Rewind: The Importance of Draft Capital

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Speaker 1: What's up everyone. Hope you're all doing well and staying safe, and I hope you're as excited as I am for the NFL Draft this week. Because the draft is about to happen, I thought that bringing back an episode from last year on the importance of draft capital would be helpful. You guys hear me talk about how draft capital is a piece of my wide receiver and running back models, and it's because it makes them a lot better and more predictive. It's likely because players who are drafted early see more immediate opportunity, but there's also a valuation embedded in draft capital. If a team in an organization sees that player as so good to spend a first rounder on him, he's probably pretty good. My models are a lot better at predicting fantasy success than draft capital alone, but draft capital makes them a lot better. And on this particular episode from last year, I provide some numbers that help explain this in more detail. You absolutely should care about where your favorite wide receiver or running back gets drafted this week, and this episode explains why. Hope you guys enjoy There are a lot of angles to go at when communicating some of this data. With draft capital. The easiest way to start, or the way that I think is easiest, is to sort of run through the profiles of top finishers in fantasy football. In other words, what is the top six running backs or high end RB one's looked like over the last decade. What sort of draft capital has been associated with those players? So let's start there. Over the last ten years, we've had sixty high end RB one seasons, because I'm looking at top six as high end RB one, so it's six times ten sixty of those seasons, we've got some duplicates. There have been players who have finished in the top six multiple times. Now, when removing those duplicates, we get thirty three unique players, and this is all PPR related, by the way. Among those thirty three unique players, these are thirty three running backs who ranked in the top six over the last ten years. Only two of them were undrafted players during the NFL draft. Those two were Arion Foster and Danny Woodhead. The only other player who was drafted lower than one hundred and thirtieth was Peyton Hillis. He was the Cisco of running backs. He had just one hit and then he fell off the map and Meanwhile, the only triple digit overall picks so picks one hundred or later that made this list having at least one high end RB one season. Those players include Devonte Freeman, James Connor, and Darren Sproulls. So outside of Hillis, Foster and Woodhead, those are the only three players who are drafted outside the top one hundred. So guys were really looking at a scenario where the vast majority of high end RB one seasons are coming from players who were selected in basically the first three rounds of drafts. Over the last ten years, of the thirty three players who have had one or more high end RB one season, twenty seven of them were drafted ninety seventh or higher. That's a rate of about eighty two percent. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't draft players who are outside the top one hundred. It's not like you can just monopolize all the RB ones in fantasy football. What it does mean, though, is that if you're shooting for seiling, you have information in front of you that can really help you increase the chances of getting a true impact player at running back. You just get a guy who has good draft capital associated with him. Or top three round draft capital. Now, if we extend this to all RB ones or top twelve running backs, we get sixty one unique running backs. That's up from thirty three, So sixty one players have finished as top twelve running backs at least once over the last ten years. This group has a few more players without top draft capital. Of the sixty one, six of them went undrafted, and twenty one of them were either undrafted or they were picked after pick one hundred. So to put this another way, thirty four point four percent of running backs who have finished with at least one top twelve season over the last decade were basically drafted after the third round or not drafted at all. With regards to the top six seasons, that number was just eighteen percent. Maybe that thirty four percent figure seems high to you. One third of RB one seasons are coming from players who are basically after thoughts. But think of it this way. Over the last fifteen drafts and will include twenty nineteens draft here, but over the last fifteen drafts, a total of one hundred and nine running backs have been drafted in the top one hundred. There have been two hundred undred and eighteen running backs drafted after that pick, and there have been loads and loads of undrafted players who made teams as well. So again, twenty one of the sixty one unique rb ones over the last decade have come after pick one hundred or they've been undrafted. But that's out of a lot more running backs. Your sample size of players coming after pick one hundred is much larger, meaning not only are just one third of the rb ones coming late in drafts, but you're gonna have a really tough time choosing which players actually pan out. So the question then becomes, can we exploit this with running backs? If we know draft capital should be factored into how we look at these players, does it even matter, or to think of it another way, do other fantasy managers seem to care about draft capital? To help answer this question, I looked at my Fantasy League dot COM's rookie draft data over the last ten seasons. During this time, we've had a total of fifty eight different running backs with first round ADP or top twelve ADP, and the majority of those players were selected in the early parts of the actual NFL draft, But we had guys like Roy Hilleu's i'maj P Ryan Kenneth Dixon, DeVante Booker, Marcus Lattimore. We have backs who were taken in the first round of rookie drafts who were drafted after the third round. We've had almost one of them per season, and of those backs, DeVonta Freeman is literally the only one who really became something in fantasy football. Now with this year's draft, we're not running into that problem, partially because it was such a crappy running back class. If we want to use that pick one hundred cutoff, we've got Josh Jacobs, Miles Sanders, Darryl Henderson, David Montgomery, Devin Singletary, and Damian Harris as all viable first round options. But only Jacobs, Sanders, and Montgomery are being selected in the first round because of their immediate opportunity. But what does that mean for the other three? They all have good draft capital, but they're not being selected in the first round of rookie drafts. Well, over this ten year span in rookie drafts, we've had nineteen running backs selected after the first round who were picked in the top one hundred. Of those players, Duke Johnson, Jeremy Hill, Lamar Miller, Shane En David Johnson, Kenyan Drake, and Jared McKinnon all have given you fantasy relevant production. That's a hit rate of about thirty seven percent, and you could even argue for a couple of other guys on that list. This is why I ranked Devin Singletary in my top twenty despite not really loving Devin Singletary, and this is why I should probably be higher on Damien Harris than I currently am. So there are ways to exploit the system, and I'm sure there are ways to increase your hit rate even more with a little bit of research. That's for running backs, though, what about wide receivers. Well, let's quickly run through the same exercise as before, where we look at the profiles for top six and top twelve wide receivers. Over the last ten years, we've had thirty one unique wide receivers give us at least one high end wide receiver one season or a top six season. That's pretty close to the running back number of thirty three. Among those thirty one players, fourteen of them were drafted in the first round, So almost half of the wide receivers who have given us high end wide receiver one seasons over the last decade came from the first round. Three of those players went undrafted. They were West Swelker, Victor Cruz, and Miles Austin. And then one of them, Josh Gordon, went in the supplemental draft, but he was taken in the second round of that draft, so Cleveland forfeited a second round pick the following year. And for the record, Adam Thelen was seventh and cumulative scoring at wide receiver this past year, and he was eighth the previous year. And as you know, Adam Thlen went undrafted. Now, outside of Welker, Cruz in Austin, only four players Brandon Marshall, Brandon Lloyd, Tyreek Hill and Antonio Brown were taken outside the top one hundred. So twenty four of the thirty one wide receivers in our sample were top three round picks. That's seventy seven point four percent of the wide receivers. Now, let's look at top twelve seasons over the last ten years. We've had fifty six different wide receivers. Give us a top twelve season at the position. Of those players, we've got two additional undrafted guys and Doug Baldwin in the aforementioned Adam thelen so five of the fifty six were undrafted, and an additional nine more came after pick one hundred, so fourteen of the fifty six were basically either drafted after the third round or they went undrafted. That's a rate of just twenty five percent. Now, I've done this analysis in the past on my own in slightly different ways, and in the past I've found that running back draft capital seem to matter more than wide receiver draft capital. But these numbers all seem the same. But if you've got a first round running back, chances are he's going to give you fantasy points. I talked about this with Josh Jacobs last week, but basically, every first round running back from the last ten years has given you at least a season or more than one season of strong fantasy production as long as they were healthy and as long as they've given you enough time. So I'll have to wait for Rashad Penny. Not all of those backs panned out for years and years, like CJ. Spiller, but they don't bust at a very high rate. And my thinking is that it's probably due to the fact that teams will feed their first round backs given the investment and volume is everything in fantasy football. Now, over this same ten year timeframe, we've had more than double the amount of wide receiver selections. So the fact that top six and top twelve wide receivers share similar profile to running backs from a draft capital standpoint doesn't tell us that draft capital means the same for both positions. The fact is wide receivers have a better chance to hit with early round picks because more wide receivers are being selected. I mentioned earlier that over the last fifteen drafts and including twenty nineteen, we've had one hundred and nine running backs selected in the top one hundred. At wide receiver, that number is one hundred and ninety six. There have been two hundred and eighty one wide receivers being drafted after pick one hundred over this fifteen year time span. That number is two hundred and eighteen for running back. So let me put this another way so it all makes sense. Wide receivers have been drafted in the top one hundred at one point eight times the rate of running backs over the last fifteen seasons, but wide receivers have been drafted after the top one hundred at about one point three times the rate of running backs, so there's a higher concentration of wide receivers being selected in the first three rounds than there are at running back. Since we're seeing similar profiles of top six and top twelve backs and wide receivers, that means that early round running backs are panning out at a higher rate than wide receivers. Or another words, draft capital matters more for running backs, but it still plays a role for wide receivers. We just talked about that the vast majority of top six and top twelve wide receivers are coming from the early rounds of drafts. But again, the question that we should ask is is this exploitable And the answer is probably not as easily as it is at running back. As a fantasy football community, we've been pretty focused on selecting wide receivers in the first rounds of rookie drafts who have good draft capital. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there are more wide receivers with Day two or better draft capital associated with them, so it's easier to fill out the first round with those types of players, whereas there aren't as many choices at running back, So running back needy teams may need to force things a little bit more. But actually over the last ten years, and again this is according to my Fantasy League dot COM's ROOKIEADP data, But over the last ten years, we haven't selected a wide receiver outside the second round in the first round of rookie drafts. Golden Tate has the lowest draft capital of the forty five wide receivers who have top twelve ADP over the last ten years. Actually pretty similar for the second round two. No wide out has been taken in the second round of rookie drafts with worst draft capital than Kenny Galladay my boy baby Tron. He was selected ninety sixth overall. So I think it's important to factor in draft capital when you're evaluating wide receivers. You don't want to overstate Kelvin Harmon's impact in the NFL because he was ranked highly pre draft. Don't be stubborn. The chances a sixth round wide receiver becomes a wide receiver one is not very high. But the market does seem to understand this, hence the ADPs that we see. But I think that you can utilize this for redraft purposes as well. Your late round flyers shouldn't be spent on undrafted free agents and late round picks. Utilize draft capital to your advantage there too. Now, last, but not least, is tight end. Tight End is unlike wide receiver and running back because clearly you're only starting one of them on your fantasy roster. So I'm really only concerned with looking at top six tight ends here. We know that we can stream lower end tight end ones. Over the last ten seasons, we've had thirty different tight ends give us a top six tight end season. Among those players, just one of them, Antonio Gates, went undrafted, so right off the bat we know to probably not give a shit about undrafted tight ends. But twenty one of the thirty were drafted in the top one hundred. So thirty percent of top six tight ends who have given us a high end tight end one season actually had pretty mediocre draft capital. Part of that is because just seventy six tight ends have even been drafted in the top one hundred over the last fifteen years. So really, you could argue that the hit rate for early round tight ends giving you an elite tight end season isn't all that bad, at least compared to running backs and wide receivers. Now, Unfortunately, we don't see a lot of first round tight ends and dynasty rookie drafts at all. Over the last ten years, not including this one, we've had six of them, and like wide receiver, we've been pretty good at targeting players who have good draft capital associated with them. So with tight ends, I think the takeaway is that, yes, surely draft capital matters in some way, but exploiting that is probably the most difficult of the positions that we've looked at today because there are just so few tight ends being drafted in the first place. So let's just wrap this thing up as nicely as possible. There are so many different ways to talk through draft capital and see how much it actually matters. So please don't walk away from today's podcast thinking that I believe that I have all the answers, or that this was the end all to any sort of draft capital debate. I think what we've seen today though, is that if you really want a good player in fantasy football, if you want a ceiling for a player, a really good ceiling, you shouldn't betting on that player being an undrafted free agent or really a player who was drafted Day three of the draft. Not only do The numbers suggest that earlier round picks produce better fantasy numbers, but they also hit at a much higher rate. It doesn't mean that Philip Lindsay type players will never emerge. It just means that you shouldn't invest anything significant in those types of players before they emerge. We unfortunately can't really exploit the draft capital importance with wide receivers and tight ends very easily, especially at tight end. But I do think that there will be plenty of instances where we'll have these Kelvin Harmon like debates where a player a lot of people liked pre draft falls in the actual draft and people are the end of that player. We saw it to a degree last season with Equanimia Saint Brown. Those players can pan out, but we're playing probability here they probably won't pan out. Where I think the draft capital topic should really be emphasized is with running backs. Not only do we see a strong hit rate with early round backs as it pertains the fantasy football, but we seem to ignore draft capital more in rookie drafts at that position. And I think the reason we do that is because we look at running back with an immediate gratification lens. What I mean by that is that when we're drafting running backs and rookie drafts, we're often emphasizing landing spot and current situation, arguably more than we are at other positions. Now we should be emphasizing landing spot. Landing spot is important, but when we're overlooking draft capital and focusing too much on landing spot, that's when I think we can get into trouble. Samaj p Ryan is a prime example of this. Forget how you felt about p Ryan after he went to Washington in the fourth round of the twenty seventeen drafts. One of the big selling points for p Ryan was who who else is in that backfield? And that type of outlook for a fourth round pick probably isn't smart and sustainable. Like it's fine to feel that way about a random fourth or fifth rounder, but it's one thing to feel that way, and it's another to then spend a first round rookie pick on that player. There will be fourth and fifth round running backs who work out and are successful in fantasy, but if you're looking at probability, you shouldn't be taking those players in the first rounds of your rookie draft. And all the while you shouldn't ignore early round backs who fall in the second round of your rookie drafts either. That's been a low key money spot for fantasy production over the last decade. Even if those players don't have immediate roles, or even if they don't look like they have immediate roles, that doesn't mean that they'll never emerge. People seem to make that mistake with players like Jeremy Hill or maybe Duke Johnson or even Kenyan Drake. That I think is one of the main takeaways here. We know pretty intuitively that draft capital matters. Teams are doing their homework and selecting good players early in their drafts, but I think we lose sight of draft capital when we're making our own team decisions in fantasy football, both in redraft and dynasty. And hopefully today's episode serves as a reminder to not forget about what happened on draft day for those players. That's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you guys for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching Forward on iTunes, google Play, SoundCloud, tune in, Stitcher, and Spotify, and if you're on iTunes, please do me a favor and leave a rating and review. I'm also on Twitter. You can follow me on there at late round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll be in your ears later this week with a Mailbag episode