though the NFL.com ratings had to be adjusted to a 100 points scale.  Remember, the right-most column is the player’s actual draft pick minus his PVM Rank.  So players with a negative number were drafted HIGHER than their PVM Ranking.  Only players chosen in the top 2 rounds are included in the analysis.

I’ll break this down so it’s easier to see in a second, but a couple of big notes first:

– Jimmy Clausen shoots WAY up the board.  While the PVM adjustment helped, this is mainly due to the fact that his average rating was 92.27.

– CJ Spiller jumps into the top 5.

– Brandon Graham, regardless of the trade involved, appears to have been taken right where he should have.  However, both JPP and Derrick Morgan rank higher and were on the board when the Eagles picked.

To be fair, all three players were taken by the 16th pick (Eagles originally has the 24th), so had the team not traded up there was a strong chance they would not have been able to choose any of them.

– The biggest “overdraft” in the top ten belongs to Rolando McClain, narrowly beating Trent Williams.  Needless to say I feel pretty good about the PVM system here…

Now let’s take a narrower look.  Here are the most OVERDRAFTED:

Really like this one for obvious reasons.

– Tyson Alualu and Tim Tebow stand out as the worst “value” picks in the first round.  Tebow, even with the positional impact bump, rated as the 44th prospect (he was taken 25th).  The Jaguars, picking Aluala, were derided (correctly) at the time.  If I remember correctly, the Jags justified it by saying he was the best guy on their board.  However, it was pretty clear at the time that they could have traded down and still got him.

It’s a valuable reminder that there is a lot more to “winning the draft” than just setting your board more accurately than other teams (better scouting).  As I’ve explained, the “skill” portion of the draft involves moving around so you get the guys you like at draft spots where they offer maximum value.

– Nate Allen’s here as well, drafted 12 spots ahead of where the PVM ranking has him.  This was a 100% “need pick” and clearly hasn’t worked out the way the Eagles hoped.

– Conversely, Anthony Davis has worked out for the 49ers, despite being taken 12 spots ahead of where he was ranked.

One big note here that, although obvious, I feel compelled to explain:  Every team will have their own individual position values, which means each team’s PVM Board (if they made one) will look different from the one above.  For that reason, it’s tough to grade teams on individual picks because we don’t know what their internal positional ratings are.  It’s possible that the 49ers place a higher premium on OT than the rest of the league (likely in fact).  In that scenario, their PVM board (with no regard for scouting), may have had Anthony Davis (and Iupati) ranked higher, which might justify taking both OL well ahead of their rankings above.

Prior to this year’s draft, I hope to compile individual PVM ratings for each team.  It will probably be very “noisy” due to various contract issues, but it also might help us infer what teams might do.  Perhaps I’ll even put an “ideal” mock draft up, showing what each team should do with their picks under this system.

Now back to 2010.  Here are the most UNDERDRAFTED players:

Some BIG hits here as well as some BIG misses.

– Clausen I mentioned above.  Though he appears to be a miss, the idea here is that at the time of the draft, his potential upside warranted a much higher draft choice than 48 overall.  That said, it’s conceivable that he has just been lost behind Cam Newton and can still be a productive player on the right team (though I’m not holding my breath).

– Sean Lee and Dez Bryant both fly up the board here.  Bryant ranked #10 overall by PVM.

– At the bottom of that chart we can see JPP and Derrick Morgan, who both ranked as top 10 prospects by PVM.

– Charles Brown jumps a full round by PVM, though it’s still unclear how his career will pan out (injured his knee this year).

– Terrence Cody and Sergio Kindle both rank high, and coincidentally or not, were both selected by the Ravens.  Though neither player has played up to their projections, it’s interesting to note the Ravens’ multiple selections. I’ll be keeping my eye on which teams show up more/less on the over/under-draft lists.  In theory, teams that are applying a system of this type should find their way onto the under list with some frequency.

That’s all for today.  Hopefully we’ll have some Eagles FA news to discuss soon.  Again, if anyone knows anywhere to get past prospect rankings, please let me know.

I previously stated that “no prospect is risk-free”.  Today we’ll look into just what that means.

The Data:

I went back through every draft from 2005-2011 and compiled the Scouts Inc. grades on each player taken in the first round.  According to the Scouts Inc. grading scale, any prospect with a 90+ grade projects as a potential “elite player”.  Recognizing that 10 points on a 100 point scale is a pretty big range, I will only look at prospects rated 95 or better.  Theoretically, these players should be the absolute best of the “elite” prospects and should carry a very low miss rate.  We’ll look at each rating and assign players to 1 of 3 categories:  Hit (Those who can be considered elite players), Bust (completely non-productive players), and everyone else.  Forewarning, I’m going to err on the positive side but feel free to assign your own if you disagree.  At the end, we’ll total up the categories and see what happens.

Note: These types of breakdowns typically devolve into parsing Hits/Busts, as everyone will have their own opinions on which players belong in which categories.  This is not my goal.  My hope is that while there will be disagreements over a few of the ratings, the overall numbers will provide useful insight.  Remember, this is not an individual player analysis, it’s an attempt to draw insight into the broader “elite prospect” pool.  One or two ratings changes won’t matter that much.

Also, we are much more interested in the “Busts”, so moving players from “Hits” to “Everyone Else” or vice-versa doesn’t really effect what we are looking at.

The 99s:

We’ll begin with the absolute best, those players receiving a 99 pre-draft grade.  Here they are:

Hits: Aaron Rodgers, Calvin Johnson, Andrew Luck (a bit early but remember we’re being generous).

Busts: None

The 98s: 

Hits: Ferguson, Thomas, Peterson, Jake Long (on the edge due to last year), Matt Ryan, Gerald McCoy

Busts: Adam Jones, JaMarcus Russell, Matt Leinart

The 97s:

Hits: Suh, Von Miller, A.J. Green, Patrick Peterson, RG3, Marcell Dareus

Busts: Mike Williams, Brady Quinn, Jason Smith, Curry

The 96s:

Hits: Ngata, Keuckly

Busts: Sims, Quinn, Rivers, Gabbert, Maybin

The 95s:

Hits: Merriman (was elite while on roids, so i guess that counts), Willis, Revis, Earl Thomas (ugh)

Busts: Travis Johnson, David Pollack, Alex Barron, Jamaal Anderson, Amobi Okoye, Derrick Harvey

The Totals:

The 99s:  Hits – 3/5, Busts – 0

The 98s: Hits – 6/14, Busts – 3/14

The 97s: Hits – 6/21. Busts – 3 4/23

The 96s: Hits – 2/21. Busts – 4 5/21

The 95s: Hits – 4/30, Busts – 6/30

In looking at those totals, it’s clear that there is actually a difference in success odds for each discrete rating, which really surprises me (though it’s hardly enough data to confirm). In general, there is a clear decrease in Hit odds and corresponding increase in Bust odds as you move from 99 to 95.

However, it also clearly shows what I was originally hoping to illustrate: There is no such thing as a risk-free prospect.  I realize that none of the 99s rated as busts, but since there are only 5 of them, and given the Edwards and Bush careers, I think its safe to say we will see a 99 bust at some point.

In total there were 93 prospects included that rated 95 or better.  Of these, I rated 16 18 as Busts, or 19.35%.

So examining the absolute best of the best prospects, almost 20% of them end up busting.     I realize this is a very subjective breakdown, but even with a few changes either way, the overarching point remains, even the best prospects have a significant chance of complete failure.