Grading By The Numbers: How’d The Vikings Do?

LBVikings   |  

Apr 29, 2018

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We entered draft weekend with a robust and complete knowledge of which players are good, and which are bad. Arif Hasan’s consensus big board does a measurably good job of evaluating players by compiling the well-researched opinions of dozens of smart people. Chase Stewart’s draft chart does a good job of assigning an expectation of value to each pick. So we can combine these tools and evaluate the Vikings’ draft in an objective and meaningful way.

Chase Stewart’s chart uses Approximate Value, or AV. More explanation here, but essentially, AV works like this: Every team gets points to distribute among its players. An average team gets 100. Good teams get more, bad teams get less. Over a season, a special teams player or rotational role player will earn one, maybe two points. A good QB will earn over ten.

So the 30th pick, on average, earns about 13 points of AV. Two AV and change per year. That means that if you’re a starter for five years, you’re beating the average. That makes sense, since not all late 1st rounders pan out. Overall, the Vikings’ arsenal of picks entering the weekend add up to 30.4 points of AV. For context, they could have traded their entire draft to the Giants for pick #2, and that would have been roughly a square deal.

30.4 AV is the line to beat. The Vikings didn’t exit the draft with the same picks they entered it with. After trading down with the Buccaneers and then a bizarre double-trade sequence with the Jets late on Saturday, they came away with a slight increase – 31.7 points of AV across all selection opportunities. So now that’s the line to beat.

But drafts don’t go exactly in order. That is to say, the best player doesn’t always go 1st, the second best player doesn’t always go 2nd, and so on. If you pick the 15th best player at pick 30, you’re beating your expectations. If you pick the 60th best player, you’re reaching. So how’d the Vikings do in picking actual players? That’s where the consensus board comes in.

Without weighting for position (stay tuned), we can assign those same AV expectations to the players by rank. So the 30th best player should get about 13 points of AV in his first five years. With that assigned, we can add up the Vikings’ expected totals, and the totals they’re looking at with the spots they actually selected (yay trades). Here’s that:

So if you lump all the trades together into one mega-trade, the Vikings came out about even. Once the players have actually been drafted, the Vikings underwhelm.

This is mostly because Mike Hughes was 33rd on the consensus board and Brian O’Neill was 72nd. Further, Daniel Carlson and Davante Downs were too low on the board to even warrant the expectation of making the team. Ade Aruna and Colby Gossett make up some ground, but not enough to offset the reaches at the top. But there was one final twist after the draft had ended.

The Vikings picked up a pretty insane UDFA class, headlined by Hercules Mata’afa and Holton Hill, both players near the top 100. Combined, these two players can be expected to output about 10 points of AV over the next five years, or essentially both be ingrained role players. At no cost, this boosts the Vikings’ haul pretty significantly.

You may feel the same way – that the Vikings’ draft was underwhelming until undrafted free agency. You may feel weird about feeling that way, since UDFAs are rarely that impactful. I’m here to tell you that’s a reasonable take to have, since the 3rd and 4th best players in the draft came after the festivities in Dallas closed.

Thanks for reading!