There has to be a better way of framing a draft class than this methodology. There are plenty of ways to skin the cat on draft grades. This one takes the cake, though. Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald wrote an article on Sunday titled “The Salary Cap Costs and Value Added from the 2024 NFL Draft.” In it, his data claims that the Green Bay Packers lost value with the draft choices they turned in this week. According to Fitzgerald, his numbers show how much the expected cost per season each team’s rookie class is going make — which in the Packers’ case is a collective $16.7 million for 11 draft picks. Then he calculated the “expected value” for a blind pick at each draft slot. For Green Bay, that number translated to $46.6 million per year in value. The last step was to compare the draft slot’s value to the “expected value” of a player‘s position drafted at the slot, which he admits himself skews heavily in favor of teams that select a quarterback. How heavily does it favor quarterbacks? The Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons — who were laughed at for drafting Bo Nix and Michael Penix so high in the draft — rank among the top four teams in the NFL for value added in the 2024 draft. In this baseline value-added lens, the Packers were estimated to draft $44.09 million per year in value, despite coming into the draft with the assumption that they would hit the $46.6 million mark. Because of that, Fitzgerald claims that Green Bay added -5.3 percent of value with their 2024 draft class, the second-worst mark in the league. Here’s what he had to say about that: The worst draft went to the Raiders at 11% under the baseline value. This was driven by going tight end and guard early in the draft and then spending draft capital on safety, running back, and linebacker late. The Packers were at -5.3% with a run on linebackers, safeties, and running backs. When you consider that they got a boost by drafting a QB late, this was every bit as bad as the Raiders. Excluding quarterback selections, which for the Packers means taking out seventh-round pick Michael Pratt from the data set, Green Bay added -10.2 percent of value via the draft — per Fitzgerald. Only one other team in the NFL was even below -3.6 percent in that stat, the Las Vegas Raiders. Now, how Fitzgerald calculated these expected value estimations is unknown, but the total percentage of the value-added column for the 2024 draft adds up to +600 percent (an average of +18.75 percent per team) with the column excluding quarterbacks adding up to +258.40 percent (+8.08 percent per team). So, in general, the draft class skews positive instead of averaging out to 0. Ultimately, what Fitzgerald is measuring is that the Packers had his third-highest projected value based on the contracts associated with their draft slots, but that they finished just 13th in projected value once Fitzgerald accounted for the positions they drafted. This, likely, is due to the team not taking quarterbacks or receivers high in the draft, positions where they were already young, talented and competitive in 2024. There just has to be a better way of looking at the draft than seeing if teams picked passers or pass-catchers. We can do better. https://www.acmepackingcompany.com/2024 ... er-the-cap
