Building a team is the hardest part for the front office of a football team. You can have the best system in the league as far as coaching but if you don't have the players, you won't be successful. So what is the best way to go? Should you draft your team and have a bunch of young guys and work to get them to gel? Or do you give up those picks in exchange for big name free agents and blockbuster trades? Let's take a look at the last 3 years. We'll compare the Super Bowl Champions with the worst team in the league and see who has what. All numbers include IR players.
2010-2011 Green Bay Packers
Drafted-38
Trades-3
Undrafted Free Agents-20
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-3
2009-2010 New Orleans Saints
Drafted-24
Trades-5
Undrafted Free Agents-6
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-34
2008-2009 Pittsburgh Steelers
Drafted-30
Trades-1
Undrafted Free Agents-12
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-20
Avg Drafted-30.67
Avg Traded-3
Avg Undrafted-12.67
Avg Free Agent-19
2010-2011 Carolina Panthers
Drafted-39
Trades-2
Undrafted Free Agents-6
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-25
2009-2010 St. Louis Rams
Drafted-26
Trades-4
Undrafted Free Agents-5
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-31
2008-2009 Detroit Lions
Drafted-29
Trades-2
Undrafted Free Agents-5
Restricted/Unrestricted Free Agents-35
Avg Drafted-31.33
Avg Traded-2.67
Avg Undrafted-5
Avg Free Agent-30.33
So comparing the last 3 years, both the best and the worst teams drafted relatively the same amounts of players and had relatively the same amount of trades. But what separates the boys from the men seems to be undrafted free agent signings. 7.67 more undrafted players per team for the champs over the chumps. The chumps also relied heavily on free agents in general, signing 11.33 more per team than the champs. So from this very limited sample, we see a trend towards the teams that scour through the undrafted guys as the guys who come out on top.
So how do you explain that New Orleans, during their Super Bowl season, had nearly identical numbers as the last-place St. Louis Rams.
ReplyDeleteNo offense, but that argument doesn't hold much water.
Lou, my purpose for having the numbers was to just show the process. Obviously none of these things are a given fact, but rather trends. That's why I averaged the numbers. If you were to create a bell curve between the best and worst teams with undrafted FAs, the Super Bowl champs recently would be above the median while the last place teams below it. If you look at the way the teams were built, the champs seem to have less unrestricted free agents, and more undrafted free agents. Year by year cases always have the potential to be an outlier from the actual trend.
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