2018 Draft Rewind
I’m typing this from somewhere over Glasgow in the middle seat of a 777-300.
Right now, I’m about four hours into a 13-hour flight from Istanbul to Houston, which means what I lack in elbow room, I make up for in loads of free time. That’s bad for me, but good for you. Because there’s only so many plane movies a person can watch. And with the spotty WiFi, I can’t exactly Google an explanation for what the heck happened at the end of Annihilation.
So that leaves me with pretty much just one option to pass the time. And by now, you’ve already figured out what that is. And I promise this is not just another excuse to use my recent travels as a segue for some fantasy football analysis.
Although, let’s be honest, that’s exactly what this is.
Samantha and I spent the last week or so bouncing around Greece and Italy where our travels ultimately came to an end in Rome. As they say, all roads lead there. (We took a ferry, but whatever.) And when in Rome, we did as the tourists do, which is to say we went to the Vatican, ate way too much pizza and pasta, and of course toured the Colosseum.
We entered the arena through the gladiator’s entrance, walking in the footsteps of all those who fought and died there many years ago. It was awe-inspiring and bone-chilling in all the ways you might expect. But what surprised me most about the Colosseum was not how ancient or foreign it felt. But how familiar.
Walking into the Roman Colosseum is not unlike walking into any football stadium in America. It’s a huge circle with the field of play at its center. The sections and seats are numbered with actual Roman numerals etched into the stone. There are names of season-ticket holders (AKA the emperor and senators) carved into the seats. And though it no longer exists, the Romans even had a system for doming the top when it got hot or rained.
This thing was built nearly 2,000 years ago and yet navigating the Roman Colosseum is just like climbing the steps to find your seats at the L.A. Coliseum. I find that kind of remarkable.
Times have changed, yes. The games are gone. The building has a new purpose, having at one point even served as an apartment building in the Middle Ages. (True story.) And today’s gladiators need not fight to the death. They have the freedom to walk away while their health is still intact. (You do you, Andrew Luck.)
And yet history has a funny way of—if not repeating itself—then of echoing into the future. All we can hope to do is to be like the archaeologists of Rome and dig through the layers of the past in search of answers. Because if we don’t, we may soon find ourselves walking in those same footsteps. The ones that lead us right into the lion’s den.
So with that in mind and this year’s draft less than a week away, now feels like the perfect time to do a little digging ourselves. Because come this time next week, I’m sure many of us will be feeling like we “totally won the draft.” But the truth is you really need the passage of time and the accumulation of stats to adequately judge just how you did.
So now with the 2018 season fully in the rearview, let’s go back and properly investigate the draft, evaluating the good, the bad and the Le’Veon Bell.
By the Numbers
In last year’s draft, a total of 192 players were selected. Of those 192, there were 19 QBs, 64 RBs, 70 WRs, 15 TEs, 12 D/STs and 12 Ks. (Woohoo! No one drafted a backup defense or kicker. Yes, that’s happened every year except 2016 and now last year.) Want to see the full draft? You can find it here.
How does that distribution compare to historical averages? For the most part, that’s right on par with previous years. That being said, the 70 WRs that were selected were the most for any position ever, which probably came at the expense of QBs and TEs, both of which saw slightly fewer taken than historical averages.
Evaluating the Draft by Positions
Of course, it’s not just about how many players at each position are taken, but when. As you might predict, RBs go early with eight drafted in the first round last year. It was the most RBs taken in the first round since 2015 when 10 were taken. (The record is 11 in 2013.)
But WRs were not far behind. They account for the other four picks in last year’s first round, and by the end of the fourth, they had caught up to RBs with a total of 22 being drafted from each position. From there on out, it’s pretty even the rest of the way, which is a similar trend from years past.
As for QBs, Tom Brady was the first QB off the board last season when Samantha selected him with the second-to-last pick in the third round. It’s the latest (pick 35) the league has ever gone without selecting a QB and the continuation of a clear trend to wait on the position. In fact, after Brady, there wasn’t another QB taken until the fifth round, at which point at least two were taken every round until the eighth. The last owner to draft a QB was Josh, who waited until the 12th round (pick 138) to select Matthew Stafford. Of course, we know Stafford was a short-term fix as he eventually traded his second-round pick A.J. Green for Patrick Mahomes prior to Week 3.
Meanwhile at TE, Rob Gronkowski was the first player at his position to be drafted (pick 20), followed by Travis Kelce and Zach Ertz in the third- and fourth-rounds, respectively. But a real run on TEs did not start until the sixth when four were taken. Like with QBs, it wasn’t until much later that all team owners had selected one with Samantha being the last team owner to do so, drafting Antonio Gates in the 11th round (pick 131).
Finally, for the most part, everyone chose to wait on defenses and kickers until the last four rounds when they started to go gradually between Rounds 13-16. Defenses tend to go before kickers with over half the league drafting a defense before the final two rounds. The earliest selection was by JT who picked up the Jaguars D/ST in the seventh! (Not a typo.) At pick #82, it was the second-earliest a team owner had ever selected a defense, bested only by the 2014 selection of the Seahawks D/ST with the 76th pick—also by JT. What can I say? The guy likes some defense.
So what can we take away from all of this? Positionally, we see the continuation of a trend to load up on RBs early with WRs not far behind. Team owners tend to wait later and later on QBs. TEs see an elite tier go relatively early with the rest taken somewhere in the middle. And for the most part, people are waiting on defense and kicker until the last four rounds with the typical exception of one elite D/ST. (This year, that’s probably the Bears D/ST, which has a current ADP in the early seventh round.) Knowing all this, you can use this information to help plan your approach. You can swim with the current or possibly zig where others zag, taking advantage of league-wide trends. Heck, maybe JT’s on to something.
Digging Deeper with VBD
But honestly, this analysis is not all that revelatory. That’s because we’re really just scratching the surface. They say Rome is built like a lasagna with history stacked layer on top of layer. If that’s the case here, then really we’ve just reached that top coating of melty mozzarella cheese.
It’s time to dig deeper.
Brandon peering deeper into his spreadsheet.
And that means looking not just at what positions were taken and when, but which players and how they performed relative to where they were taken in the draft.
To do that, will need a little help from VBD.
As a reminder, VBD stands for “Venmo Brandon Directly” because he’s been doing all this research for you for free. Just kidding. But seriously, VBD stands for “Value Based Drafting” and it’s a tool that helps us compare the relative value of players at different positions by measuring the degree to which a player exceeds the production of a replacement-level player at his same position.
This allows us to compare apples to oranges, or in our case QBs to RBs. If we just looked at total points, we’d think QBs are the most valuable player, since they almost always score the most points. But the reality is that it doesn’t matter how many points QBs score. What matters is how many more points your QB scores than a typical QB.
Don’t care about the methodology? Skip this next part. But in case you do, here goes:
To calculate VBD, we have to establish what we mean by a replacement-level player at each position. There are a lot of ways to do this. I prefer fantasy analyst Chris Harris’ 10-round methodology because, in his words, “10 rounds is the point where fantasy starting lineups are set, the top rookies and hyped sleepers we hope could work their way into being fantasy starters have been drafted, and we’re now looking for backup (or ‘replacement’) type players.”
Historically, our league drafts an average of 15 QBs, 45 RBs, 47 WRs, 11 TEs, 3 D/STs and 0 Ks in the first 10 rounds. So for our league, the replacement-level players are 2018’s #15 QB (Mitchell Trubisky), #45 RB (Royce Freeman), #47 WR (Curtis Samuel), #11 TE (Rob Gronkowski), #3 D/ST (Rams) and we’ll use #1 K (Ka’imi Fairbairn), which is to say that all kickers are replacement-level. Now all we have to do is subtract the raw fantasy point totals of each of those baseline players from the point totals of every player at his respective position.
For example, let’s take Todd Gurley, the first pick in last year’s draft. In 2018, Gurley scored 301 points. By comparison, our replacement-level RB Royce Freeman scored 79 points. That makes Gurley’s adjusted point total or VBD equal to 222, which actually ranks 1st, ahead of even Patrick Mahomes who scored the most points last season. (For what it’s worth, Mahomes’ VBD rank was sixth, which ain’t shabby.) So even though Mahomes scored more points, Gurley was the more valuable player. And kudos to Erik for picking the guy who ultimately finished first overall with the #1 pick. Not easy to do.
With VBD in hand, we can easily determine whether a pick was “good” or “bad” based on how close a player’s VBD rank was to where they were drafted. Generally speaking, if a player’s rank is higher than where he was picked, that’s a good pick. He over-performed his draft spot. But if their rank is lower than where they were drafted, we’d say that’s a bad pick. Those are underachievers. In the charts below, I color-coded them to make it easier to process at a glance. Green is good. Red is bad.
Alright, so now let’s get to it. After the first round, we’ll break the draft into three-round segments and see what observations we can glean.
The First Round
There’s a truism in fantasy football that you can’t win your league in the first round, but you can definitely lose it. Judging from last year’s draft, that statement couldn’t be truer.
Looking at last year’s picks, I’m actually surprised and impressed by how many great picks were made in the first round. In fact, half of team owners drafted a player who finished in the top-12 by VBD (which means they were deserving of a first-round pick). Plus, another three drafted players who were right on the cusp. And a fourth drafted a player (Odell Beckham Jr.) who, had it not been for a late-season injury, likely would have finished among this group.
The two outliers? Gray and Geoff. You’ll recall the former traded back to the eighth pick in order to select fellow LSU Tiger Leonard Fournette, who was in and out of the lineup for much of the season due to injury or suspension. Fournette’s final VBD rank was 80th. That’s a seventh-rounder.
And then there’s Geoff, who with the third pick in the draft, selected Le’Veon Bell, which easily ranks as the worst pick in the draft. Due to Bell’s season-long holdout resulting in 0 points, Geoff’s team was doomed from the start. It’s no surprise he went on to have the worst season by TW% in Worst League history.
The Early Rounds (2-4)
Everybody spends a lot of time of their draft prep mentally focused on the first pick. Who are you going to pick first?! Look, I’m just as guilty of it as anybody else.
But the truth is, the first pick is a lot less important in some ways than the rounds that come immediately after. That’s because there’s way less risk in the first round than there is in the rounds that immediately follow.
Last year, there were 19 bad picks in Rounds 2-4, which we’ll define as players drafted at least one round (or 12 picks) earlier than their performance would have dictated. For example, Nick drafted Michael Thomas 19th overall. He finished 22nd. Technically, it’s a little early, but that’s still a good pick, delivering nearly equivalent value to where he was drafted. Meanwhile, Greco drafted Rob Gronkowski with the 20th pick, but he finished 99th. Now, that’s a bad pick.
So if there were 19 bad picks, that means there were just 17 good picks. In other words, the hit rate in the Early Rounds was just 47%. By comparison, the hit rate in the first round was a whopping 75%. As I said, there’s a reason those guys go first.
And why is it so important to hit in the Early Rounds? Because that’s where the gold is. The Early Rounds are where we find those few extra first-rounders who slip through the cracks—guys who finish as top-12 players despite not being drafted as such. And there are not very many of them.
Case in point, last year half of true first-rounders were actually picked in the first-round. Of the other six, two were diamonds in the rough—guys picked way in the back of the draft. (We’ll get to them later.) The other four? Christian McCaffrey, Melvin Gordon, Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill. They were all scooped up in rounds 2-4. And their owners all made the playoffs. That includes the eventual champion (Brandon), the third-place finisher (Samantha), and the two team owners who led the Power Rankings for most of the season (Alex and Josh). It’s no coincidence that by the end of the Early Rounds, those two had each already doubled up on first-round talent.
The Middle Rounds (5-7)
Last year, all but four of the first 48 picks were either a RB or a WR. But in the Middle Rounds, especially in the sixth once all flex spots have been filled, that’s where the QBs and TEs really start to go.
Last year, 11 non-RB/WRs were picked in the Middle Rounds, which is a sign of how things have really changed over the years. In the early years, you’d find just as many QBs drafted in the first as you would RBs. Now, it’s a more disciplined approach.
And the result has been a higher hit rate for QBs, 83% for those drafted in the Middle Rounds compared to just 44% for RBs and WRs. Which means QBs are being drafted late enough that they’re more easily able to return their value. In fact, in the entire draft only five QBs were bad picks based on where they were selected—Tom Brady, Carson Wentz, Jimmy Garoppolo, Matthew Stafford and Alex Smith. Three of them were due to injury and two of them were drafted as backups anyway.
In fact, there’s an argument to be made that QBs should be drafted earlier. Guys like Deshaun Watson, Andrew Luck, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan were all drafted multiple rounds later than the value they ultimately delivered.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for TEs. But I think that’s more an indictment on the position than it is on poor draft strategy. Last year, there were just three TEs considered to be among the top tier—Rob Gronkowski, Travis Kelce and Zach Ertz. Of those three, two hit. Sorry, Greco.
But then among the rest, it’s just devastation. That includes four busts in the sixth round alone, which includes Jimmy Graham, Evan Engram, Greg Olsen and Delanie Walker. In fact, there were only four good TE picks the rest of the way and even then we’re talking about guys like Kyle Rudolph, Trey Burton and David Njoku. They’re returning value, but when the picks are late, you get what you pay for.
Even by the 11th round, TEs are still busting. Guys like Jack Doyle and Antonio Gates. Jake Butt busted in the 14th, where it’s practically impossible to have a bad pick. So when it comes to TEs, you probably either grab one early or you pray.
Finally, as for the RBs and WRs, it’s a little bit of Russian roulette here. The hit rate for the Middle Rounds is down slightly to 44%. Most of those hits are flex-level players providing much-needed depth, but not a lot of star power. In fact, there was only one top-25 RB/WR in this group (Chris Carson) and just four top-50 RB/WRs.
The Great not Late Rounds (8-10)
When they say it’s always darkest just before the dawn, perhaps they’re talking about Rounds 8-10 of a fantasy football draft. Because contrary to what you might think, things actually start looking up here.
In fact, looking at the tables above, you’ll notice quite a bit more green in the Late Rounds than you do in the Middle and even Early Rounds. Part of that is just a function of how value works. Mathematically, it’s just way easier for a 10th-round pick to exceed expectations than it is for a first-rounder because that player has got so much more room to grow.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason that the hit rate in the Late Rounds jumps from 44% to a remarkable 61%. For the first time since the first round, we actually have more good picks than bad.
But it’s not just the hit rate, but the quality of the hits that even improves. In Rounds 8-10, we find seven top-50 RB/WRs. That’s almost more than double what we had in the Middle Rounds. And take a look at the list, what do you notice? Sony Michel, Tarik Cohen, Adrian Peterson, Aaron Jones, James White, Matt Breida and Tyler Lockett. All but one are RBs. And not just RBs, but backup RBs who popped after an injury to the starter.
Obviously, injury is impossible to predict. But when it happens, it opens the door to opportunity for another player. The Late Rounds are your chance to find that player. Just like the team owners of all the players named above who of course all went on to make the playoffs last year.
Getting Sleepy (Rounds 11-13)
It’s after Round 10. At this point, you’ve probably already drafted your QB, a TE and enough RBs and WRs to fill out your starting lineup, plus another three bench spots. Maybe you have another QB. Maybe you’re still waiting to draft one. Maybe you reached on a defense. (Looking at you, JT.)
But for the most part, your lineup is pretty set. By definition, we’re picking among mostly replacement-level players at this point. Remember, we calculate VBD in part by the number of players left available at each position after this round.
As a result, there really are no bad picks after the 10th round. In fact, this part of the draft is almost the exact opposite of the first part of the draft. Remember in the first round when we said you can’t win your draft, but you can definitely lose it? Well, in the final rounds, you can’t lose your draft, but you just might win it.
Look no further than James Conner and Patrick Mahomes, an 11th- and 12th-round selection, respectively. By all accounts, Alex should have won the league last year for having drafted both of these guys, not to mention two other first-rounders in Ezekiel Elliott and Davante Adams. That’s right, he drafted four of the top-12 players. That’s a third of true first-rounders all on one team. No wonder he broke the record for best TW% in league history.
Can you predict who these guys are going to be? Obviously not. The Le’Veon Bell holdout was a possibility at the time we drafted last year, but even in a worst-case scenario, he was not expected to miss the amount of time he did. And Patrick Mahomes? He broke nearly every single-season QB record in the books and won league MVP. Not exactly something any of us were expecting for a second-year QB coming off a season in which he started a single game.
No, you can’t predict it. But you can dream, can’t you? And this is definitely the time to go for broke. You’ve got nothing to lose. So pick your favorite sleepers no matter how far down the draft boards they are. Because who knows? They just might shock the world and help you win it all.
The Final Countdown (Rounds 14-16)
Okay, now there really is no such thing as a bad pick.
Well, almost. Technically, Alex Smith, Jake Butt and Chris Boswell were bad picks. But the former was injured and the latter by only the slimmest of margins.
As for kickers and defenses, the league generally waits until these final few rounds to draft them, though JT did spend a seventh-round pick on the Jaguars D/ST last season. For what it’s worth, the Bears D/ST finished as the best defense and went undrafted.
Not going to do a lot of analysis here other than to say you should probably spend one of these three picks on one final sleeper and then the last two on a defense and kicker in whatever order you prefer.
Let it be known that there are still good players to be had in this range. See Jared Goff and Calvin Ridley. So don’t throw in the towel just yet. But know that there will be still better players available that aren’t even drafted. Think Phillip Lindsay or Eric Ebron last season.
So Who Won the Draft?
It should come as no surprise given these results that Alex won last year’s draft, buoyed in large part by his 11th and 12th round selections of James Conner and Patrick Mahomes, both top-10 players.
In fact, as measured by the total VBD of all players he drafted, it was the single, best draft in the modern era (since 2014) for which I have data. Not only that, but he won by a landslide, eclipsing the second-best draft by more than 150 points.
But he wasn’t the only that drafted well. Josh was equally record-breaking in rounds 1-10, which is normally where I limit my analysis given that the last six rounds are usually comprised of players that rarely make the final roster and can wildly skew the results. In those rounds, Josh actually broke Alex’s record from 2015, making his draft what I would ordinarily consider the best of the modern era. James White in the 10th was a big help.
In fact, the top five drafts all belonged to players who made the playoffs including Alex and Josh, plus Jess, Brandon and Samantha. Nick, who finished with the top overall seed, was not far behind at seventh. Meanwhile, Geoff and Gray had the two worst drafts due in large part to injuries or no-shows from some of their top selections.
The best thing about a re-draft league is that no matter how you performed last season, the draft is always a chance to start fresh. To learn from the lessons of history. And learn you must. Because remember, the draft is where historically 76% of all scoring is derived, which means there’s no single day more critical to your eventual success or failure than draft day.
No pressure.
Speaking of pressure, my ears are starting to pop, which means we’ve finally started our descent back here in Texas. And the flight attendants are now circling like the Roman legion. My time here is short. So I will leave you with this—a pearl of wisdom from one of the greatest gladiators the world has ever known, Russel Crowe:
What we do on draft day, echoes in eternity.
Or at least the playoffs.
