Rookie Draft Study: Part Three, Rookie Worth

Jeff Miller

rookieworth

This is part three in a series covering dynasty rookie drafts, pick value and historical ADP. If you missed parts one and two, we’d strongly recommend you check them out before continuing on with this article – they help set the stage for what we will be discussing today and in future articles in the series.

Last night we went over rookie ADP from front to back. It was fun. Not trip to Vegas where the flight home may or may not include you wondering where you left your pants the night before fun, but fun nonetheless. Today should be a bit more somber as we are going from talking about how much rookies are worth to how worthless rookies are.

We’ll start with quarterbacks and tight ends. I’m grouping them together because each position has a diminished value in most dynasty leagues. As a result, far fewer are drafted in rookie drafts which leaves us with a less than full sample to work off. With that in mind, don’t get quite as invested in these numbers as with running back and wide receiver.

What we are about to look at is effectively the hit rates for each position. The table indicates what percentage of seasons a player selected in a given round finishes within the corresponding group. For example, quarterbacks drafted in the second round of rookie drafts since 2009 have played a total of 39 seasons. Five of those seasons have been top-12 at the position for a rate of 12.8%.

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As I alluded to above, this covers every rookie quarterback and tight end drafted from 2009-2014. This covers 63 players and 203 total seasons played.

Because the sample sizes aren’t overwhelmingly large, it’s a bit difficult to form any firm conclusions. What I can confidently say is tight ends present far more value in the second and third round than any other position. This stands to reason when you consider the best tight ends very often end up slipping out of the first. With that being the case, my long held belief that it’s a mistake to take a tight end early seems to be pretty dang accurate.

The QB data mostly seems to show that later round lottery tickets rarely pay off. Unsurprisingly, if a signal caller isn’t worth drafting early, they probably aren’t worth drafting.

Before we jump to running backs, I want to point out a trend you will see across all positions. If you look carefully at the hit rates in the first round versus the second, third and fourth, you may notice the earlier we draft players the more often they hit. This may be an obvious statement, but what is surprising is how amazing we are at making this come true.

In nearly every single instance, the higher the round/group of picks within a round, the higher the hit rate. For all the arguing and hand wringing over rookie rankings, as a group we get it remarkably right. So pat yourself on the back. You’ve earned it.

OK, you can stop now. Come, on, you’re going to get a sore shoulder. Done? Good, because we have running backs to look at.

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Oh, wow, that’s not very good, now is it? If you are drafting a running back in the first round, my guess is you are hoping for more than an 11% chance of a RB1 season, right? Yeah, me too. So what gives?

One logical explanation: Running backs bust. A lot. They also get hurt, are subject to the whims of coaches, and in general are more dependent on landing spot than wide receiver. Evidence of all this can be found by looking at current ADP for all 102 of the RB’s drafted the last six years.

The percentage of drafted column shows the percent of the 102 drafted running backs who fall within the given ADP range. The percentage of group shows what percent of the ADP group is made up of the drafted running backs.

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For comparison’s sake there are 33 total running backs being taken in the top-100, meaning 15% of RB’s going in that range were either undrafted in rookie drafts or drafted prior to 2009.

Another contributing factor is that this data includes players drafted as far back as 2009. So any running back good enough to be picked in a rookie draft and good enough to keep playing in the NFL but not good enough to post relevant fantasy numbers would really drag the average down. There are several such examples from ’09 doing just that.

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Of the 17 running back drafted that year, these eight remain. I didn’t even know Frank Summers existed. I thought he was the host of Double Dare on Nickelodeon in the early 90’s. Only a Google search revealed that to have been Marc (no relation).

So what happens if we lop 2009 and 2010 off the sample in order to eliminate some of the riff raff?

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Aside from a big jump at 1.01-1.03, things don’t change much, especially considering we removed the Donna Summers’ (or whatever his name was) of the world. The big increase in hit percentage at the top is thanks to good old fashioned variance. 2009-2010 didn’t provide much from the first three picks, 2011-2014 did.

It is here were we see a small crack in the data I’m presenting. Even though we are talking about six years’ worth of drafts, the sample is easily skewed by just a couple of players. The remedy for this is to continue my study into future years, which I plan to do. But in the meantime, we have to work with what we have. And even if the sample isn’t as statistically significant as I’d like, I’m very confident it is an accurate representative of real life hit rates.

OK, so running back is pretty ugly. What about the prestige position in all of fantasy, wide receiver?

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As I said in part one, wide receiver is the overall safest of the positions. What’s more, I expect these numbers to improve over the next few years as our back to back loaded receiver classes should kick things upward.

When taking a closer look at receivers taken from the 1.01-1.03 we find that 16 of the 21 seasons were top-36 or better. Of those 16, seven ranked in the top-12. So while 76% of seasons played by top-three picks end up being at least WR3 level, 44% of those end up being WR1.

As we work our way down the list, there is a noticeable, and expected, drop off. Specifically, there is a dearth of top-24 or better seasons from any round outside of the first. I was quite surprised at how often even second round picks miss. It’s rather off putting to say the least.

Aside from success from second and third round tight ends and first round receivers, it seems as though the hit rate of rookies is, well, pitiful. The evidence presented in part two concerning the disintegration of second to third year ADP would suggest second year production isn’t much better. While I don’t believe this to be the death knell of rookie picks, it should be a sobering reminder that the rookie draft is a high risk game.

All that said, tomorrow, in part four, we are going to put all four positions together in to a composite. The experiment should give us a much better idea of how risky the draft is as a whole. We will also discuss the value proposition of trading up, or back, picking up multiple picks in return.

I’ll see you then.

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jeff miller