We have the 3rd highest average draft position o-line

[Jville]

Patriots had a crap line protect Brady and it worked.

Hoooo boy

Now you're REALLY stepping on some people's sacred-cow beliefs about the importance of the OL.

Next we'll hear lunacies like how Peyton Manning's line was proven to be bad once he left the Colts, or how Aaron Rodgers has actually been one of the league's most sacked QB's over the years, or how David Carr's sack rate followed him to other teams once he left Houston while Matt Schaub immediately improved things...

Oh wait...those are all true... :?: :?: :?:

:lol: well done ...... Oh slayer of myths and delusions.

 

[Seymour]

The issue is you can't keep everyone. Okung, Carpenter, Unger and Sweezy (throw him in too) is a $23m cap hit in 2017(rising significantly over the next few years too). Who would you cut to make that happen?

Dump Graham, Lacy, and Joeckel.

That is very near $23M right there. What good is Graham used as a blocker anyway? It's like buying a Ferarri and turning it into a flower box.

 

[vin.couve12]

Well it doesn't mean a whole lot really. Check out statistics league wide on 1st round picks alone and that will tell you enough.

Yet there are so many out there (safely say vast majority) claiming teams like Dallas is good because they have all the high picks. Can't have it both ways.

Dallas goes for much larger OL where their sort of innate nastiness lends to greater gains than technicalities regarding scheme.

I've was always a big Buddy Ryan fan as a kid. I didn't know it at the time, but I loved the mid 80s Bears defense and also the very late 80s/early 90s Eagles defense. I learned later that they were coached by the same guy. Anyway, he was famous for finding gritty, mean and nasty gems all over the place. He said he generally knew it when he talked to them before the draft or otherwise.

Kam said the same thing about his backup rook....can't remember his name, but that means something. Not that this has anything to do with anything, but it's different styles of thought and maybe an ineptitude as well....I had a few with my wife so don't mind me...

That has nothing to do with the conversation we are having on draft selection position. They have higher draft valued players that produce better than most, yet our picks consumed more resource. We are not at a disadvantage there. That is the point being made.

Well I think it does. I was listening to Joekel on an interview yesterday and, going back to what I was saying, when he talks he's kind of....passively dumb.

 

[vin.couve12]

The issue is you can't keep everyone. Okung, Carpenter, Unger and Sweezy (throw him in too) is a $23m cap hit in 2017(rising significantly over the next few years too). Who would you cut to make that happen?

Dump Graham, Lacy, and Joeckel.

That is very near $23M right there. What good is Graham used as a blocker anyway? It's like buying a Ferarri and turning it into a flower box.

This is very much agree with.

 

[Seymour]

The issue is you can't keep everyone. Okung, Carpenter, Unger and Sweezy (throw him in too) is a $23m cap hit in 2017(rising significantly over the next few years too). Who would you cut to make that happen?

Dump Graham, Lacy, and Joeckel.

That is very near $23M right there. What good is Graham used as a blocker anyway? It's like buying a Ferarri and turning it into a flower box.

This is very much agree with.

Today Pete might even agree also. Problem is, too late. Live and learn, or in our case live in stubborn futility.

 

[sdog1981]

Patriots had a crap line protect Brady and it worked.

Hoooo boy

Now you're REALLY stepping on some people's sacred-cow beliefs about the importance of the OL.

Next we'll hear lunacies like how Peyton Manning's line was proven to be bad once he left the Colts, or how Aaron Rodgers has actually been one of the league's most sacked QB's over the years, or how David Carr's sack rate followed him to other teams once he left Houston while Matt Schaub immediately improved things...

Oh wait...those are all true... :?: :?: :?:

Oh, man Anthony! is going to find you for posting this........ :lol:

 

[vin.couve12]

Seriously though...go back and listen to a guy like Breno talk vs listening to Joekel. I find it kind of alarming how much of a difference there is how mentality even sort of comes through verbally.

 

[sdog1981]

Seriously though...go back and listen to a guy like Breno talk vs listening to Joekel. I find it kind of alarming how much of a difference there is how mentality even sort of comes through verbally.

Just some things can't be evaluated. Breno was a bully and the line kind of took on that mentality. Sure he got some 15-yard penalties but he let the other team know they had a long day ahead of them.

 

[ctrcat]

First, a huge thank you to Erebus for doing all that work! Excellent find and work. Finally some solid proof against all those "but we draft last" of course we suck replies I'm tired of reading.

Fact of the matter is, yes not a ton of $$ (younger talent) but a ton of resource is getting chewed up drafting lineman year after year that are doing nothing but holding us back thanks to Cable, Brennon Carroll and Co.

Anyone watch the Vikings all new line they put together last night? Nice job Vikings....yes it can be done with someone in charge that knows what the hell they are looking at for talent.

The Vikings entered Monday with five starting linemen who had not been on the field together for even one snap in the preseason: Easton, left tackle Riley Reiff, center Pat Elflein, right guard Joe Berger and right tackle Mike Remmers.

It would be hard not to say nice things about the linemen after their showing against the Saints. They opened plenty of holes for rookie running back Dalvin Cook, who ran for 127 yards, and they allowed just one sack of quarterback Sam Bradford, who was throwing the ball all over the field.

Bradford completed 27 of 32 passes for 346 yards with three touchdowns and had a career-high passer rating of 143.0.

http://www.twincities.com/2017/09/12/vikings-offensive-line-answers-plenty-of-questions-in-opener/

Always Compete....unless you are a coach.

Remmers sucks and the Vikings OL issues will rear their ugly head in due time, rest assured.

 

[Alexander]

Looking at average draft position of starters isn't really a good way to express value. You have to look at cap dollars, where we are setting the floor.

Rees Odhiambo was a 3rd round pick. Does that make him a good player? He is not explosive, strong, long, quick, or experienced.

Luke Joeckel obviously is not a first round quality player. He signed a one-year "prove it" deal.

Another consideration is that the Seahawks are picking near the bottom of these rounds. Getting the 31st pick in Germain Ifedi is not really the same as getting a Top 10 pick in Tyron Smith or Jack Conklin.

Why would you only look at cap dollars? I agree you can't just look at draft position, especially for players that were signed rather than drafted, but it makes no more sense to focus solely on the cap than it does to focus solely on the draft. Teams use both to assemble their rosters. If your O-line consists entirely of top-15 picks, I think it's fair to say you've invested heavily in the position, even if the cap dollars don't show it. (Higher picks do have a higher cap hit than lower picks, but rookie contracts are severely undervalued even at the top end.)

I think the right way to do it is to consider the draft value that a team spends on the O-linemen they've drafted themselves, and for any free agents they've signed convert their contract into an approximate draft value. For the Hawks, the only player on the line that they didn't draft themselves is Joeckel, whose contract obviously doesn't come close to matching his original draft status. That would tend to lower the Hawks in these rankings, but probably not by a whole lot. They really have spent a good deal of draft capital on the O-line in recent years, so it's simply not true that they haven't invested in that group. It just hasn't paid off, at least not yet. In their defense, however, it seems to be a league-wide problem.

Also, picking near the bottom of every round has nothing to do with these rankings, since they're not based on the round but the overall position in the draft. These rankings already treat a player picked at 10 differently than a player picked at 31. Granted, one could argue that the difference is severely understated at the top, since the difference between 10 and 31 is much larger than the difference between 110 and 131. It might make sense to use a draft value chart (like the Jimmy Johnson chart or an updated version of it) to convert picks into draft value, then calculate the average draft value on the line, then convert that back into a corresponding pick.

 

[themunn]

Average draft position maybe, but where those picks are really matters.

For example, take the Cowboys starting line last weekend:

Smith - 9th overall
Martin - 16th overall
Frederick - 31st overall
Green - 91st overall
Collins - Undrafted (255 in your methodology)

That Collins draft position completely throws the average out (in particular as he's in essence a 1st/2nd round guy who fell due to non-football concerns)

In effect, a team could have 4 players picked 1st overall, one guy undrafted and still have an average of 51.8 - which would be a lower average draft position than the Redskins, who have 2 first round picks and three 3rd round picks.

I'd be interested to see the results using the draft capital chart everybody throws around. I'd suspect we'd still feature more highly than we should, given we have Joeckel, but we sank no draft capital to acquire him at all.

Effectively our entire O-line group has cost us a 1st, 2 2nds, a 3rd, a 4th and a 5th round pick (Tobin trade). I'm sure we'll be hard pressed to find another team with that kind of draft capital spent

 

[IBleedBlueAndGreen]

If Fant hadn't gotten hurt that number would have been 96, putting us at 13th in the league. And the fact that Joeckel brings the average down significantly makes this an exercise in futility in my opinion. Just sayin.

 

[Erebus]

It might make sense to use a draft value chart (like the Jimmy Johnson chart or an updated version of it) to convert picks into draft value, then calculate the average draft value on the line, then convert that back into a corresponding pick.

I agree. I might get to it eventually, but despite what HawkGA thinks, I actually don't have much time for this due to having a family, a job, and doing two college classes. What I've already done took less than an hour.

Smith - 9th overall
Martin - 16th overall
Frederick - 31st overall
Green - 91st overall
Collins - Undrafted (255 in your methodology)

That Collins draft position completely throws the average out (in particular as he's in essence a 1st/2nd round guy who fell due to non-football concerns)

I actually wish Collins had been drafted in the 1st, because then the Cowboys wouldn't have gotten him. But calling him a first round pick raises the Cowboys rankings, solidifies the argument that draft position is usually indicative of overall ability, and that higher average draft position should result in better success.

If Fant hadn't gotten hurt that number would have been 96, putting us at 13th in the league. And the fact that Joeckel brings the average down significantly makes this an exercise in futility in my opinion. Just sayin.

Yes, but on the offensive line, 3rd round picks are generally drafted to be average starters. Odhiambo wasn't starting until Fant's injury because he wasn't good enough.

 

[Mad Dog]

This is all crap. We don't have a good line because we have no continuity and experience. We don't have continuity and experience because by the time the linemen finally get decent, they become FA's. And then they get offered sky high salaries that our FO doesn't want to match. I get where that comes from because why pay 10 million a year for an average lineman when you can get an elite athlete at another position for the same cost.

Well right now, I'd take a few less elite athletes to have a more experienced functional line. In fact, everyone but Wilson and Thomas are expendable in my books.

 

[themunn]

Smith - 9th overall
Martin - 16th overall
Frederick - 31st overall
Green - 91st overall
Collins - Undrafted (255 in your methodology)

That Collins draft position completely throws the average out (in particular as he's in essence a 1st/2nd round guy who fell due to non-football concerns)

I actually wish Collins had been drafted in the 1st, because then the Cowboys wouldn't have gotten him. But calling him a first round pick raises the Cowboys rankings, solidifies the argument that draft position is usually indicative of overall ability, and that higher average draft position should result in better success.

Any reason to ignore the rest of my post? i.e that a line with the 1st overall pick and an undrafted player would give you an average draft position of 128 for those two players - the exact same as drafting two players at the bottom of the 4th round, but which would you expect to yield better results? The former, of course, because a team can cycle through a range of Patrick Lewises, Lemuel Jeanpierres, Alvin Baileys, Garry Gilliams, George Fants and Jordan Roos' until someone hits and sticks, and it's not considered a waste of capital.

You draft 2 mid round players then you've got a toss up between the decent to possibly good in time Mark Glowinski/Rees Odhiambo and the bad (John Moffit).

But if you want a Walter Jones type, or even a Russell Okung, then you need to be drafting in the top 10 or fluke a lucky pick.

If anything, the fact we have successfully managed to draft a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th round pick and get them playing is a testament to drafting ability. Of our draft picks in the top 4 rounds since 2010, only Poole has been an outright failure (cut/injured/failed physicals everywhere he's gone). Moffitt didn't pan out well either - although he was only found surplus to requirements after we drafted Sweezy. The failure of late third/4th round picks.

Okung and Carpenter are still playing elsewhere - incidentally, Okung is now the highest paid tackle in the league.

Okung and Sweezy's leaving helped net us two third round compensatory picks which we turned into Nazair Jones (already looking a terrific investment) and Amara Darboh.

How many other teams are drafting O-line that well without picking in the top 20?

 

[Seymour]

Hugh Millen is talking about this on 950. He said using the draft value formula, since 2010 we have put more draft value to our Oline than ANY OTHER TEAM IN THE NFL. ukeface:

 

[hawk45]

Hugh Millen is talking about this on 950. He said using the draft value formula, since 2010 we have put more draft value to our Oline than ANY OTHER TEAM IN THE NFL. ukeface:

Yep, not only have we used the most draft picks on OL - 16 picks - but using the Jimmy Johnson draft scale or some other scale he mentioned, the value of those picks is either #1 or top 5. And the reason why they never pay any of them is because none of them ever plays well enough to warrant a second contract. Which was proven when John re-signed Britt, Cable's accidental monkey bashing on keyboard typing Shakespeare success story.

So the resources excuse is defunct. The last remaining Cable fig leaf is the canard about the poor OL prospects coming out of college. This fig leaf which is blown away by the fact that every NFL franchise operates under the same circumstances and yet Cable's OL is the one grading out as worst in the NFL and that can't draft and develop the talent to replenish itself.

 

[Seymour]

Hugh Millen is talking about this on 950. He said using the draft value formula, since 2010 we have put more draft value to our Oline than ANY OTHER TEAM IN THE NFL. ukeface:

Yep, not only have we used the most draft picks on OL - 16 picks - but using the Jimmy Johnson draft scale or some other scale he mentioned, the value of those picks is either #1 or top 5. And the reason why they never pay any of them is because none of them ever plays well enough to warrant a second contract. Which was proven when John re-signed Britt, Cable's accidental monkey bashing on keyboard typing Shakespeare success story.

So the resources excuse is defunct. The last remaining Cable fig leaf is the canard about the poor OL prospects coming out of college. This fig leaf which is blown away by the fact that every NFL franchise operates under the same circumstances and yet Cable's OL is the one grading out as worst in the NFL and that can't draft and develop the talent to replenish itself.

To clarify. Yes that is what I'm saying. Using that formula...we are #1 in actual draft value being used....not just top 5.

Agree with the rest of your post as well.

 

[themunn]

To clarify. Yes that is what I'm saying. Using that formula...we are #1 in actual draft value being used....not just top 5.

Agree with the rest of your post as well.

I am somewhat surprised by that, but given we sunk heavy draft capital into Okung and Carpenter who are no longer with the team (and being paid far more than we can afford), I'm not taken aback.

Thing is, if we had kept all of our O-line draft picks we'd probably be playing with a line of Okung-Carpenter-Britt-Sweezy-Ifedi, and IMO you'd be hard pressed not to call that one of the better lines in the league.

Thing is, looking at current contracts, we'd be paying $13.25m APY for Okung, $4.75m for Carpenter, $9m for Britt $5.5m for Sweezy and $2m for Ifedi - $34.5m in total.

And that would give us the 2nd most expensive starting line in the league (instead of cheapest). How would you plan to find the extra $20m cap dollars to pay for it?

The thing is, aside from Britt, none of those guys is an All-Pro, and yeah, we've been slacking at drafting them on the O-line. However, PC/JS strategy has been to pay the guys who are genuinely elite at their position. If we found a Joe Thomas or Tyron Smith we'd find the room to pay them somehow, but an Okung, who's played just one 16 game season in his career (the one he DIDN'T play with us...), no way are we paying that kind of money for him.

The fact is that there's little value at the O-line position, to get league average guys you have to pay above their value, would you rather pay £13m a year on Okung or Sheldon Richardson? Easy choice right?

 

[Seymour]

To clarify. Yes that is what I'm saying. Using that formula...we are #1 in actual draft value being used....not just top 5.

Agree with the rest of your post as well.

I am somewhat surprised by that, but given we sunk heavy draft capital into Okung and Carpenter who are no longer with the team (and being paid far more than we can afford), I'm not taken aback.

Thing is, if we had kept all of our O-line draft picks we'd probably be playing with a line of Okung-Carpenter-Britt-Sweezy-Ifedi, and IMO you'd be hard pressed not to call that one of the better lines in the league.

Thing is, looking at current contracts, we'd be paying $13.25m APY for Okung, $4.75m for Carpenter, $9m for Britt $5.5m for Sweezy and $2m for Ifedi - $34.5m in total.

And that would give us the 2nd most expensive starting line in the league (instead of cheapest). How would you plan to find the extra $20m cap dollars to pay for it?

The thing is, aside from Britt, none of those guys is an All-Pro, and yeah, we've been slacking at drafting them on the O-line. However, PC/JS strategy has been to pay the guys who are genuinely elite at their position. If we found a Joe Thomas or Tyron Smith we'd find the room to pay them somehow, but an Okung, who's played just one 16 game season in his career (the one he DIDN'T play with us...), no way are we paying that kind of money for him.

The fact is that there's little value at the O-line position, to get league average guys you have to pay above their value, would you rather pay £13m a year on Okung or Sheldon Richardson? Easy choice right?

We didn't need to keep them all. 2-3 would likely do. Why pay Joeckel $8M when we could have had Carp $4.7 for the same job?? He would not get put on his butt with a bull rush either. Teams know this now, and it will be a long season for him (and us...yeah) IMO.