[OC] How much value did each team get from their recent draft picks in 2024?
Introduction
This post tries to analyze which teams got the most value from the last few drafts during the 2024 season. It'll help confirm your suspicion of, yes my team has not benefited much from the draft, or yes my team has done amazing, or yeah my team has not truly participated in the draft lately. This started as an exercise to prove just how bad my team, the Cincinnati Bengals, have been at drafting, but expanded from there. This looks at players drafted since 2021, and examines how much value these players contributed in 2024. It doesn't care why they did or didn't contribute, it's entirely results-oriented and specifically for the 2024 season.
Methodology
To achieve this, I'm looking at PFF grades and snap counts from all draft picks from 2021-2024 who still play on their drafted team. It calculates a player's value using a slightly more complicated version of "snap count x PFF grade." This implies that a player who played all their team's snaps at an above-average level can be more valuable than a player who played at an elite level but only played a fraction of their team's snaps. You can debate the merit of that if you'd like, but I wanted to reward players who can be 3- or even 4-down contributors and players who stay healthy, not just those who contribute at an elite level.
As a basic example, Aidan Hutchinson was playing out of this world before his injury. This formula gave him 1163 points of value. Penei Sewell, who also played at an elite level but for the entire season, got 3252 points. And Jameson Williams, who played a lot of snaps but received a more middle-of-the-pack grade, got 847 points of value. Over the course of the season, was Hutch's short season still more valuable than Jamo's full season? Was Penei over 3x more valuable than Jamo? Eh, I'm not sure that's truly quantifiable, but there are certain assumptions that we just kind of have to roll with, otherwise you could spend forever trying to adjust the formula to absolute perfection.
Some of the charts then compare the player's value versus their draft cost. Simply how much that draft spot was valued (Rich Hill chart, no reason why I chose that one), regardless of whether you traded a future 1st round pick to get it. It's about who you drafted and where you drafted, not how you got there.
Most charts are only looking at draft picks from the first 3 rounds. There are a few reasons. Day 1 and Day 2 are almost always about getting starters. Sometimes it's future starters, (e.g. QBs who sit for a year), but starters nonetheless. On Day 3, you could be drafting for anything. Depth? Specialist? Special Teams? Just hoping to win the lottery on the next Tom Brady? The results are too random, it's a lot harder to evaluate the contributions of these players, and the reasoning behind the picks is too nuanced to effectively evaluate with this method. On a related matter, Jake Moody is the only player manually omitted from this analysis, because it doesn't play well with special teams players.
Chart 1 - Value vs Cost for R1-3 Picks
The main chart of the post. Behold it in its majesty. Look at how insanely good the Lions and Eagles have been, unsurprising to many of you. Remember that the Lions lost Aiden Hutchinson pretty early in the season, and they're basically off-the-chart anyway. Top Right is most likely to be teams that have gone through hell, giving them good draft positions, and have come out on the other side. Bottom Right is teams that have gone through hell, and by and large still remain there.
The Eagles are the closest to the Top Left -- a team that didn't spend much but got huge returns. The Ravens and Chiefs are also near that category, perpetual late-round drafters who have made the most of what they're given. Also the Broncos are there, because they kept trading away their first round picks but still drafted pretty well.
Chart 2 - Percent of Value Gained from a Single Player (R1-3)
Some teams have a draft history that's buoyed by a single great pick. Here's how much of the team's draft value was because of a single player. You can see in Cincinnati's case how Ja'Marr Chase is the only true bright spot of the past few years. Cleveland is up there as well, but they had so few qualifying draft picks in the first place that it's not surprising that a single player would have a relatively huge impact.
On the other end, you can see the Eagles and Lions, two teams known for having strong draft classes lately, who are clearly well-diversified. I mean hell, Detroit's data point isn't even using Hutch. They're simply this good even without him.
Chart 3 - Value vs Cost for First Round Picks
I originally excluded Day 3 picks because things are just too random and too nuanced at that point. But maybe we want to take that even further, and only look at Round 1 picks. These are the guys who everyone was pretty damn sure could be a solid starter, or even a franchise All-Pro with just a bit of luck. Higher expectations can sometimes lead to higher disappointment.
My biggest takeaway here is that the Rams are higher than a good number of teams in this chart despite having only a single eligible draft pick. Imagine how frustrating it must be to be a Bears or Panthers fan, and look at all that Round 1 draft capital, then scan your eyes over to the Rams. It must be terrible.
Chart 4 - Most Valuable Pick Per Team (R1-3)
I'm not here to argue over specific players. Simply put, with this methodology, here's who the most valuable recent draft picks were in the 2024 season for each team. Reminder that this is 2021-2024 draft picks only, and Day 1/2 picks only. The Saints have struggled. Many of you will look at the player for your team and say to yourself, "well, if that's our best player, that tracks with how well our team played as a whole."
Again, this is a data set that mostly excludes Hutch due to injury, but I'm still surprised to see Kerby above Jahmyr or Penei. Also surprising, Bryce Young wins out for the Panthers, even though his score is still on the lower end.
Chart 5 - Number of Picks Providing Value (R1-3)
This divides all of a team's eligible picks into three categories: those who provided positive value, those who did not, and those who didn't even get the chance. The last category includes players who got released or traded, players who were injured the whole season, players who were drafted with the intention to sit their first year, and maybe some other reasons as well.
According to this chart, you'd think the Jaguars were performing better than they are. Also, the Vikings and 49ers have struggled in this regard.
Chart 6 - The Off By One Experiment (R1-3)
Your team drafts a player, like Caleb Williams. What if they had instead picked the next drafted player at that same position, e.g. Jayden Daniels? Which team lost out on the most value in 2024 by being "off by one" in one of their draft picks? A major caveat to this is that I'm using generalized positions. If you were looking for a slot CB and the next pick was an outside CB, this doesn't account for that. Honestly, this chart far more just for fun.
Going into this, I had two theories for the biggest misses. One was Caleb Williams => Jayden Daniels, which ended up being second place. Or possibly JJ McCarthy => Bo Nix. Honestly it might be a flaw in my methodology that the McCarthy pick wasn't even the most value lost for the Vikings. That honor goes to that time they picked Dallas Turner over Jared Verse, which admittedly was pretty massive as well.
The Packers picking Josh Myers over Creed Humphrey was the biggest off-by-one miss. But you'll notice a few outlier teams at the bottom -- the Eagles, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Steelers have all done very well at avoiding this curse. That doesn't mean their drafts were perfect, they were just nearly perfect compared to the next player drafted at that position. But it's still pretty surprising how different these four teams are compared to the rest of the league.
This chart is in Comic Sans to discourage readers from taking it too seriously.
Chart 7 - Value Per Team, But All Rounds Included
This is mostly a gift to the Lions and Rams fans. I generated this out of curiosity, and was just dumbfounded with the Lions. But I also wanted to see the impact of Puka, and so the Rams fans will get to see a chart that puts their team near the top.
Postscript
I would've loved to make this work on a larger timescale, like 2018-2024, but the list of players you need to add manually grows pretty rapidly with every additional year. I also feel like the complexities around second contracts are too nuanced for this methodology to be useful for. My original cutoff was 2021 because I didn't want to have to factor in fifth year options, and I only wanted to use players on their rookie deals.
Also, if anyone wants to complain about PFF -- whether good or bad it's the most comprehensive data source I could get my hands on. It's usually a reasonable generalization, just don't quibble over whether Josh Allen really deserves to be 2 points lower than Burrow. If you're just trying to throw players in categories of "great, fine, sucks" it's not too bad (although admittedly still not perfect).
If anyone wants minor variations of these charts, I can usually generate them fairly quickly, e.g. an earlier draft of the post included charts that excluded quarterbacks, or one that only looked at 2024 picks. I currently can't do anything based on pre-2024 PFF grades, however.
The Future
Thanks to everyone who's given suggestions or criticisms so far, I've gotten some good ideas for how to improve this in the future. I knew there'd be some problems with the methodology going into this, but feel free to suggest anything that comes to mind to make this better.