Comparative draft evaluations 2012-2017

There has been a great deal of discussion recently on MHR about the quality, or lack thereof, in our scouting department. This has been driven largely by the fact that only one of our 2017 draftees has contributed significantly to the team in 2017 - Garett Bolles. Three of the 8 are on the IR and the other four who have been healthy have hardly played. To make matters worse, two of the rookies have played poorly when they have seen the field (Isaiah McKenzie and Brendan Langley). This evaluation is largely meaningless without context though.

Firstly you can’t really evaluate any draft until the players have been in the league for three years. The Broncos’ 2017 draft may turn into a great draft still as we have no idea what, if anything, DeAngelo Henderson, Carlos Henderson, Jake Butt and Chad Kelly will do in the NFL. Additionally, Demarcus Walker and Brendan Langley could very well turn into great players for the Broncos, but they have not been put in situations to succeed this season (for different reasons).

In the John Elway piece today, Sadaraine uses the 2012 to 2017 time frame (six drafts) to evaluate how John Elway (and the rest of the franchise) have done at drafting and developing players. I wanted to provide some more context to this to see how the rest of the league has done over the time period. So that is what this article will do.

Allow me to explain the stat that I am “coining” for this - starteryears. Pro-football-reference.com (PFR) will call a player a starter if he starts the majority of his teams games at a position on the offense or defense. For example, Kayvon Webster, who was never listed as a starter for the Broncos during his four years here, is listed as a starter at CB for the Rams despite only playing 11 games (he got hurt and is on the IR). Webster, despite being a starter for another team, would contribute one starteryear to the Broncos tally for this time frame. To use another example, Derek Wolfe, who has been a starter all six years he has been in Denver, would count for six starteryears. From the 2012 through the 2017 drafts the Broncos have gotten 36 starteryears. So the table below for how that compares with the rest of the league.

The Broncos are 26th if you just go by starteryears. Note that I have done a similar analysis using AV (approximate value) before. It is interesting to note that of the teams that are worse than Denver in this, NE, NOR and PIT all have a shot at winning the super bowl this year. You can also see that I have tried to normalize for total number of picks (far right column) so that teams with a bunch more picks will get penalized while teams with relatively few picks won’t. You can see that while NOR has had little success by the starteryear metric, they have also had the second fewest total draft picks during this six year window (36, only CAR had fewer with 35). Normalizing by number of picks moves the Broncos up to 20th, which is a little better.

Of course, this brings up the argument about bad teams NEEDING to start players immediately while good teams don’t. I agree that is something that is hard to correct for, but one way to do so is to look at the total number of Pro-bowl (1st team) and All-Pro (1st team) selections that the players drafted by every team have earned. If you focus on this, during this time frame, the Broncos have been horrible.

Only three teams have not had a player that they drafted from 2012 through 2017 make the Pro-Bowl. I am not counting that 7th alternate selection that Trevor Siemian garnered last season. That is not counted by PFR and I don’t count it either. Only Cleveland and New Orleans are in the same boat of not having a Pro-bowl selection from their draft picks and New Orleans will most likely get two this year from Alvin Kamara and Marshon Lattimore.

Any time your franchise sharing a category with the Browns and only the Browns, it is a sad thing. Now, before you raise the issue, I will concede that C.J. Anderson has made the Pro-bowl (in 2014), but he was not drafted by the Broncos. Even if you expand the net to include undrafted college free agents, during this time window, you only get that one Pro-Bowl selection from the Broncos franchise.

If you look at the teams that are down near the bottom in this metric with the Broncos, you find a bunch of “perennial loser” franchises like Cleveland, Jacksonville, San Fransisco, Detroit, Cincinnati and Buffalo. With the exception of San Fran none of the cellar dwellars (at least in this metric) can claim anything close to the level of success that the Broncos have enjoyed during this time period.

Never forget that during the 2012 through to the 2017 season, the Broncos have had:

1 Super Bowl victory

2 Super Bowl appearances - Lamar Hunt Trophies

4 AFC West titles

5 Playoff victories

San Fran made the Super Bowl and lost in 2012 and then made the playoffs in 2013 and lost in the NFC title game. Cincinnati has made the playoffs four times but has not won a single playoffs game. Detroit has made the playoffs twice (and lost in the WC both times). New Orleans has made the playoffs once. Jacksonville will make the playoffs this year first the first time since 2007. Buffalo and Cleveland have not made the playoffs this century (ok, I joke, Cleveland has, they made it in 2002).

So what is there to do done? Do you see this as a failure on John Elways part or does the blame lie somewhere else? Let me know in the poll and the comments.