The Bills do NOT spend more picks on the secondary

[Ramius]

Good work.

Just a thought, but you could try to make it more accurate by adding a draft trade point value to each pick the teams spent. This would solve the discrepancy that a 3rd is equal to a 1st. Then you would be able to say over X amount of years the average NFL team spent 2852 draft points on DBs.

 

i thought about that, but its very difficult to come up with a reasonable ranking scale of the draft picks. Another inherent problem is that teams can't control where they draft. Take the Colts. They've drafted a league high 10 DBs in the first 3 rounds. But, they're traditionally picking at the end of each round. Would they have taken a DB if they were picking 15 spots higher? We simply dont know, so i did what i could to leave that speculation out.

 

In this study, 99% of the posters here understand that i was looking for a general trend of high draft picks. I didnt run these numbers to pursue any agenda, i just wanted to see if the Bills do or do not actually spend more picks on DBs in the early rounds compared.

 

Ignore AKC. He's mad because he tried to do a study with fuzzy math, bad statistics, and leaving out data that didnt fit his point. I was one of numerous posters that called him out on his shoddy work, and his insults here are a childish attempt at revenge.

[Sisyphean Bills]

i thought about that, but its very difficult to come up with a reasonable ranking scale of the draft picks.

 

Why is it difficult?

 

Here is a system. Break the draft into groups of 10. With 96 picks in 3 rounds that's 10 groups. Picks 1-10 would get assigned a weight of 10, 11-20 a weight of 9, and so on with 91-96 getting a 1. Compute the weighted average.

 

Another inherent problem is that teams can't control where they draft. Take the Colts. They've drafted a league high 10 DBs in the first 3 rounds. But, they're traditionally picking at the end of each round. Would they have taken a DB if they were picking 15 spots higher? We simply dont know, so i did what i could to leave that speculation out.

 

Seems fair enough. I think it'd be more interesting to see what sort of value the pick had anyway, since in the end its the production on the NFL field that counts. Maybe 2 points for every year on the team as a starter (3 for being a stud/Pro Bowler?), 1 point for being on the team, 0 points otherwise.

[Ramius]

Why is it difficult?

 

Here is a system. Break the draft into groups of 10. With 96 picks in 3 rounds that's 10 groups. Picks 1-10 would get assigned a weight of 10, 11-20 a weight of 9, and so on with 91-96 getting a 1. Compute the weighted average.

 

 

 

Seems fair enough. I think it'd be more interesting to see what sort of value the pick had anyway, since in the end its the production on the NFL field that counts. Maybe 2 points for every year on the team as a starter (3 for being a stud/Pro Bowler?), 1 point for being on the team, 0 points otherwise.

 

i could theoretically run the pro-bowler/starter/bust numbers, but i dont have that much time.

 

In my opinion, assigning an arbitrary "value" to draft picks isnt going to get you anywhere, because there are a million ways to assign values so they skew the results towards what you want to see. I can email you the file with the numbers if you are interested, however. And just for arguements sake, here are the league averages +/- std. dev.

 

Round 1: 1.56 +/- 1.24 Buffalo: 3 picks (note: roughly half the league has spent 0 or 1 1st rounder, and half has spent 2 or more)

Round 2: 1.75 +/- 0.98 Buffalo: 0 picks

Round 3: 1.72 +/- 1.05 Buffao: 2 picks

 

Based off of those, it shows that buffalo spends an average number of "high picks" on DBs, however, when you break the picks down, we seem to spend more at the top end than the bottom end.

[Dibs]

Theres a lot or talk on the boards about the bills drafting strategy lately, namely about the way the Bills use some picks on CBs. I've run some numbers to simply see what the league says about this arguement. I took a look at all DBs drafted by teams in rounds 1-3 (the old "day 1" picks). I feel that these picks can be expected to reasonably complete and develop into NFL players. I also tracked drafts back to, and including the 2001 draft. That gives the past 7 years (to me, a reasonable time frame), plus this most recent draft. Heres the results.

 

The average team in the NFL has drafted 5.03 DBs in the first 3 rounds since 2001.

The Bills have drafted 5 DBs in this same span.

The most DB picks spent are by the Colts (10), Chargers (8), Raiders (7), and Packers (7)

The fewest DB picks spent are by the Texans (2), Dolphins (2), Buccs (3), and 49ers (3)

 

The average NFL team has spent 1.56 first rounders on DBs in that 8 year span.

The Bills have spent 3 firsts, along with 4 other teams.

The most firsts spent are the Raiders (5), and the Chargers (4)

6 teams have NOT spent a 1st rounder on a DB in that span, the Browns, Chiefs, Saints, Bears, Vikings, and Lions.

 

For those that say no one drafts like the Bills did in 2006, there are some other notable times teams have spent lots of early picks in the DB(we'll call them BillinNYC drafts).

 

Philly in '02 spent the #26, 58, and 59 picks on DBs

San Diego in '03 spent the #30, 46, and 62 picks on DBs

Seattle in '03 spent the #11 and 42 picks on DBs

Denver in '05 spent their 1st 3 picks, 56, 76, 97 on DBs

In the 07 and 08 drafts, the giants have spent the #20 (2007) and then the #31 and 63 picks this year on DBs.

 

Some general thoughts:

 

Teams that do NOT spend picks on the secondary generally have bad secondaries. Note the teams with 0 first rounders spent, 5 of the 6 (bears excluded) have had traditionally garbage secondaries. Also, teams that spent few picks on DBs generally have bad secondaries (miami, houston, san fran) The Buccs have only spent a few picks on DBs, but they have had Ronde Barber and Brian Kelly locking down the CB position for a long time now, thus having no need to replenish the secondary.

 

The good teams over the past few years have had wildly different strategies for building their good teams. Some good teams spend more picks on DBs, and some good teams spend fewer picks on DBs. There is no one set formula to follow. The numbers are all over the board.

 

In conclusion:

While there is no set method for being a good team, it seems to be that ignoring the secondary on draft day is simply not a smart move. Teams that ignore the secondary early on draft day have bad secondaries. If you look at the teams with few picks early spent on DBs, you'll see a shortage of victories and playoff success.

Though I'm pretty sure that I understand what your actual point is in this.....to be fair I should point out a few things....

 

Saying that teams that ignore the secondary early on draft day have bad secondaries is unsubstantiated....In fact many of them rank in the top 5 over the years. Suffice it to say that teams can fill their secondary talent by means other than the 1st round(or even 1st 3 rounds).

 

Interestingly though there is a correlation to your last point of shortage of victories and playoff success.

Over the past 5 seasons none of the 4 teams who picked fewest number of DBs in the first 3 rounds(Texans (2), Dolphins (2), Buccs (3), and 49ers (3)) have made the playoffs.

Over the past 5 seasons half of the 6 teams who picked no DBs in the 1st round made the playoffs....Bears twice, Chiefs twice & Saints once.

I would say that there is a definite correlation for those teams that generally ignored selecting DBs(in the 1st-3rd) but not a good correlation for those that ignored 1st round selections.

 

For interest sake....let's use the exact same criteria you did but with the DL....

 

The average team in the NFL has drafted 4.53 DLmen in the first 3 rounds since 2001.

The Bills have drafted 7 DLmen in this same span.

The most DL picks spent are by the Chiefs (8), Eagles (8), Bills (7), Lions (7), Rams (7) and Cardinal (7)

The fewest DL picks spent are by the Redskins (0), Browns (1), Chargers (2), and Bucs (2)

 

The average NFL team has spent 1.91 first rounders on DLmen in that 8 year span.

The Bills have spent 1 first.

The most firsts spent are the Rams (5), and the Texans (4) with 9 temas spending (3) Jets, Patriots, Jaguars, Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys, Vikings, Saints and Seahawks.

Only 2 teams have NOT spent a 1st rounder on a DLmen in that span, the Dolphins, and Lions.....with 11 teams spending 1 first rounder.

 

Over the past 5 seasons half of the 4 teams who picked fewest number of DLmen in the first 3 rounds have made the playoffs.

Over the past 5 seasons neither of the 2 teams who picked no DL in the 1st round made the playoffs.....though 7 of the 11 teams that only selected 1 have made the playoffs.

 

What does all this combined with Ramius' post tell us???

Nothing really.....that no real conclusions can be drawn from analysing draft patterns(probably because it is only a very small facet of how players are obtained/retained)......which I think is what Ramius was pointing at in the first place.

[Ramius]

Though I'm pretty sure that I understand what your actual point is in this.....to be fair I should point out a few things....

 

Saying that teams that ignore the secondary early on draft day have bad secondaries is unsubstantiated....In fact many of them rank in the top 5 over the years. Suffice it to say that teams can fill their secondary talent by means other than the 1st round(or even 1st 3 rounds).

 

Interestingly though there is a correlation to your last point of shortage of victories and playoff success.

Over the past 5 seasons none of the 4 teams who picked fewest number of DBs in the first 3 rounds(Texans (2), Dolphins (2), Buccs (3), and 49ers (3)) have made the playoffs.

Over the past 5 seasons half of the 6 teams who picked no DBs in the 1st round made the playoffs....Bears twice, Chiefs twice & Saints once.

I would say that there is a definite correlation for those teams that generally ignored selecting DBs(in the 1st-3rd) but not a good correlation for those that ignored 1st round selections.

 

For interest sake....let's use the exact same criteria you did but with the DL....

 

The average team in the NFL has drafted 4.53 DLmen in the first 3 rounds since 2001.

The Bills have drafted 7 DLmen in this same span.

The most DL picks spent are by the Chiefs (8), Eagles (8), Bills (7), Lions (7), Rams (7) and Cardinal (7)

The fewest DL picks spent are by the Redskins (0), Browns (1), Chargers (2), and Bucs (2)

 

The average NFL team has spent 1.91 first rounders on DLmen in that 8 year span.

The Bills have spent 1 first.

The most firsts spent are the Rams (5), and the Texans (4) with 9 temas spending (3) Jets, Patriots, Jaguars, Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys, Vikings, Saints and Seahawks.

Only 2 teams have NOT spent a 1st rounder on a DLmen in that span, the Dolphins, and Lions.....with 11 teams spending 1 first rounder.

 

Over the past 5 seasons half of the 4 teams who picked fewest number of DLmen in the first 3 rounds have made the playoffs.

Over the past 5 seasons neither of the 2 teams who picked no DL in the 1st round made the playoffs.....though 7 of the 11 teams that only selected 1 have made the playoffs.

 

What does all this combined with Ramius' post tell us???

Nothing really.....that no real conclusions can be drawn from analysing draft patterns(probably because it is only a very small facet of how players are obtained/retained)......which I think is what Ramius was pointing at in the first place.

 

good post dibs. and good work with the info.

 

My initial point was to see if we actually do spend more picks on DBs than other teams, because a lot of posters were claiming this after the 2006 and 2008 drafts. The other general trends i noted were made after i had run all the numbers.

[obie_wan]

Why is it difficult?

 

Here is a system. Break the draft into groups of 10. With 96 picks in 3 rounds that's 10 groups. Picks 1-10 would get assigned a weight of 10, 11-20 a weight of 9, and so on with 91-96 getting a 1. Compute the weighted average.

 

 

 

Seems fair enough. I think it'd be more interesting to see what sort of value the pick had anyway, since in the end its the production on the NFL field that counts. Maybe 2 points for every year on the team as a starter (3 for being a stud/Pro Bowler?), 1 point for being on the team, 0 points otherwise.

 

even better would be to use the chart the NFL has used for years to assign value to drafat picks - the draft pick trade value chart.

 

Players picked at the top of the 1st round use much more of a team's assets than one picked in 3rd round.

[OCinBuffalo]

EDIT: Oops! You could simply ignore me and look at Dibs' post above. That is a fine example of what I am talking about below. However, s/he doesn't resolve the Texans suckiness either, friggin' bastard.

 

I performed a study of the positional drafting of the past 5 seasons Super Bowl Teams versus the Bills in order to see if there were clear patterns that differentiated the Bills from the draft strategy's of the best teams. WRamius couldn't process the fact that the best teams place a much higher priority at the top of the draft on defensive players and specifically DL when compared to the Bills. This didn't fit all his pre-draft insistence on a WR at 11, which I tried to explain to him was not a good football move in the 2008 draft.

I suppose I wasn't asking for a summary of your troubles with Ramius and I fail to see how anything in this paragraph resolves the issue I presented. I do appreciate the work you put in because it shows us that if nothing else you care enough to take the effort to try and back up what you are saying.

Instead of considering the evidence done with a weighting for where the each position is actually taken (the only way to get information of value in assessing segments of the draft), WRamius somehow drifted off to making demands about the whole NFL or the Chiefs, etc. The Chiefs have been in the playoffs three times since the Bills have last appeared, but he somehow finds the need to positions them as some kind of bad example. I didn't include them in my study because I simply don't care what mistakes they do or don't make- I wanted to see how the Bills differ against the best teams in the league. My study shows that.

I haven't been following much of the Ramius vs. AKC war, but I will tell you that if you think it's a good idea to compare us only against the "best" teams, without establishing a control(isolate the variables we are talking about here), or better, proving the inverse(contrapositive), then this is simply bad math. The reason is simple: if your findings are supposed to prove a causation then the inverse of the causal relationship you have defined should, by definition, be true as well.

 

Consider: if you were saying that the lower a person's IQ, the more likely they are to believe in Global Warming, the inverse of that = the higher a person's IQ the less likely they are to believe in Global Warming, should be true as well, which would clearly demonstrate IQ as a causal factor on belief in Global Warming. You have to study the whole data set, and if you cannot establish the inverse of your causal relationship between variables, as well as your premise, then there must be some other mitigating factors(in this case political ideology), or limiting factors(mean, median and mode IQs of the sample set), that have to be run down and accounted for, otherwise you are wasting everyone's time.

 

So, if you are trying to prove that "the best teams have a higher propensity to draft O or D line earlier and/or more often" it simply stands to reason that you must also prove that "the worst teams have a higher propensity to not draft O or D line earlier and/or more often". Telling us that you "don't care about what mistakes" the bad teams make doesn't suffice, and changes your efforts from a "study" to mere "conjecture" in a heartbeat = you are simply pissing into the wind, and it's landing on the rest of us...

 

And none of this resolves the Texans either.

If you recognized before the draft that there was overwhelming evidence that no WR was going to be taken in the top of the draft- at least not by any good football organization, you might further clarify that trend by looking at my study. On the other hand, if you cornered yourself like WRamius did before the draft on how great an idea a #11 WR would be, you have to try to find some innocuous way to cover up your embarrassment. I don't know whether you were screaming like he was for a #11 WR, but if you'd like to see some of the evidence showing the best teams shying away from WRs at the top, take a look at my study. If you got caught up in bad judgment like WRamius, maybe some foolishness like his rating the first 99 picks as pick of "great expected value" and pick 100 on of little or no value, mine won't be of any interest to you.

Since I handled the trouble your "study" is in above, and I was in favor of drafting, in order:

1. somebody that fell to us who we weren't supposed to get(McKelvin, Ellis, Harvey, Rivers I would have been fine with any of them, I did not want Gholston),

2. trading down,

3. a CB,

4. reaching for a O lineman like Brandon,

I don't see how any of your WR argument applies to me. I have excellent judgment, and I'm going to demonstrate that right now:

 

Nothing in your post resolves why the Texans(or as Ramius suggested, Chiefs = 3 get slaughtered playoff appearances as the lowest common denominator? please or Rams) have sucked for as long as they have while drafting O and D line exclusively. Worse, they have all been drafting in the top 15 consistently for the last 5 or so years, so it's not like they are getting crap players, yet they can't do anything on the field.

 

My excellent judgment also tells me that I apparently I will be waiting for you to prove the inverse of what you are saying, perhaps forever, while I am still waiting for you to answer my original f'ing question.

[Ramius]

EDIT: Oops! You could simply ignore me and look at Dibs' post above. That is a fine example of what I am talking about below. However, s/he doesn't resolve the Texans suckiness either, friggin' bastard.

 

 

I suppose I wasn't asking for a summary of your troubles with Ramius and I fail to see how anything in this paragraph resolves the issue I presented. I do appreciate the work you put in because it shows us that if nothing else you care enough to take the effort to try and back up what you are saying.

 

I haven't been following much of the Ramius vs. AKC war, but I will tell you that if you think it's a good idea to compare us only against the "best" teams, without establishing a control(isolate the variables we are talking about here), or better, proving the inverse(contrapositive), then this is simply bad math. The reason is simple: if your findings are supposed to prove a causation then the inverse of the causal relationship you have defined should, by definition, be true as well.

 

Consider: if you were saying that the lower a person's IQ, the more likely they are to believe in Global Warming, the inverse of that = the higher a person's IQ the less likely they are to believe in Global Warming, should be true as well, which would clearly demonstrate IQ as a causal factor on belief in Global Warming. You have to study the whole data set, and if you cannot establish the inverse of your causal relationship between variables, as well as your premise, then there must be some other mitigating factors(in this case political ideology), or limiting factors(mean, median and mode IQs of the sample set), that have to be run down and accounted for, otherwise you are wasting everyone's time.

 

So, if you are trying to prove that "the best teams have a higher propensity to draft O or D line earlier and/or more often" it simply stands to reason that you must also prove that "the worst teams have a higher propensity to not draft O or D line earlier and/or more often". Telling us that you "don't care about what mistakes" the bad teams make doesn't suffice, and changes your efforts from a "study" to mere "conjecture" in a heartbeat = you are simply pissing into the wind, and it's landing on the rest of us...

 

And none of this resolves the Texans either.

 

Since I handled the trouble your "study" is in above, and I was in favor of drafting, in order:

1. somebody that fell to us who we weren't supposed to get(McKelvin, Ellis, Harvey, Rivers I would have been fine with any of them, I did not want Gholston),

2. trading down,

3. a CB,

4. reaching for a O lineman like Brandon,

I don't see how any of your WR argument applies to me. I have excellent judgment, and I'm going to demonstrate that right now:

 

Nothing in your post resolves why the Texans(or as Ramius suggested, Chiefs = 3 get slaughtered playoff appearances as the lowest common denominator? please or Rams) have sucked for as long as they have while drafting O and D line exclusively. Worse, they have all been drafting in the top 15 consistently for the last 5 or so years, so it's not like they are getting crap players, yet they can't do anything on the field.

 

My excellent judgment also tells me that I apparently I will be waiting for you to prove the inverse of what you are saying, perhaps forever, while I am still waiting for you to answer my original f'ing question.

 

Game. Set. Match.

[Sisyphean Bills]

i could theoretically run the pro-bowler/starter/bust numbers, but i dont have that much time.

 

In my opinion, assigning an arbitrary "value" to draft picks isnt going to get you anywhere, because there are a million ways to assign values so they skew the results towards what you want to see. I can email you the file with the numbers if you are interested, however. And just for arguements sake, here are the league averages +/- std. dev.

 

Round 1: 1.56 +/- 1.24 Buffalo: 3 picks (note: roughly half the league has spent 0 or 1 1st rounder, and half has spent 2 or more)

Round 2: 1.75 +/- 0.98 Buffalo: 0 picks

Round 3: 1.72 +/- 1.05 Buffao: 2 picks

 

Based off of those, it shows that buffalo spends an average number of "high picks" on DBs, however, when you break the picks down, we seem to spend more at the top end than the bottom end.

As far as the system thing, I don't disagree that a system can be jury-rigged to fit the data to whatever point someone wants to make. (And, yeah, that happens.) OTOH, if the formula/system and data are given it establishes some credibility that the analysis is 1) correct and 2) being done openly.

 

At any rate, thanks for taking the time to post the numbers you collected. I, for one, did find it interesting.

[Wilson from Gamehendge]

The fewest DL picks spent are by the Redskins (0), Browns (1), Chargers (2), and Bucs (2)

 

Over the past 5 seasons half of the 4 teams who picked fewest number of DLmen in the first 3 rounds have made the playoffs.

 

 

Out of the 4 teams, only the Browns did not make the playoffs last year, or any other year in the last 5 seasons.

[Dibs]

Out of the 4 teams, only the Browns did not make the playoffs last year, or any other year in the last 5 seasons.

How did I make that mistake? 3 of them made the playoffs last year