Buckeyes get Boiled down without Loving
February 5, 2015Finally some Wine and Gold: The Nike LeBron 12 “Double Helix”
February 5, 2015What’s your favorite sport? Baseball? Basketball? Or the NFL Draft? Such is the state of Cleveland football that fans are heard to say after the NFL’s regular season ends, “Now the fun starts, getting ready for the draft.”
So, this is for fans like “Neil from Cleveland” who asked recently on a sports call-in show, “ …there are some teams in the NFL that always seem to be competitive, always in the playoffs. Why are the Browns never contenders?” Why, indeed? Shouldn’t the succession of bad Browns teams getting higher draft picks somehow yield better teams?
In his autobiography Paul Brown told a great story of attending his first NFL draft. As he and his staff entered the room where all the teams were gathering, Brown sensed the stares from the other teams. His group was carrying fat notebooks of data they had been collecting for months while many of the other teams were leafing through sports magazines. But even then, Paul Brown’s advantage was not absolute. Drafts have never been an exact science, much as Paul Brown tried, like everything else he did, to make it one.
But, hey, even the exact sciences aren’t exact. Just ask a professor of quantum physics. It’s more a matter of probabilities than absolutes. Fortunately for Ray Farmer, Terry Bradshaw was right. It’s football, not rocket science, and more favorable probabilities are all we’re after here.
Cleveland fans who have been lamenting the disappointing draft history of the post-expansion Browns should note: It’s even worse than it looks.
Three years after starting their team-building strategy the Steelers, in 1972, went 11-3. They won the Super Bowl in 1974. Only seven losing seasons since 1972 and only once since then have they had consecutive losing seasons. They’ve had only three head coaches since 1969. They’ve played in eight Super Bowls, winning six. The continuity, consistency and success they’ve had since those early years has been extraordinary.
How did they do this and how have they maintained their competitiveness? In large part by drafting the best player available, round after round, year after year and, usually, without high draft picks. During the 2014 draft, between Rounds 1 and 2, Pittsburgh’s GM Kevin Colbert, was questioned why the Steelers didn’t select a cornerback in the first round when there seemed to be a clear need for one. He answered, “We’re well aware of who we have on our team, but when we can add a player of quality, it will override the need at any time.” They don’t panic on draft day. They’re patient with their rookies because they don’t look for saviors or quick fixes in the draft. They have a 45-year history of trusting their draft strategy and knowing that in the long run, striving to accumulate players who are better than their opponents’ will bear fruit.
Cleveland fans who have been lamenting the disappointing draft history of the post-expansion Browns should note: It’s even worse than it looks. The history of squandered high draft choices, including unproductive trades of draft picks, goes back decades. An obvious question here concerns the fact that the Browns left for Baltimore in 1996. So why didn’t this ineptitude with the draft just continue after the Browns became the Ravens? The answer is Ozzie Newsome, the General Manager. He has become known as a guy who consistently emphasizes “value” — getting the best available player — over meeting a specific need. Newsome, in the 2014 draft, was predictable. If you compared the Ravens’ picks with one of the many generic draft boards, you could see he consistently drafted players ranked at or above where he was drafting. No dipping down to lesser players to fill a need. Newsome broke the cycle of bad drafting with a new strategy and the Ravens are perennial contenders.
Then there are the Seahawks. Head Coach, Pete Carroll, and GM, John Schneider, arrived in Seattle in 2010 after the team’s history of draft failures and, together, arrived at the conclusion that the team’s strategy had to change. They needed more quality players. So they decided to throw out virtually every other consideration and consistently took the most talented player on the board — even if they were already very strong at that player’s position. They won the Super Bowl in 2013.
The Best Player Available (BPA) strategy is obviously not fool-proof. But it does make success more probable. However, there is an underlying assumption to insert here, especially where the Browns are concerned. Each team has its own draft board, rankings that are not available to the public. These private boards are undoubtedly tailored and weighted to reflect the teams’ priorities and parameters, for instance, speed on defense or size and arm strength of a QB. So it is assumed here (and hoped) that the Browns’ rankings are competitively accurate and intelligently crafted. I know … that’s a big assumption given their long history of dubious choices. But, moving on …
There will always be guesswork in the ranking of players and their predicted levels of success. And the value differences between players on a draft board aren’t necessarily huge. But what the Browns need is a higher probability of success. And in the world of NFL parity teams need to take advantage of every competitive edge at their disposal. So if a team’s draft board is fairly reliable, why not use it? Why not try to select as many players as possible who have been evaluated as more likely to out-perform the players ranked below them?
The most important part of this BPA strategy, however, is to recognize the fallacy that drafting for need works as well or better. It rarely does simply because of the probabilities. And, worse, it perpetuates weakness as the basis of your strategy. By that I mean that if you feel your team is so talent-challenged and so desperate to fill a vacancy at one of your weakest positions, then you’re drafting from a position of weakness. And that makes your team more likely to pass up players who are clearly better football players. The long term result? A weaker overall roster … which leads to the cycle repeating itself.
It’s one thing to select one of two players with roughly equal rankings to meet a need. But close calls are not the Browns’ biggest draft problem. Their biggest problem has been big misses, squandered opportunities with their high draft picks. OK, so you have a big hole in your roster? Fine. Go after those undrafted college prospects and veteran free agents. But don’t pass on the opportunity to get someone who looks like a perennial all-pro linebacker or receiver because you like defensive backs.
The 2013 Browns ended up at 4-12. It was their sixth consecutive 11-plus loss season. In many ways they looked like they were still an expansion team. So this was a team with plenty of “needs” at virtually every position. Even their best player, Joe Thomas, was getting along in years, entering his eighth season. So there were the Browns, sitting at No. 4. Not only was Sammy Watkins available with the fourth pick, he was a wide receiver, clearly a position of need for the Browns. But even if they had an ace up their sleeve and felt they could pass up Watkins, there was Khalil Mack sitting there, rated on many boards as the second best player in the draft. Nevertheless, it was reported several times that Coach Pettine likes defensive backs who can play a strong press coverage as a foundational part of building a defense. So, you know what happened. The Browns traded down from No. 4 to No. 8 and drafted Justin Gilbert.
From the standpoint of teams like Pittsburgh and Baltimore who are devoted to drafting BPA, the Browns compounded their mistake by not only moving down without good cause, they also drafted Gilbert at No. 8 when he was not a consensus no. 8 pick. Several boards had him no better than 20. So, not only did the Browns pass up Khalil Mack, Sammy Watkins and other, more highly ranked players above no. 8, they also passed up players who were ranked between eighth and twentieth, including Mike Evans, Teddy Bridgewater and Odell Beckham Jr. Two different problems: Did the Browns have Gilbert rated the 8th best player? Doubtful. Or did they have him rated somewhere around 20 and took him at 8? The first problem concerns scouting and player evaluation. The second involves draft strategy.
This isn’t just hindsight. You can look at the many player rankings as they stood before the 2014 draft and ask yourself, who would the Browns have drafted using BPA? Assuming the Browns’ private draft board was somewhere in the vicinity of the boards put out there for public consumption, the answer is that they stood a greater chance of making a better draft choice, especially in the first round, by pulling from a hat the name of one of those players who were ranked at or above their place in line. Shocking, perhaps, but highly probable.
You can run the names and numbers for the past 10 years or more. Over and over, the Browns have made a habit drafting from this position of weakness, even desperation, followed by a new regime which comes along and says, this is a very weak team. They purge the roster … only to start over again with the same losing strategy.
And yet, fans, there is still reason for hope. With the massive amount of research on draft prospects, with the NFL combine workouts, with the year-round development of prospect rankings and access to video, draft boards are now more thorough and more the product of national consensus than ever before. Still not an exact science but the probabilities are more reliable. So if the Steelers, Ravens and Seahawks are correct, the Browns could hire a couple of guys who could sit on a couch in the family room in front of a plate of nachos and follow in the footsteps of the late, great Chuck Noll. They could draft the best player on the board, round after round, year after year and — in all probability — the Browns would end up with a much stronger roster. And if the Browns’ coaches know what to do with more talent, then watching actual games will be more entertaining than the off-season.
52 Comments
Excellent story Richard! The best I’ve read in over a month. It’s a shame that the NEOMG can not write more like this. It was very informative and entertaining. It was clearly written with a great deal of thought.
no doubt I made an unfortunate mistake having Gilbert #7 overall. the rest is harsh, but I’m glad that you are passionate.