Which offensive positions are most/least correlated with playoffs & SB? Last 6 years ..

[Bobby816]

I think we end up with only 1 2nd… that after Thursday we make a trade Day 2 that involves 42 or 43 maybe even when we’re on the clock.

 

I’m in the thinking that we have several options of trades agreed to. And there several different deals that could all go down depends INT on how the draft falls.

 

I think the 1st domino to fall is if JSN is there at 13. GB might want that pick. But we aren’t giving it to them unless we like 2 players a ton left on the board. Let’s remember that NE is at 14 and needs OL help. So it’s not as simple as just take my pick one go on. Have to see how it falls. So say JSN is gone and 2 OTs are gone. I doubt 13 for 15 is included. Which then goes to option 2. Which is likely as simple as 42 or 43 involved. Also why would the sheets make this trade without seeing the Baird 1st. Wait until we’re on the clock. If it’s a guy we both like and GB wants him, why would you give them 42 instead of 43? So wait until we see what happens and who they like. They want a different player than us. Then giving them 42 vs 43 doesn’t matter. But if they do and have already traded them that pick. We don’t get who we want.

 

So I do think it will be an on the clock type trade on Day 1 or 2.

[Jetsfan80]

2 hours ago, undertow said:

Never really understood why center is looked at as an unimportant position that you can't take in the first round.

It's not unimportant and you certainly CAN draft one in the 1st (preferably no earlier than, say, pick 20).  Its just a lot easier to find one without using heavy draft capital compared to other positions on the field.  It's also easier to find one outside of Rd 1 than the other 4 OL spots.  

When you look at the highest-paid C's in the game at the moment, there's an inordinate number of mid-late rounders mixed in there than you would expect at other positions:

1. Jason Kelce - 6th
2. Frank Ragnow - 1st
3. Ryan Jensen - 6th
4. Corey Linsley - 5th
5. Ryan Kelly - 1st
6. Erik McCoy - 2nd
7. Chase Roullier - 6th
8. Mitch Morse - 2nd
9. Connor McGovern - 5th 
10. Bradley Bozeman - 6th
11. Ted Karras - 6th
12. Ethan Pocic - 2nd
13. Nick Gates - UDFA
14. Mason Cole - 3rd
15. Garrett Bradbury - 1st
16. Brian Allen - 4th
17. David Andrews - UDFA
18. Andre James - UDFA
19. Jake Brendel - UDFA
20. Austin Blythe - 7th

 

So of the top 20 highest-paid Centers in the league, 14 were taken outside of Round 2.  12 of those taken Rd 5 or later.

In addition, if you follow the money, C's just aren't paid that much compared to other OL.  The market has decided their worth.

[undertow]

8 minutes ago, Jetsfan80 said:

It's not unimportant and you certainly CAN draft one in the 1st (preferably no earlier than, say, pick 20).  Its just a lot easier to find one without using heavy draft capital compared to other positions on the field.  It's also easier to find one outside of Rd 1 than the other 4 OL spots.  

When you look at the highest-paid C's in the game at the moment, there's an inordinate number of mid-late rounders mixed in there than you would expect at other positions:

1. Jason Kelce - 6th
2. Frank Ragnow - 1st
3. Ryan Jensen - 6th
4. Corey Linsley - 5th
5. Ryan Kelly - 1st
6. Erik McCoy - 2nd
7. Chase Roullier - 6th
8. Mitch Morse - 2nd
9. Connor McGovern - 5th 
10. Bradley Bozeman - 6th
11. Ted Karras - 6th
12. Ethan Pocic - 2nd
13. Nick Gates - UDFA
14. Mason Cole - 3rd
15. Garrett Bradbury - 1st
16. Brian Allen - 4th
17. David Andrews - UDFA
18. Andre James - UDFA
19. Jake Brendel - UDFA
20. Austin Blythe - 7th

 

So of the top 20 highest-paid Centers in the league, 14 were taken outside of Round 2.  12 of those taken Rd 5 or later.

In addition, if you follow the money, C's just aren't paid that much compared to other OL.  The market has decided their worth.

Good info thanks....I still think when there's a sure thing like Humphrey you jump on him and draft him in the first....was there anything more predictable than Creed Humphrey being a ten year all pro?  If you are redrafting are you taking Humphrey or JJ?

[Jetsfan80]

9 minutes ago, undertow said:

Good info thanks....I still think when there's a sure thing like Humphrey you jump on him and draft him in the first....was there anything more predictable than Creed Humphrey being a ten year all pro?  If you are redrafting are you taking Humphrey or JJ?

Give me the EDGE rusher any time, because I can find a decent enough C in free agency or the midrounds.  You CANNOT find elite EDGE rushers very easily going that route.  It's a worthwhile shot to take.  Centers are nice and safe but even elite ones don't tend to move the needle a whole lot for your franchise. 

Again, follow the money:  High end C's just aren't paid that much compared to other OL.  Just three Centers make $13M+ per year, topping out at $14.3M (Kelce).  Juxtapose that to the other spots on the OL who clear $13M per and the top contract of each:

• LT (15, $25M)
• RT (8, $20.2M)
• LG (6, $20M)
• RG (4, $20.5M)

To be fair, there are a bunch of C's who make at least $5M.  So the FLOOR for a center's pay is pretty good (you NEED to have one so you don't end up like the late 2010s Jets who could barely snap the ball).  But the difference between an elite Center and a JAG isn't tremendous.  It's more like a "pass/fail" grade at that position, unlike the other OL spots where elite play makes a huge difference for your team.

Also look at the Jets' history.  It's littered with excellent Center play over the decades.  Probably the position the Jets have nailed more than any other on the field.  Yet we've won two division titles since the merger, lol. 

[jgb]

17 hours ago, Jetsfan80 said:

Give me the EDGE rusher any time, because I can find a decent enough C in free agency or the midrounds.  You CANNOT find elite EDGE rushers very easily going that route.  It's a worthwhile shot to take.  Centers are nice and safe but even elite ones don't tend to move the needle a whole lot for your franchise. 

Again, follow the money:  High end C's just aren't paid that much compared to other OL.  Just three Centers make $13M+ per year, topping out at $14.3M (Kelce).  Juxtapose that to the other spots on the OL who clear $13M per and the top contract of each:

• LT (15, $25M)
• RT (8, $20.2M)
• LG (6, $20M)
• RG (4, $20.5M)

To be fair, there are a bunch of C's who make at least $5M.  So the FLOOR for a center's pay is pretty good (you NEED to have one so you don't end up like the late 2010s Jets who could barely snap the ball).  But the difference between an elite Center and a JAG isn't tremendous.  It's more like a "pass/fail" grade at that position, unlike the other OL spots where elite play makes a huge difference for your team.

Also look at the Jets' history.  It's littered with excellent Center play over the decades.  Probably the position the Jets have nailed more than any other on the field.  Yet we've won two division titles since the merger, lol. 

Centers are a little like MLBs and QBs in that brain football processing power is an important factor in performance and is very difficult to evaluate pre-draft.

[Dunnie]

OL, QB are symbiotic ... this is not a new concept.   Also .. a good D makes an OL even better.  Its total team contribution that leads to better performances at various offensive positions.

Good exercise for the pre draft boredom of postseason .. I just think the issue is more complex than presented.

The RT/LT comparison is interesting.

Edited April 20, 2023 by Dunnie

[Sperm Edwards]

On 4/18/2023 at 7:36 PM, OtherwiseHappyinLife said:

I took the Associated Press All Pro 1st & 2nd teams (offense) over the last 6 years & mapped out which players/positions went to the playoffs.

While these types of analysis are imperfect, we should get a 'feel' for which positions drive greater success.  In this analysis, success defined as the rate of reaching the playoffs and a sweet spot for how far.   

On offense, the conventional wisdom is that the 3 most important offensive positions are QB, LT/WR or WR/LT.

So let's use the success metrics above to challenge that.

1. QB rank matches conventional wisdom (of course ) but some of the high to low positional rankings in the table below might surprise you.

2a. Right Tackle is ranked #2 with 6 different players landing on the All Pro teams over 6 years with a 100% playoff rate and 3 trips to the Super Bowl.

2b. Pass Catching Tight End is roughly tied w/ RT, with fewer playoff trips but deeper runs & more Super Bowl appearances.  Kelce, Kittle & Gronkowski are unicorns other teams don't have and it shows.

3. Then Wide Receiver and so on as you can see below.

4. Center is slightly above Right Guard, possibly highlighting the importance of the glue that holds a line together.  Something I don't think McGovern was good at

5. Surprisingly, Right Guard is significantly higher than Left Guard, which is considered the more premium position.

6. Is it possible having dominant players on the right side against weaker pass rushers is leading to better results?  Or it's more important to have clearer throwing lanes on the right side of the line in a league that has a slight preference throwing right?  Or that right tackles are more impactful in the running game?   

7. Which brings us to Left Tackle...  is this table somehow understating the importance of the blind side protector?  It's roughly equivalent to Right Guard with a lower playoff percentage but deeper runs ...... however no Super Bowls.

8. Sticking with the offensive line, maybe moving AVT to right guard was due to these trends, and having a healthy Becton there might not be a bad thing.

9. Lastly, none of these TEs was a first round pick which might highlight how hard a position it is to evaluate.  I do NOT think a guy like Mayer from Notre Dame is in the same class but who the hell knows...

I thought it was interesting so decided to share.  What are your thoughts?

I appreciate the time this probably took to piece together. The problem isn't in how it's cooked; it's some wrong key ingredients from the outset.

So here's a lot of why the conclusions aren't correlating with expectations, outside of QB: 

You're starting with 1st and 2nd team AP players. Seems reasonable, but then you leap to the conclusion of how important the position is to team success. So you've set this arbitrary cutoff point of top-2 play (subjective as that is anyhow); and below which have kinda concluded that the position itself must not be all that necessary ("overvalued") when it's really a correlative measurement of team success with having one of the two best players in the league at his position; not really how important the position is itself.

You're generally using the playoffs as the separator line for team competence. I'd agree with that (there has to be a cutoff somewhere). But then you've taken only the two most-elite players as the measurements of competence at their positions when you then conclude the relative importance of their individual positions, like LT is "overvalued" as a position -- rather than having the best or 2nd best LT, instead of the 3rd best, is what's really proving "overvalued" here.

The problem is the 3rd best (or 6th best) LT is of course plenty good enough to start on a playoff team, but by not being 1st or 2nd best, you've proposed a conclusion that their value was somehow extraneous. However unintentionally, that conclusion values a true asset as his team's LT - but nominally is voted as merely 3rd best - as being on par with the 30th ranked LT who actually hurts his team.

Anyway, outside of QB it's hard to suggest - at any other position on offense - that a top-2 player is causitive to making the playoffs or the Super Bowl. Even then, more is needed: while hardly common, I've seen the Saints fail to win more games than they lost even with an all pro QB. It's also an inexact measurement at any position: voters definitely give brownie points to top players on the best teams over bad teams. Mangold was arguably the league's best center in 2008. He wasn't voted even AP2, though, and never got AP1 recognition unless the Jets reached the championship game. So was the team success partly caused by having an AP1 center, or is an AP1 center more likely to get such recognition when his team is winning? My guess is a little of both, making statistical measurement of a position's AP-necessity nebulous at a minimum, and conclusions about relative positional importance based upon that is something of a house of cards.

The snide way of putting it is "Best teams have the best players. News at 11." But I'd never do that. Never.

There's more - I always have more ? - but for a nice change of pace I will mercifully stop at one chapter for now.

[BurntDice]

23 hours ago, undertow said:

Never really understood why center is looked at as an unimportant position that you can't take in the first round.

A huge benefit of selecting a player in the first round is the 5th year option. With center the vast majority make 6 mil or less which cripples the value of the 5th year option for that position. 
 

Starting centers can regularly be found for around 6 million. There is a massive value difference between wrs selected in the first and centers. Starting wrs are usually well over 10 mil which is twice the value of centers. Same thing with edge and many other positions. 

[OtherwiseHappyinLife]

38 minutes ago, Sperm Edwards said:

I appreciate the time this probably took to piece together. The problem isn't in how it's cooked; it's some wrong key ingredients from the outset.

So here's a lot of why the conclusions aren't correlating with expectations, outside of QB: 

You're starting with 1st and 2nd team AP players. Seems reasonable, but then you leap to the conclusion of how important the position is to team success. So you've set this arbitrary cutoff point of top-2 play (subjective as that is anyhow); and below which have kinda concluded that the position itself must not be all that necessary ("overvalued") when it's really a correlative measurement of team success with having one of the two best players in the league at his position; not really how important the position is itself.

You're generally using the playoffs as the separator line for team competence. I'd agree with that (there has to be a cutoff somewhere). But then you've taken only the two most-elite players as the measurements of competence at their positions when you then conclude the relative importance of their individual positions, like LT is "overvalued" as a position -- rather than having the best or 2nd best LT, instead of the 3rd best, is what's really proving "overvalued" here.

The problem is the 3rd best (or 6th best) LT is of course plenty good enough to start on a playoff team, but by not being 1st or 2nd best, you've proposed a conclusion that their value was somehow extraneous. However unintentionally, that conclusion values a true asset as his team's LT - but nominally is voted as merely 3rd best - as being on par with the 30th ranked LT who actually hurts his team.

Anyway, outside of QB it's hard to suggest - at any other position on offense - that a top-2 player is causitive to making the playoffs or the Super Bowl. Even then, more is needed: while hardly common, I've seen the Saints fail to win more games than they lost even with an all pro QB. It's also an inexact measurement at any position: voters definitely give brownie points to top players on the best teams over bad teams. Mangold was arguably the league's best center in 2008. He wasn't voted even AP2, though, and never got AP1 recognition unless the Jets reached the championship game. So was the team success partly caused by having an AP1 center, or is an AP1 center more likely to get such recognition when his team is winning? My guess is a little of both, making statistical measurement of a position's AP-necessity nebulous at a minimum, and conclusions about relative positional importance based upon that is something of a house of cards.

The snide way of putting it is "Best teams have the best players. News at 11." But I'd never do that. Never.

There's more - I always have more ? - but for a nice change of pace I will mercifully stop at one chapter for now.

I stated from the beginning it’s flawed, doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it.  We are simply taking the elite of the elite by position over a 6 year period and mapping out how their teams did in order to uncover possible insights.  

I’m not taking this and running out to pay more than the market for a Center or Right Tackle but I might try to better understand why the right side of the offensive line at this level goes to more playoffs and makes deeper runs than the left.

Could be a simple explanation … in this sample set we might learn they have the best QBs …. or it could require further digging.  Maybe that leads a GM to challenge whether certain positions are overpaid rather than just following the market … or look to understand the impact of certain positions on rookie contracts (immediate impact of WRs over the slower development of OTs) .. or investigate just how much a really good center improves the rest of the offensive line, something that might be underestimated and could then otherwise lead to a change in the attributes of Centers you are looking to draft.

It’s all good stuff.  We agree it’s not close to perfect and you need to be careful what conclusions you draw.

For me, I’m curious about looking deeper at right tackle & right guard over the left side.  My curiosity is peaked even more after the early success of Wirfs, Sewell and McGlinchey who all play on the right side.

[Sperm Edwards]

2 hours ago, OtherwiseHappyinLife said:

I stated from the beginning it’s flawed, doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it.  We are simply taking the elite of the elite by position over a 6 year period and mapping out how their teams did in order to uncover possible insights.  

I’m not taking this and running out to pay more than the market for a Center or Right Tackle but I might try to better understand why the right side of the offensive line at this level goes to more playoffs and makes deeper runs than the left.

Could be a simple explanation … in this sample set we might learn they have the best QBs …. or it could require further digging.  Maybe that leads a GM to challenge whether certain positions are overpaid rather than just following the market … or look to understand the impact of certain positions on rookie contracts (immediate impact of WRs over the slower development of OTs) .. or investigate just how much a really good center improves the rest of the offensive line, something that might be underestimated and could then otherwise lead to a change in the attributes of Centers you are looking to draft.

It’s all good stuff.  We agree it’s not close to perfect and you need to be careful what conclusions you draw.

For me, I’m curious about looking deeper at right tackle & right guard over the left side.  My curiosity is peaked even more after the early success of Wirfs, Sewell and McGlinchey who all play on the right side.

I just don't think it shows anything like that, though.

It's not merely flawed but rather it's critically flawed in the outset, that only AP1 or AP2 players are considered worthy or counted in any way, while the 3rd-best (who's typically on par with one or both receiving such awards) is ignored the same as though he's a scrub, and whether that 3rd-best player [at that position] is on a 14-win team or a 14-loss team. 

Also McGlinchey wasn't an early success, which is why the 49ers traded for and then heavily paid Trent Williams after Staley retired, instead of sliding their top 10 draft pick to the left side. He was no slam dunk to get his 5th year option exercised at the time (and only barely got it exercised in the 11th hour, on May 1st). Sewell also wouldn't factor into the above formula, since he's not AP1 nor AP2. See the problem with the analysis? It values both those guys the same as it values scrubs. Of those 3, only Wirfs, who coincidentally was awarded neither an AP1 nor an AP2 election when the Bucs won the Super Bowl his rookie year. 

So interesting, yes. But as the basis for any conclusions about a proper course of action going forward? No. Other than elite players > not elite players, and teams with more of them do better than teams that have fewer. But we already knew that .

Still an impressive amount of data, and mercifully it's a new topic discussion even if I think there are no new conclusions to be drawn in terms of a team's future-planning.  

[OtherwiseHappyinLife]

22 minutes ago, Sperm Edwards said:

I just don't think it shows anything like that, though.

It's not merely flawed but rather it's critically flawed in the outset, that only AP1 or AP2 players are considered worthy or counted in any way, while the 3rd-best (who's typically on par with one or both receiving such awards) is ignored the same as though he's a scrub, and whether that 3rd-best player [at that position] is on a 14-win team or a 14-loss team. 

Also McGlinchey wasn't an early success, which is why the 49ers traded for and then heavily paid Trent Williams after Staley retired, instead of sliding their top 10 draft pick to the left side. He was no slam dunk to get his 5th year option exercised at the time (and only barely got it exercised in the 11th hour, on May 1st). Sewell also wouldn't factor into the above formula, since he's not AP1 nor AP2. See the problem with the analysis? It values both those guys the same as it values scrubs. Of those 3, only Wirfs, who coincidentally was awarded neither an AP1 nor an AP2 election when the Bucs won the Super Bowl his rookie year. 

So interesting, yes. But as the basis for any conclusions about a proper course of action going forward? No. Other than elite players > not elite players, and teams with more of them do better than teams that have fewer. But we already knew that .

Still an impressive amount of data, and mercifully it's a new topic discussion even if I think there are no new conclusions to be drawn in terms of a team's future-planning.  

As mentioned several times, I wouldn't draw any conclusions.  It could simply be the basis to explore a contradiction further, by examining a layer beneath the AP team.

What I should have made clearer is the impact of pay.  This isn't an all else equal exercise of LT versus RT because it inherently factors in different levels of pay in a world with the salary cap.  

The fact that the top Left Tackles -- a position considered by many to be one of the top 4 or so positions in all of football -- haven't made the playoffs at as high a clip or as deep a level as some other positions might cause some analysts to pause and consider whether the position might be overpaid relative to others.  Could using the same dollars to pay an elite Center AND Right Tackle make more of an impact to wins and losses?  The combo of Kelce and Johnson have helped consistently lead Philly to the playoffs across multiple HCs and at a time when they had Wentz, played Foles, and went through the growing process of Hurts?  Just an example, no conclusions.

If the top 2 QBs in the league across multiple years made the playoffs 60% of the time, it would stand out more to ask some follow-ups around pay, strategy, etc.  Left Tackles aren't QBs but they also aren't RBs or RGs ... they are in a position that is greatly valued.

So again, no conclusions ... just clarifying why I did what I did and some of the things that possibly might be interesting to examine further.  Maybe I'll follow up by looking at the next layer down to see if there really is something there (or if it's a flaw of a smaller sample sample) 

   

[Sperm Edwards]

4 hours ago, OtherwiseHappyinLife said:

As mentioned several times, I wouldn't draw any conclusions.  It could simply be the basis to explore a contradiction further, by examining a layer beneath the AP team.

What I should have made clearer is the impact of pay.  This isn't an all else equal exercise of LT versus RT because it inherently factors in different levels of pay in a world with the salary cap.  

The fact that the top Left Tackles -- a position considered by many to be one of the top 4 or so positions in all of football -- haven't made the playoffs at as high a clip or as deep a level as some other positions might cause some analysts to pause and consider whether the position might be overpaid relative to others.  Could using the same dollars to pay an elite Center AND Right Tackle make more of an impact to wins and losses?  The combo of Kelce and Johnson have helped consistently lead Philly to the playoffs across multiple HCs and at a time when they had Wentz, played Foles, and went through the growing process of Hurts?  Just an example, no conclusions.

If the top 2 QBs in the league across multiple years made the playoffs 60% of the time, it would stand out more to ask some follow-ups around pay, strategy, etc.  Left Tackles aren't QBs but they also aren't RBs or RGs ... they are in a position that is greatly valued.

So again, no conclusions ... just clarifying why I did what I did and some of the things that possibly might be interesting to examine further.  Maybe I'll follow up by looking at the next layer down to see if there really is something there (or if it's a flaw of a smaller sample sample) 

   

The bolded is why I think the analysis is merely worth "that's interesting" comments, but roughly zero can be extrapolated from it. 

The LT position is extremely important. What's not important is having the 2nd-best player but not the 3rd-best player. A position can be important without having the single best player at the position, or the 2nd best either. 

This is what I've been saying. The problem remains that the 3rd best LT in the league, in this analysis, is equated with being a backup-level LT. i.e. if you're not the #1 or #2 rated tackle in a given year, then you're not worth more than the worst LT of the past decade. 

Of course it's not intentional that this equation is being made (starting NFL LT #3 = backup LT #33), but on paper that is what the data is measuring. 

If there was further analysis - and don't do this; live your life, lol - where it ranked the next tier and their importance, then you could do comparative analysis of an average vs. very good vs. among the best vs. the best of the best; and then assess weighted importance a bit better. It'd still be flawed because the players don't exist in a vacuum, but it'd be far more basis for inference. 

That's what sites like pff seeks to do, even if they often (or typically) do a poor/flawed job of it themselves. There isn't the same all-or-none assessment of a player; if their ratings were accurate the idea is there's a sliding scale. Then you could say you probably need a minimum level of competence in or above a certain grade range. But their rankings are famously off, and my understanding is when people call them out on individuals badly they've been known to change them to fan/reader pressure, so it's not the objective measurement they purport to be.