Building a more useful NFL draft "Big Board"

Leveraging what evaluators do well, and enhancing it with analytics, via positional and surplus value

Is Hendon Hooker a top-5 pick or second-round prospect?

Every March and April I get progressively confused, angry and dismissive of NFL draft media "Big Boards” and rankings. Most of the draft analysts producing these boards and rankings do a fantastic job with their core competency: evaluating college prospects. I wouldn’t dare to attempt digging through hours of tape and formulating how good of a player each prospect will be in the NFL. Maybe I could refine the grading process by identifying and systematically countering various biases, or figure out a way to quantify traits for easier comparison and memory retention, but I would only be making changes to the results on the edges. Draft evaluators are very good at rank ordering players within their position, as indicated by the strong correlations between prospect draft positions and NFL success.

What frustrates me isn’t the individual prospect grading, but the process of aggregating all the non-specialist positions into one list, either titled as a “Big Board” or simply “Prospect Rankings”. It’s fine to say that Bijan Robinson is more likely to be an elite running back than C.J. Stroud an elite quarterback, but does that mean you’d follow the rankings and draft the former first, knowing the vast difference in value their respective positions bring to their teams? I’d hope not, but the rankings and Big Boards out there usually aren’t explicit in their application. If you rank a player in the top-5, but wouldn’t draft them at that position¹, what exactly is the point of your inter-positional rankings?

There are some obvious answers. People like to see a list of the all the players together much more than position-specific rankings, i.e. follow the clicks. Less cynically, some draft analysts in the media might actually believe that you should be position-agnostic when building a draft board, and then draft accordingly. Yes, it’s an antiquated way to think, pushing against ever-increasing mounds of evidence, but a decision-maker like Dave Gettleman was running an NFL front office just two years ago. We haven’t made it completely out of the analytical dark ages, through there are signs of an shift with the hiring of younger general managers across the NFL.

Rather than continuing to complain on social media about what others are doing², I decided to build my own Big Board for the 2023 NFL draft, leveraging the outstanding prospect grades from Sports Info Solutions (SIS), which you can find on their draft website. What I’m doing here is combining the best of the prospect-grading world, with analytical concepts of NFL value and surplus value based on position, which has been a big focus of my own research.

I ranked the top-100 players by projected NFL value, which I define as the equivalent salary you’d expect for a second contract, based on the number grading from SIS, which comes with a description for each grade cohort. I then weigh the projected NFL value in annual per year contract (APY) against the designated contract costs for each draft slot for the first four years of a player’s career. No matter the contract cost, teams what to draft players with the highest projected NFL value. But the costs decline significantly by draft position³, greatly affecting the cost-including values to NFL teams.

I determined the NFL values by position using a mix of art and science. The science part was looking at the expected percentage of cap value curves for each position, illustrated below. The art part is using the descriptive definitions of the SIS grading (e.g. “Solid Starter”) and marrying them with the current contract values by position at OverTheCap.com.

I like how the analysis played out using these combined values, but there are still ways beyond the scope of what I have done to further improve the process. Some ideas I have that would likely help, but require a lot more time and complication:

• Turning the NFL value projections into ranges of outcomes, instead of a single NFL value number. For some draft slots and positions we care more about the ceiling than the floor, and every prospect represents a distribution of potential.

• Aggregating and scaling multiple grading scales to get a “wisdom of crowds” NFL projection , rather than rely solely on SIS.

• Projecting based on my value metric of NFL Plus/Minus and translating back to dollar-based value, rather looking backwards on what players have been paid.

I’ll work on incorporating this stuff in the future, but I think we get 90% of the way towards making a superior Big Board in the rankings detailed below.

Each table includes: the updated, position-adjusted player rankings (“Adj Rank”), the traditional rankings based on grades (“Trad Rank”), the player names and positions, the SIS grade and its description, the contract value you would expect for a player at that position of that grade (“NFL Value”), the designated annual contract amount for the draft selection (“Contract”), and the annual surplus value the drafting team would get from selecting the player (“Surplus”). The last three value numbers are all based in millions of dollars.

THE NEW TOP-10 PROSPECTS OF 2023

Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud top the Unexpected Points Big Board with grades indicated they’ll be solid starting quarterbacks. In an NFL that pays Daniel Jones $40 million per year, that amount might seem light for a true franchise quarterback over the next five years. While I’m somewhat high on this class, and especially like Young, the historical success rates for quarterbacks taken early, even at the top of the first round, is a bit lower than assuming a solid starter with the selection.

Even if you assume the most likely outcomes for Anthony Richardson, Will Levis and Hendon Hooker are for both to be lower-end starters, they still look like values before moving on to other positions. You could make the argument that the replaceability of a lower-end starting quarterback lowers their value enough that you should look to contracts like Jimmy Garoppolo’s to estimate their value, but you also can’t be confident Richardson, Levis and Hooker won’t defy the mean estimates and instead produce at an elite level. Even a small chance at elite play probably makes each worth a top-5 picks, unless your evaluation has them pegged as an NFL backup. According to position-agnostic grading, Richardson, Levis and Hooker would rank 32nd, 33rd and 57th, but instead are in the top-5 in my Big Board.

Will Anderson has the only SIS grade over 7.0, and “high-end” grade combined with his status as a tier 1 non-quarterback position makes him the 6th most valuable player in the 2023 draft. The gap between Anderson and the next highest graded edge rusher in Nolan Smith is probably too large, as historically the player rank order before another only outperforms in the NFL roughly 55% of the time in the first round. The 7.2 grade for Anderson is probably overly confident, as the most likely outcome for any prospect isn’t high-end play. Take his $17.5 million surplus value with a grain of salt, since that value figure on average peaks around the 10th selection.

The rest of the top-10 is comprised of the only other “high-end” graded player in defensive tackle Jalen Carter, though his grade within the “high-end” category is 0.2 lower than Anderson’s. Defensive interior is another of the tier 1 positions for NFL value, along with offensive tackle and edge rusher. All the non-quarterbacks in the top-10 come from those positions.

REST OF THE FIRST-32 TOP NFL VALUES

The next three prospects are edge rushers graded at 6.7, which is the same number grade as offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr., though with a slightly lower positional value. This is typically the range that you see the highest surplus value, meaning that the SIS grades could be under-projecting this grouping, or over-projecting Will Anderson and Jalen Carter.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the first tier 2 position to make the big board, with wide receiver salaries jumping significantly over the last couple seasons, making their NFL value numbers higher than you’d find looking back at past contracts and historical hit rates, which have suffered at the position in the first round. Smith-Njigba is grades 0.1 points higher than a cohort of other receivers that fill rankings 18-21, and fall below better graded players who play on the defensive interior and at cornerback.

Michael Mayer is the highest ranked tight end in the class at 6.8, or “solid starter”. Tight end is a tough valuation because it combines a slowly developing position (less early surplus value) with one likely undervalued on second contracts (low franchise tag gives teams a lot of leverage). Travis Kelce has earned $63 million over the last eight years (less than $8 million APY), making him probably the best veteran contract value in the NFL. For that reason, Mayer could move a bit up my board, but it’s true that highly graded tight end prospects haven’t had outsized NFL success.

The most controversial rankings in the back-half of the first round by this methodology are probably two quarterbacks: Jake Haener and Tanner McKee. According to aggregated and weighted mock draft data from Grinding the Mocks, McKee is currently ranked slightly outside the top-100 prospects, and Haener is well into Day 3. McKee might be a name to watch and see how much the respect for positional value and range of outcomes has crept into NFL front offices.

Bijan Robinson rounds out the top-32 prospects, which would technically put him out of the first round this draft with the Dolphins forfeiting their first round pick. Robinson, unsurprisingly, is the biggest faller from his traditional ranking as the third highest graded player, the last of the “high-end” grades out there. I suggest you read through ESPN’s Bill Barnwell’s article covering every angle of the debate about where Robinson should go in the draft.

I’m honestly tired of the running-back-value debate, and don’t need a lot of compelling evidence to confirm my assumption that you should pass on Robinson until all the “Lower-end starter” prospects are gone at premium positions. I’d probably slide him into the mid-second round, but a handful of elite running backs have signed good second contracts, boosting his projected value in this analysis.

THE SECOND-ROUND OF RANKED PROSPECTS

THE REST OF THE TOP-100

1. The best framing I can think of when formulating draft ranking: “How should the players be drafted if it was a startup draft and every position was a position of need?” PFF’s Mike Renner agrees.

2. Perhaps my core competence.

3. The player selected 11th makes roughly half of the No. 1 pick in the draft.