i don't like drafting wrs in rd 1, but i am content with agile versus fast and clean routes/ heady versus strong. if you take a guy in rd one he better run a full tree and be fast and big. too often teams fall in love with athletes that can't play football. can't remember the name of the Georgia Tech WR the jets took that was a freak athletically but did very little route running in college. route running is key, because it suggests good body control and that = separation when changing directions.
i don't like drafting wrs in rd 1, but i am content with agile versus fast and clean routes/ heady versus strong. if you take a guy in rd one he better run a full tree and be fast and big. too often teams fall in love with athletes that can't play football. can't remember the name of the Georgia Tech WR the jets took that was a freak athletically but did very little route running in college. route running is key, because it suggests good body control and that = separation when changing directions.
Calvin Johnson played at Georgia Tech...he did very little route running in college...just sayin...
i don't like drafting wrs in rd 1, but i am content with agile versus fast and clean routes/ heady versus strong. if you take a guy in rd one he better run a full tree and be fast and big. too often teams fall in love with athletes that can't play football. can't remember the name of the Georgia Tech WR the jets took that was a freak athletically but did very little route running in college. route running is key, because it suggests good body control and that = separation when changing directions.
Calvin Johnson played at Georgia Tech...he did very little route running in college...just sayin...
"The results of the research show that 60 % of the running backs and wide receivers in the 3rd-7th round sample have amassed greater
average career statistics than the 1st and 2nd round players they were compared with."
Not sure what exactly that has to do with my post...but why are people surprised that players in a group that includes 5 rounds of drafting amassed greater stats than players amassed from a grouping of 2 rounds? I also have a problem with the way they selected the players for this study...but whatever...
Lets quote from the rest of the abstract shall we?
" Players were randomly selected from the 2008-2012 drafts, where 4 players per position (quarterback, running back, wide receiver) were selected for each year. Two players per position were selected from the 1st and 2nd round, while the other two players per position were selected from the 3rd-7th rounds."
So not all draft picks were considered.
"In order to select my participants in the form of which players will be analyzed, I placed all wide receivers, quarterbacks, and running backs from the years 2008 through 2013 into a spreadsheet and then used a random generator formula to select 2 players per position from the rounds 3-7, and then from the rounds 1-2 and then compare those players."
ok.....so who got left out of the random sample? If you read the article and look at profootball-reference you note right off the bat that Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco aren't in the study, instead its Brain Brohm and Josh Freeman. Also in 2008, Matt Forte and Chris Johnson and Ray Rice don't get used as 1/2 round picks. That would ruin the study. Instead its Jonathon Stewart and Felix Jones. Its also nice that the random pick generator pulled out Jamaal Charles and Tim Hightower instead of Jacob Hester or Xavier Omon. And the WRs? Well, can't use DeSean Jackson (2nd)or Jordy Nelson (2nd), have to use Donnie Avery and Malcolm Kelly. And thats just 2008. Pretty much you can give up there.**, ***.**** Of course if you read to the end (which sadly I did) you will find this lovely sentence:
"Acknowledging that the sample for this research did not include every quarterback, running back, and wide receiver, the data may not accurately represent the NFL as a whole."
This whole study is skewed silly by its randomness. Simply going with Nelson/Jackson over Lavelle Hawkins/Mario Urrutia totally changes the numbers.
sorry can't help myself in mocking this 'academic' paper. 2009 QB. Josh Freeman and Pat White are the round 1/2 QBs. Never mind that Stafford and Mark Sanchez completely blow away Stephan McGee and anyone they use from rounds 3-7. (apparently, McGee was compared to Pat White and declared the better draft pick which proves the articles point I guess.) RBs? Shonn Greene (3rd) was drawn against Knowshon Moreno (1st) and declared better while Benard Scott (6th) was drawn against Donald Brown (1st) where Brown is declared better. Of course lets us not include LeSean McCoy (2nd) cause that would skew the study. Again, the randomness completely skews the study. Why Shonn Greene and not Javon Ringer? Because that would also give 1/2 round RBs wins over 3-7th RBs again, completely changing the studies conclusions. Should we look at the WRs? Because again, if we randomly choose different players we could end up with Crabtree vs Jarrett Ringer and Jeremy Maclin vs Brandon Gibson. Of course, you can also go the other way and have Mike Wallace v Brian Robiskie and Julien Edelman v Juaquin Iglesias. The study is too random dependent to draw any conclusions.
because I'm realllllllllly bored. If you use weighted approximate value from profootball-reference from 2008 and look at the QBs you see something much different. If you use all 4QBs drafted in rounds 1-2 and find their average AV, you will see that its 37.25. If you take the top 4 qbs from rounds 3-7 you get 1.25. Any study that depends on Stephan McGee against Pat White to justify that 60% of players taken in rounds 3-7 are better than the compared players from rounds 1-2 is seriously flawed. As someone with a published master thesis in education, I have no idea how this even got published or approved. Top 4 WRs drafted in rounds 1/2 have 44.5 AV while the top 4 WRs from rounds 3-7 have a 37.75 AV. Their system doesn't work. If you use the first 4 WRs drafted, rounds 1/2 still wins 38 to 37.75.
bwah ha ha ha...look at 2010. Coly McCoy 'wins' over Tim Tebow and John Skelton wins over Jimmy Clausen. Meanwhile Bradford blows them all away. 1/2 rounds have an average AV of 18.3 while top 3 QBs from round 3-7 have an AV of 5.6. Yep, rounds 3-7 sure were better. Meanwhile top 3 1/2 round RBs have an AV of 31 while top 3 3-7 RBs have a 14. Top 3 WRs from rounds 1/2 have AV=53 while round 3-7 have AV=51.3. The randomness skews everything, I know I've said that before, I just can't help it.
Looking at the WRs for 2011, lets not consider Jones and either Green, Cobb or Torrey Smith, but rather Jones and Titus Young. At RB definitely better to compare the best two rbs from rounds 3-7 over Mikel Leshoure and Daniel Thomas, because if you use Mark Ingram the conclusion changes. At least at QB the authors used Andy Dalton and Jake Locker as the 1/2 round reps rather than Gabbert and Ponder. Of course Newton wouldn't change things that much would it.