2018 NFL Draft: A Positional Value Primer

Alright, I’ve been quiet on the draft front for a few months, but I’ve been working on my rankings ever since our last encounter. One of the set backs was the fact that Draft Breakdown went belly up and I didn’t find a good source for videos until within the last month. That said this first piece isn’t going to focus on prospects but will instead take a dive into positional valuation.

There have a been a number of arguments/conversations on #DraftTwitter this draft season about whether positional value warrants taking a RB (Barkley) or a G (Nelson) in the top five picks. So I figured I’d do a little research and start to work this out. My Hypothesis: Total guaranteed money and % of guaranteed money will be the key leading figures to show us how the NFL values position groups. Two caveats before we begin… 1) I excluded P/K/FB (Sue Me.) 2) I used every player with at least $1,000,000 guaranteed per year who isn’t on a rookie contract.

So, let’s start off by looking at the just the flat number of players from each position group that meet the million-dollar criteria.

Position	Total
WR	49
CB/Edge	44
INT	39
OT (LT/RT)	39 (19/20)
OBLB/S	35
G (LG/RG)	33 (14/19)
QB	30
TE	29
RB	21
C	19

As we see in the table above the totals make some sense, the top six are positions that have multiple players on the field. The number that really stands out here is that 29 TEs are guaranteed at least 1 million dollars per year in their contracts, that’s about where the comparison to the QBs on this list will stop.

The raw # of players are interesting, but it doesn’t really do much to move our inquest along until we add the actual figures. For each player I pulled the overall value per year if all incentives were hit (Val/Yr) and Guaranteed salary per year (Guar/Yr).

Pos	ValMed	GuarMed	ValQ3	GuarQ3	AdjMed
QB	20.625	8.300	22.375	12.200	13.64
WR	8.000	3.250	12.250	5.333	5.86
CB	8.500	3.125	11.854	5.150	5.83
EDGE	7.709	2.875	12.900	4.744	5.56
OT	8.000	2.900	8.350	5.500	5.33
G	7.000	3.250	7.615	6.083	5.32
INT	7.000	2.788	12.000	4.000	5.07
C	8.000	2.600	9.000	3.500	4.75
OBLB	7.228	2.688	9.25	3.864	4.74
TE	6.500	2.500	7.550	3.000	4.08
S	6.003	2.333	7.200	3.850	4.09
RB	4.000	1.833	5.125	3.213	3.05
LT	11.250	4.400	12.200	5.300	6.68
RT	6.350	2.100	7.263	2.763	3.52
RG	8.253	3.300	10.000	4.250	4.95
LG	5.350	2.834	7.750	4.419	3.67

So, I used both median and quadrant 3 to get to my adjusted value. I went with median over average because it tells you where the actual middle is of each group and isn’t swayed as much by one or two big contracts. I also decided to use Q3 because I thought it added better context to the top values for each positional grouping. The two-guaranteed values account for two thirds of the adjusted rank, with the two overall value numbers accounting for the final third. As we look at the results we see a slightly surprising result on both ends of the table. The first surprise was just how much more value the NFL has placed in salaries for QBs. The fact that the position was first is no surprise, but the salary values are around 2.5x higher than any other position. On the bottom, our second surprise, are the running backs. The NFL just does not value the position. Yes, the top guys are being guaranteed more than the TEs but that is literally the only sliver of hope. Which brings us to the how this affects my draft rankings.

It doesn’t affect the standard rankings themselves, but it does help me create my big board by helping to adjust for positional value. That lead me to this final table.

Pos	AdjMed	%Adj	A%Adj	MyAdj
QB	13.64	1.00	1.00	1.00
WR	5.86	0.34	0.84	0.90
CB	5.83	0.34	0.84	0.95
EDGE	5.56	0.31	0.81	0.95
OT	5.33	0.29	0.79	0.95
G	5.32	0.29	0.79	0.85
INT	5.07	0.27	0.77	0.95
C	4.75	0.24	0.74	0.85
OBLB	4.74	0.24	0.74	0.90
TE	4.08	0.19	0.69	0.85
S	4.09	0.19	0.69	0.85
RB	3.05	0.10	0.60	0.90
FB	1.89	0.00	0.50	0.50

The problem I have with the results from the raw data is that using the adjustment in column two for each position group you end up with 14 quarterbacks at the top of my big board and I can think of nothing less realistic. This does however go to prove the point that the quarterback market is insanely out of whack. The solution I liked best was to cap the adjustment at the bottom of the table at 50% and then use the same general ratios to come up with the positional adjustments. This leads to a top 32 with 1 center, 6 corners, 4 edges, 3 guards, 2 interior linemen, 5 off ball linebackers, 1 tackle, 1 QB, 1 strong safety, and 7 WRs. I think the wideouts are a little much here, but again the guaranteed money for receivers was high. There is also the issue of both the tackle and edge positions being relatively down this year, and the fact that my QB ratings tend to be spread out a skewed a bit lower than the other positions. The last column is how I hade the adjustments set up in the past. I set these numbers based on how I personally saw the value of each position group. All positions but QB are higher than with the statistical adjustment, but I’m not too embarrassed with them in general.

What have we learned then? First, that QB valuation makes sense in general but has gotten so out of whack that every other position group is worth at least 40% less in guaranteed money. As for the guard-running back debate… Well it turns out that generally the NFL values guards 57.33% higher than running backs. In fact, the only non-kicker group less valued is full backs with just 1 player earning 1 million guaranteed. So, on draft night, conventional wisdom will say Barkley is more valuable than Nelson based on position groups but they say money talks and the NFL is 1.75 times more likely to give 2^nd contract money to a guard than a running back.