DRAFT MUSINGS
Posted by thehuddlereport.com on April 23, 2008
By Fred Jones
VALUE - A curious characteristic
Watch ESPN and listen to their experts describe value as it pertains to NFL draft prospects. Not to be outdone, the experts on the NFL Network explain their definition of the value of a prospect. Football editorials by gurus have addressed this concept time and again. Many maintain that we must wait for a “couple of years” before we evaluate a player. We’ve addressed it here at The Huddle Report. Robby ranks the prospects on his Value Board. We have also introduced the concept of length-to-impact (LTI) that has its basis on value. So the concept of a prospect’s value has been pretty much clarified for us. WRONG!
Value is the regard that something is held to deserve is an accepted definition of the term. It is also defined as the material or monetary worth of something. And it is also defined as the usefulness of something considered in respect of a particular purpose. That said, we can apply any and all of these definitions to the value of an NFL prospect considered in the Draft.
First, we don’t have to wait a number of years or games to determine the value of a player. From the common theme of the above definitions, value is in the eye of the beholder at the time the beholder selects a player. Why is this definition valid? It’s valid because the team selects that prospect above all others that are available at that time and intends to compensate that player on a monetary scale that certainly displays the value of the prospect to that team. So the value of a prospect is determined by where he is selected in the Draft…period.
O.K., you say. But what if that prospect does not perform and is traded or cut early in his career? The answer is simple: his value has changed. Value has a time aspect to it. It’s just like the Enron stock you bought back in the early 90s. It had a high monetary value. Now it’s worthless. Time changes value. In financial terms, present value and future value are finite but different worthiness claims. It’s the same for NFL prospects before the Draft, during the Draft and after the Draft.
Why did I harp on this topic for four paragraphs? I did so because I want you to understand that the value of a player at draft time should be considered in the context of the Draft. It gives the Draft importance. Remember, there are a couple of hundred million dollars being committed to 256 prospects. Did Jake Long sign a contract to play for the Dolphins without compensation? Both the Dolphins and Jake Long saw value in their business association. I say that’s the definition of value in my Funk & Wagnalls.
April 23, 2008 at 10:34 am
Agreed. A lot of “experts” like to assess things several years after the fact and pick over what constitued value in an attempt to promote their great hindsight. Value in the draft is the value on the day of the draft, and how that player conforms to a given team’s system and their expectations of his character and work ethic. One of my peeves on this is when a player, often one with no injury history, has an unfortunate career-ending injury and a few years later people are rambling on about what bad value that pick was. Sorry, anyone can get hurt in this game, there’s no crystal ball to determine who’s knee is going to blow out or whos bad hip is going to be a longterm problem. You can assess risk factors but to pretend its an exact science is foolish.