Breaking: Browns deal No. 2 pick to Philadelphia
April 20, 2016Tyronn Lue believes Tristan Thompson finishing 10th in Sixth Man of the Year is “unbelievable”
April 20, 2016Did the Cleveland Browns make a good deal when they traded the second overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft to the Philadelphia Eagles? Like nearly everything else in the world, it depends. Let’s go through some questions and answers, because this is really difficult to figure out without jumping around.
The Browns haven’t had a quarterback going back to 1999! How can they not take either of the two guys that the Eagles and Rams are willing to spend so heavily on?
I suspected the Browns were telegraphing how they felt about these two quarterbacks when they decided to sign Robert Griffin. I also said that I didn’t think RG3 and his prospects were reason enough to not grab a quarterback with the second pick overall, but this is how you have to proceed given the information that we have. The Cleveland Browns either only wanted to take Jared Goff that high, or otherwise didn’t think either quarterback was worth as much as the haul they got from the Philadelphia Eagles.
But if the Eagles are willing to give it up and the Rams are willing to give it up, how can you believe the Browns know what they’re doing?
All due respect to the new guys in Berea, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe the Browns know what they’re doing right now. They got a nice haul of picks, and nobody is saying they got ripped off in the trade. But getting value for your pick is only half the battle in making a trade with draft picks. The other half is drafting the right players.
But the Browns just never take the quarterback. Didn’t you read the story on ESPN about the Browns and how they almost drafted Ben Roethlisberger?!
Let’s just get this out here now for the rest of all time. The “if Ben Roethlisberger had been drafted by the Browns” thing is an utter joke. The Cleveland Browns have been a disaster organization for so long that Ben Roethlisberger almost assuredly would have flunked out of the league (given his personal problems) and wouldn’t have developed the way he did in Pittsburgh. He isn’t this savior of a character that would have become the same guy no matter which team drafted him. Ben Roethlisberger was a dumb kid with lots of potential and ability that worked continually with a team employing a top-down organization that is expert at taking guys and making the most out of them, from coaching to ownership. To think Ben Roethlisberger was going to somehow change the fortunes of the Cleveland Browns with some untold magical fairy dust is idiotic at best.
So you’re saying we’re doomed and nothing matters anyway? Why do you bother even writing any of this?
It’s about hope. You hope that the Browns have the right people running the front office. You hope that they can get along well with the coaching staff and that they can all work together to form a cohesive organization. You hope that the addition of Dee Haslam changes the ownership tide from what it has been with Jimmy Haslam’s impetuousness and off-the-field distractions. Yes, the Browns have to get the picks “right,” but they also have to make that a positive self-fulfilling prophecy, as opposed to the negative one that has existed in Berea since 1999.
But don’t you remember all the other trade downs? How can you possibly defend this trade down once again?
I’m not defending it or promoting it. I don’t know if the Browns are better off doing this, or staying at two and taking the best player available. I’m simply saying that if you’re going to trade the pick, the Browns got good value. The Browns have always done a good job getting value. The issue is that Phil Taylor is less than Julio Jones. The Browns would be better off today with Sammy Watkins. The Browns nailed the Alex Mack pick when they allowed the Jets to select Mark Sanchez, but the rest of Mangini’s haul was kind of embarrassing. The Browns need to nail the picks … or at least a non-embarrassing percentage of them.
But you said with the Roethlisberger thing that “nailing picks” isn’t really possible. It takes overall organizational stability and success to make the most of your picks.
Yes. It’s never going to be one thing. It’s also not going to be everything — because perfection is an impossible goal. It has to be a higher percentage of function than dysfunction. It has to be a higher percentage of good prospects than the percentage of bad prospects. It has to be a higher percentage of good coaching, planning and development, etc. The Browns have to be good at their jobs in most phases for these things to work out. Bad coaches ruin draft picks. Good coaches get fired if too many bad prospects are picked over time. Good players become bad ones with bad organizations that don’t have a real team-building philosophy.
What in the world does this say about analytics?
I’m just guessing, but I have a few theories. First of all, if the best teams only hit on just above 50 percent of their draft picks, then it makes sense to have more picks, especially at the ground zero point of your rebuilding cycle. We would all agree that the Browns are starting basically from scratch, right?
The other thing that I wonder about, is how the Browns feel about the clock on drafting a quarterback considering their rebuild cycle. When you draft a quarterback, also the highest paid position in the league, you start the clock on him. These guys sign four-year deals with team control on an option for the fifth season. If you “win” with that draft pick and he earns his second contract, you know for a fact that it’s going to be a cap crippler. Depending on how you feel about the quarterback development cycle as it pertains to the team-building cycle, and the financial projections of the team with the salary cap going forward, all of these things could come into play for a really smart, forward-thinking organization where the statistician folks have won the power struggle.
Of course, the analytics or team-building philosophy on the cap cycle get overruled if Andrew Luck is knocking on your front door. I believe that’s where the coaches start to win arguments about staying put and selecting the available player. It seems reasonable to assume the Browns coaches either lost that argument, or didn’t feel like making it with the two high-profile QB prospects.
So what is Craig’s feeling about the deal?
I’m intrigued. I’m digesting the thought that the Browns didn’t like Carson Wentz enough to take him second. I’m intrigued that they are going to presumably go forward this season with Hue Jackson coaching Robert Griffin III. I’m waiting to see what player at what position they end up drafting in the No. 8 spot. The Browns could win this trade regardless of what the No. 2 overall player ends up producing on the field. Given this front office’s lack of track record, there’s no chance of us being able to say definitively that this is a winner or a loser yet.
63 Comments
It does boil down to 2 games a year against the Ravens though.
That said, I guess time will tell. The people singing Goff’s praises (and maybe Wentz’s) weren’t blowing smoke. And apparently 2 teams agreed.
that is what sticks in my craw the most right now, we will be drafting behind Baltimore. Im having Ngata/Wimbley flashbacks
Right? Like I get it, you can’t be concerned about what other teams are doing and just do what’s best for your team. But having to see Ngata and Ben and whoever destroy the browns twice a year for a decade makes the rational position a hard one to maintain.
Forgot to mention – If you believe the Browns will mess up the picks, then the trade doesn’t matter. You may assume that if the Browns didn’t trade, then they would pick the right person but that is contradictory to your premise. Either the Browns will blow the picks or they wont regardless of where the pick falls.
IF anybody thinks a front office this deep in analytics is drafting Elliot in the first, you have been living in a cave and have no grasp on the future of NFL team building as the current brain trust sees it.
I know the Browns don’t have the best history of making good on extra picks from trading down, but that has no bearing on whether it’s the right move for this draft. There is a legitimate argument for there being less uncertainty with a single pick at the top of the draft than a bunch of picks at later points, but there’s also a fair amount of evidence that when it comes to finding quality players, quantity matters. Where they have gotten into trouble in the past is to accept the overwhelming value of trading down and then give away most of that value by either using the picks to trade back up a few spots (giving away your quantity return for a particular need at a higher risk level than your original pick carried) or by using your later pick on a high risk position anyway. (is there any higher risk pick than a late 1st round QB?) Once you’ve traded slightly higher certainty for vastly higher quantity, you have to take advantage of the quantity and don’t think you can win both sides of a trade-down/trade-up combo.
I’d like to see somebody run regression on the whiff rates by position and draft level. I bet you could come up with a risk coefficient that would help you maximize your pick usage and help inform trades based on team needs an what players are available. This is an application of analytics that wouldn’t replace scouting or tell you who to pick, but it would be a pretty handy tool to help you avoid draft blunders. There would be a lot of subjective input, like what do you consider a “wiff” and is that a sliding scale as you move down the draft order? And of course you’d have to look at an awful lot of players’ careers to populate your tables. Still, I think it could be done, and it could be very revealing.
For the few people that are upset at not taking Wentz…I looked at the number of QB’s that have become franchise type players when they were drafted in the first round since 1999-2013. The last 2 years don’t count yet. Here is the entire list:http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2015/04/success_for_quarterbacks_picke.html
Some of these names may even be up for debate but 15 QB’s out of 42 taken in the first round is pretty low. Basically a 1 in 3 chance of getting this right. For my money our roster is better for it and I’m OK moving down again because 50% success in all draft picks is around the benchmark.
Donovan McNabb
Daunte Culpepper
Chad Pennington
Michael Vick (before prison)
Carson Palmer
Eli Manning
Philip Rivers
Ben Roethlisberger
Alex Smith
Aaron Rodgers
Matt Ryan
Joe Flacco
Matthew Stafford
Cam Newton
Andrew Luck
It’s just the “expect the unexpected” factor that comes with a new approach. Not drafting RB’s high is basically the prevailing wisdom these days. Everybody thinks they’ll do something very different, but it will probably be more subtle than that. It’s more about a rigorous, disciplined process than it is about finding some deep, dark, hidden secret of drafting.
It is not “expect the unexpected”. Not at all. To the uninformed, perhaps. It’s only about maximizing value, sustainability and having the best franchise culture. There’s still top RB taken every year and 80% of the first rounders have been pedestrian at best. That in itself should clue you in.
Expect the unexpected? That implies some thrill of shock value. That has nothing to do with it and demonstrates a clear failing to undestand the value of working from a position of maximum information.
This is a great analysis. I also think it’s worth noting that you don’t necessarily need a top five pick to get your franchise quarterback. Dalton was a second round pick. Big Ben was 11th overall. Flacco was the 18th overall pick. There really is no reason to reach for a QB with the second overall pick.
I see the appeal of Goff/Wentz, but not in the 2nd spot. There’s too much risk. I would be interested in seeing a list of every QB drafted 1 or 2 overall over the past 25 years. I would think that Wentz and Goff would be at the bottom of that list if they were ranked by their pre-draft reputation/consensus rank prior to the draft.
So I did top ten:
1987 #1 Vinny Testaverde ; #6 Kelly Stouffer
1990 #1 Jeff George : #7 Andre Ware
1993 #1 Drew Bledsoe : #2 Rick Mirer
1994 #3 Heath Shuler : #6 Trent Dilfer
1995 #3 Steve McNair : #5 Kerry Collins
1998 #1 Peyton Manning :#2 Ryan Leaf
1999 #1 Tim Couch : #2 Donovan McNabb
2002 #1 David Carr :#3 Joey Harrington
2003 #1 Carson Palmer : #7 Byron Leftwich
2004 #1 Eli Manning : #4 Philip Rivers
2011 #1 Cam Newton : #8 Jake Locker :#10 Blaine Gabbert
2012 #1 Andrew Luck : #2 Robert Griffin : #8 Ryan Tannehill
2015 #1 Jameis Winston : #2 Marcus Mariota
Boy the odds are stacked against the second QB taken in the top 10.
Yep.
Not what I meant at all. I was describing why so many people are expecting something crazy and off the wall, because they don’t really understand what the use of analytics means.