My friends Sigmund Bloom and Cecil Lammey from the world’s best football podcast are fond of saying that Al Davis likes shiny things. I don’t know if it’s original to them, but it’s catchy.

I don’t know why this thought popped into my head, but last night I wondered what team had the most former first-round picks on its roster. So I ran the query, and it provided more evidence of this post’s title.

There have been three teams in NFL history with 18 former first-round picks on the roster at some point. Two of those three are Raider teams: 1997 and 2003. Both were 4-12. They’re separated by only six years but have almost no overlap. In fact, 39 different former first-round picks played for Oakland in the seven-year span from 1997 to 2003. The average NFL team suited up about 22 different first-round picks during that span.

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This post will trace the history of the NFL’s structure, in terms of league size, expansion (particularly as it applies to the currently existing franchises), length of schedule and format, and playoff structure. I am not going to focus on the champions or specific on field results each and every year, though I may discuss a few. If you want to see any particular season, you can go here.

Part one will discuss the league up through the 1959 season. Part two will pick up in 1960, the year that the American Football League started. I would encourage comments from anyone if you think I have omitted something important, or have any personal knowledge or historical info. I am recreating this almost entirely from reviewing the yearly standings, franchise indexes, and specific yearly team pages here at pro-football-reference. Some of the historical references to World War II, as well as date checking were confirmed using this site for the Pacific and European Theatres.

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You may have noticed that most of the SR sites have a shiny new logo in the upper left-hand corner. We had been talking about getting nice logos for years, but the formation of the LLC this past December finally gave us the boost to actually get something done. In fact, when we got together at the Baseball Winter Meetings to sign the documents that offically formed the LLC, we met a graphic designer by the name of John Hartwell. John runs a company named Hartwell Studio Works. He has done a lot of sports-related work, including designing the logo of the Birmingham Barons, a minor league baseball team. We have been extremely impressed with John, not only the finished product, but also with the professionalism he displayed throughout the process.

Our hope is that these new logos further unify the sites. We want people of to think of our web sites as parts of a whole, not distinct entities, and we believe these logos are an important step in that process. Please feel free to let us know what you think (you’re never shy about that, are you?), and as always we thank you for your support of our sites.

This is my current best attempt at an Approximate value-based draft chart.

I looked at all drafts from 1980–1999. I figured 1980 was late enough to be “modern,” 1999 was early enough to have allowed most of the players to have finished their careers, and 20 years was enough to get a decent sample size.

Then, for each player, I computed what I call his “draft value”:

Draft Value = (Total approx value of first four seasons) + (90% of AV of fifth season) + (80% of AV of sixth season) + … + (10% of AV of 13th season)

The basic idea is this. When you draft a player, you’re getting roughly his first four years, and then some uncertainty. This was just a quick way for me to capture the fact that there is some chance that your draftees will be helping some other team and not yours in five, six, seven years time. Also, teams presumably value 2008 production more than 2015 production.

Then I looked at the draft values of all players selected in a certain slot, and bunged them down into a chart. Well, sort of. Let me take a line and explain it:

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As you probably are aware, 26-year-old all-pro defensive end Jared Allen was just traded from the Chiefs to the Vikings in exchange for the 17th, 73rd, and 82nd picks in the upcoming draft. There was also a swap of sixth-rounders, but I’m going to ignore that.

This seems to me like a good deal for both teams. My favorite Viking blogger, Pacifist Viking, likes the deal from the Minnesota side:

If anybody would like to complain about giving up draft picks, I encourage you to look at Grant’s Tomb for a list of players the Vikings have drafted since 2000 [Doug note: or you could click this customized query]. The draft is hit or miss: you can score big (Kevin Williams, E.J. Henderson, Adrian Peterson), but you can also come away with no meaningful contributors (see 2000, 2001, and 2005). Draft picks in and of themselves are worthless; draft picks are only meaningful because they can be turned into starting players. The Vikings turned those three draft picks into a 26 year old who had 15.5 sacks in 14 games last season. They turned their draft picks into a very good football player, and that’s what draft picks are for.

Very true; with all the draft hype, we have a tendency to forget that picks are just a means to an end. And they are hit-or-miss. But some more so than others. A third-round pick has a better chance of becoming a productive player than a fifth-round pick does, but not as good as a first-round pick. We’re dealing with potentials here. Likelihoods. Probabilities. And that was PV’s point. But I’d add that Jared Allen is just potential at this point too. We don’t know what Allen’s future looks like. Granted, we’re much more confident about his future than we are about pick #73, but Allen belongs on the probability continuum too, just like a first-round pick, a third-round pick, and a fifth-round pick. Yes, he’s very near the good end of it, but he’s still on it. Everyone is.

This kind of thing is why I felt the need to develop the approximate value method. If we can put numbers on player seasons, then we can attempt to quantify statements like PV’s above. What are these probabilities? What is the probability that the #17 pick in the draft will turn into a solid NFL player? What’s the probability that Jaren Allen will continue to be one? What’s the probability that the #17 pick will be more productive than Allen over the next year? Two years? Five years? What’s the probability that at least one of the three picks the Vikings give up will be more productive than Allen?

Here’s what I did.

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Using my still-in-beta approximate value method (which you can read about here, here, here, and here), I decided to identify the best draft classes since 1970.

The obvious choice is the 1974 Steelers‘ draft, which produced three Hall of Famers and one other guy who also got elected to the Hall of Fame. Pacifist Viking, however, makes a strong case for the 1986 49ers‘ class which lacks Canton residents but boasts seven players who started for five or more seasons. Nailing down a third of a team for half a decade in a single draft is pretty impressive.

My method ranks these classes #2 and #4 respectively. In between them is the 1981 Saints class, which is even deeper (but also even more lacking in true star power) than the ‘86 49ers’ class. The Saints landed an astounding 12 players who would be NFL starters for at least two seasons. To give you a sense, consider Russell Gary. He started every game of the first four years of his career, and was even named by the UPI to the all-NFC team one year. He was, according to my method, the seventh-best player drafted by the Saints in 1986.

Before I reveal #1, let me describe the method.

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The NFL and AFL had their first common draft in 1967, making this year the 42nd draft in modern professional football history.

Jake Long becomes the third offensive lineman selected with the first pick, joining Orlando Pace and Ron Yary. Each made 7 Pro Bowls.

Fifteen lineman have now been drafted first overall, with twelve of them being defensive players.

Exactly two-thirds of the number one draft picks have been offensive players.

Long becomes the eighth player from the Big 10 to be drafted first overall, joining Courtney Brown, Pace, Ki-Jana Carter, Dan Wilkinson, Jeff George, Tom Cousineau and Bubba Smith.

Long becomes the first Michigan Wolverine ever selected with the number one overall pick. USC has the most number one picks, with five.

Long becomes the 37th first draft pick selected from a current BCS school. Alex Smith (Utah), David Carr (Fresno State), Ed “Too Tall” Jones (Tennessee State), John Matuszak (Tampa) and Terry Bradshaw (Louisiana Tech) were all drafted from current non-BCS schools or non-Division 1 schools (Jones, Matuszak).

According to the current breakdown of schools, the ACC and the Big 12 have five number one picks each, the Big 10 has eight, the SEC has seven, and the Pac-10 has eleven. Notre Dame has one (Walt Patulski), and the Big East has zero. Mike Vick was selected first overall when Virginia Tech was in the Big East, but the Hokies are now in the current ACC. The current WAC has two (Carr, Bradshaw) and the current Mountain West has one (Alex Smith).

Long (6′7) joins Bubba Smith and Orlando Pace in a tie for the third tallest player ever picked first overall. Ed “Too Tall” Jones was the tallest first pick ever at 6′9, and John Matuszak ranks second at six feet, eight inches. Ki-Jana Carter, 5′10, was the shortest top selection ever.

Long is also the third heaviest player ever (315 lbs) drafted first overall, behind Dan Wilkinson (335) and Orlando Pace (325). Irving Fryar was the lightest first pick, weighing just 200 pounds.

Long is also the first native Michigander selected at the top of the draft. Washington, Texas and Ohio have each had four top picks, while California leads the country with six sons selected first (Palmer, Aikman, Keyshawn Johnson, Plunkett, David Carr and O.J. Simpson).

Long is the tenth oldest player selected first overall. Billy Simms was the oldest, as he turned 25 in September of his rookie season. Mike Vick was the youngest, and both he and Alex Smith were just 20 years old when drafted.

Long is the 14th player selected by an AFC East team with the first pick. The Bills have four (Bruce Smith, Cousineau, Patulski and Simpson), the Baltimore Colts have one (Elway; the Colts were not in the AFC East when Bubba Smith was selected), the Indianapolis Colts have three (Manning, George and Emtman), the Jets have one (Keyshawn) and the Patriots have four (Drew Bledsoe, Irving Fryar, Kenneth Sims and Jim Plunkett). This is the first number one pick by Miami.

Links to part I, part II, part III,

A few weeks ago, I asked the fine folks at the footballguys message board to rank the following list of players according to overall career (not peak) value.

Dale Carter
Cris Carter
Kevin Carter
Dexter Coakley
Warrick Dunn
Dan Hampton
Seth Joyner
John Lynch
Clay Matthews
Eric Moulds
Anthony Munoz
Roman Phifer
Bruce Smith
Neil Smith
Aeneas Williams

The idea was to take players from a variety of positions, decades, and overall quality levels, and see if my method put them in roughly the same order as the fan consensus. After posting the list, I realized that I should have included a few more offensive linemen. Munoz is the only one, and he’s easy to rate. The omission of quarterbacks was intentional; I’ll talk a little about that later.

I realize this isn’t a tightly controlled scientific survey, but here is the consensus of the 13 sets of rankings that were offered at the time I tallied them (a few more sets of rankings trickled in later; they’re not included here):

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The sports-reference family of sites is pleased to bring you hockey-reference.com. Please enjoy the site, and tell all your hockey-stat-loving friends.

Justin K, of basketball-reference.com fame, is heading up this project. If you want to offer general or specific suggestions or criticisms, or just congratulate him on a job well done, please do so at the h-r blog.

When the site re-launched in December, a player was declared an an all-pro if he made first- or second-team on any of the various all-pro teams that were named in a given year. So a second-team all-NFC player and a unanimous first-team all-NFL guy were both simply called “all-pro.” You may have noticed that, a few days ago, we essentially switched the meaning of “all-pro” to “first team AP all-pro.” We’ve left that definition intact, but have now added a great deal more info.

The all-pro pages — like this one, for example — now provide you with a lot more information on which players were named to which teams. Also, the player pages have a list of all-pro honors, right below their leaderboard appearances. Jerry Rice made a lot of all-pro teams.

And a bit of unrelated news….

Prepare yourself for a site announcement tomorrow (Monday) night that some percentage of you will be very, very excited about. I really don’t know what that percentage is, but if you’re in it, you won’t want to miss this announcement. UPDATE: announcement postponed until Tuesday morning. Sorry for the delay.

Here are the links to part I and part II.

Getting approximate values for defensive players proved to be quite a bit tougher than I had anticipated. What I’ve ended up with is a method that seems pretty sloppy, with lots of arbitrary “add three points for this” and “multiply this times 1.6″ sort of rules. But I generally like the results it gives. And since the point of this is not to be theoretically correct, but to build an objective method that matches peoples’ subjective opinions, I’m OK with it.

I’m going to do here the opposite of what I did in parts I and II. That is, I’m going to post some lists before posting the complete methodology. The basic idea is the same on the defensive side of the ball as on the offensive: while we don’t know the contributions of each individual player, we do know what they should add up to, because we know how good the team was. So I’ve given each team defense a certain number of points, based on its points allowed per (estimated) possession compared to the league average. And then I’ve done my best to divvy up those points among those players according to: sacks (post-1982), interceptions, defensive touchdowns, tackles (post-1994), and all-pro status.

As I mentioned above, the exact mix of those ingredients is something I arrived at by trial and error. I’ve spent a lot of time asking, why does that guy rank so high? Oh, it’s because of the way such-and-such a stat gets figured in. That needs fixing. OK, so now why is this other guy so low? Ah, I see, let’s tweak that a little.

The main “breakthrough” here, which I’ve also applied to the offensive linemen, is that, instead of having a binary was-he-or-wasn’t-he an all-pro system, I am now using three different degrees of all-pro-ness: first-team AP all-pro, second-team AP all-pro, and pro bowler who didn’t make the first- or second-team all-pro list. This helps to separate the Kevin Williamses from the Trent Coles. Not that there’s anything wrong with Trent Cole, but he’s no Kevin Williams.

Enough chit-chat. I’m just going to post my approximate value estimates for a handful of famous teams and a few ‘07 teams. The number immediately after each player is my approximate value estimate. The second number, which is either a 1, 2, or 3, signifies the level of all-pro-ness of that player for that year. 1=first team, 2=second team, 3=pro bowler not on first or second team. But note that this information is only figured into the system at the non-skill positions, where I feel like we don’t have the stats necessary to give them reasonable ratings without it. In other words, I’m comfortable (approximately) rating Derek Anderson and Franco Harris and Wesley Walker without knowing whether or not they made the pro bowl in a given year, but I’m not comfortable rating Jeff Saturday or Dave Duerson or Terrence Newman.

Peruse the lists and let me know what sticks out. Who’s way off? Do you see anything that appears to you to be a systematic error?

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Does a team’s finish have any impact on how they perform the next season? I looked at all teams that finished with between 4 and 8 wins, since 1990. I then used the following quick measurement to see how each team was performing at the end of the season. For every win in the final 4 games, the team got 2 points. For every win in games 9-12, the team got 1 point.

I then sorted the teams by win totals. The teams in each win total were then divided into three groups, the strong finishers, the average finishers, and the weak finishers, based on how many points they scored. The average finishers were those within +/- 1 pt of the average expected points for that particular win total. For example, a 6-win team would average 1.5 wins for every 4 games. That would be an average of 4.5 points in my system (3 points for final 4 weeks, 1.5 points for weeks 9-12), so the average finishers for the 6-win group were all teams that scored 4 or 5 points. The strong finishing 6-win teams scored 6 or more points (for example, 2 wins in last 4, and 4-4 in final 8). The weak finishing 6-win teams scored 3 points or less.

Here are the results sorted by win totals.

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There is some tidying to be done, but our draft data is now searchable.

You can do a quick search via the main draft index page, or you can get a bit more specific with this form.

I would like to thank Doug for allowing me to infect this week’s blog with some temporary March Madness. Long before I was doing research on the NFL, I was a NCAA tournament junkie.

I still have the NCAA program from the 1988 Final Four, featuring Arizona, Oklahoma, and Duke. (I’ll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize the fourth team). I memorized that program, and can still to this day tell you who won the NCAA tournament in any year. In college, I once banged my head on the floor during an intramural basketball game. My teammate’s reportedly asked me who won the NCAA tournament in 1950, to see if I was okay. When I mumbled “CCNY, Irwin Dambrot, Nat Holman”, they told the ref that I was okay. I don’t really remember it.

My particular affliction, and the cause of an unhealthy love-hate relationship with March Madness, is that I am a Missouri Tigers fan. I cried when the 1987 team with Derrick Chievous lost in the first round to Xavier as a #4 seed. I cried the next year when they lost to Rhode Island in the first round. (Yes, I cried alot as a kid). By the time the 1990 NCAA tournament rolled around, I was a sophomore in high school. I was at school, but skipped class that afternoon, snuck into the A/V room in the library with a couple of other guys, and watched the second half of the game against Northern Iowa. I can still see Maurice Newby’s prayer of a shot sailing through the net.

That particular Missouri Tigers team was led by Anthony Peeler and Doug Smith (who Doug had an opportunity to see up close at the first NFL game he attended). Less than a month earlier, they were the #1 ranked team in the country. They went into a bit of slump at the end of the season, culminating in a first round Big 8 tourney loss to the #8 seed Colorado Buffaloes, which dropped them all the way down to a #3 seed in the NCAA tournament. I’ll use that Missouri Tigers team to transition to the point of this post. How important is a team’s finish to the regular season, and does the tournament committee properly weight the end of season performance versus the whole body of a team’s performance?

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Yesterday I asked whether you, were you sitting in Bill Parcells’ chair (and were such a thing not pure fantasy), would exchange the first overall pick in the draft for all 32 fifth round picks. Some good comments followed. As promised, I’ll give a general overview of how often starters and stars emerge from the fifth round.

I looked at all fifth round picks between 1990 and 1999. That keeps the data somewhat recent while also leaving time for all the players being looked at to have finished at least most of their careers. Using some quick ratings based on my almost-finished-but-not-yet-released approximate value formula, here are the best fifth round picks of the 90s. ‘St’ is the number of seasons he was his team’s main starter at his position and PB is the number of pro bowls he made.

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This is purely hypothetical, because no team would ever be faced with this choice, but I think it’s a fun thought experiment and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

I’ll offer a single question, then I’ll give it a couple of twists.

The question: If you were the Miami Dolphins, would you trade the first overall pick for the entire fifth round (all 32 picks)?

For me, two things instantly pop into my mind. First, I wonder about the salary cap impact. Second, I’d be concerned about my ability to evaluate 32 marginal talents during the short duration of a single training camp. So here are a couple of follow-ups.

1. If it were mandated from above that the trade would be salary-cap neutral for the first two years, would you trade #1 for the fifth round?

2. If you got a special practice-squad exemption that allowed you to carry all your fifth-rounders for a full year to evaluate them, would you trade #1 for the fifth round?

Tomorrow, I’ll look at the historical data to see how many starters and how many stars generally emerge from the fifth round. For now I’m interested in your gut reactions.

From a franchise index page, you can now get quick links to single-season and career team leaderboards.

Examples (don’t forget to utilize the sortable column headers):

Cowboys’ career rushing leaders

Top receiving seasons by a Giant

This page shows all those Buccaneers who didn’t return any kicks for TDs from 1976 to 2006

Lots of good stuff to announce today.

1. The touchdown data I told you about a few months ago has been integrated into the players pages (well, a link from the player pages). For instance, if you go to Johnny’s Unitas’s page you’ll see, right above his stat tables, a link called View Details For: 290 Regular Season and 7 Playoff TDs Thrown. Click that and you can see a quick summary of all Johnny U’s touchdown throws — 63 were to Raymond Berry, 43 to Lenny Moore, and so on. Below that is a log of the details of every single one of them. On October 11, 1959, he threw a 68-yarder to Lenny Moore in the first quarter to give the Colts a seven-point lead over the Lions in a game the Colts would go on to win 31-24.

2. In anticipation of next month’s big event, we have beefed up the draft section of the site. In addition to yearly drafts, you can also view all draft picks by franchise (here are all the Jaguars draft selections) and by position (all tight ends selected from 1980–2007). Also, interceptions and sacks have been added to the stat tables, so you can use the sortable column headers to bring (roughly) the top defenders to the front of the list.

3. We now have tackles and assists for individual players as far back as Ronnie Lott and Monte Coleman. They also appear on the team pages (scroll down to Defense & Fumbles) and there are now yearly defense registers, where you can use the sortable column headers to discover that the top three tacklers of 1994 were Junior Seau, Chris Spielman, and Sam Mills.

How complete are they and how far back do they go? This gets a little confusing, so bear with me if you’re interested in the details. We have tackles for the complete careers of anyone who played in 1994 or later. So from 1994 onward, we are complete. For seasons prior to 1994, we are not complete. But the closer you get to 1994, the closer we are to complete. The 1985 defense register, for instance, shows tackle data for only 54 players (the 54 defensive players who played in 1985 and were active past 1994), so you shouldn’t assume that Kyle Clifton was leading tackler of that season even though he appears at the top of the list. Finally, prior to 1994, some teams tracked assists and some didn’t. So we have combined the tackles and assists into the tackles column and blanked out the assist column for years prior to 1994.

Enjoy.

Matt Ryan is the consensus first quarterback who will be selected in the NFL draft. For example, this site has links to numerous mock drafts on the internet. Ryan is the first quarterback projected in virtually all of the mock drafts linked. However, there is less consensus on where he will go, with some placing him at the first overall, others somewhere in the top five, and the majority having him in the 8th slot to Baltimore. This is similar to what we see from the national draft pundits.

Almost universally, then, Matt Ryan is accepted as the top prospect. The next prospect on most draft boards is Brian Brohm. Chad Henne and Andre Woodson also appear in the majority of top 50 selections in mock drafts. Joe Flacco of Delaware rounds out the top 5 and is placed in the top 50 in about half of the mock drafts. There is almost uniform consensus that those are the top five quarterbacks available, as I did not see any others in anyone’s top 50.

So, what is the likelihood that Matt Ryan will actually be better than Brian Brohm, the only other one who is unanimously somewhere in the top 50?

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Rare double post today, but I thought these moves deserve some attention. Let’s start with Vilma.

According to the New York Times, the Jets received a 2009 4th round pick from the Saints, that could become a third round pick if Vilma reaches certain incentives. In general, the cost of a pick in round X this year is a pick in round X-1 next year; so you could look at this as if it’s really a 2008 4th or 5th round pick — in other words, not very much. Vilma was the defensive rookie of the year in 2004 and made the Pro Bowl in 2005, but has obviously seen his stock drop since then. He underachieved in 2006 and played poorly last year before suffering a season ending knee injury. It’s unclear if Vilma will ever return to form, and there’s been speculation that it will be two years before Vilma is at full speed — and who knows exactly what that means for him anymore. Considering he’s in the last year of his contract, he certainly wasn’t going to command a lot in the trade market.

Nearly everyone blames Vilma’s failures in ‘06 and ‘07 on the 3-4 defense Eric Mangini installed. I’m not convinced that’s accurate, though.

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