Best Player Available = Worst Draft Policy Possible

[SalishHawkFan]

Do you take a great player at a position you don't need, or a good player at a position you do need?

BPA is the strategy of taking the better player and I think it is demonstrably superior over the long term. Needs change every year, while salary is mostly slotted by draft position. This means that you would be paying roughly the same amount for the good player that you could have paid to the great player, which means that a team who drafts need first will have less talent given the constraint of the salary cap.

You don't draft BPA, but you do draft for value.

If you define value as production per dollar and recognize that salaries are largely slotted into draft position, then the conclusion is that drafting BPA and drafting for value are the same thing.

Also, GMs who ignore team fit and what the coaches need will have short, unremarkable careers.

Of course the strategy will be much different for a new hire GM given the freedom to rebuild, or a GM on the third year of a rebuild that isn't moving in the right direction. However, when people talk about building through the draft, they are usually talking about the philosophy coming out of a complete overhaul and transitioning to a sustainable future. BPA leads to a higher overall talent level, which means better overall depth, which means less short term emphasis on scrambling to fill short term needs.

Either way, Aaron Curry has nothing to do with BPA. Hindsight tells us that was Aaron Rodgers, and Aaron Curry was not in the top 50 remaining on the board at that point.

Which makes my entire point: HISTORY tells us who the BPA was, there's no way to know who the BPA IS at the time of the draft, therefore, you can't draft by BPA. It's a term that really is fake. You HAVE to draft by need except in those rare instances where it's blatantly obvious - which usually only happens at LT and QB. And even then, you don't KNOW the player is the BPA, you just have a really good chance to be right and he's worth the risk.

 

[Stoned Cold]

Some times it works. Rodgers.
Sometimes it doesn't. Curry.

The top ten in that particular draft was awful. Using it to prop up an I hate BPA agenda is silly.

This

Christine Michael best player available. I guess that was stupid if you look at things in black and white and draft positions of need. I deal in shades of grey.

 

[razor150]

I don't define value as production per dollar. Value is also determined by your current roster and by what the market is paying for similar talent.

Production is an expected value, and as such would vary based on your current roster. Decisions should always be made based on the future rather than the past.

Do you need to include market prices separately? Teams already spend their FA dollars based on expected production, and assuming that the market is efficient strikes me as a good simplification. Sort of like the economist joke about the $20 laying on the ground which must not actually be there or it would have been picked up already.

Considering draft evaluation is at best an imprecise science claiming that drafting need over BPA is leaving a team less talented isn't true at all.

Uncertainty makes it difficult to figure out who the best players are and even the best GMs strike out all the time. However, drafting for need doesn't solve this issue. In many cases, it can actually exacerbate the problem because it makes it hard to move on from guys who aren't panning out. QB is perhaps the best example of this, where a bunch of teams reach on prospects to fill needs. If the Jaguars had a time machine, they would love to get a do over in 2011 and go BPA with JJ Watt rather than need with Gabbert.

Saying you should draft by need doesn't mean reaching on players like Gabbert, who was drafted so highly solely on measurables and not on production. I believe before the hype train started on Gabbert he was considered a late first round to 2nd round pick. A player like that ideally would go to a team where he isn't required to start right away. Anyways I said best player available based on need, which would preclude reaching on overhyped players like Gabbert. If they needed a player at the position JJ Watt plays they should have drafted him. Drafting JJ Watt just because he was there and not actually needing him wouldn't have actually done them any good. That is how you get picks like Curry, who let's not forget was pretty much considered the best player in the draft by everybody, and was a player we did not need until Ruskell blasted a hole in our LB corp to make room for him. Him being a bust doesn't matter in retrospect, he was the BPA. Trading back and acquiring more picks, and drafting positions of need is a better strategy then just drafting somebody because he fits some nebulous idea of BPA. We didn't need Curry, and even if he didn't bust he wouldn't have improved the roster enough to justify that pick on a team with such glaring holes as ours at the time.

The only teams that can afford to draft by BPA is teams that have a really bad roster where drafting strictly BPA is an option because every player is an upgrade. Great rosters can kind of get away with it as well if they have no areas of great need, or if they are looking to replace an aging star in the next few years. IE Michael and Lynch or Alexander and Waters.

 

[AgentDib]

Which makes my entire point: HISTORY tells us who the BPA was, there's no way to know who the BPA IS at the time of the draft, therefore, you can't draft by BPA. It's a term that really is fake.

Imagine you are deciding between two players with the #15 overall pick. The first is a WR who is ranked 4th on your board (projected production), while the second is a DE who is ranked 9th on your board. At the same time, you know that DE is a need for your team whereas the WR would be more of a luxury. "BPA" would be taking the WR, while "need" would be taking the DE. Do you agree so far with that premise?

I agree that the WR could fail to pan out, but the same can be said of the DE. You should still expect your higher ranked players to produce more on average over the long term. If that isn't the case, then why have talent evaluation in the first place?