Philadelphia Eagles Draft Possibilities

Apr 25, 2013; New York, NY, USA; Lane Johnson (Oklahoma) is introduced as the number four overall pick to the Philadelphia Eagles during the 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

Best Player Available

There is practically no team in the NFL who will admit that they “reach” for their players.  And the Philadelphia Eagles are certainly in that category of never admitting (well, at least until well after the fact), that they are guilty of reaching to fill a need in their roster.

But due to the random nature of the NFL – which players will “slot” nice into which NFL teams, who can focus, transform, compete, and rise up to the challenges – even using the term best player available is very subjective.

So I dug more deeply and focused on which positions have historically succeeded in the NFL at which round.   To do so, I found a remarkable bit of excellent research already done on the topic by Steve Mayernick over at spinnakr.com.  In a May 8th, 2014, Steve does just that – analyzing which position has the best relative chance of success in which round.   Briefly described, he analyzed pro-football Approximate Value (AV) metric, analyzing the draft AV compared to the player AV.  This allows the gems found later in the draft to have a larger impact on the value of that round.   Some NFL Teams routinely find starters in later rounds, such as the Seattle Seahawks, while others do not have that success rate.  That being said, the results may surprise you:

http://spinnakr.com/blog/data-2/2014/05/nfl-draft-data-analysis/

There is other research available as well.   An August 2011 article in nflstatsblog.com assessed the ability of teams to “hit” on a drafted player at a specific position.  “Hit” in this article is defined as the percentage of players that ultimately are starters for 4 or more years.  Checking this to the data accumulated, the blog concluded the following:

http://www.nflstatsblog.com/2011/08/fun-fact-2-which-positions-are.html

QB — High Risk
RB—High Risk
WR — High Risk
TE — Medium Risk
D-Line — Medium Risk
D-Backs — Low Risk
LB — Low Risk
O-Line — Low Risk

What does tell us?  Two things.  First, the Philadelphia Eagles, as any other NFL team, cannot predict the future of the NFL draft.  If they could, every NFL team would have rosters filled with players from their own selections.  Sometimes the team selects the right player, but is a wrong fit for their team’s scheme.  Former Eagles safety Jaiquawn Jarrett was labled a “bust” by the team after just two seasons, but he was picked up by the New York Jets in 2013, and was given a chance to start in 2014, which he did in a big way.

Secondly, success with the NFL draft requires patience.  Depending on the quality of the roster, a drafted player with starting calibre talent can sit on the bench until his opportunity comes along.

Head coach Chip Kelly must absorb all of these principals while being fair to himself and his coaching staff.  If 2014 taught us anything, it taught us that the Philadelphia Eagles are not simply a plug and play NFL team.   As much as the coaches can and do place the players into situations to be successful, not every player who dons an NFL uniform can do so.

Each year places the Philadelphia Eagles closer to the goal of succeeding.  Having filled the defensive line, shored up the linebacking, the team’s last defensive piece to the puzzle is the defensive backfield.   Once the player is picked, the task begins to coach them into an NFL starter.

"“You don’t know how it will turn out.  Just going through the analytics of it, fifty percent of first-round picks don’t make it.  That’s through the history of time.  When you draft someone in the sixth round and you say, ‘Hey, we got a steal,’ my first question is, why didn’t you take him in the fifth, then?” Kelly said.  “If you’re so smart and you knew what you knew and you knew everything about the draft and you knew the guy was going to be an All-Pro — the people who brag about, ‘We got a sixth-round pick and he became an All-Pro player’ — then the first question is, well why didn’t you draft him earlier if you were so smart?  A lot of times you don’t know.” – Chip Kelly"

And so, into the off-season we go. Where we stop, nobody knows. But the NFL draft and free agency come down to numbers. If there is anyone who can figure it out, it’s Chip Kelly.