Rams draft hit rates compared to other teams

wv wrote:

he Pats are an interesting example. They, apparently are often below average on the draft, but they must be good evaluators during free agency, cause they always put together a good team ‘somehow’.

I don;t agree with that either btw.

Subtract Brady and Bellichick and you don’t have a good team.

That doesn’t mean they put together good teams, measured against others. It means they have both Brady and Bellichick.

wv wrote:

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

For starters, I’d call tavon a bust. I really would.

I don’t think Tavon is even remotely a bust. Some would say a disppointment based on the slot where he was picked, but he was performing half the role he was supposed to be performing in 2017, when McVay would not use him in the passing game. That’s not on Tavon.

To me it’s a matter of perspective. Trung Canidate is a bust. Robert Thomas is a bust. Jimmy Kennedy is a bust. Klopenstein is a bust. Tye Hill is a bust. Claude Wroten is a bust. Brian Leonard is a bust. Chris Givens is a bust. Tavon gets used and accounted for. That’s not a bust.

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Well, like i said, we disagree. He was drafted in the top ten. They moved up to get him. And he ended up making as many bad plays as good ones. Drops, muffs, fumbles, missed assignments, bad kick-return decisions. He totally lost his confidence at the end.

If he’d been a sixth round pick, I ‘might’ not call him a bust. But i might. I dunno. But a top ten pick that ends up running a few sweeps and basically plays decoy because the coach doesnt trust him to do anything else? For me, bust is a fair word.

w
v

I don’t count draft slot in determining if a guy is a bust. A 5th rounder can still be a bust.

The way I do this, there’s 2 steps. 1st, basic hit percentage, which is just raw data. Doing that keeps people from being completely arbitrary. So if someone goes “Snead sukks, look at all the busts” you can point out that a 40% hit rate is good. Period. No team hits on everyone and every team has first and 2nd round busts in their history.

There’s another step though.

Grading is a separate step. It’s qualitative. Then you bring up things like where Tavon was picked, Robinson, Donald, Gurley, and hash out how that looks.

To me a bust is a guy who cannot play in the league.

You don;t have defenses geared up to account for a guy with extra attention every time he’s on the field if he’s a bust.

I mean if I did 2016 I would certainly count Cooper as a hit/significant contributor because of PRs. If anything Tavon did more than he has.

And as I said, hit percentages is just basic math. If you want to register a complaint about Tavon’s draft spot, that goes into what I consider to be the next step, which is grading.

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• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by zn.

nittany ram wrote:

zn wrote:

I don’t think Tavon is even remotely a bust. Some would say a disppointment based on the slot where he was picked, but he was performing half the role he was supposed to be performing in 2017, when McVay would not use him in the passing game. That’s not on Tavon.

Well, if it’s not on Tavon, then who is it on? McVay?

I think if Tavon had shown any ability in the passing game, McVay would have used him. Tavon’s own deficiencies kept him out of the passing game. Maybe if he hadn’t had wrist surgery and hurt his hamstring in the preseason when he was trying to learn the offense things might have been different, but Tavon never materialized as anything more than a gadget player and a good punt returner before succumbing to the worst case of the yips I’ve ever seen.

Yes that’s on McVay. And that’s not even a complaint. I was saying last spring before the season that there was a good chance McV would not be interested in using Tavon the way Tavon can be used, and that he had no obligation to do so since McV didn’t draft Tavon. That there was a chance he was not going to bend his system to incorporate Tavon. Again, that was last spring.

He HAS shown what ability he does have in the passing game and has been used that way. From 2014 to 2016 he has 237 targets and 141 catches. Means he can be used in the passing game.

The mistake everyone makes with Tavon IMO is to judge him as a pure receiver. I was saying he WASN’T that before they even drafted him.

He’s a weapon you can use to run the ball and catch the ball, and if Schott and Cigs could figure out how to do that, obviously McV could too. I just don’t think he had any interest in doing it.

In Dallas he replaces Dunbar whose touches divide pretty evenly between catches and runs. That’s what I expect to see. It looks like it will be 2014-2015 again, where he had 83 catches and 88 runs.

Watch career highlights with Tavon. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJvZUVnI9dg ].He catches passes. The idea that he can’t is just not born out. But, you have to program in what he CAN do because what he’s NOT going to be is a pure receiver who can be used as one.

The advantage of having him as a hybrid weapon who you both run the ball with and throw to is that you cannot tell from where he lines up which it will be, and since defenses never stopped heavily accounting for him, that’s a good thing. Adds some deception to the game.

Hram wrote:

I’ve just never thought that he was that great of a weapon as a gadget player that he can be counted as a hit regardless of where he was drafted.

I believe he is a career backup part time gadget player.

If he was a 4th rounder or lower, that would be okay, but I still wouldn’t count him as a hit. But it would be okay for that amount of draft capital.

Even if I saw him that way, to me that’s a hit. I don’t list only starters as hits. For example if they had drafted Robey-Coleman, as a nickel back he’s a significant contributor hence a hit.

Tavon = 561 touches, 24 TDs. Significant contributor. A hit. Not a starter but a hit.

Same with Cooper. He’s the PR which only meant only 100 touches in 2 years but still a hit.

And this is across the board with other teams too. When I compare the Rams hit percentage with other teams, I count the hits the exact same way. That’s why I counted Nate Ebner as a hit for the Patz even though he has never started a down on defense. He’s a key special teamer and I count that as a hit.

Hram wrote:

Good discussion.

Might be interesting to differentiate between starters (I’d include the nickel guy with starters) and bakups/roll players.

Then again maybe not, could become too complicated.

Yeah it’s a good discussion.

I just happen to add an array of players to “hits” which includes not just starters but significant role players. So for example I counted both Nate Ebner with the Patz (top special teamer) and Hager with the Rams (some good back-up work plus top special teamer). I think having significant contributing special teamers reflects good drafting.

But then the point is to compare different teams’s hit percentages, so if you do it the same for all teams, the comparison is valid.

To me discussing Tavon’s draft position is a “grading” thing and I separate grades from hit percentage. Hit percentage is just numbers.

Quick caught 105 passes with the Rams. Is he a hit? I say no. They were clearly keeping him in the lineup to try and get him going, he never really delivered for his position (which is unlike Tavon an actual WR), he didn’t have the TDs, or the catch percentage (50%), and he did nothing last year with a new team.

Some say Tavon was a miss. My vote is that I don ‘t count Austin as a bad pick. He was productive in his role as an offensive weapon, and until 2017 on special teams too. In terms of just hits and misses, to me that’s a hit. If you’re going to go beyond hits and misses and grade picks, then you mark Austin down for not living up to high first round value. But that;s a different issue.

So I stand by my vote on that—I don’t think TA is a miss or bust because he was a productive role player and has the yards and TDs to prove it. In terms of just raw hit percentage that counts IMO (as I said the grade is a different thing).

BUT.

I am outvoted on that, so for the sake of just kicking it around, what would the Rams hit percentage in those years be if he were counted as a miss?

It would be exactly 40%, and that (according to my math on all this) is still the threshold for “good.”

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JackPMiller wrote:

Who was the guy on these boards were calling them a bust? Hmmm. I wonder?

Everyone.

They’re busts.

But that’s after time to assess.

No call the same year as the draft will be valid. You have to wait.

So whoever called Goff a bust in 2016 was proven wrong. Whoever called RG3 a hit in 2012 was wrong.

snowman wrote:

I don’t know if I consider Tavon a miss. Can I have a third category called “push”? He did not become an every-down WR like I hoped, but he started 50 of 75 games, was targeted as a receiver almost 200 times in 2015-16 combined, was valuable as a third RB and gadget player and he returned kicks. Tavon played a lot, just not in the capacity one would expect or desire of the #8 overall pick. I end up looking at stats. If Tavon had five years like the first two years of Tyreek Hill’s career, I would call him a big hit.

That’s why I separate hit percentage and grades.

The way I do it, hit percentages are just basic raw numbers, and they more or less just tell you if the regime is meeting basic bottomline standards. Doing that narrows the discussion in terms of which teams are generally good or poor, but those numbers alone don’t finalize anything.

Grades are more complex. So it’s “Tavon too high for what he was + GR a high pick bust + very few teams in NFL history have come up with a Gurley level player and a Donald level play and a pro bowl qb in 3 consecutive drafts =…. ?”