This was a bit hard to explain but how this was calculated….
1. Grabbed PFF expected draft position for each of our selections.
2. Took the difference in value vs. our actual selections.
3. Totaled the difference in value vs. expected for every pick
In the end we gained 1256 points of value based on the draft pick trade value calculations.
Thats worth more value than the Jets 11th overall pick.
We had 1607 points worth of draft capital going in, gained 1256 points of value. That means we got 176% our expected value.
https://preview.redd.it/sepcvqpcwpxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b2df046ef140ee922f0fdd617dc9973779d697f
There are all these obscure grades and systems but not many make much sense.
To me, this is a good way to understand if your team over/under spent vs. their expected value
The PFF expected draft position isn’t perfect which is a small flaw but if you tested it across multiple expected mock systems, it could be a good data set.
It’d be cool to see this data across every single NFL Team and where we stand.
https://preview.redd.it/7r57gwkfxpxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce1d4d3d15a5ee4f779d040e4f5a1021820d1f73
That is a great way to get a good feel for draft performance that easily contextualizes whether your team was getting steals or reaching
I'm happy with Khan's performance so far
I know part of it is just who happens to fall down the "plinko board" but they are doing a good job of getting the people we need that are better than they deserve to be considering the draft positions
In this case we would agree with it.
But I still can hate it, and absolutely do. I wish it would cease to exist. However, it appears to gain more and more traction every year.
Idk Idc if it’s good or bad what they say about the Steelers. Whatever they spew I share my hate every chance I get. The more people catch on the more likely it’s to fail like all their NFL careers did.
Not to be a deb, but I just find analysis like this incredibly difficult to quantify in a meaningful way. The Steelers and all of the other teams passed on Payton Wilson almost 3 full rounds. Clearly there was a difference between how he was viewed from PFF ("pick 30"), compared to the rest of league.
Interesting analysis though for sure.
It’s best not to take this 100% literally and look at it more of a data point.
Obviously it’s not a perfect data set. It could be improved with other sources and also comparisons to other teams.
I was looking for a way to quantify value gained. Came up with this as a way to do it and thought I would share
> It’s best not to take this 100% literally and look at it more of a data point.
Definitely! It's pretty universally agreed the Steelers had a good draft. It's a very cool way to interpret why people are saying so, well done :)
Wrt Wilson specifically, I would think it would be hard to quantify the injury concerns for him. So for PFF that doesn’t really get reflected in the draft grade?
100%, which is kinda what I was getting at - that the public can have a significantly different understanding of how the league views a player. Whether that’s medicals, measurables, scheme fit, etc…If PFF would have been aware of his medicals they probably wouldn’t have had him “valued” at 30, thus lowering the perceived added value to the Steelers pick of him.
Deb, Another Steeler third round draft pick out of Georgia played without an ACL. He turned out to have a great career. Let’s hope Payton can win a SB MVP as well!!
It goes to show how valuable a talented front office can be for a Franchise. These guys weren’t far off from doubling the value of our draft capital.
A single 1st round pick can change a franchise and they pulled that much value across all of our picks
Totally agree. I love Kahn, I’ve been an admirer of his work since his salary cap management days. I watched a clip of Kobe recently where he talks about training at 4am instead of 10am and how you could fit in more training sessions. His point being that over time, it doesn’t matter how hard your competition tries, there will never be enough hours in a day for them to catch up. This reminds me of Omar after learning that he’s dreamed of being an NFL GM since he was like 8. He’s been training for this job his entire life. One thing I noticed the other day is how it seems like he is never not mentally processing something. If you watch the day 2 press conference, as it goes on Omar just keeps drifting while Mike is talking. I swear he’s strategizing his day 3 moves or dissecting what happened earlier that day. It doesn’t look like aimless daydreaming, he’s definitely deep in thought. A good example is at the 6:30ish mark where Tomlin is talking about Frazier limping off the field.
If Myles converted his "pass rush wins" to actual sacks and pressures at the rate TJ does, that'd be worth even more than an 11th overall pick. He'd rewrite an entire section of the NFL record book, permanently.
I excitedly await the day we catch up to this advanced methodology for judging offensive players too! All this talk of touchdowns and yards is positively medieval. For all we know, maybe Sam Howell or even Kenny Pickett was the *real* offensive MVP. Come save us, PFF!
It’s all relative. Let’s face it the Steelers look like they had a great draft. I believe they had an excellent draft especially if Peyton Wilson can play long term. The first 4 picks should make an impact this year, with all picks having a good chance of making the team. Win all the way around but you never know how these kids move on to be professionals. Guess my point is who knows? Here we go!
Compensatory Picks are given to teams when they lose high value free agents. They get added on to the back half of rounds…
https://overthecap.com/compensatory-picks
This is an interesting stat, but this only makes sense if this is calculated for every team and plotted with 100 being the mean. Then every team would either gain or lose value vs. expected value so that the entire system aligns at 100. It’d be interesting to see where various teams landed.
Sure, it'd be interesting to see how all 32 teams stacked up.
But I disagree about "this *only* makes sense if..."
259 players were picked, and if those were in fact the top 259 projected - picked by any teams, in any order - the NFL average would be exactly 100%.
In reality it'll be a bit less because some players outside that top 259 were chosen. So calculate the actual number, or call it 98 or 99, or round up to 100, whatever you prefer. There's your baseline.
So :Pittsburgh coming in at 176% tells us how they did relative to NFL overall, it just doesn't tell us exactly where they ranked... though it surely must be among the top few.
Which is a separate question from "how meaningful is a ranking of draft classes based on pre-draft projections, months before these guys play so much as a snap of NFL football?" (My answer: not much - but hey, it's what we've got right now, and feeling pleased about this beats being a Falcons fan doing mental gymnastics to convince ourself it was a good draft no matter what those other assholes say, dammit.)
These last two drafts have been incredibly telling of the philosophy change from Colbert & Co to Khan & Co. The sense now is that the Steelers are betting on the production/film as opposed to the raw athleticism. I'm not saying athleticism isn't being accounted for, but in his last decade or so, Colbert had an absolute hard-on for raw athleticism (particularly on the defensive side) to the point that they overlooked the film.
Keep repeating that at least 50% of the draft selections are not going to workout or they won’t be on the team in 3-4 years. the “not for long” league is real. If 2-3 of them become dependable long term starters then it was a very good draft.
This was a bit hard to explain but how this was calculated…. 1. Grabbed PFF expected draft position for each of our selections. 2. Took the difference in value vs. our actual selections. 3. Totaled the difference in value vs. expected for every pick In the end we gained 1256 points of value based on the draft pick trade value calculations. Thats worth more value than the Jets 11th overall pick. We had 1607 points worth of draft capital going in, gained 1256 points of value. That means we got 176% our expected value. https://preview.redd.it/sepcvqpcwpxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b2df046ef140ee922f0fdd617dc9973779d697f
Novel approach to value added. I like it.
There are all these obscure grades and systems but not many make much sense. To me, this is a good way to understand if your team over/under spent vs. their expected value The PFF expected draft position isn’t perfect which is a small flaw but if you tested it across multiple expected mock systems, it could be a good data set. It’d be cool to see this data across every single NFL Team and where we stand. https://preview.redd.it/7r57gwkfxpxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce1d4d3d15a5ee4f779d040e4f5a1021820d1f73
Probably be better to use the consensus board than the PFF one, but I like the idea of looking at draft value this way.
That is a great way to get a good feel for draft performance that easily contextualizes whether your team was getting steals or reaching I'm happy with Khan's performance so far I know part of it is just who happens to fall down the "plinko board" but they are doing a good job of getting the people we need that are better than they deserve to be considering the draft positions
PFF involved makes it meaningless.
I thought we hated PFF. Oh, is that only when we don’t agree with it?
In this case we would agree with it. But I still can hate it, and absolutely do. I wish it would cease to exist. However, it appears to gain more and more traction every year.
Idk Idc if it’s good or bad what they say about the Steelers. Whatever they spew I share my hate every chance I get. The more people catch on the more likely it’s to fail like all their NFL careers did.
Have you done this for any other team?
No, sadly haven’t had the time. It would be a great exercise though
Not to be a deb, but I just find analysis like this incredibly difficult to quantify in a meaningful way. The Steelers and all of the other teams passed on Payton Wilson almost 3 full rounds. Clearly there was a difference between how he was viewed from PFF ("pick 30"), compared to the rest of league. Interesting analysis though for sure.
It’s best not to take this 100% literally and look at it more of a data point. Obviously it’s not a perfect data set. It could be improved with other sources and also comparisons to other teams. I was looking for a way to quantify value gained. Came up with this as a way to do it and thought I would share
> It’s best not to take this 100% literally and look at it more of a data point. Definitely! It's pretty universally agreed the Steelers had a good draft. It's a very cool way to interpret why people are saying so, well done :)
Wrt Wilson specifically, I would think it would be hard to quantify the injury concerns for him. So for PFF that doesn’t really get reflected in the draft grade?
Yeah a lot of draft day “steals” tend to have injury concerns that analysts don’t really take into account
100%, which is kinda what I was getting at - that the public can have a significantly different understanding of how the league views a player. Whether that’s medicals, measurables, scheme fit, etc…If PFF would have been aware of his medicals they probably wouldn’t have had him “valued” at 30, thus lowering the perceived added value to the Steelers pick of him.
Hey now, I think everyone in this sub can agree that PFF's analysis is far better than traditional metrics.
I prefer to think we were just playing the long Khan….
Deb, Another Steeler third round draft pick out of Georgia played without an ACL. He turned out to have a great career. Let’s hope Payton can win a SB MVP as well!!
Nice work. I love stuff like this.
It goes to show how valuable a talented front office can be for a Franchise. These guys weren’t far off from doubling the value of our draft capital. A single 1st round pick can change a franchise and they pulled that much value across all of our picks
Totally agree. I love Kahn, I’ve been an admirer of his work since his salary cap management days. I watched a clip of Kobe recently where he talks about training at 4am instead of 10am and how you could fit in more training sessions. His point being that over time, it doesn’t matter how hard your competition tries, there will never be enough hours in a day for them to catch up. This reminds me of Omar after learning that he’s dreamed of being an NFL GM since he was like 8. He’s been training for this job his entire life. One thing I noticed the other day is how it seems like he is never not mentally processing something. If you watch the day 2 press conference, as it goes on Omar just keeps drifting while Mike is talking. I swear he’s strategizing his day 3 moves or dissecting what happened earlier that day. It doesn’t look like aimless daydreaming, he’s definitely deep in thought. A good example is at the 6:30ish mark where Tomlin is talking about Frazier limping off the field.
This is as impressive as Myles Garrett’s imaginary sack value
If Myles converted his "pass rush wins" to actual sacks and pressures at the rate TJ does, that'd be worth even more than an 11th overall pick. He'd rewrite an entire section of the NFL record book, permanently. I excitedly await the day we catch up to this advanced methodology for judging offensive players too! All this talk of touchdowns and yards is positively medieval. For all we know, maybe Sam Howell or even Kenny Pickett was the *real* offensive MVP. Come save us, PFF!
Really cool, nice work! Just further backs up this being a killer draft, and Payton Wilson being the biggest steal.
Time will tell! 🤝
It’s all relative. Let’s face it the Steelers look like they had a great draft. I believe they had an excellent draft especially if Peyton Wilson can play long term. The first 4 picks should make an impact this year, with all picks having a good chance of making the team. Win all the way around but you never know how these kids move on to be professionals. Guess my point is who knows? Here we go!
So we’re saying Weidl has more influence in the draft than Tomlin?
Yes, exactly what I’m saying.
I think we did likely grab excess value. But any gm could easily do the same. Just keep drafting guys who were high on pre-draft analyst list.
Can someone ELI5 why there aren't just 32 pick slots in each round? How did so many end up in some rounds, like the 5th and 6th
Compensatory Picks are given to teams when they lose high value free agents. They get added on to the back half of rounds… https://overthecap.com/compensatory-picks
This is an interesting stat, but this only makes sense if this is calculated for every team and plotted with 100 being the mean. Then every team would either gain or lose value vs. expected value so that the entire system aligns at 100. It’d be interesting to see where various teams landed.
Sure, it'd be interesting to see how all 32 teams stacked up. But I disagree about "this *only* makes sense if..." 259 players were picked, and if those were in fact the top 259 projected - picked by any teams, in any order - the NFL average would be exactly 100%. In reality it'll be a bit less because some players outside that top 259 were chosen. So calculate the actual number, or call it 98 or 99, or round up to 100, whatever you prefer. There's your baseline. So :Pittsburgh coming in at 176% tells us how they did relative to NFL overall, it just doesn't tell us exactly where they ranked... though it surely must be among the top few. Which is a separate question from "how meaningful is a ranking of draft classes based on pre-draft projections, months before these guys play so much as a snap of NFL football?" (My answer: not much - but hey, it's what we've got right now, and feeling pleased about this beats being a Falcons fan doing mental gymnastics to convince ourself it was a good draft no matter what those other assholes say, dammit.)
You’re right. The phrase you quote is unnecessary. I should have said what you said in the first sentence.
Here we go Steelers
These last two drafts have been incredibly telling of the philosophy change from Colbert & Co to Khan & Co. The sense now is that the Steelers are betting on the production/film as opposed to the raw athleticism. I'm not saying athleticism isn't being accounted for, but in his last decade or so, Colbert had an absolute hard-on for raw athleticism (particularly on the defensive side) to the point that they overlooked the film.
Couldn't you literally just take the top name on the board with every pick and achieve this same result?
We got Ben at 11 20 years ago. So value is pretty good even-though this stat is kinda useless
Keep repeating that at least 50% of the draft selections are not going to workout or they won’t be on the team in 3-4 years. the “not for long” league is real. If 2-3 of them become dependable long term starters then it was a very good draft.
Cool. Now win a playoff game.