NFL Draft Analysis...Has Arrived

The NFL draft is a week away, and I feel like this year we have heard much less hooplah about it than previous years. The first round of the draft starts on Thursday night April 22nd prime time. The Bengals have the 21st pick, which puts them in perfect position to a) get a quality player and b) potentially be able to get them into camp on time since they won't demand as much money as a top 10 pick. If you watched the Bengals last year, then it's clear their most pressing needs heading into the offseason were WR, WR, TE, and Safety depth (hello Tom Nelson, goodbye). They've done some work in the offseason acquiring WR's in Matt Jones (laugh) and Antonio Bryant while getting rid of (also a positive) Laveraenous Coles - now that he is no longer on the team I refuse to take 40 seconds googling him to figure out how to spell his first name correctly-. It's no surprise that the names we've heard most often when talking about potential Bengals picks are TE Jermaine Gresham, WR Dez Bryant, S Taylor Mays.

But before we can look forward at who the Bengals might pick, I think we all need to have a full and strong understanding of where the Bengals, and the rest of the NFL have gone before. Thus, I begin:

Let me start this post by saying that I have been working on this for like literally 5 months. Unfortunately I am very lazy and tend to have problems finishing things I've started (I have cornhole boards sitting in the basement that only need holes drilled for the legs and the top to be painted and they are complete. Theyve been sitting down there for 2 years). I started doing my research for this post oh about week 14 of the NFL regular season. I'm not sure what finally set me off enough to take the time to do this. Maybe it was noticing how desperate the Bengals need was for just an average wide receiver, meanwhile a 2nd round draft pick from 2008 sat undressed on the bench while a 3rd round draft pick from 2008 struggled on the field. Or maybe it was noticing how the Bengals were LITERALLY putting on the field a Tight End whose hands have been surgically replaced with bricks while a 3rd round TE draft pick hadn't even made it on the field (at that point he was on IR with a foot injury, it was later diagnosed as inactivityfracturitis). Or maybe it was hearing all the talk about the Michael Oher story, The Blind Side, and noticing the Ravens Offensive Tackle first round pick (picked after the Bengals) was quickly being mentioned as a top flight OT, while the Bengals Andre Smith was just starting to get playing time. I could go on for probably 10,000 words about what possibly could have pushed me over the edge to actually go and do this research, or I could just lay it all out for you and you would probably understand.

(These things also combined with the fact that it was the week of Christmas and I didn't feel like doing sh*t at work)

To better understand the success and/or failures of the Bengals scouting and player personnel department, I decided to go back and look at all 32 teams first 5 round draft picks for the last 6 years (2004-2009). If a player was dubbed a successful pick, the team was given 1 point. In the end, each team was ranked based upon how many points they accumulated divided by points possible. This gives a team what I call a Player Estimation and Natural Intelligence in Scouting rating - henceforth known as PENIS rating. A bonus PENIS point will be given for 5th round picks deemed successful, and a penalty PENIS point will be deducted for first round picks who do not pan out.

I should start by adding this should be applied to week 17 of this past year. Therefore all the offseason changes (like Santonio getting traded to the Jets do not apply and the Steelers would get a PENIS point for Santonio).

Now, everyone's initial reaction will obviously be, "OK who are you and how do you deem someone as a successful or not successful pick." Here is how I dubbed someone as successful or not successful:

The basic cutoff was whether or not the player had played 8 games (half the season) during the 2009-2010 season for the team that drafted him.

Caveats to the above are:
-If a player had started the majority of the previous season but had gotten hurt during the 2009-2010, they were still deemed "successful".
-If a rookie did not start 8 games during this past season but did start, for example, the last 6 games of the regular season they were deemed "successful".
-If a player did not start 8 games during this past season but I noticed they started, for example, the last 6 games, I did some further research. If someone on the depth chart in front of them was injured, and they stepped in and continued to start multiple games in a row, then they were deemed "successful."
-Someone like RB Jonathan Stewart only started 2 games for Carolina due to the dual running-back system they have. However, the 1,131 yards and 10 TD's he amassed makes him PENIS point worthy.

Now you may be wondering about players who suffered career ending injuries or passed away. For example David Pollack's injury. Pollack looked for sure to be coming on strong toward the end of the '05 season and beginning of '06 when he suffered the career ending neck injury. The above rules were applied, he did not start 8 games, nor did he start the final 6, for example (he started a combination of 6 of the last 12 games to end '05). Therefore, Pollack was not deemed a "successful" draft pick and thus the Bengals were not give a PENIS point and were also deducted an additional PENIS point since Pollack was a first round pick. Now if we look at Sean Taylor, former Redskins Safety, he had started 40 of his teams last 40 games before he was tragically killed. Therefore the Redskins would get a PENIS point for him.

OK so enough about the rating system. If you want to know how I rated an individual person, or maybe a team on a given year, then ask.

My goal in doing this was a few things: a) determine if us Cincinnatians were simply over reacting and every team did as poor of job at drafting/developing players as the Bengals, b) determine if there was any correlation between the number of draft picks a given team has and how many wins they accumulate, and c) determine if there was a correlation between a team's PENIS rating and how many wins they accumulated.

So the first thing we should look at is the number of wins each team has had over that 6 year span and the number of draft picks teams have had (1st-5th round)

*these win totals do not include playoff victories

Next, lets plot these two tables against each other to see if there is any correlation between # of draft picks and # of wins.



You can see the data is pretty scattered with only a slight increase in wins with # of draft picks. Probably no statistical significance. The Titans have had the most 1st-5th round draft picks (43) but rank only 17th in amount of wins (48) in the NFL from '04-'09. The Patriots have had the second most wins (73) but have had only 28 draft picks during that time (a ranking of 24th).

Now lets take a look at each team's PENIS rating. This rating shows how good a team is at picking players that wind up starting the majority of the team's games. In other words, how good at drafting players that a) pan out and b) fit into a coaches system.



Comparing a team's PENIS to the amount of wins they have:



There is a slight trend between a team's PENIS rating and the number of wins they have accumulated over the past 6 years. There are some anomalies in the data though. According to the research, the number 1 team for drafting players that end up contributing to a team is the Washington Redskins. However they have the 22nd most wins out of any team in the NFL. This can be explained by the fact that they also have had the fewest draft picks out of any team in the NFL. This is most likely due to Mike Brown equivalent Washington owner Daniel Snyder being very aggressive in trades and completely throwing away draft picks. As a result they have a few very highly paid players which results in being forced into playing just about all of their draft picks. I would like to throw them out of this analysis.

I'll come back to this more but lastly I want to look at a trend I expect to see. That is, how the number of draft picks a team has compares to their PENIS rating.


There is a pretty clear trend here where the number of draft picks you have affects your PENIS rating. This is to be expected as you are increasing your pool of players to pick from without increasing the amount of rosters spots a team has.

So back to the PENIS rating and the ability of a team to draft and how it affects their win loss total. If you look at the top 7 teams in PENIS rating, and throw out the Redskins as mentioned, 5 of the remaining 6 are in the top 10 in wins and 4 out of 6 are in the top 5 in wins.

To me, that seems to show there is a basic relationship between how well a team does at drafting and the amount of wins they accumulate.


Now, wait a minute, I haven't mentioned the Bengals PENIS rating yet. Hang on give me a minute to scroll down the list and see how they did, I'll start at the top... scrolling...scrolling...scrolling...scrolling...scrolling...jesus they can't be this far down... scrolling...OH there they are!!! second last...I guess that means we in Cincinnati have not been overreacting about the Bengals lack of scouting department, player personnel people, and the general mismanagement of the Bengals franchise under Mike Brown. It's really quite pathetic that we keep rooting for a team that must recognize this but yet does nothing to change their ways, except to continue to raise ticket prices.

And what's even funnier, the Bengals are in second to last place and that includes a BONUS fifth round point for drafting the PUNTER Kevin Huber last year. A good pickup for the Bengals, but the 5th round is about as high as you will see a punter taken.

My two biggest hurdles I came across in doing this research were 1) the whole conundrum about "well even if 100% of scouts agree a player is the best out there, he can still be considered not successful if he does not have the proper coaching." and 2) With the frequency of NFL coaching changes, it makes an analysis like this difficult because usually when a new coach comes in, they like bringing in their own draft picks and players instead of going by what the former regime had done. There is no denying this statement as true, just look at what Mike Holmgren has done in 1 offseason as the Browns GM/2011 Head Coach in waiting. Remember however, that when I set out to do this research, it was mainly to focus on the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals have had the same head coach/management since 2001. Therefore, teams like the Bengals who have had stability, SHOULD have a large advantage over the teams that have a revolving door at Head Coach/GM.


So, fans, I build an optimistic view of our beloved Bengals as we head into next week's NFL draft. Here's to hoping that someday things will change in Cincinnati.



-Greg "Finally got this damn thing done, now off to get married, see everyone in 2 weeks" R.