Joe Pesci wrote:
In all seriousness if his heart checks out and he falls to 9, I'm all in favor of drafting Star Lotulelei and throwing him out there with Wilkerson, Coples, and Ellis and having the best d-line in the AFC East for the next 10 years.
Someone is gonna get a beast in Star.
I really wish someone would aggregate player draft rankings over time from the first rankings after the season, again from after the combine, and then again right before the draft to see which rankings are most predictive of NFL success.*
My sneaking suspicion (and bias, I guess) is that the pre-combine rankings are the most predictive of NFL success, as they're all based on what people do and don't do on the field.
After the combine you get the introduction of more noise from workout warriors and overstated fears (e.g. Tayvon Austin goes from being a 2nd or 3rd round pick to a high to mid first because of an unofficial 40 time that isn't that special once the official one comes out, collective fear about a beast like Star, etc.).
By the time you get to the pre-draft rankings there has also been time for collective belief to create further noise, and the draft process itself introduces irrational overbidding (e.g. at the end of the season after watching all these QBs play we knew they all sucked, but a week out from the draft it seems a fair number of them are going to go in the first 40 picks despite their play not supporting that).
Basically:
Hypothesis 1: Conditioned on player position, pre-draft rankings are best at predicting # of starts.
H2: Conditioned on player position, pre-draft rankings are best at predicting # of stats (e.g. catches, tackles, carries, etc.) in the first five years after the draft.
H3: Conditioned on player position, after the first five years pre-draft rankings under perform compared to post- college season rankings and combine rankings under perform compared to post-college season rankings for # of stats.
H4: Conditioned on player position, # of pro-bowls is better predicted by post-college season rankings than post-combine rankings and pre-draft rankings.
Basically, everything that's not based on on-the-field evaluation introduces noise into the evaluative system, and the whole off-season is better understood as a money generating promotional venture rather than a clarifying evaluative process.
*It's essentially impossible to avoid endogeneity as the rankings right before the draft may be reasonably best at picking where people are drafted, and merely by being drafted higher a player may get more starts, stats, etc. even if he's not talented. "Success" would probably best be measured by Pro-Bowls, meaning you'd have to go back into the past a bit to only capture players who have already retired.
nerd