Money in the Banana Stand

With the draft a couple of days away, it’s a good time to unveil the official Banana Stand 2012 Wide Receiver Draft Rankings. I’m an extreme skeptic of eyeball evaluations for a variety of reasons I won’t go into, but here’s the crux of the matter: Everything you can see on tape is expressed in the stats … if you have the right stats. We probably aren’t there yet in football, but we’re closing in. (Well, not everything. Work ethic and character matter a lot. Unfortunately, they’re often no less inscrutable.)

Here’s a brief description of the stats used here:

Dominator Rating

If you’ve read the Fantasy Douche’s excellent book, Game Plan, you know he’s got a lot of intriguing ideas for improving NFL decision-making through the use of statistical analysis. One of my favorites is the suggestion that market share of collegiate yards and TDs is a better barometer of future performance than raw yardage and TD numbers. For the time being, I’m referring to this as the Dominator Rating, not only because players who excel in this metric have been dominant players in college but because they dominated the looks on their own teams.

In terms of predicting NFL success, any number over .50 – which roughly corresponds to having caught 50% of your team’s yards and TDs – projects as an NFL superstar or Top 10 overall pick value. .45-.50 is excellent (roughly Top 15 pick value), .40-.45 very good (Top 20 pick), .35-.40 (late first, early second), .30-35 (second round to third round), below .30 (middle round pick). Of course, DR in isolation only provides part of the picture. Almost equally important is the receiver’s physical profile.

Height-Adjusted Speed Score

When Bill Barnwell developed the Speed Score for RBs, the same metric didn’t seem to work for WRs. The reason it doesn’t work is because height plays a big role at the receiving position. Almost every legitimate No. 1 WR at the NFL level is 6’1” or taller. My Height-adjusted Speed Score (HaSS) attempts to fix the problem. HaSS is scaled in the same way as Barnwell’s original Speed Score, with 100 being a solid draftable score, anything over 110 being excellent, and anything over 120 suggesting complete physical dominance. In case you’re wondering, since 1999 the No. 1 HaSS is by Calvin Johnson (143). No. 3 is Vincent Jackson (131). No. 5 is Julio Jones (127), and No. 6 will show up in these rankings.

Target Percentage/Yards Per Target

Bill Connelly at Football Study Hall has provided target data for college WRs back to 2005. This is a huge contribution to the statistical evaluation of collegiate WRs. While I hope to do more with it in the future, I’ve included these numbers in the current rankings mostly for illustrative purposes.

Agility Score

This is the combination of the short shuttle and 3-Cone times. My research for PFF shows this strongly correlates to passing down abilities in running backs. Early study suggests this is a less important metric for receivers, but some successful slot receivers have had extraordinary times in this area. I’ve noted it here for a couple of big, supposedly plodding receivers who may possess deceptive lateral explosion.

Unfortunately, we don’t have access to my two favorite PFF stats for NFL players – yards per route and average depth of target – but some NFL teams might and hopefully industrious individuals out there will provide that information in the coming years.

One final note: I doubt the WRs in this class are as far apart as traditional scouting methods suggest. More important than the rankings are the projected value numbers I give with each blurb.

1. Justin Blackmon

Blackmon probably isn’t Calvin Johnson or Randy Moss, but plenty of ‘possession’ receivers are successful No. 1s at the NFL level, especially if they are TD scorers. Although Blackmon’s production plummeted in his final season, he still recorded a .37 in Dominator Rating. In 2010, his .48 was at the elite level. He recorded a whopping 12 yards per target that season. Blackmon’s Height-adjusted Speed Score of 100* is not particularly good, which gives him more of a young Anquan Boldin-type comparison. (Fantasy owners should remember that Boldin exploded as a rookie on a bad team that was still a year away from selecting Larry Fitzgerald.)

Projected Value: 7-15 Overall Projected Selection: 5-10 Overall

Continue reading →

Recently I was given a chance to read an advance copy of Game Plan, a book written by the author of the Fantasy Douche website (probably the best football/fantasy website out there that’s operated by a single person). Game Plan very successfully argues for a paradigm shift in the way football organizations are run. At less than the cost of adding guacamole to your burrito, buying the book is a no-brainer, and if you’re a K.C. fan, consider buying a copy to pass on to Scott Pioli as well.

A key premise in Game Plan revolves around inefficiencies in the way teams acquire and deploy running backs. As frequent readers know, I’ve been working on a series of articles for Pro Football Focus that look at potential ways in which teams might be emphasizing the wrong RB skills. With the draft approaching, it’s worth taking a quick look at whether Game Plan is right and what that means for draft prospects like Trent Richardson.

Trent Richardson is often referred to as the best RB prospect since Adrian Peterson, but that’s almost certainly meaningless. After all, if Purple Jesus is mildly overrated and doesn’t fit the profile of a runner that most closely matches what contemporary NFL teams need, what should we make of the Richardson comparison?

Why RBs are Still Overvalued in the NFL Draft

Jeff Fisher has recently said that he doesn’t buy into the devaluing of the RB position. This could make him a contrarian, or it could make him a smoke-screener, or it could make him an idiot. Fisher is probably not an idiot. After all, he often explained the best way to beat the Colts was to sit back and let them run the ball. Hard to believe he’d want to arrange his whole game plan around a strategy he’s admitted is sub-optimal.

No, the contrarian viewpoint is a little different. It states that even with the ongoing devaluation of the RB position, RBs are still vastly overvalued at draft time. The reasons why are legion.

• RB quality no longer has much correlation with NFL wins.
• RBs suffer a higher rate of injuries than the NFL at large and have short shelf lives.
• NFL teams are not good at evaluating RBs in a general sense.
• NFL teams are not good at understanding which RB skills are important in a particular sense.
• History shows no value to selecting a Top 10 RB.

All of these points are relatively easy to prove individually. I’m going to focus on history in this article. Continue reading →

The Denver Broncos signed Peyton Manning to a 5-year, $96 million contract on Tuesday. Most NFL prognosticators believe the Broncos are immediate Super Bowl candidates with the addition of Manning. After all, the Broncos were a team on the rise even without Manning, weren’t they?

The Illusion of an Ascending Defense

Manning theoretically went to a team with an emerging defense, but their individual players combined to receive a cumulative grade of 17th by Pro Football Focus. Football Outsiders had Denver ranked a lowly 19th in 2011. They finished even lower according to Advanced NFL Stats. You’ve got to scroll all the way to down to 21st to find them.

In truth, this is a very mediocre defense that benefited from the Tim Tebow Effect. Broncos games featured low scores because they played at a slow pace on offense and weren’t a threat to outscore their opponents. This led to a limited number of total snaps and a conservative approach by the opposing team. You can expect this to be reversed with Peyton Manning under center.

The Myth of the Good Offensive Line

Because the Broncos led the NFL in rushing, most believe Denver has a good offensive line. The truth is very different. This is an area where Tebow’s unique rush ability dramatically distorts the stats. If you remove Tebow’s yardage, the Broncos drop out of the Top 10. Tebow averaged 5.4 yards per carry, almost a yard above what the RBs averaged, and his value as an option threat dramatically impacted how the defense had to play. This was true even when the RBs ended up with the ball.

The true measure of the Broncos offensive line can be seen in the advanced stats. Advanced NFL Stats ranked the Broncos dead last in offensive line play. They ranked last in OL-EPA (expected points added) by a wide margin. They ranked last in Rush EPA and they rank 27th in Pass EPA.

Pro Football Focus ranked the Broncos dead last in run blocking and they finished 50% worse than any other team. They ranked 25th in pass blocking. Advanced Stats are better than traditional stats in correcting for context and determining which metrics are predictive, but they obviously still have blind spots. Advanced NFL Stats and Pro Football Focus use completely different methodologies in determining their rankings. If both of them see the Broncos as having an atrocious offensive line, it’s a very bad sign. Continue reading →