The Browns recently hired Paul DePodesta, whose story of bringing an analytical approach to baseball was chronicled in the book/movie Moneyball. Seeing as this hiring provides an opportunity to combine two of my favorite things – the Browns and math – I decided to make my own attempt to play football Moneyball. Since the NFL draft is the most obvious place where statistics can be applied, and since I’m a huge dork, I put together a spreadsheet of all Browns draft picks from 1999-2014, and used a formula based on career starts, Pro Bowl appearances, and Pro Football Reference’s “career value” rating to put each player on a seven point scale from “Hall of Famer” to “Never played”:
| Pick | HOFer | Quality Starter | Starter | Occasional Starter | Substitute | Bench | Never played |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1-5 (1st) | 1 (17%) | 0 | 4 (67%) | 1 (17%) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| #6-10 (1st) | 0 | 1 (25%) | 1 (25%) | 1 (25%) | 1 (25%) | 0 | 0 |
| #11-20 (1st) | 0 | 0 | 1 (50%) | 1 (50%) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| #21-31 (1st) | 0 | 1 (17%) | 1 (17%) | 2 (34%) | 2 (34%) | 0 | 0 |
| #32-46 (2nd) | 0 | 3 (25%) | 3 (25%) | 5 (42%) | 1 (8%) | 0 | 0 |
| #47-61 (2nd) | 0 | 0 | 1 (12%) | 3 (38%) | 3 (38%) | 1 (12%) | 0 |
| Round 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 (7%) | 4 (27%) | 8 (53%) | 1 (7%) | 1 (7%) |
| Round 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 (5%) | 4 (20%) | 9 (45%) | 1 (5%) | 5 (25%) |
| Round 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 (25%) | 5 (31%) | 4 (25%) | 3 (19%) |
| Round 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 (4%) | 1 (4%) | 5 (22%) | 9 (39%) | 7 (30%) |
| Round 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 (39%) | 5 (28%) | 6 (33%) |
Data from Pro Football Reference
Teams who hold a draft pick in the top five value that draft pick as if it is certain to produce a Hall of Famer, but of the six top-five draft choices the Browns have made, Joe Thomas was the lone great pick, four of the others never made a single Pro Bowl, and the sixth (Braylon Edwards) made one Pro Bowl in his only good season and was traded after three years. Drafting in a position where they expected to find great players, the Browns instead came away disappointed five out of six times.
Since the Browns have done so poorly drafting in the top five, trading back needs to be a consideration. When considering whether to make a trade during the draft, the accepted way to “value” a draft pick in the NFL is the draft value chart. An alternate approach is to use analytics to determine the expected value of a trade, and that approach is more likely than the draft value chart to support trading back to get more picks, stating that the draft value chart over-values high picks. With the huge caveat that my table above is admittedly too small of a sample size to be fully accurate – it should include the draft history for all NFL teams, not just the Browns – here’s my attempt to use math to show why the Browns should listen to analytics and trade back.
The Browns have the #2 overall pick in the 2016 draft, which the draft value chart says is worth 2600 points. Theoretically the Browns could trade with San Francisco and get San Francisco’s first round pick (#7 – 1400 points), second round pick (#37 – 530 points), third round pick (#68 – 250 points), and second round pick in the 2017 draft. Based on what Tennessee just got from the LA Rams the haul would probably be even higher, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that’s the deal. Using the Browns draft history table above, and assuming San Francisco’s 2017 second round pick is in the top half of the second round, here’s what the odds of each of those picks panning out look like, based on past drafting history:
| Pick | HOFer | Quality Starter | Starter | Occasional Starter | Substitute | Bench | Never played |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browns trade: | |||||||
| #2 | 0.17 | 0 | 0.67 | 0.17 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| San Francisco trades: | |||||||
| #7 | 0 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 0 | 0 |
| #37 | 0 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 0.42 | 0.08 | 0 | 0 |
| #68 | 0 | 0 | 0.07 | 0.27 | 0.53 | 0.07 | 0.07 |
| 2017 2nd | 0 | 0.25 | 0.25 | 0.42 | 0.08 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 0 | 0.75 | 0.82 | 1.36 | 0.94 | 0.07 | 0.07 |
By giving up one player who the odds say is most likely to end up as a regular starter the Browns get four players and have excellent odds that one of them is a future Pro Bowler while another turns into a regular starter. The math seems clear: you make that trade.
With all of the above said, it’s the Browns, so expect to see them throw analytics out the window on draft night and pick another quarterback that they can then cut after 3-4 mediocre years.