NFL Draft: Why Are Teams Bad at Evaluating Talent?

The NFL Draft is where teams can turn their fortunes around. One pick can change the course of a franchise. However, in the NFL it seems that so many teams completely whiff on the pick. This is apparent this season with the Bryce Young vs. C.J. Stroud debate. Why are teams so bad at evaluating talent in the NFL Draft?

NFL Draft Biggest Misses

For a sample size, let’s use the last 20 years and start with the number one overall pick. In the last 20 years, I have the picks in these categories.

Home Run Picks: (Nailed this pick. Absolutely set the franchise on a course for sustained success) Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton, Andrew Luck, Myles Garrett, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence

Solid Picks With Solid Careers: (Definitely not misses but also not franchise-changing) Carson Palmer, Alex Smith, Mario Williams, Jake Long, Kyler Murray, Travon Walker

Didn’t Live Up To Expectations: (Fine players but not worth a number one overall pick) Eric Fisher, Jadeveon Clowney, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield

Complete Miss: (Absolutely whiffed on the pick) Sam Bradford, Bryce Young

Category Of His Own: JaMarcus Russell. (It isn’t fair to put any other player with him)

Other NFL Draft Misses

This is just the top overall pick. If we extend it to the top five we get a laundry list of busts. I won’t go through all of them but here are the hits.

WR Charles Rogers (2nd overall in 2003)

The entire 2005 top ten (Seriously go look at it.)

QB Vince Young (3rd overall in 2006)

OT Greg Robinson (2nd overall in 2014)

QB Marcus Mariota (2nd overall in 2015)

QB Mitchell Trubisky (2nd overall in 2017)

QB Sam Darnold (3rd overall in 2018)

These are just a sampling. If you go through the top five in NFL history, it is riddled with absolute misses or players who were fine but not worth the premium draft capital. Once I got to this point in my research, I realized that there is one position that is an outlier, the quarterback. More than any other position, teams miss this position. Why?

A Quick Detour To The NBA

The gut reaction of many (including myself) was to say, “Drafting is hard! Of course, there will be misses!” However, I juxtaposed the NBA Draft history with the NFL Draft history. Let’s do the same thing with the number one overall picks.

Home Run Picks: (Nailed this pick. Absolutely set the franchise on a course for sustained success) LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose, Blake Griffin, John Wall, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Anthony Edwards, Cade Cunningham, Paolo Banchero, Victor Wembanyama

Solid Picks With Solid Careers: (Definitely not misses but also not franchise-changing) Andrew Bogut, Karl Anthony-Towns, Deandre Ayton

Didn’t Live Up To Expectations: (Fine players but not worth a number one overall pick) Andrew Wiggins, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, Zion Williamson

Complete Miss: (Absolutely whiffed on the pick) Andrea Bargnani, Greg Oden, Anthony Bennett

Compare those two lists. Look how many more home run picks happened. Some of the busts and not living up to expectations are due to injuries. Oden is a perfect example of this. His knees were messed up and his career never took off. Still, the vast majority are players that will be franchise cornerstones for years or at the very least great second or third guys that can help win some championships.

Back To The NFL Draft

Okay, we’re back from that detour. Let’s start the discussion by comparing the game of football and basketball. It is so much easier for one player to come in and change a franchise in the NBA. Offenses can flow through one person so much easier. Inserting one person into a lineup of five people is a lot different than inserting one player into a group of 11. Basketball players play both sides of the ball making it easier for one player to make an impact on both sides of the floor. When all else fails, a highly-skilled player can also simply beat an opponent themselves with no help from teammates. This is what makes the NFL more difficult.

Lots Of Moving Parts

An NFL team has way more moving parts. The quarterback position is the most important but a good quarterback does not equal a great team. Patrick Mahomes threw a beautiful deep ball to Marquez Valdes-Scantling a couple of weeks ago but he dropped it. Joe Burrow had offensive line issues early in his career and didn’t have a lot of time to throw the ball. Aaron Rodgers led some of the best offenses in NFL history but his defenses could be but through like warm butter. The success of a draft pick, especially a quarterback, is dependent on a lot of factors and these are just the ones on the field.

An offense or a defense in football has lots of moving parts. For offensive linemen, blocking schemes have to be understood by all five guys. If not, the whole line fails. Wide receivers have to understand route trees and blocking assignments. Linebackers have to diagnose complex offenses quickly. Every play is a complex dance that requires precise timing. In basketball, the shot clock can be running out and a player can fire up a terrible shot that can go in. This doesn’t happen as much in football.

Coaching Staffs

NFL coaching staffs are huge. You have the head coach and offensive coordinator but then you also have the individual position coaches. If one of those is a weak link, there could be issues with the team. Let’s take Bryce Young as an example. He hasn’t been good and I think there are deficiencies with his game that are going to be difficult to fix. However, his environment didn’t help him. Josh McCown is a young coach. Injuries ravaged the offense and defense. The healthy offensive linemen haven’t done Young any favors. His number one target is 33-year-old Adam Thielen. Environment matters.

Would Mahomes be who he was if he didn’t land in a situation with Andy Reid? Maybe but Reid sure has helped. If Jalen Hurts were plopped into the Carolina position would he be an MVP frontrunner? I don’t mean to imply that the player has no fault in this (see JaMarcus Russell) but a player’s fate can be drastically affected by who they are around.

College Game Vs. NFL Game

Another aspect that makes talent difficult to evaluate in the NFL is college environments can often be deceiving. Most of the athletes on the field on any given Saturday will not play professional ball. Playing against amateurs can make some players look better in the college game. There are also some loaded teams in college football. It isn’t surprising that Young looked better on an Alabama team surrounded by talent than on the Carolina team that is lacking in talent. Offenses can be crafted to help certain quarterbacks and players but when that offense isn’t run in the NFL, the player can struggle.

How Can Teams Evaluate Better?

There are a couple of things that teams can do in order to evaluate players. The first is to recognize what is a real evaluation and what isn’t. There is a perfect example of this with C.J. Stroud. One of the knocks was that he was an Ohio State quarterback and the past Ohio State quarterbacks haven’t been good so Stroud won’t be good. This argument makes no sense. Stroud is a completely different player. Speaking of Stroud, his S2 cognitive test scores scared many teams. Doesn’t seem to be a problem now. He probably doesn’t test well and that’s okay. He plays football well.

In general, teams need better evaluators of talent. Taking the Carolina Panthers example, reports have indicated that owner David Tepper was involved in the Young pick. Tepper isn’t a football guy and doesn’t know what to look for. This happens all the time. Teams swing on talent because someone in the organization attaches to a player. Not a great way to make business decisions. Teams should invest heavily in their scouting departments to make sure that they are finding the right players for their team. There will always be busts in the NFL Draft but the goal is to limit those busts.