My goal for today was to apply the same type of analysis I posted on Friday to each major position group, illustrating the prospects tiers in each one.  I have, indeed, done that and will post it below.  However, I also feel compelled to address an article I saw today on Philly.com by Phil Sheridan; so you’re actually getting two posts in one.  If you don’t care about the Sheridan piece, please scroll past it and go right to the positional breakdown, since it’s among the most important draft posts that I’ve done.

The Article

Here it is. In general, I have no problem with Sheridan and don’t mean to pick on someone simply voicing their opinion.  With this article, though, Sheridan PERFECTLY encapsulates the type of conventional “fan-think” and flawed draft strategy that I hate.

The column is titled “Eagles better off keeping the fourth overall pick”.  Now the title itself is not an issue, since there are definitely reasons to keep the pick.  The reasoning, however, is unfortunate.

“With their highest pick since taking Donovan McNabb No. 2 overall in 1999, the Eagles need an impact player. If new head coach Chip Kelly is going to build a championship team, he is going to need some championship players. The fourth pick of this draft is the best place to start.”

The Eagles need an impact player (a few in fact); I couldn’t agree more.  It’s important to note, though, that NEEDING something does not have any effect on it being available.

“If Roseman and his revamped staff can’t identify a Pro Bowl-caliber player from the hundreds available this week, the Eagles have a bigger problem than a single draft bust.”

This is perhaps the worst line of all, and it seems to exemplify what a lot of others are thinking.  The logic goes:

Howie’s job is to evaluate players (with his FO team).  If he can’t accurately identify an “elite” player at #4, he’s not doing his job and therefore doesn’t deserve it.

The flaw in this logic?  What if there aren’t any pro-bowlers in the draft?  It’s unlikely, and I don’t believe that’s the case this year, but it’s possible.  Again, simply wishing for an elite player does not make him appear.  More importantly, what if there are SEVERAL pro-bowl caliber players available at #4?

Here, Sheridan seems to completely ignore the notion of VALUE, which is, of course, the key to the entire draft process.  In essence, you want to get players you LOVE at the LOWEST POSSIBLE PICK.  Focusing on the first part (players you love) and forgetting the second part is a recipe for disaster (I’ll get to that in a second).

“The Eagles haven’t drafted a defensive Pro Bowler since Trent Cole in 2005. Fletcher Cox, Mychal Kendrick, and Brandon Graham may get there, but their chances will be increased exponentially by adding a great player to the mix.” (I added the bold emphasis.)

I’ll just leave that one for you and move on.

“The experts would have torn their meticulously styled hair out if someone had taken Colin Kaepernick or Russell Wilson with the fourth pick of their respective drafts. But those picks would have looked visionary right now.”

WRONG.

First, the fact that each player lasted so long means taking them in the first round, let alone with the #4 overall pick, would have been TERRIBLE VALUE.

Seattle chose Wilson with the 75th overall pick (their 3rd rounder).  In the first round, the team selected Bruce Irvin, and while that was a “reach” at the time, Irvin went on to collect 8 sacks last season.  With their 2nd round pick, the Seahawks selected Bobby Wagner (MLB).  All he did as a rookie was collect 140 tackles, 2 sacks, and 3 interceptions.  ProFootball Focus rated Wagner as the 2nd best inside linebacker in the entire league last year.

So let’s recap:  In hindsight, Seattle could have chosen Russell Wilson with the 15th overall pick and been relatively happy with that selection.  However, they would have given up Bruce Irvin and his 8 sacks as a rookie.  OR, the team could have selected Wilson with the 47th overall pick and been very happy with that selection.  However, they would have given up Bobby Wagner, one of the best young linebackers in the game.

In reality, the Seahawks chose Wilson in the third round, and is ECSTATIC, since the team was able to use its earlier picks on two potential building blocks for the defense.

Safe to say Seattle likes the way that turned out.

There’s a relatively pervasive strand of draft reasoning that says: “be confident in your board and take the guys you love, regardless of where that is.”  Sheridan seems to be advocating that here with his “visionary” comment and when he later says “Target your guy and make a bold move to get him.”  Those types of picks let you pat yourself on the back and feel good about “getting your guy”, but often end in disaster.

This is what happens when you ignore value:

Tyson Alualu, Tim Tebow, Darius Heyward-Bey, Matt Jones, etc…

Yes, there are a few cases that worked out, but they’re heavily outnumbered by the legends you see represented above.

Sorry, Phil, you’re way off.

Positional Breakdown

Now back to the prospects.  If you haven’t yet read Friday’s post, please do so, since it’s the basis for what I’m showing you today.  To recap, I’ve taken the three major scouting ratings (Scouts Inc., NFP, and NFL.com) and averaged them together to get a consensus score for each player.  I then calculated the standard deviation for each player and used that to create a corresponding value range (+- 1 SD).  Overall, I believe this provides a much more informative “draft board” than simply listing prospects sequentially.  While every team assigns each player a specific grade, they must also recognize that certain players have a better chance of reaching those grades than others.  These charts are an attempt to quantify and visualize that logic.

Two notes before I get to the charts: On friday I sorted each graph by average rating. I’ve changed that and am now sorting by the Upside score.  The theory here is that when a player is drafted, it’s likely to be by a team that has a relatively high grade on him.  Therefore, sorting by “high” should provide a better prediction of actual draft order.  Second, ESPN has some conflicting ratings depending on which page you load. I’ve updated a few of the ratings based on noticed differences, so you may see a few small changes in player ratings/ranges from Friday’s post.

Lets start with the CBs:

We can see why Dee Milliner is the consensus #1 CB.  He’s clearly in his own tier, with both a higher expected value than anyone else and a lower range (less uncertainty).  After him, the guy to pay attention to is DJ Hayden, who seems to be rising up draft boards.  Mike Mayock actually has him ranked above Dee Milliner.  This chart shows that Hayden does indeed have the talent to become one of the best CBs in this class.  However, it also shows that he carries a lot of risk as well.  For my money, I’d rather have Jamar Taylor or Xavier Rhodes.  Giving up very little upside for A LOT less downside.

Now DEs:

Note that the DE/OLB breakdown is difficult since there are several players who could go either way (Mingo for example could definitely be an OLB).  I’ve defaulted to whichever position a player is listed as by ESPN.

Here we can see that the top tier of DEs is composed of 3 players, Ansah, Mingo, and Werner, with little difference between them and a big drop-off after them.  Tank Carradine sticks out as the best option after the first tier, but he carries some injury risk that isn’t represented here.

OLBs:

Similar to the CBs, we see a clear top tier of just one prospect (Dion Jordan).  The talent falls off relatively quickly after Jordan, which is something to keep an eye on in the draft.  If the Eagles really want an OLB, it might be best to take Jordan (if he’s there) at #4, since the options after him are lacking.

DTs:

I’m a big fan of Star Lotulelei; I think his versatility and skill-set make him a great fit for the Eagles.  However, this chart is a pretty clear case for NOT taking him at #4.  The drop-off in DT talent is not nearly as severe as we saw in the OLBs or CBs, suggesting the team could slide down or wait until round 2 and still grab a DT with a lot of talent.  Five players here have “upsides” that crack 90, illustrating the very strong depth of this DT class.

The OTs:

The chart confirms Joeckel and Fisher as perhaps the best players in the draft (on an absolute basis).  However, it also shows that there is reasonable depth behind them at the OT position.  I’ve mentioned him a few times, but Menelik Watson looks like he’ll be a great value at the end of the first round or beginning of the second.  He doesn’t crack the 90 point mark, but the scouts are very confident that he’ll be a good (not great) player.

The QBs:

This is a particularly informative chart, as it clearly shows the risk associated with each QB.  Nassib is clearly the boom/bust player of the class, though EJ Manuel also carries in incredibly large range of potential values.  Tyler WIlson is the “least risky” QB, in that he offers the narrowest range, but he also does not show the potential upside that most teams are looking for in a starting QB.

Some team will take the plunge on Nassib and Manuel, but I wouldn’t touch them in the 1st round with a ten-foot pole.  Even at #35 overall, I’d probably pass.

The Safeties:

This is a position of interest for Eagles fans, since the team is in desperate need of some talent at safety.  This is, potentially, a very deep class.  Notice, though, that many of the players carry a LOT of uncertainty.  At this moment, my only concrete “want” for the draft is for the Eagles to come out of it with one of the top guys here.  Cyprien would be my choice, and I think it’s possible the Eagles trade up into the end of the 1st round to get him.  The team could wait on either Elam or Swearinger, but each is a risky play.  Conversely, the team could almost definitely sit at #35 and select Eric Reid, but he doesn’t offer the potential upside I (and most fans) would like to see with that valuable a draft pick.

Lastly, the WRs:

Not much to say here, other than there aren’t any clear gaps in the group.  That means if you want a receiver, you’ll be able to find one almost anywhere in the first three rounds without “reaching”.  Not a lot of high-level talent (only 3 players break 90, and one just barely), but lots of solid prospects.

That’s all folks. Congratulations and thank you to whomever stuck with this post for all 1800+words.  I’m going to post the positional charts separately under their own page, similar to what I’ve done with the PVM rankings.  That way you can easily refer to them during and after the draft.

I posted last week about how we can compare this year’s prospect class to previous years and illustrated the system I will use going forward to do that.  However, it occurred to me that it would be of some value to modify the current system so that we do have a true apples-to-apples comparison with previous years.

I’ve done that and will use those results to illustrate the main idea of today’s post: accurately setting expectations for the draft.

Unfortunately, the draft structure lends itself very well to year-to-year comparisons (i.e. looking at the success of previous #4 picks).  However, in reality it doesn’t work like that.  Each draft class is distinct and wholly unrelated to the previous classes, meaning the quality of player available at #4 will differ greatly depending on the year.  But how greatly, and what does that mean for this year?

To answer that question, I first eliminated the NFP ratings from this year’s data (I don’t have it for previous years).  I then added the 2012 and 2010 prospects to the database and ran all the prospects through the same TPR formula.  Note I did not include 2011 because, for some ridiculous reason I can’t imagine, NFL.com’s draft tracker does not work for that year, meaning I don’t have the prospect ratings for the Cam Newton, A.J. Green, Patrick Peterson draft class.

Anyway, now we’ve got this year’s prospects compared side-by-side with the top prospects from 2012 and 2010, graded using the same scouting ratings and formula.  Here are the results, with current prospects highlighted yellow:

Notice the ratings and order of this year’s class is different from the current TPR system (due to the absence of NFP’s scouting data).  Also, while I will only be discussing the TPR rankings here, I’ve included a chart at the end of the post that sorts by average rating (so even if you think TPR is bullshit you can still find something interesting here).

As you can see, Luck, Bradford, and Griffin are far and away the best prospects from these three years.  Also fairly obvious is the fact that Luke Joeckel, this year’s #1 ranked player, is just the 9th best prospect here.

That’s what everyone means when they say there are no “elite” players in this year’s draft.

However, after the top subset of prospects, this year’s class takes over the list, meaning that there are a LOT of very good players here.  I know this point has been made repeatedly, but I wanted to show a very clear picture of exactly how this draft compares to previous years.

So what does that mean for the Eagles?

– First and foremost, it means trade back.  Almost regardless of compensation, if the Eagles can move back a few picks (staying in the top 10), the team should and likely will take that opportunity.

– The Eagles should still get a very good player.  Here’s where it will get tricky for fans.  If the Eagles stay at #4, whomever they select will be expected (by fans) to be a star from day one (or soon after).  It’s pretty clear, though, that such expectations would be unfair for just about all of these players.

Please, everyone must understand:

Luke Joeckel is not Joe Thomas

Star Lotulelei is not Gerald McCoy or Ndamukong Suh

Dee Milliner is not Patrick Peterson

It sucks (for the Eagles), but it’s true.  Anyone expecting that level of talent from the Eagles first pick is likely to be sorely disappointed.  However, take a close look at the chart above and it should be clear that the Eagles can still come out of this draft in good shape.  A number of prospects in this class are rated more highly than guys like Eric Berry, Joe Haden, Earl Thomas, Anthony Davis, etc…

Adding a player of that caliber is still a big upgrade and something we should all be excited about.

Other notes:

– By this measure, Brandon Graham was a better prospect than anyone the Eagles will be able to select this year…

– Eagles fans should be a bit higher on Dee Milliner.  Not perfect, but he’s a very good CB prospect.

– Picking Geno Smith at #4 would be crazy…and I think all the rumors are just misinformation.

– It’s possible that the Derrick Morgan, JPP, Brandon Graham DE run is among the best we’ve ever seen at that position.  Obviously depends on Graham’s transition, but all three of those players were steals on draft day.

– Not related to this post, but Tyler Wilson should be getting a lot more respect.

– Don’t sleep on Ziggy…with so much misinformation out there and rumors that the Eagles really like EVERYONE, I’m more intrigued by the LACK of reported interested in Ansah.

Finally, here is a chart of the same prospect set sorted by average scouting rating.  Similar story, though the names have shifted a bit:

While I posted the full TPR rankings earlier this week, I didn’t go through them in any detail.   Today I’ll look at the players most effected by the formula.

First the fallers.  These are players whose consensus scouting ranking is HIGHER than their ranking in the TPR system.  As a result, these are players we expect to be OVERDRAFTED.  Now we need to be careful about the relative magnitude here.  For example, a ranking difference (as shown in the TPR Effect column) of just a few spots isn’t a big deal.  We’re mostly concerned with the larger movements, as they indicate a wide divergence between perceived value and actual value (as we’re attempting to quantify it here).

Here are the top fallers among the top 60 overall prospects:

For Eagles fans, the first guy on the list (Cyprien) should be of interest.  Cyprien is a definite potential target for the team in the 2nd round.  By these rankings, taking him at #35 overall would be a slight reach, but nothing to get too upset over.  HOWEVER, it also shows that we shouldn’t be surprised if he goes towards the end of the first round.

We should all hope that somebody takes Matt Elam in the first round (where he’s been listed in several mock drafts).  Elam ranks as just the #5 overall safety by the TPR rankings, FAR below Cyprien, Eric Reid, and just behind D.J. Swearinger.

Other notes:

– Jarvis Jones and Sylvester Williams both drop from the mid-first round to the end of the first round or beginning of the second.  Both of these players have relatively large scouting rating standard deviations, meaning ESPN, NFL.com, and NFP have largely divergent opinions of each player.  Neither seem to be in play for the Eagles, but these guys are both  wild cards for draft day, in that they can go anywhere from the top 15 to the top half of the second round.

– Dion Jordan falls 4 spots.  While that’s not a huge amount on an absolute basis, it’s very meaningful for him, since he began ranked 4th overall.  Though he’s been a popular mock pick for the Eagles at #4, the rankings here show that would NOT be a good pick.

Now let’s look at the risers.  These are guys who are likely to be UNDERDRAFTED, and therefore may represent good value in the first two rounds of the draft.

Quarterbacks, obviously, feature prominently on this list. Despite a relatively low hit rate, the QB position still receives the largest benefit from this system.  The reward of hitting on one is so much larger than the reward of any other position that QBs tend to fly up the list (which we see in real life as well).

What’s interesting here is that Tyler Wilson gains the most and becomes the SECOND ranked QB, just ahead of Matt Barkley.  Most QB discussion has centered on Geno Smith, Ryan Nassib, Matt Barkley, and EJ Manuel.  According to these rankings though, Tyler Wilson should be getting a lot more attention.

– Towards the lower end, Ezekiel Ansah benefits, moving from #8 to the top 5.  Still not sure if he can be a 5-tech DE (I think he can), but he remains a dark hose candidate for the Eagles pick.  His ranking here suggests that wouldn’t be a stretch.

– Tank Carradine jumps 10 spots, from the end of the first round to the middle.  He is a player I’ve been secretly hoping would drop to the Eagles at #35, but his listing here suggests that’s unlikely.  If he does, it’d be an early candidate for steal of the draft.

So now we have relative rankings for all of the top prospects in this year’s draft, but there are a couple of issues with the scores, namely:

– Each player is scored on a different scale (due to positional risk and impact modifiers)

– We can’t compare players from one year to the next, since those modifiers will change as the league changes.

Neither of those presents any problems for what the ranking’s main purpose is, but there is a way to address it, which I will now explain.  This will allow us to answer the question of “how good is a prospect?”, rather than just “who is the best prospect?”.

First let’s look at the scales.  As I mentioned, each position carries a different maximum score, depending on the amount of inherent risk at that position and its potential impact.  Here are the maximum sores by position:

Note that these numbers are rounded for the sake of simplicity.  The only surprise for me is at the Safety position, which ranks near the bottom.  Basically, this is telling us that:

According to our Risk/Impact measures, the PERFECT QB prospect is better than the PERFECT DE prospect, and so on.  Again, the ranking of safeties surprises me, but that’s why I use the data, rather than my own rankings.

Now that we have the maximum scores for each position, we can take another step.  That is, we can find divide each player’s individual TPR grade (TPR seems more accurate than PVM at this point) by the total available points at his position.  For example:

Ziggy Ansah has a TPR grade of 93.6, out of a possible 103 points, giving him a % score of 91.3%.

This method of scoring has a couple of advantages.  It solves the problem of comparing prospects from different years while accounting for the fact that the league evolves.  It enables us to easily back out the positional impact and risk modifiers, while keeping individual risk. It also is a bit easier to understand, since it’s out of 100 and every player is on the same scale.

By looking at the % score, we get a better question of the ABSOLUTE value of each prospect, rather than just the RELATIVE value (though for the draft’s purposes RELATIVE is far more important).

So now let’s look at the top of the board again, this time with the % scores included. First I’ll show the top players sorted by TPR rank.  Then I’ll show them sorted by % score (“Pos % Score”).

This second chart will help to answer the question of “How strong is this draft?”.  Unfortunately, I do not have the complete data set for the past several years (can’t find NFP’s ratings).  With only 2 sets of ratings, the system loses a fair amount of value.  Additionally, I do not have the salary information from 2011-2012, which would result in different positional impact scores.  However, we’ll do the best we can with what we have, since I want to show an example of what we’ll be able to do from now on.  My guess is that, if included, NFP’s ratings would INCREASE the standard deviation of most players, LOWERING their overall score.

Here are the top 25 picks from last year:

Again, since we don’t have NFP’s ratings, this isn’t an exact apples-to-apples comparison.  Regardless, we can see at the top of the board that Andrew Luck was a far better prospect than anyone available this year (not that we didn’t know that).

HOWEVER, after Luck, Griffin, and Kalil, this year’s draft class looks pretty good by comparison.  In fact, the average Positional % score of the top 25 players THIS year is slightly above the average for last year, even though last year includes Andrew Luck as a high outlier.

Other notes of interest:

– Dee Milliner appears to be a BETTER prospect than Morris Claiborne was last year.  This has been talked about a lot (Milliner not being a “top” CB prospect), but he scores better than Claiborne, who was drafted 6th overall last year.  Consequently, it really should be a surprise if Milliner goes top 5 this year, despite not having elite return skills.

– All three top DTs this year (Star, Floyd, and Richardson) score better than Fletcher Cox did last year.

– Ryan Tannehill would indeed be the top QB prospect if he was in this year’s draft.

– Andrew Luck is as close to a perfect prospect as we are ever likely to see.

– RG3 was a better QB prospect than Chance Warmack is a G prospect.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the overall rankings and next week I’ll see if I can do some side-by-side big board comparisons so we can see where guys like Kiper diverge from our board.

If you haven’t seen the new Total Prospect Rankings, see either yesterday’s post or the PVM Rankings tab at the top.

There are a number of ways we can slice and dice this information, and over the next couple weeks I’ll look at a bunch of them.  Today, we’ll look at the “riskiest” prospects this year.  Note we are only looking at the top subsection of players (137 total, of which I posted 130), so we aren’t including players who are likely to be late round picks.

As I discussed yesterday, “risk” in the draft is composed of two components, the individual player’s risk and the larger positional risk, as quantified by the historic success of players drafted at each position.

First let’s look at the individual component.  Here is a chart showing the prospects with the highest standard deviations in their consensus ratings.  Note that the measure here is HALF the true standard deviation.  Also, for this chart I’ve only used Top 60 prospects.  The worse prospects tend to have higher standard deviations, so using the whole sample results in a bunch of guys that aren’t really worth talking about just yet.

The columns should be self-explanatory, but: “Consensus” is the average scouting score.  “.5 SD” is the measure we are looking at.  “Pos Miss Rate” is the historical failure rate for each position.  “Risk Adj” is the combined risk component, as described yesterday.

Immediately, the two QBs at the top jump out.  EJ Manuel and Ryan Nassib, both potential targets for the Eagles in round two (or late round 1) carry very high “individual risk rates”.  The three scouting groups I’ve used have widely different opinions of these players.  Therefore, they are riskier choices.

Other notable inclusions on this list are:

– Sylvester Williams, DT.  Ranked 22nd overall by the Consensus Scores, he drops to 33 in the TPR system (due in part to his placement above).  He carries the 6th highest individual uncertainty score of all the top prospects.

– John Cyprien, S.  He is a popular target for the Eagles 2nd round pick, but does not fair well in the TPR system.  There is relatively wide disagreement among scouts about his ability, and while he ranks 30th in the Consensus Scores, he drops to 43rd in the TPR rankings.  Note that the Eagles 2nd round pick is nearly halfway between those two rankings, meaning he remains a viable option for the Eagles at pick #35.

– Towards the bottom, we can see Sharrif Floyd carries the highest individual uncertainty among Top 10 prospects.  This is part of the reason I am firmly in the Star>Sharrif camp.

Now here is the chart showing the players with the LOWEST individual risk grades:

This is perhaps the more interesting chart for Eagles fans, as it includes many of the potential targets for the 4th overall pick.

– Chance Warmack remains a pain in the ass.  I originally conceived of the positional adjustments in an effort to explain why Chance is a terrible use of resources in the Top 10. However, through two iterations he remains near the top of the TPR draft board.

Here I have to stress two things about Warmack that people aren’t mentioning enough:

1) He is the highest rated prospect by Consensus Score.

2) He has the lowest standard deviation, suggesting there is widespread agreement that he is the best prospect.

I’m close to the point of saying that our (and MY) preconceived notions about positional value may be blinding us to what should be an obvious assertion, namely: Chance Warmack should be a top pick.

I’m not there yet, but the entire idea here was to take subjectivity and bias out of the equation, and on that basis, Chance Warmack looks pretty good.

– Dee Milliner, Dion Jordan, and Star Lotulelei all place near the top of the board.  That means, on an individual basis, we should be more confident in their scouting grades then in the grades of players lower on the list.

How about Total Risk?

Now let’s look at the total risk component.  As described yesterday, the total risk component is weighted heavily to Positional Evaluative Error, with individual uncertainty included, but with less impact.

This is one area where I am not 100% comfortable with the model.  Should individual uncertainty carry more weight?  I don’t know, but maybe, and it’s something I’m thinking about as we get closer to the draft.

Anyway, here is a chart showing the Top 60 prospects with the HIGHEST risk components:

Nobody should be surprised to see EJ Manuel and Ryan Nassib at the top of the list.  A lot of individual uncertainty + a large positional risk rate = a big risk component.  These guys may become good/great players, but given where they will likely be drafted, they represent the riskiest picks in the entire draft.

Others of note:

– We already discussed Williams, Cyprien, Floyd.  For obvious reasons, they are included above.

– Keenan Allen is another one to note. Ranked 16th overall by Consensus Score, he is one of the “riskiest” top prospects, despite the fact that the TPR system only drops him to 19th overall.

While the guys above probably don’t seem familiar to most of you, they are all players that we’ll be seeing/talking about towards the bottom of the 1st round and through the 2nd round of the draft.  Might as well start familiarizing yourself with them now.

Now for the LEAST RISKY top prospects:

Not surprisingly, we see mostly offensive linemen at the top of the list.  The biggest name for Eagles fans is Eric Fisher, who is probably the most likely pick for the Eagles at #4.  Based on the current measure of risk that I’m using, Fisher is the 3rd SAFEST top prospect.

Some other things to keep in mind:

– Pay close attention to the CBs listed near the top of the list.  Guys like Rhodes and Taylor could be great pick-ups for the Eagles if they fall to the second round.

– Menelik Watson is another guy to keep an eye on.  It’s possible (though I think unlikely) that he’s available at #35 and, should the Eagles pass on Fisher at #4, would be a prime target for the team.

As I said, I’ll be looking at this info in a number of different ways, but please feel free to suggest anything in particular that you’d really like to see, either through twitter, email, or the comments.