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A Round-By-Round Look At the NFL Draft
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A round-by-round look at the NFL Draft

After months of shuttle runs, bench presses, and anonymous sources attacking the culinary skills of 22-year-olds, the time has come for the 2016 NFL Draft. For some franchises, this is an exciting time. For others, it's an annual, Groundhog Day-esque nightmare. And for Pats fans, it's a good night to catch up on The Americans or Game of Thrones.

A lot of NFL conventional wisdom relates to the importance of taking certain players in certain rounds. Some people think you should draft interior lineman in later rounds. Others suggest that wide receivers taken in the 1st Round tend not to succeed.

So, to get ready for tonight, let's break the draft down by round, in order to examine two questions: Which teams have drafted the best in each round, and which positions are good targets in each round.

To begin, using the Draft Finder at Pro-Football-Reference, I pulled a list of every draft pick, by round, from 2000-2013. Since the players taken in the 2014 or 2015 NFL Draft are still developing, I decided to leave them out of the sample for this post.

For each player, PFR has a score called Approximate Value. AV is an attempt to assign a single numerical value to a player's performance over the course of a season, that can be applied to everyone at any position. The highest single-season AV was LaDanian Tomlinson's 27 in 2006, the highest career AV is Peyton Manning's 271, and 2015's highest AV was J.J. Watt, with 21, followed by Cam Newton and Aaron Donald with 20.

For this post, I'll be using a weighted career AV, calculated by adding 100% of a player's best season, 95% of his second best, 90% of his third best, and so on. I'm also counting a player's total career AV, not just his AV with the team that picked him.

Once all the AV scores were collected, I found the average AV of every team's draft pick, by round. I also took the average of each position's AV, however, certain positions tend to run a little higher in AV than others. So, instead, I added together all the rounds for each position and then looked at the percentage of the total that came from each round, in order to identify which positions tended to spike in value at which points in the draft. This method is admittedly imperfect, since it doesn't account for the number of players drafted in each round, but it should give us a starting point.

Lastly, I'll point out the best and worst pick by AV in each round, breaking any ties by using the highest pick for worst (in other words, the biggest bust) and the lowest pick for best.

Let's get started with the round we'll be seeing on Thursday:

Round 1:

Best Team: Baltimore Ravens (53.2 average AV). Worst Team: Jacksonville Jaguars (28.9 average AV).

Best Position: QB (42.3%). Worst Position: (26.1%).

Best Pick: LaDainian Tomlinson (128 AV). Worst Pick: Rashaun Woods (1 AV).

Here's why the Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles were shoveling future draft picks at Cleveland and Tennessee, why Carson Wentz and Jared Goff are flying up draft boards, and why teams show seemingly little fear of past QB busts. The average first round quarterback has a career AV of 47. In the 2nd round, that drops to 23.

To give those numbers some context, a weighted AV of 47 is roughly equivalent to Jason Campbell's career while a 23 is more like Christian Ponder's. On paper, that might not seem like that important of a distinction, but it's perhaps more important to consider the difference in AV than the actual average. A 24-point AV gap is roughly the downgrade from Ben Roethlisberger's career to Jay Cutler's.

In other words, the key is picking a QB who can hit the over. Of the 11 first round picks since 2000 to rack up over 100 career AV, five are QBs (Big Ben, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, Eli Manning, and Carson Palmer). No other position accounted for more than one.

On the flip side, while first-round centers have averaged an AV of 43, the drop-off in the second round is much shallower than at the QB position. Second round centers are worth an average of 39 AV and even waiting till the third round gives you an average AV of 36.

The difference in on-field success between the best team and the worst team suggests that, more than any other round, nailing the first round is vital to a franchise's on-field success. In fact, the four teams that round out the top 5 in average first round AV include two other AFC dynasties (Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots), a two-time NFC champion (Carolina Panthers), and a team that's won its division three times in the last five years (Houston Texans).

On the other hand, the bottom 5 is made up of three of the teams you'd guess (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders, and the Rams), bur also the Philadelphia Eagles, who were 6th in wins from 2000-2013 despite not getting great value out of their first round picks. Of course, it helps that they nailed their first round pick in the 1999 NFL Draft.

Also, shouts to LT. Despite the importance of QBs, the rapid devolution of the running game, and the diminishing importance of running backs, the best first round pick of this century was a workhorse RB.

Round 2:

Best Team: Jacksonville Jaguars (38.5 average AV). Worst Team: Kansas City Chiefs (17.6 average AV).

Best Position: WR (23.7%). Worst Position: DE (19.2%).

Best Pick: Drew Brees (147 AV). Worst Pick: Ras-I Dowling (1 AV).

I cheated a little bit listing Dowling as the worst pick, since 18 2nd rounders were worth 0 AV, and many more tied Dowling's 1. However, given that Dowling was taken with the very first pick of the 2nd round of the 2011 NFL Draft, it seemed like he deserved this somewhat dubious distinction.

In happier news for Jacksonville fans, their team may have bombed the first round, but they sure did well in the 2nd. In fact, the average 2nd round Jaguars pick was nearly 10 points of AV more valuable than their average first round pick. And only six of those thirteen picks fell in the 33-40 range, meaning they weren't just benefitting from picking early in the round when more talent was available.

Meanwhile, one bit of conventional wisdom paid off, as the second round really does tend to be the place to find wide receivers. That said, since the cutoff for this study was 2013, it just missed Odell Beckham and his cohort of insanely talented first-round WRs.

Round 3:

Best Team: Carolina Panthers (24.8 average AV). Worst Team: New England Patriots (9.1 average AV).

Best Position: C (21.7%). Worst Position: DB (11.3%).

Best Pick: Steve Smith (101 AV). Worst Pick: Giovanni Carmazzi (0 AV).

Expecting the 3rd round AV leader to be Russell Wilson or Jason Witten? I guess you aren't familiar with the rules and regulations. Smith is one of 11 3rd round picks since the merger to tally over 100 career weighted AV and the 2nd-best 3rd-round WR ever. And I'll just note here that nearly everyone above him is a Hall-of-Famer or a year or two away from being inducted. Don't worry, Seahawks fans. After four years, Wilson is already at 65 AV, and should take first place in this group within the next two or three years.

Smith is also one of three players who more or less single-handedly gave his team the lead in a round. However, the Panthers hit on several other 3rd rounders, including Will Witherspoon (60 AV) and Travelle Wharton (46 AV). On the other hand, New England's 16 3rd round picks in this time period yielded a batch of mostly anonymous players, with Nick Kaczur being the only one to crack 30 AV, and two others (Ellis Hobbs and Stevan Ridley) breaking 20.

Round 4:

Best Team: New York Jets (21.3 average AV). Worst Team: Carolina Panthers (4.9 average AV).

Best Position: DE (15.2%). Worst Position: (8.4%).

Best Pick: Jahri Evans (103 AV). Worst Pick: Curtis Keaton (0 AV).

Despite that, the Patriots might have the right idea. The fact that the Panthers can go from top of one round to bottom of the round below it (like Jacksonville) suggests that drafting is a lot more luck than skill. The average 3rd-round Panthers' draft pick had the career of a Will Allen or Michael Bush, while the average Carolina 4th rounder ended up generating less value than JaMarcus Russell.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that pass rushers are flying off the draft board higher than ever, DE is the best 4th round position and Professor Rexavier's School for Gifted Pass Rushers led in 4th-round average AV, suggesting maybe teams are fine waiting.

Round 5:

Best Team: New York Giants (15.3 average AV). Worst Team: Washington Redskins (3.5 average AV).

Best Position: DT (11.5%). Worst Position: QB (1.5%).

Best Pick: Dan Koppen (74 AV). Worst Pick: N/A (too many 0 AV players for one to stand out)

The weirdest quirk of the 5th round is, by far, the QB situation. The average 5th-round QB has been worth 1.7 AV, which is roughly Brady Quinn's NFL career and much lower than the average AV of QBs taken after the 5th round.  The most successful 5th-round QB in the sample is either Dan Orlovsky or A.J. Feeley each of whom had a career AV of 7. While historically, the 5th round has produced a couple of high level QBs (Mark Brunell, Fran Tarkenton), an argument could be made that this century's most accomplished 5th-round QB is already A.J. McCarron.

Round 6:

Best Team: New England Patriots (12.9 average AV). Worst Team: Atlanta Falcons (1.3 average AV).

Best Position: QB (8.1%). Worst Position: WR (4.3%).

Best Pick: Tom Brady (160 AV). Worst Pick: Ryan Lindley (-3 AV).

Tom Brady isn't just the best 6th round pick; he's had the best career AV of any player drafted in any spot since 2000 and the 7th best AV ever. Coming to New England with the 199th pick, he's pretty inarguably the greatest draft pick in NFL history and, at the same time, evidence that program, coaching, and luck are all more important to a prospect's success than innate talent and skills identifiable by scouting.

You can see the Brady effect on this round's results. He single-handedly lifts the Patriots to the top spot (their next highest 6th rounder, Jeremy Mincey, was worth 30 AV), and makes this round disproportionately great for QBs, although it also helps that Marc Bulger (career AV of 57) was also taken in this round.

If Brady represents that absolute peak of what can happen when you pick a QB in the 6th round, Lindley shows how it can all go wrong. His ill-fated 2012 season was worth -5 AV, thanks to a ratio of 0 touchdowns to 7 interceptions.

Round 7:

Best Team: New Orleans Saints (11.3 average AV). Worst Team: Baltimore Ravens (1.2 average AV).

Best Position: G (7.9%). Worst Position: TE (2.1%).

Best Pick: Marques Colston (72 AV). Worst Pick: Owen Pochman (-2 AV).

Like the Patriots, the Saints lead because they unearthed an all-pro in a late round, although Colston isn't quite the black swan event that Brady was. His 72 career AV is 7 higher than the 2nd-best 7th rounder since 2000 (in comparison, Brady was nearly 100 points above the second-best sixth rounder).

However, in general, you shouldn't expect to find much of value in the 7th round. The Saints were the only team to average double-digits in AV and punter and guard were the only positions to do it. Besides Colston, the Top 10 in 7th-round AV includes Ryan Fitzpatrick and Cortland Finnegan. And the fact that the worst team in the 7th round was the best team in the 1st, and one of the more respected and successful franchises in the league, shows how much of a crap shoot late round picks can be.

More must-reads:

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