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Last edited by Topcat; 04-16-2024, 05:11 PM. -
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The 2014 NFL Draft wouldn’t happen for months, but according to Steve Gera, at least one Cleveland Browns executive had his mind made up on one of its most polarizing prospects.
A special assistant to head coach Rob Chudzinski, Gera had been in the NFL for more than five years. The San Diego Chargers had hired the former Marine to “do analytics” in 2007. Gera’s qualifications included a recently obtained MBA from San Diego State and the fact that he’d read “Moneyball.” He scouted opponents and supplied data to coaches through easy-to-read narratives.
“I would just crack jokes and make fun of our offensive coaches but also include information,” Gera said recently. “Data is inherently boring and soulless. What you hear typically sounds like the first day on f—— Mars. I wanted to break it down shotgun style.”
The approach kept him around. Gera studied fourth-down attempts, timeout usage and draft strategies. Relationships made in that role helped him transition into becoming a coach.
That’s what led him to Cleveland, where, on a plane at the beginning of the 2013 season, he says he heard a Browns executive say, “The only person I’ve seen who competes harder than Johnny Manziel is Michael Jordan.”
“What makes you say that?” Gera asked.
“Tape,” the executive said. “Watch it long enough, and you’ll see it, too.”
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Gera left the NFL a decade ago and has since worked in the NBA and European soccer, founded data science companies and taught. Experience in different sectors helped crystallize some of Gera’s beliefs about football, and the Manziel moment epitomizes what Gera believes is one of the most faulty decision-making processes in the NFL: draft strategy.
Compare a prospect to a legend from the outset, and you — or, say, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, who drafted Manziel No. 22 overall and then watched as the quarterback’s career imploded suddenly and spectacularly — are likely to cling to that early comparison despite evidence to the contrary.
“The draft is an absolute petri dish for every cognitive bias underneath the sun,” Gera said.
Conversations with 14 general managers, coaches, analytics staffers, scouts and executives in other sports — some of whom were granted anonymity because they were not authorized by their current organizations to speak about the highly competitive process — unearthed a messy concoction of uncertainty, overconfidence, competing incentives, pressure and impatience.
“Human dynamics writ large,” said Hall of Fame NFL executive Bill Polian.
Even Nobel Prize-winning scholars have spent decades mulling whether there is a single best way to draft.
The answer, they’ve found, is a resounding yes. But only a few teams are curious enough to think differently, and even fewer are disciplined enough to act differently.
In 2011, Kevin Meers applied for an analytics internship with the Dallas Cowboys. During his interview, Cowboys brass decided that Meers, who majored in economics and statistics at Harvard, was a worthwhile enough candidate to solicit feedback on a 63-page academic paper they found fascinating.
The paper, “Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League,” had been published six years earlier by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meers hadn’t read it, hadn’t even heard of it, but it was draft-related and he’d long been draft-interested.
Meers wasn’t your typical draftnik. Spouting opinions on prospects did not captivate him. The allure lay in the idea that you could trade picks. Should you? Why or why not? And how do you assign value to each pick?
Cowboys executives were exploring similar questions internally, and that’s how they found the paper Meers was now dissecting on their behalf.
First, he wondered, who wrote this?
Richard Thaler, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who would win a Nobel Prize in 2017, and Cade Massey, a business professor then at Duke University.
Their hypothesis?
Teams overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they overvalue the “right to choose” in the draft.
And what were the findings after examining every draft pick and trade from 1988 to 2004?
Teams massively overestimate their abilities to delineate between stars and flops, and because of that they heavilyovervalue the “right to choose” in the draft.
Meers combed through the paper and uncovered some highlights:- The treasured No. 1 pick in the draft is actually the least valuable in the first round, according to the surplus value a team can create with each pick.
- Across all rounds, the probability that a player starts more games than the next player chosen at his position is just 53 percent.
- Teams generated a 174 percent return on trades by forgoing a pick this year for picks next year.
Thaler and Massey suggested that teams should accumulate picks by trading back and into the future more often. The more darts you have, the better your chance of eventually hitting the bull’s-eye.
The Cowboys’ interest led them to invite Thaler and Massey into their building for presentations. Jerry Jones dined with them.
Meers, whom the Cowboys ultimately hired, expected a team that understood Thaler and Massey’s research would serve as the perfect place to learn. But he would learn what so many others in professional sports have over the years: analysis is only as good as a decision-maker’s willingness to put it into action.
Thaler and Massey, specifically, understand this better than most. They’ve met with countless teams. Most, if not all, seem receptive to their findings only to toss them aside and operate the way they always have.
“I think the industry is relatively aware of Dick and Cade’s research on the draft,” one longtime NFL executive said. “But I don’t think there have been a lot of people willing to say: ‘I’m going to fully invest in doing this differently than it’s always been done.'”
The night before the 2002 NFL Draft, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay walked into the team’s draft room with a friend who, according to Polian, considered himself a bit of a draft expert.
The team’s GM since 1998, Polian had been sitting at a long, rectangular table in the front of the room with first-year coach Tony Dungy. Irsay’s friend spotted them and squinted at the 12-by-15-foot board categorizing every player by grade. The wall on the right side of the room had been prepped to show every pick throughout the draft. On the wall on the left, there were two columns headlined DNDC (do not draft, character) and DNDM (do not draft, medical).
“Look at those guys,” the friend blurted out, pointing at the board. “You mean to tell me you’re not going to draft any of those guys?”
“No,” Dungy hollered over. “We’re not interested.”
“Why?” Irsay’s friend replied. “They’re all good players.”
“Well,” Dungy said, “they don’t fit us.”
“People outside the draft rooms only know about 55 percent of what goes into making up the grade,” Polian said recently. “They do not know the personality, the security issues, the medical issues. And they shouldn’t.”
But if teams have all of this inside information, why do they still miss so often?
More than a decade ago, one NFL team commissioned a study into whether certain GMs were better than others at the draft. Though some posted better track records than others, specifically Baltimore’s Ozzie Newsome, the answer was mostly not.
This is not to say all of the league’s top personnel people are poor evaluators. In fact, there is a line of thinking that the smaller the variation in skill among competitors, the more ripe the situation is for randomness to sway the results.
Many executives and scouts, believers in their own methods of evaluation, would disagree vehemently.
The idea of trading down, in particular, consistently repulsed Polian. “I firmly do not believe you trade a high pick, which is going to be a difference-maker, in order to pick up two picks,” he said.
But that’s the issue, one former NFL executive pointed out. That logic assumes the player you’re initially picking will actually become a difference-maker.
“The problem for everyone in sports is that nobody wants to admit how random and arbitrary it is,” the former executive said. “Admitting that it’s arbitrary takes away from your specific abilities.”
Even true believers in trading down don’t hold to the dogma 100 percent of the time. Meers, who became the Browns’ director of research and strategy in 2016, said that exceptions are worth making at the quarterback position and if your team needs a star.
If you have a franchise quarterback, one longtime NFL executive said, you might want to act aggressively to show a commitment to winning.
“I don’t think Dick and Cade were suggesting that any of this is an absolute,” the executive added. “But it’s just, once you run into the realities of it, it’s there. There is absolutely a bias against or fear of admitting uncertainty and trading back time and time again.
“Which is why it’s valuable.”
Fans might not be thrilled with the idea of their team trading down in the draft. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)
Another consideration that prevents teams from accumulating more picks is the number of competing incentives among decision-makers. Teams preach collaboration, alignment and shared vision, but their end goals may conflict directly with different segments of the organization.
A general manager might be more focused on his job security over the long-term direction of the organization. A head coach may believe unreasonably in his own ability to mold a player. Coordinators and position coaches want to add talent to their groups, while scouts may quite literally pound the table for the players they unearthed during the pre-draft process.
“Everybody is spitting falsehoods about how good they think a player is because they want one more bullet in the chamber for themselves,” one longtime executive from another professional league said. “That’s reasonable and rational, that they would behave in their own self-interest, but you have to find a way to discount it as a GM.
“Is the coach in this situation 20 percent crazy? Is the offensive coordinator 40 percent crazy? Is the linebackers coach 60 percent crazy? Because they might be. They’re thinking in a way humans would think.”
The former NFL executive suggested the inherent irrationality drove him “a little crazy.”
“When you grow up, you think these teams are so good, and they’re all trying to pedal in the same direction and win,” he added. “And when you’re there, you realize that very few are really doing that. Everyone is just looking out for themselves.”
Public pressure may prevent some teams from enacting the newer approach. Make seven picks, and you’ll be judged seven times. Make three trades and 10 picks, and you’ll be judged 13 times. Watch other teams nail picks you traded — or miss on picks you traded for — and negative narratives can quickly form.
Ownership plays a pivotal role. In many cases, franchise owners are men and women who built business empires by making sound decisions over long periods of time. And yet, they struggle to duplicate this approach with their sports team.
Offer Jones $100 this year or $274 next year and his answer will unquestionably be the latter. But offer him a third-rounder this year or a second-rounder next year and he’s likely to think it over a little longer.
Jones met with Thaler and Massey and fully understood their research results. Then, during his team’s draft preparations, he listened to Cowboys executives and scouts. By draft night, Dallas was not trading down but up for players the team had barely considered.
Luke Bornn, who from 2017-20 was the vice president of strategy and analytics for the Sacramento Kings and who has since managed multiple European soccer teams alongside former Oakland A’s executive Billy Beane — of “Moneyball” fame — has thought a lot about the role of ownership.
“You have an environment in sports where there are very high-dollar decisions being made, and it’s simultaneously a very emotional playground in which to make those decisions,” Bornn said. “Those two things combined lead to bizarre behavior … which is sticky. Things happen where you might look back and say, ‘Why in the world do they do that?'”
In 2013, Thaler and Massey published another paper, “The loser’s curse: Decision making and market efficiency in the National Football League draft,” finding that some teams had adapted their processes, but “slowly and insufficiently.”
In 2017, Mike Band, a master’s student at the University of Chicago, wrote that the “trade market is becoming more efficient.” In 2021, Tucker Boynton and Ella Papanek, two Harvard students, referenced the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens as teams that traded frequently and maintained consistent returns in the draft.
Coincidentally, around that time, Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said the following on a podcast: “There was a really seminal article written in 2005. It was really about the draft and how teams should trade back and always acquire picks — and never trade up.”
DeCosta doubled down in 2021 when a reporter mentioned the Ravens as one of the top drafting teams in the NFL. “We’ve probably had the most picks over that span,” he said. “That goes back to a philosophy that I think Ozzie started back in 1996.”
Other teams have tried to garner more picks with varying success.
The Minnesota Vikings’ analytics staff recommended that GM Rick Spielman amass more picks, so he tried, completing 37 draft-pick trades from 2011 to 2020. Results were mixed, and fans constantly dinged Spielman for moving down.
“I’ve been told that if I could trade my mother for a seventh-round pick, I would do that,” Spielman said. “I always thought that the more opportunities you had, the better odds you had.”
Colts GM Chris Ballard once ended a news conference by saying, “I love ‘dem picks,” teasing reporters about the possibility that they’d sit through the entire first round for no reason. Later on, he explained the thought process behind his comment: “I think we’re pretty good at what we do, but there needs to be a little luck involved, and the more picks you have, the more chances of luck are going to show up.”
Other teams eschew this type of thinking. Jones and New Orleans Saints GM Mickey Loomis both tend to trade future picks, while Miami Dolphins GM Chris Grier and Jacksonville Jaguars GM Trent Baalke tend to trade up.
Thinking back to his time with the Browns, especially during the draft process, Gera is not surprised to hear that teams are still operating so inefficiently nearly 20 years after Thaler and Massey published their paper. During his season with Cleveland, Gera was not even sure who was making the final selection on each pick.
“The thing here that I would tell you is the way the sausage is made is not always pretty or very organized,” Gera said. “And I think it would blow away most fans.”Comment
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Xenos
Superb article...thanksAdopted Bolt: Kimani Vidal RB
Final prediction: Latham OT, Colson LB, Sainristil CB,Rice WR, Zinter OG, Nourzad OC, MacLachlan TE, Vidal RB, Lovett DT
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This quote was interesting given how much preparation teams and TPB put into the draft : “The thing here that I would tell you is the way the sausage is made is not always pretty or very organized,” Gera said. “And I think it would blow away most fans.”Originally posted by Xenos View PostComment
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If anything I think the draft process is getting better...
Teams now include
(1) Game tape
(2) Attitude and Behavior on and off the field
(3) Measurables (Combine and other results)
(4) Scheme fits
(5) injury history
(6) How a player might transition to the NFL vs. college play.
What we can't control is weird owner Whims...the more they get involved and don't understand what's going on the more varied the results.
All you can do is create your own shopping list for your individual team and hope for the best.Chiefs won the Superbowl with 10 Rookies....
"Locked, Cocked, and ready to Rock!" Jim Harbaugh
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Yes that’s correct on Maye and that makes some sense as Maye can sit year 1 behind Darnold.Originally posted by Boltjolt View Post
I can definitely see TT lurking but would have to convince the Commanders to not draft Daniels and Sheffter already made the draft pick call for Daniels to the Commanders. Although, there was no secret that Kingsbury loves Daniels.
Antonio Pierce recruited Daniels to Arizona State and from what I heard they have mutual admiration of each other. Former Bengals coach Marvin Lewis who is on the Raiders staff also coached Daniels at Arizona State. I think the Raiders would love to get Daniels but they have to convince Washington and New England to pass on him and that won’t happen.
New England would be the team to watch at #3. I’m hearing they are not enamored with Maye. If that’s the case and they take McCarthy/Penix, then Maye falls to #4 and the fun begins.
For those that would prefer the trade down, this is the scenario to root for because I do believe the Giants would want Maye over McCarthy. If Arizona takes MHJ then you have the needed leverage to try and fleece the Vikings using the added pressure of the Giants.Comment
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Western Carolina wide receiver David White, Jr. is an interesting late-round prospect. I just read an article on him. He seems like the Harbaugh type.
He took care of his father, who was dying with lung cancer, in 2021. He came back and impressed over the last two seasons.
Here are some highlights from the article on Go Long, which you must subscribe to:
The hardest part about training for the 2024 NFL Draft has nothing to do how many iron plates David White Jr. slides onto a barbell. Or cone drills. Or wind sprints. Nothing physical whatsoever. Worse than any pain this wide receiver could ever put himself through was the ghastly sight of fellow draft hopefuls refusing to do exactly that.
Thinking back to those training sessions in Boca Raton, Fla., White looks repulsed.
Back at Western Carolina, he was a captain. It was his duty to rip into freshmen for loafing. He served as the role model. Here? “I can’t hold everybody’s hand,” says White, who admits he bit his tongue for only so long. As peers waltzed into the gym late and half-assed their way through workouts, he started to speak up.
“Why get this close and then act like you just made it?” says White, via Zoom. “Why get this close and give 60 percent? Ugh! It pisses me off! I promise you it pisses me off. I see dudes roll in late and I tell them, ‘Bro, if you’re getting drafted, you’re getting cut.’ I tell him straight up, ‘If you’re not a first- or second- rounder, you’re out the door. You’re replaceable.’”
Big schools. Small schools. All positions. Laziness does not discriminate.
He shakes his head.
“It pisses me off. I just don’t understand it. Why are you here?”
He admits a few of those prospects probably deemed him “insane,” but knows his heart is in the right place. That’s why White stressed the need to be intentional, to genuinely attack the day. David White Jr., late-round NFL prospect, honestly sounds more like Steve Prefontaine, 70s track icon, as he eloquently articulates the need for everyone in life to maximize every ounce of their potential. He doesn’t want to have friends who do the minimum in life — “Why live that way? Why just get by?” — because not pushing your body to its absolute limits sacrifices the gift within.
Says White: “I don’t like seeing people take the easy route. Let’s get it the tough way.”
That’s certainly the road White took to the NFL’s doorstep, from Division-II Valdosta State to… a harrowing 2021 back home in Jacksonville, Fla., to… those Western Carolina Catamounts of the Southern Conference. Not exactly Ohio State or LSU or Washington in what’s been universally blessed as an all-time class of wide receivers. Perhaps one percent of readers heard grumblings of this small-school wideout dusting corners during the week of East-West Shrine Game. For the other 99 percent reading, White describes his game.
When White got to campus that January, he weighed only 175 pounds. Working out at the local gym isn’t the same as locking into a D-I lifting program. He was able to add 25 pounds to his frame and Bell believes he can easily get up to 220-225 pounds in the pros.
Year 1 was fine. Into Year 2, Bell challenged White. Western Carolina had a legit change to win and he wanted the wide receiver to be the team’s “voice” because Bell knew everybody respected him. His message was blunt: “You’ve got to change your mentality. You’ve got to become the leader of the team. You’ve got to hold people accountable.”
Words White took to heart as a captain. Before practice, he huddled up the entire team. On gameday, his voice set the tone. Most importantly, he applied such a hard-edgedattitude to his own position and it molded his game.
In practice, he started winning every 50-50 ball. Dominated.
“Him becoming a leader his senior year,” Bell explains, “took his mental space to a different level. It made him become really just a dog.”
He’s a big receiver who moves like a small receiver. The Catamounts played White inside due to necessity and his freaky ability to change direction. All receivers stretching to 6 foot 2, however, should look down at puny cornerbacks as if they have no business breathing the same oxygen. Arrogance is an advantage.
White started viewing himself as the best player on the field who could not be stopped.“And I think that’s what made him such a great NFL prospect,” Bell says. “He’s long, he’s explosive. He can get out of routes, but then you start adding the fact that he’s tough. He’s a great blocker. He does the little things right. He’s physical when he’s catching it.
“Some receivers want to be pretty. They’re prima donnas. He became that nasty, that get-it-out-the-mud type of kid. … I’ve never seen a kid really change that much, where he went from this quiet, hardworking kid to this guy who, man, you can just feel the presence when he talks. You can feel that energy around him and that competitiveness. That drivethat he has, everybody fed off of it.”
The Catamounts finished 7-4, and White’s final numbers were modest: 34 receptions for 519 yards and six touchdowns. The more scouts studied his film, the more they surely realized he was open… every game. Biting his tongue, White politely notes that he could not throw the ball and run the route himself. Bell says White was “wide-ass open” — constantly — and easily should’ve posted 100+ yards in four or five games, but that the team’s sophomore quarterback was best friends with the wide receiver on the other side of the field and force-fed him the ball. White didn’t complain.
The word that comes to the coach’s mind on three different occasions this conversation? “Mature.” They’ve known each other for a half-decade now.
Highlight reels are in short supply on YouTube, but there is one telling video. Former Pro Bowl safety Corey Chavous, the brains behind “Draft Nasty,” isn’t too concerned about those so-so numbers. He watched White closely all Shrine Week and cited the receiver’s true game speed. “He’s a player who has ‘right-now acceleration’ off the ball,” Chavous explained. “No wasted steps. No false steps in terms of his movement.” That week did wonders for White’s belief and forced NFL scouts to pay attention.
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so coaching on defense makes bigger difference than on offense, cause myself and others have argued that the O-line will be better this year just by adding a center and with the better coaching but that's generally rejected by those wanting Joe Alt...but defense we somehow create miracles on by only spending day 3 picks on defense...Originally posted by sonorajim View Post
I have to disagree with you on this one, I think a great defense requires a lot more draft capital invested year in year out than a great offense, look at how many teams have strong offensive lines that don't even feature a single 1st round draft pick? you cannot say the same for teams that feature powerful front 7s on defense they pretty much all feature mutliple #1 and #2 picks all along the front..."The author assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this post. The information contained in this post is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness..."Comment
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Sheesh, White sounds tailor-made for a Harbaugh team.Comment
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The latest mock from The Atletic
1 (11). JC Latham, OT/G, Alabama
2 (35). Kris Jenkins, DT, Michigan
2 (37). Keon Coleman, WR, Florida State
3 (69). Blake Corum, RB, Michigan
4 (105). Nehemiah Pritchett, CB, Auburn
4 (110). Hunter Nourzad, C, Penn State
5 (140). Jeremiah Trotter Jr., LB, Clemson
6 (181). Trevor Keegan, G, Michigan
7 (225). Dwight McGlothern, CB, Arkansas
7 (253). Michael Barrett Jr., LB, MichiganComment
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