How good is Baltimore in the draft?

Recently, Grantland’s Bill Barnwell wrote a piece detailing why Bill Belicheck is amazing at the draft. This led me to wanting to review Ozzie Newsome draft history, and compare the two in a similar process.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board .)

Barnwell starts the meat of his article pointing out that 25 players that have been comp picks under Belicheck. And his first year, he got 4 basically because he had no cap space to work with. Barnwell uses AV from ProFootball Reference to make his measurements. Those 25 draft picks = 32.6 AV. Long story short according to this chart, that has value between the first and the second pick overall. 

So how do the Ravens stack up? First of all, they had 35 comp picks during this time. Really they’ve had 35 comp picks since 2002 with none in 2000 or 2001 (so they gave Belicheck a 2 year head start). So we’ve established Newsome plays the comp pick game better, from a total draft pick stand point. Let the fact that it’s 10 picks more than the Pats who are also supposed to be notorious for playing the comp pick game.  Now consider the sum of the AV projected for these players. 61.7 AV(!) nearly double that of Belicheck. What’s impressive about this is the quality of talent that has left the Ravens as a FA during their time with the Ravens. In only about 1/4 of as many picks, Newsome extracted nearly 50% of the total value.

Now, the Pats are hyped because Tom Brady is one of those comp picks, but the Ravens haven’t done so poorly themselves in this area. Chester Taylor, Sam Koch, Pernell McPhee, Tony Pashos, Ricky Wagner, Le’ron McClain were all comp picks. I think any conversation that involves comp picks has to start with the Ravens as being the creme of the crop of this group. And any article that reference comp picks should pay appropriate homage to the Ravens for their efforts.

Next Barnwell started the article by suggesting you just can’t trade up.

The evidence suggests the NFL draft is most likely a crapshoot, so even if your team’s draft board has a first-round grade on a player left in the middle of the second round, chances are that the rest of the league is right and you’re wrong. Teams do trade up and succeed, of course, in the same way that a drunk blackjack player hits on 16 against a five and wins sometimes, but it’s not an optimal strategy.

For me this is an interesting way to start out looking at the Ravens. How good are they at trading up and in those circumstances how did the players they traded up for do against the average outcome of the NFL.

Players traded up for: Traivs Taylor (1st) Anthony Weaver (2nd), Kyle Boller (1st), Devard Darling (2nd), Roderick Green (5th), Adam Terry (2nd), Haloti Ngata (1st), Marshal Yanda (3rd), Joe Flacco (1st), Michael Oher (1st), Jah Reid (3rd), Bernard Pierce (3rd), Arthur Brown (2nd).

Flacco (CAV in parentheses 69), Oher (31), Ngata (96), Yanda (51) were all big hits netting the Ravens back a CAV of 247 compared to the expected 55.8 CAV of these 4 draft picks. Not to mention Ngata/Yanda/Flacco could end up yielding as much as another 100 CAV alone depending on how long they play. Is that a crapshoot as Barnwell claims? Perhaps. The combined approximate expected CAV for all the guys that they traded up for is 139.8. The four guys mentioned above, have already generated 120 CAV more than the expected value of the entire group of 12. Granted Terry, Green, Draling, Reid and Brown have combined for 2 CAV, but Taylor (19), Weaver (21), Boller (9) and Pierce (4) add another 43 alone. I think you have to stop here for a moment and point out the Ravens will have a good shot to do something smart if they trade up. But what about when they trade down?

The 10 trades Barnwell highlight added 79.9 AV (80.8 total) to the Patriots total. By my count the Ravens trade back less. Just 7 times during this span. Note, the Pats had 48 draft day trades, the Ravens had 24. It was hard to calculate the totals for losses and gains, so I just highlighted the 7 times they traded back here and the increase projected AV that came from those picks. The Ravens group here only netted 43.8 in AV, but per trade, the Ravens actually may have landed the same value per pick but not in total.

1. Jamal Lewis for Reggie Kelly (2.42). Kelly played for the Falcons for 4 years and created a whopping 1 AV even if we said he created his average of 10.8 Lewis went on to create 54 AV for the Ravens alone. So a net of 53 AV or a net of 42 AV if you want to be generous and give the Falcons the projected AV of the position. Approximate draft value created 13.5. Or equal to the third best Patriots trade.

2.  Derrick Harvey netted the Ravens 31.3 AV at the time, landing Brown, Gooden, Slaton, Sheilds in future picks (1.26/3.71/3.89/4.125) respectively. But if you recall, Duane Brown pick was then flipped to the Texans (where he’s been quite good) in exchange for picks (1.26/3.89/6.173) for Flacco (1.18). Ozzie really mastered this trade because he gave up just .3 AV in value for Joe but netted 9.9 AV for Harvey. So receiving 9.6 AV, the fourth highest value for the Ravens.

3.  Ah the Kindle/Dickson/Pitta pick kind of a disaster of a trade all around. The Ravens gave up 14.1 AV, but got back 22.7 in the trade in value. Or a gain of 6.6 AV. Obviously if Pitta doesn’t come back, this trade could go down as one of the biggest flame outs ever.

4.  Ray Rice was a trade back. I didn’t remember that… His pick was used on John Carlson, at 2.38 (11.4 AV) and brought back 15.3 AV. So a net of 3.9 AV. Not a great trade from AV stand point of view but Carlson for Zbikowski and Rice is pretty good return. 

5. The Yamon Figurs trade. Probably one that you don’t even remember. They gave up 2.61 Gerald Alexander (8.1 AV) and got back 3.74 (7.3) and 4.101 (5.2) 12.5 (AV) a nice little net of 4.4 AV. But Podlesh who you might recognize as a punter, never played for the Ravens, that pick was busheled together with the Ravens 5th and 6th (2.8 projected AV between the 5th/6th and 8 total projected AV) to land Yanda (6.2 projected ,but I think you know the actual).

6. They did a weird trade back with the Pats in 2009 giving up 4.123 and 6.198 (4.9) for 5.137 and 5.141 (6.4) so a cute little 1.5 AV gained, but really that trade was nothing. David Phillips/Kenny McKinley for Ohrnerberger and Jake Ingram.

7. They also dealt 1.29 in 2012 (which became Harrison Smith) for 13.4 projected AV for 17.4 AV so a total gained of 4.

But where I think the Ravens really make quality value is trading their picks away for players of specific need. There were 4 that stuck out to me. McNair, Monroe, Boldin, McGahee. All four of these guys were pretty major contributors to the Ravens and filled short term gaps that the team needed to be competitive.

McNair – the Ravens gave up a 4th for him. The projected AV of his spot, 3.7. He brought 8 AV in one season to the Ravens. I’d call this a great trade.

Monroe – The Ravens gave up 4.114 and 5.159 for him. This would have been about 6.7 AV in the process. Monroe has already in two seasons given the Ravens 8 AV and will probably produce at about a 4-5 AV per season for the next two or three years. Again another win.

Boldin – This is my favorite trade of all. In 3 seasons he provided 19 AV. The Ravens gave up 3.88 and 4.123 (10.1) in AV. But the kicker on this trade is that the Cards added a pick. They sent 5.157 in this trade, who cares, a measly 2.4 projected AV. Art Jones was that pick. Now he only created about 9 AV during his time here, but if he nets back a 3rd round comp pick that’ll most likely be another 5.3 in future AV that the Ravens will actualize this season.

McGahee – We gave up a lot. 3.71, 3.92, 7.239 that’s 13.3 in projected AV. He brought back 14 AV on the dot. 

So where does this whole piece leave us? I looked at all draft picks from 2000 to present for total CAV for both teams. Now, based on Barnwell’s argument, the draft is a crapshoot, you need more picks to gain more players which will give you more total CAV. And he’s almost right. The Pats had 110 picks during this time and they netted a CAV from all their picks of 1680. The Ravens had 106 picks during this time and netted 1646. Comparatively per player 15.27 for the Pats vs 15.52 per player for the Ravens.

But what if you take Tom Brady out? I know you can’t do that…but let’s just do that for fun. Brady has a CAV of 141. That takes the Patriots all the way down to 14.12 AV per draft pick. If you take out Flacco (and I’d argue the Ravens used a lot more skill to get him the Ravens fall to 15.12 per draft pick). That’s pretty darn substantial. Now you might ask, but don’t the Ravens pick earlier, shouldn’t they get more value? Well the Ravens average draft position is 131.04 and the Patriots picked at 134.07. So yes, there’s some value to be had there in expected value on average it’s .1 difference in projected AV and the Ravens have appeared to net .3. 

It’s clear the Ravens method to their madness works. Despite not trading 48 times in the draft, they’ve picked just 4 less times than the Pats, they’ve gotten more value per player during that time and they burned two firsts on a franchise QB something the Patriots have never had to do. I get the stat guys like Barnwell want to promote the Pats, they maneuver and jump around the draft with precision.  But at the end of the day, I think you can argue the Ravens have simply found a formula to actually draft better.