After sleeping on yesterday's article on where to find the most value in the draft I started wondering if the sweet spot for elite players/value is in the #6 - #15 spot. Easy enough to rearrange players to see where they fall. These players land contracts in the 5/$35M range:
1996 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 Overall
Elite 2 2 2 4 2 2 4 2 2 3 25
Solid 4 3 7 4 6 3 5 4 7 4 47
Bust 4 5 1 2 2 5 1 4 1 3 28
When we compare this to the prior totals:
1-10 11-20 21-30
Elite 27 24 9
Solid 39 44 47
Bust 34 31 43
Well ... not much difference. It still looks like the sweet spot of the draft but only by a little, and certainly not more than can be attributed to variance. Still, worth an eyeball.
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Are the busts clustered at certain positions? Intuition tells me offensive skill players are most likely to bust: QB, WR and maybe RB. But I don't know if the data support that.
ReplyDeleteI would guess not. There have been a ton of DL busts I can remember. LB maybe not as many but prolly more because they aren't taken first round as often...same with safety and TE. Etc...
ReplyDeleteI think those players are just remembered more cause they're so transparent as to how good or bad they are. There aren't a bunch of great stats to tell us how elite Haynesworth is vs. how busty Robertson is. But you can pretty easily see how elite Fitzgerald is vs. how busty Troy Williamson is. Plus, those positions are the flash...the others don't get nearly the public scrutiny.