Wharton Professor: Draft success largely based upon luck
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Stringer BellsubscriberOPI've always had my suspicions that you couldn't identify certain teams are being in the draft. This professor's research seems to reach that same conclusion:
"I went out and looked at the data," said Massey, sitting in his office on the fifth floor of Huntsman Hall at Penn.
"It turned out, there are no differences in teams' abilities to draft."
There are clearly "huge differences" in outcomes, Massey was quick to point out.
"Some teams have great years, other teams have bad years - and it matters," Massey said. "But those differences aren't persistent year-to-year, which tells me that they are chance driven. Something between 95 and 100 percent - I'm not exaggerating - of team differences in the draft is driven by chance."
There is skill involved in selecting players, the professor said."It's just that teams are equally skilled, in a very uncertain environment," Massey said.
Massey worked as a long-term consultant for an NFL team that didn't want to be identified, he said. (Not the Eagles.) He is friends with plenty of analytic types, including new 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie, whose brains and creativity he raves about.
Massey is offering ideas that aren't wedded to sports alone.
"You should play lottery environments very differently than math-problem environments," Massey said. "With math problems, there's a right answer. Work hard enough and you'll get the right answer. If you can't get it, find the smartest guy in the room and he'll have the right answer."
And lotteries?
"You don't spend any time trying to get the right number because it doesn't make any difference," he said. "You try to get as many draws as possible or spend as little money as possible."
One of Massey's central tenets: People tend to think of life as more math problem than lottery. There's some mix, obviously. But they've got the ratio wrong. Given the strong element of chance, he said, you don't throw up your hands and give up.
I'm also a big believer that luck plays a huge role not just in the draft, but in the NFL in general. Too often we overlook luck and randomness.
EDIT: Here is a video of Massey providing more insight on this subject:
“Come on, shake your body baby, do that conga!”
ckparrotheadmoderatorThe part that is interesting to me is the part about how the draft absolutely involves evaluation skills but the problem is that most of the other evaluators are equally skilled.
And what it means to me is that if you don't participate in this arms race amongst evaluators, if you take a step backward in evaluation skill, you're left in the dust very quickly.
There's nothing inherently surprising about draft success being statistically inconsistent, short-lived or fleeting. SUCCESS is inconsistent, short-lived and fleeting in the NFL. It's a parity-driven league where everyone has talent and everyone is looking for an edge. But that does not, nor should it stop teams from continuing to try to find that edge at every cost.
Twitter: @ckparrot
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padre31luxury_boxProblem is the mix of skills being evaluated.
Now, Parcells was banged on here, by me, for his preference for 3-4 yr starters from big conferences as #1 picks..however...he did not have a pure bust of a #1 pick.
Later in the draft as the talent pool becomes shallow but larger, such metrics are actually hurtful as it just means the player was in that conference but not good enough to excel particularly well.
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