Trade value table
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:51 pm
Can someone please clue me in on why NFL teams place so much value on the universal trade value table? Where do these numbers come from? I know Jimmy Johnson did as much as anyone to popularize them, but did he or anyone else just make the numbers up? Is there any kind of research on the historic values of different picks?
Every time I look at it, it strikes me as being incredibly top-heavy. Say my team, the Seahawks, wanted to trade up from #25 into the top 15. (I started thinking about this because I was considering what it would cost us to move ahead of Arizona, which, like Seattle, is probably looking at a RB like Stewart or Mendenhall, and also happens to be a division rival.) According to the table, if we traded the #25 and our second-rounder (#56), it is just barely enough to move up to #15, and not quite enough to move up to #14. Can that really be true? A second-round pick is the cost just to move up from the late first round to the middle of the first round? Offhand, I would expect an NFL value chart to be much less front-loaded than this in most years -- football requires a lot of players and a well-balanced roster, teams' needs are often wildly different, and players are hard to project.
Alternatively, the chart says Seattle can move down from its position at #25, in the "mid-late-first-round," to #32, or "late-late-first-round," and pick up a third-rounder in the process. Is that really the going rate?? That sounds too good to be true. I'd love to be able to do that.
Believe me, I'm the first to acknowledge that "it just doesn't sound right" is not a valid criticism. But I'd like to know what empirical basis there is for assigning these values in the first place.
And yes, I know these are general guidelines and not hard-and-fast numbers. 2008 might be different from 2007 or 2009, especially when your team is looking at a RB and may well be happy with Felix Jones instead of Stewart or Mendenhall. But to hear some people talk about the chart, you'd think it was etched in stone forever.
If there's something that proves the #1 overall pick has historically tended to be worth TWO #7 overall picks, can someone point it out to me?
Every time I look at it, it strikes me as being incredibly top-heavy. Say my team, the Seahawks, wanted to trade up from #25 into the top 15. (I started thinking about this because I was considering what it would cost us to move ahead of Arizona, which, like Seattle, is probably looking at a RB like Stewart or Mendenhall, and also happens to be a division rival.) According to the table, if we traded the #25 and our second-rounder (#56), it is just barely enough to move up to #15, and not quite enough to move up to #14. Can that really be true? A second-round pick is the cost just to move up from the late first round to the middle of the first round? Offhand, I would expect an NFL value chart to be much less front-loaded than this in most years -- football requires a lot of players and a well-balanced roster, teams' needs are often wildly different, and players are hard to project.
Alternatively, the chart says Seattle can move down from its position at #25, in the "mid-late-first-round," to #32, or "late-late-first-round," and pick up a third-rounder in the process. Is that really the going rate?? That sounds too good to be true. I'd love to be able to do that.
Believe me, I'm the first to acknowledge that "it just doesn't sound right" is not a valid criticism. But I'd like to know what empirical basis there is for assigning these values in the first place.
And yes, I know these are general guidelines and not hard-and-fast numbers. 2008 might be different from 2007 or 2009, especially when your team is looking at a RB and may well be happy with Felix Jones instead of Stewart or Mendenhall. But to hear some people talk about the chart, you'd think it was etched in stone forever.
If there's something that proves the #1 overall pick has historically tended to be worth TWO #7 overall picks, can someone point it out to me?