Draft Tek Review of 2005 Draft

Scoring Former Drafts

Each year the NFL draft takes place, immediately after which pundits (including Drafttek.com) come out and seek to identify winners and losers. Typically letter grades are assigned, but always with the caveat "it will take several years to truly identify the winners and losers of the recent draft class".
But rarely does anyone offer up such a review. There have been a few scattered efforts, however we've not been impressed with the quality. Mostly letter grades focused on the picks of the first few rounds. Sensing an opportunity, Draft Tek looked to develop a quantitative method of evaluating the drafts of recent years.

Scoring System Concept
Yeah there are spectacular flameouts, but most teams manage to find success with their first round picks. But which teams year after year seem to find serviceable NFL players in the mid and lower rounds? This is the focus of our analysis - our scoring system assigns greater value to lower round picks than higher round picks, assuming similar performance metrics.
As an example, we assign more points for a 7th rounder who becomes a contributing rotational player, than to a first rounder who becomes all pro. The 7th rounder is a testament to the player evaluation capacity of the drafting team. You can bet that it is the lower round successes which earns the accolades and bonuses for the scouting department, not the blue chippers.
Two scores are provided. The first is a total sum of the points of all the teams picks. The second takes the total score and divides by the number of selections. This has the effect of putting a team with only 4 selections on the same scale as a team with 11 picks.

Assumptions
We've gone over the point system quite a bit and are comfortable with the final product. Here are some assumptions that are used:

1) Sometimes players do not fit neatly into our categories. If they seem to straddle two descriptions, we'll interpolate with the scoring.
2) Scores are rounded to the nearest 25 pts.
3) Players who are cut and go on to success with other teams are graded based upon performance with the selecting team.
4) Undrafted Free Agents are not included in the analysis. The top UFA's typically have a choice of teams to audition for, the decision is as much the players choice as opposed to the teams.

Timeline
Draft Tek is slotting the Past Drafts analysis for summertime content. This summer, we are starting with the 2006 draft class. The plan is to analyze one team per day on average. After 2006 is complete, we'll move to the 2005 class.

Points Table
Below