Drafting against consensus, Part 2

It’s a complicated story

In the first article in this series, I began to explore the relationship between those NFL teams that have regularly drafted against consensus boards over the past five years, and whether that fact might have any causal relationship to their success.

I looked carefully at the San Francisco 49ers “reaches” over that timeframe – and added in two more years for good measure – for three reasons: 1) Washington’s General Manager Adam Peters came from the 49ers; 2) The 49ers have been the most draft-deviant team over the first three rounds of the draft for the past five years, and 3) They’ve been one of the best teams in the league during that period.

What I found didn’t appear to connect the 49ers’ draft “reachiness” to team success at all.

In fact, only one real reach – Dre Greenlaw taken in the 5th round of 2019 draft – could be considered to be a major cog in the 49ers recent success (First round right tackle, Mike McGlinchey is an important component as well, but he was a fairly minor reach, and may only be the fourth best tackle from his draft, despite being the first off the board).

So, are there any deviant teams who have seriously benefitted from being “reachy,” as opposed to say, simply drafting well?

The Rams, who have made a habit of drafting with both hands tied behind their back, struck me as a possibility, so I decided to do a deeper dive.

In this case, I didn’t have a nice, single source pointing me to all of the Rams’ “reaches,” so I had to go back and try to put one together myself.

Reconstructing Rams “Reaches”

What follows below is a year by year attempt to re-build the post-draft “reach” evaluations from the “consensus board” community to the best extent possible. I recognize the limitations of this approach, but think it’s probably good enough for this exercise.

2023

Here, we’re going to use Mel Kiper’s take as a proxy for the consensus big board. While Kiper actually recognized Bryce Young as a “steal” – which he appears to have been – he called out the following players as “reaches.”

I thought I was high on quarterback Stetson Bennett (128), but I had heard he was more likely to go in Rounds 5 or 6. He’ll be a nice backup for Matthew Stafford, but I’m not sure how high his ceiling is overall. Wideout Puka Nacua (177), tight end Davis Allen (175) and edge rusher Ochaun Mathis (189) were all reaches on my board, and L.A. ended up taking my sixth-ranked punter Ethan Evans (223). – Mel Kiper

It turns out, at least after one year in, none of these players were reaches. Turner outperformed his peers, Allen was on par with his peers – except his teammate, Nacua, who single-handedly skewed the peer grade, Nacua was an absolute rock star, Mathis was fine, and Evans – a punter – did more than most 7th rounders ever will.

2022

Here, we turn to The Athletic, who – in the wake of the 2022 draft – judged the Rams incredibly harshly, deeming it the second poorest return on investment:

The Rams actually had an advantage in this exercise, as it’s easier to gain value when picking later because teams can snap up falling players. But despite not having a pick until selection No. 104, they went well against the board. Logan Bruss was a reach of about 85 spots in the rankings, and Decobie Durant was a reach of about 100. That said, the model is overly harsh to players ranked outside the top 400, and it really shouldn’t be a big issue that a team invests seventh-round picks in players who would be ranked 412th. Really, all this means is that the Rams had only two opportunities to grab value by the board’s standards, and they didn’t take advantage of those opportunities.

Thus far, Bruss indeed looks like a reach. Durant, however, has performed in alignment with his peer group.

2021

In 2021, again The Athletic brutalized the Rams, deeming them the worst team in the league in terms of draft “return on investment.”

Fields is the biggest reason the Bears ended up with the highest return on investment, but not the only reason. Had the draft stopped after the third round, the Bears would have ranked fifth behind the Texans, Browns, Titans and Vikings. At the other end of the spectrum are the Jaguars, Raiders and Rams.

The Rams’ wide receiver, Tutu Atwell, was deemed one of the biggest reaches in the draft. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler had Rams’ third round pick, LB Ernest Jones as a 5th or 6th round pick, his 17th best linebacker overall.

In retrospect, Atwell may have been a slight reach, but Jones was an absolute steal in the third round, and very good value there.

2020

The Rams were deemed very middle of the pack – 17th in the league – at netting value from the 2020 draft, per The Athletic. None of the players were called out as particularly “reachy” in this class.

2019

The further we go back in time, the more of a patchwork this analysis become. In 2019, I’ve settled for the Sporting News’ evaluation of the Rams’ draft, which placed them at 32nd in the league:

“Let’s just say this is a 180 from the superstar free-agent haul Les Snead gathered in the 2018 offseason to turn the Rams into NFC champions. The Rams strangely ignored their need to boost their interior offensive line and edge pass rush early. Rapp and Henderson have real bust potential and both Long and Evans were reaches, leaving Gaines as their one truly OK pick.”

It appears that the Sporting News nailed their post-draft evaluation in this case.

2018

The draft commentariat found it difficult to weigh in on the 2018 Rams’ draft, in part because the team didn’t have a pick until the middle of the third round. But ultimately, that didn’t pose an issue to Walter Football:

“The first choice was a decent one, as Joseph Noteboom is an athletic tackle who could one day replace Andrew Whitworth. However, the next two picks, center Brian Allen and defensive end John Franklin-Myers, were both major reaches. Franklin-Myers wasn’t even considered to be anything more than a seventh-round prospect by some teams, yet the Rams selected him in the fourth frame.

Things seemed pretty dubious for the Rams, but they began making some solid choices. Linebacker Micah Kiser, running back John Kelly and guard Jamil Demby were all quality value selections who filled needs. The best pick was arguably edge rusher Ogbo Okoronkwo, a third-round prospect who fell to No. 160 overall. The edge rush was the Rams’ greatest need heading into the 2018 NFL Draft, and Okoronkwo could compete for a starting role as a rookie.

Walter (or Charlie) screwed up on this one. Both Allen and Franklin-Myers turned out to overperform their draft peers in the 6 years since being drafted.

The Full Picture

In total, this analysis has identified 13 “reaches” in the six Rams’ drafts between 2019 and 2023. All of these, except one, are from round 3 or later, in part because the Rams have so intermittently had first and second round draft picks during that time frame.

Of these 13 reaches, nine players (69%) have matched – or exceeded – the performance of their peer group (I included Allen in this cluster, as it was his teammate, Nacua, who skewed the entire peer score (i.e., without Nacua, Allen would have been average)). That’s basically double the 49ers’ 35% “reach success” score.

Of this group, Jones and Nacua were important pieces of the Rams’ roster last year, and Allen was a depth center. Franklin-Myers was actually cut after his rookie year, and picked up by the Jets, who have turned him into a solid, starting defensive lineman.

All of this said – and given that the Rams have “reached” pretty well – this doesn’t look to me like it’s an enormous difference maker in terms of team success, with regards to the players added (though Nacua could end up being a real exception).

Right now, this looks to me like “reaching well” is probably a competitive bump – and certainly a hat tip to the Rams’ front office – but in the same range of advantages conferred by things like managing the cap incrementally well or optimizing an extra comp pick or two per year.

Taken alone, the benefits of those advantages can seem relatively small, but in the aggregate, I believe they can be the difference between ultimate success and failure.

There is no silver bullet in the NFL, but there are lots of steel buckshot, and Les Snead and Sean McVay seem to be very adept at packing shells.