2019 Five Year Draft Scores

The draft is close at hand.  Last year I looked back at the 2018 draft, this year we will be looking at the 2019 draft.  

First let's at the teams who added the most value to their teams from the 2019 draft.  On this front Oakland is the only team that gets an A.  They added 152.51 points of value to their roster over the last five years from the players they drafted.  You might be saying, wait that isn't possible.  We all know the Gruden years in Oakland were defined by bad drafts.  And this is true, but they got two players who have accounted for 89 of those 152.51 points, Maxx Crosby and Josh Jacobs.  They got another 21 points of value from Hunter Renfrow.  Crosby was a 4th round pick and Renfrow was a 5th round pick.  That's great value for those guys.  The problem is the Raiders had 3 first round picks in 2019.  Jacobs was one of their first round picks, the other two were Clelin Ferrell and Jonathan Abram, they provided a total of 22 points of value to the Raiders and only a combined 33 points of value overall in the league.  That's bad.  With three first round picks and hitting on guys in the 4th and 5th round this should have been a 200 point draft for the Raiders.  Still they were the only team to get at least 150 points out of their draft and thus an A.  

This takes us to group two with the 49ers, Giants, Titans, Bucs, Cardinals, Bills, and Football Team.  The Giants had 10 draft picks and like the Raiders had 3 in the first round.  Yet they could only manage 137.36 points added to their team.  The vast majority of their points came from Daniel Jones and Dexter Lawrence who contributed a combined 81 points.  Again it's great to come out of the draft with two big time contributors, but when you have 3 first round picks and 10 picks overall you should do better.  This was Dave Gettleman's second draft and would really be the one that was the beginning of the end for his time in New York.  Washington may have had the oddest draft.  They got a good grade from Bleacher Report A-, but only get a B here and a C on a per player basis because they also had 10 draft picks and two number ones.  Almost all of the value they received was from three picks, Montez Sweat, Terry McLaurin, and Cole Holcomb.  They account for 88 points of the total 106.05.  

So what's interesting to me about this draft is the fact that the top rated teams really didn't do all that great.  Yes they added value to give them a good grade, but not the kind of value that can actually change the path of your franchise which is what you are looking for when you have multiple first round picks.  

There are three teams on the bottom here that we need to discuss because their grades from Bleacher Report were A's.  New England had 10 picks and only managed to add 55.55 points to their team over these past 5 years with these picks.  This would be the beginning of the end for Belichick.  Brady would leave the next  year and the Patriots would really stumble in part because of such a poor roster construction.  Bleacher Report praised the pick of N'Keal Harry, Joejuan Williams, and Chase Winovich in the first 3 rounds.  These players combined added a total of 19 points over 5 years for the Patriots and 21 points to the League.  The Colts are another team who got an A score from Bleacher Report but on a per player bases get a D.  With a total of 10 picks they only added 68.68 points to their team.  Chris Ballard has gotten a lot of love over the years in Indianapolis, but I've always thought he's overrated and when you look at a failure of a draft where you had 10 picks it's not wonder they've been in limbo the last few years.  The last team here is Cleveland.  With high expectations and high post draft grades this class for Cleveland was a D over the last 5 years and was John Dorsey's last year with the Browns.    

One draft I have to point out is Arizona.  They had 11 picks and added Kyler Murray who has accounted for 57 points.  The other 10 picks have accounted for a total of 55 points.  So yes you get a B for drafting a starting quarterback, but this is also the kind of draft that will eventually cost a GM their job.

One guy who you would think had a good enough draft to keep his job was Tennessee GM, Jon Robinson.  Back in 2019 everything was great.  They were the only team to get over 20 points of value per pick in this draft.  By 2022 Robinson would be fired, but at least in 2019 all was good with the Titans and this is the kin of draft you want to see your team have.  They added solid contributors to defense and offense with players like Jeffery Simmons, AJ Brown, Nate Davis, and David Long.  Maybe the problem is that Brown, Davis and Long are all now gone from Tennessee even though they were solid contributors while they were with the team.  

 Here are the grades I have.  The first chart is the total points added for the team.  The second is the per player average.