Draft Twitter Pre-Combine Top 100 Talent Gap Analysis

The Top 100 Project

The Draft Twitter Top 100 project is ever evolving.  Initiated to compile opinions of as many NFL prospect talent evaluators as possible to create an aggregate list, the Draft Twitter Top 100 project hopes to take another step forward with the upcoming Combine ballot.  The aggregate Top 100 NFL prospects compiled from the lists of the contributors will serve as the trigger point for Integrated Scouting where the composite knowledge base and discovery of a panel of scouts will try to normalize some of the conscious and unconscious biases that may skew one talent evaluator’s rankings.   Through aggregation of scouts of different backgrounds, philosophies and analytical methods, the DraftTwitter Top 100 hopes to establish a back-tested track record of sensible player rankings. 

The Value of the Talent Gap

In creating the DraftTwitter Top 100, it became clear there composition of the list would give rise to analysis of talent gaps, that is, which player positions are so stocked with talented prospects the value of each is somewhat diminished and which player positions may have only a couple of prospects that stand out above the others in their group, making them more valuable?

The ranking tell us which players are considered the best, but if the graded distance between a #1 player at any position is large, he is far more valuable than if 3 other players at his position were chosen over the next 10 spots.  

Once we assess how large this talent gap is for each position, it will give us an idea of how valuable a player really is once we consider other players who may be somewhat close to his talent level.

Looking at the Pre-Combine Top 100 (click through HERE to view), there are a few conclusions we can draw based on the aggregate rankings of 27 talent evaluators.

			Rankings
Position	# in Group	Average Score	Average Score Rank	Avg Score St Dev	PPPD	PPPD St Dev	FINAL SCORE	FINAL RANK
SS	5	44.35	7	1	3	1	3.00	1
FS	4	44.94	6	3	2	5	4.00	2
RB	8	47.93	5	4	8	3	5.00	3
ILB	3	55.69	1	8	1	12	5.50	4
OLB	6	54.55	3	10	7	2	5.50	5
QB	5	54.99	2	12	5	4	5.75	6
DE	11	49.74	4	2	10	9	6.25	7
TE	6	37.91	12	9	6	6	8.25	8
OT	7	38.62	11	7	9	7	8.50	9
DT	12	34.57	14	5	11	8	9.50	10
WR	11	39.94	10	6	12	11	9.75	11
OG	4	37.48	13	13	4	10	10.00	12
CB	16	43.56	8	11	13	13	11.25	13
C	2	40.91	9	14	14	14	12.75	14

Average Score

The evaluators were asked to list their Top 100 NFL draft prospects.  From those results, each player received points based on the following scale:  the #1 player received 100 points, the #2, 99 points and so on until the 100^th player received just 1 point.  An average score was then calculated.

Inside Linebackers received the highest aggregate rankings.   Although only 3, the group of Reuben Foster (#9), Jarrad Davis (#36) and Raekwon McMillan (#60) had an average ranking score of 55.69.

Defensive Tackles were the lowest aggregate ranked position.  Of the 12 members of the group, 8 fell below the 34.57 point average for the position.  Four members scraped the bottom of the rankings at #95, #96, #99 and #100.

Group size was not a factor in the above as the Defensive End group of 11 was in the top 4 in terms of position average while the Guard group of 4 was second to last.

Average Score Standard Deviation

Taking a look at the standard deviations of the average scores across each position group, we see the group with the widest distribution of average scores was the five man Strong Safety group.  They were smack dab in the middle of the Average Score rankings at #7 of 14, however, their scores varied the most with a Standard Deviation of 31.9.  With a group that currently includes Jamal Adams, Jabrill Peppers, Justin Evans, Obi Melifonwu and Eddie Jackson, it’s hard to imagine one or more of them will not move up the rankings after the upcoming Post Combine Ballot (please see the Shameless Self Promotion, below, for details)  and impact the Strong Safety group’s overall distribution.

Excluding the two man Center group, the 4  man Offensive Guard group’s St Dev at 16.9 points, is the lowest in the Pre-Combine Draft Twitter Ballot. 

Preceding Position Player Differential (PPPD)

The next part of the analysis looks at the difference between the scores of a player and the player taken before him.  If WR2 has a score of 82 and WR1 had a score of 90, the differential would be 8.  The analysis then averaged out the differentials and found the StDev of the same. 

The Inside Linebacker group had the highest PPPD of 27.79 points between players while the Cornerbacks had the lowest PPPD of 4.04 points (the 2 man Centers group was not included in this analysis).

PPPD Standard Deviation

Looking at the Standard Deviation for PPPD, the Strong Safety group is confirmed as having the largest distribution of 16.5.  In an interesting twist, the ILB group, which had the highest PPPD, was 12 of 14 in terms of their distribution as their  St Dev for PPPD was just 6.17.

The CBs remained 2^nd to last (again, ignoring Centers) with a StDev of 4.03.

Based on the table above, we can see which positions were valued most by the inaugural DraftTwitter Top 100.  Re-ranking the top 14 spots of our survey based on the above would result in the following talent gap weighted ranking:

1.    Jamal Adams (currently #3 in DraftTwitter 100)
2.    Malik Hooker (8)
3.   Leonard Fournette (5)
4. Takkarist McKinley (12)
5. Reuben Foster (9)
6. Deshaun Watson (15)
7. Myles Garrett (1)
8. O.J. Howard (13) 
9. Ryan Ramcyzk (16)
10. Jonathon Allen (2)
11. Mike Williams (7)
12. Dan Feeney (33)
13. Sidney Jones (14)
14. Pat Elflein (48)

Remember, these only consider the top player at each position. 

Shameless Self-Promotion!

The Post Combine Ballot will be available in a few weeks so please feel free to email me at boombearfootballmail to be added to the list of evaluators.

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