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Swap meet An inside look at the value of trading spaces on draft dayPosted: Monday April 21, 2003 10:46 AM
There's something I've always wanted to know about NFL Draft Day, and Saints head coach Jim Haslett recently educated me about it: How do teams figure out fair value for trades? This is a particularly interesting question for Haslett’s team this year, because New Orleans is trying to move up from its two mid-first-round spots (the Saints are scheduled to pick 17th and 18th, the second selection coming from Miami, courtesy of the Ricky Williams trade) and into a position where it could take one of two stud cornerbacks -- Kansas State's Terence Newman or Washington State's Marcus Trufant. Haslett explained how the Saints assign value to picks in the first round, and other rounds, by pulling a single photocopied sheet from a file folder hand-labeled "Draft" out of his black leather bag. "Everybody has to be happy if you make a trade with first-round picks," Haslett said. "And so you do your fact-finding before the draft, calling around to see if you would be able to match up with teams above you or below you. This is how you see if both teams are getting equal value." He pointed to the sheet, which had a point system for picks. I remembered seeing something similar when I covered the Cowboys’ draft war room last year, but I didn't really pay it much attention. This year I'm paying close attention, because I think there's going to be a lot of movement in the first round. Teams assign point values to each pick in the draft -- in descending value from No. 1 to No. 262. Basically, if you want to trade picks and move up, you add up the value of picks that you have and compare that total to the point value assigned to the pick you want. Let me lay out what each selection is worth in the New Orleans' system; other teams obviously look at this differently. Then I'll discuss what the values mean.
The above list seems pretty arbitrary on the surface, but it's a value ranking system that has been crafted over the years by studying what teams have bartered to move up and down in the draft. The points-per-pick system obviously doesn't stop at No. 32 -- each pick in the seven-round draft has a numeric value -- but we’re using New Orleans' first-round rundown as a quick example. So let's look at a few possibilities, using the numbers that the Saints have assigned, for intriguing first-round selection scenarios. 1. Cincinnati at No. 1. The combination of teams a) having no desire to trade up, which would mean shelling out a $15 million bonus to sign the top pick and b) the absence of a "lock" superstar in this draft means the Bengals will have to just sit and use the pick. 2. Dallas at No. 5. I could see Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones brokering a deal here, because the Cowboys have so many holes and there's not one player they feel they must have. Maybe, if the Kentucky defensive tackle is still available, they’ll take Dewayne Robertson. But I could see Dallas sitting tight and selecting tackle Jordan Gross of Utah, or moving down a spot (or five) to stockpile extra picks. 3. Baltimore at No. 10. The Ravens like Kyle Boller, the Cal quarterback, but won't take him this high. They could use the top-10 value and, unless they fear Rams head coach Mike Martz pulling the upset special and drafting Boller at No. 12, move down several spots, still get Boller, plus a third-rounder. 4. New Orleans at Nos. 17 and 18. That's 1,800 points of value, in their book. If Dallas is sitting there at No. 5 (with 1,900 points of value for the pick) with Newman still on the board, the Saints have to go get him. This would be an excellent deal for both teams, with the Saints possibly throwing in a fifth-round pick (worth approximately 100 points) to even it out. "If we could get one of those corners," Haslett told me, "we'd do a lot." 5. New England at No. 19. The Patriots may want University of Miami running back Willis McGahee, but probably not this high. They could move down six or eight spots and build up even more ammo to make deals in both this draft and in 2004 -- while still landing McGahee, if he's truly who they desire. So, if you peer into war rooms during coverage of the draft Saturday and you see GMs puzzling over some addition problems, you'll know what they're doing.
... With McGahee, who paused between an Easter celebration with his family and sessions of football video games on his Xbox Sunday to talk about where he'll go, what his late workout Tuesday in Miami means, and the state of his left knee, which sustained three torn ligaments during a grotesque Fiesta Bowl injury: MMQB: You have a gut feeling who will take you? McGahee: Not at all. I have no idea. I try not to think about it. I just want to get somewhere and get going. Everybody seems to have their opinion about me. I was going to be the first running back taken high in the draft, then the injury happened. Then I was going to be a sixth-round pick, then maybe a fourth-rounder, then maybe a third-rounder. Now, who knows? MMQB: Who will be there for your workout Tuesday, and what do you hope to show them? McGahee: The Patriots, Raiders, Texans ... maybe eight to 12 teams. I'll just show them my regular rehab routine. Jog, weights, lunges, squats. I can't sprint yet, but I'll do as much as I can. MMQB: Do you want to go somewhere where the team will definitely play you this year? McGahee: It's my desire to play, but I have to see what the team wants me to do, and what makes sense for me to do. My rehab's not near finished. No one can say what's going to happen until it's finished.
Mel Kiper's draft guide arrived in the mail last week. You've Got Mel's book is always really good. But he had one of the strangest Kiperisms in there that I've ever seen, and I can't quite figure out why. In his draft projection, Mel has McGahee going 67th, to Houston. Sixty-seventh? Twenty-seventh, maybe. But 67th? Was this book printed the day after the Fiesta Bowl? If McGahee goes in the third round, I make this vow: I will immediately make "The Mel Kiper Memorial Bouffant Note of the Week" a permanent part of my column.
"He is the best player on the board and should be the first player chosen. ... If he falls out of the top five, it would be a grievous mistake. And each club that fails to call his name will have a ready bunch of excuses to back up its decision. Years from now, all those excuses will look like so much blather."
Now, there's not a competitor covering the NFL who I respect more than the thoughtful Attner. But let's say you're Chicago GM Jerry Angelo, picking fourth. There's Leftwich sitting there. You have to pay him $9 million guaranteed when he signs a contract. He has suffered two leg fractures. He's not very mobile. The first left leg injury Leftwich suffers, Angelo gets ridden out of town on a rail. It could be that Leftwich will be the next Dan Fouts. He certainly has one of the best arms an NFL prospect has ever had. If I had to bet the ranch on him being a seven-time Pro Bowler, I'd probably hem and haw and take a long walk and then bet on him. But Byron Leftwich is not exactly my idea of a no-brainer.
I want to tell you all how much your letters touched me this week, following the death of my mother. Scores of letters, simple and complex, made the emotions of the past couple of weeks bubble up when I read them Friday night. I did want to explain something that several of you -- including Bill from San Diego, Sam from Holton, Ind., and Dave in Raleigh, N.C. -- slightly took me to task on: Why so little about my mom? Especially when I wrote an entire column about my dog last year, and when I write so much about other family members and family events. Well, it's like this: My mother was private. Some of my extended family is fairly private. My mother would be the one to make a fuss about people. She wouldn't ever want to be the one having a fuss made over her. And so I made a judgment that instead of writing my column about her, which I thought would not have been warmly received by everyone in my family, and certainly not by Mom if she'd have known I was going to do it, I would simply write a paragraph eulogizing her. Was I right? Who knows. But that's why I did it. Now on to some letters. KINDRED SPIRIT. From Scott Dubois of Saline, Mich.: "I'm 44 and parentless. And yes, it does feel weird." Weirder the more I think about it. THANKS A BUNCH. From Chad Nims of Cedar Rapids, Iowa: "Every week I read your column. Every week it is there. Just as for 45 years your mother was there for you. I never knew your parents, and I will probably never meet you, but I hope there are more people like them, and you, on my road of life." Thanks. You're going to make me cry if you don't stop. WHAT A NICE THING TO SAY. From Gary Helsel of Philipsburg, Pa.: "My condolences to you and your family. In the years I've been reading MMQB, your audiences and I have gotten to know your daughters growing up, special dinners with your wife and the loss of the family dog. When I read your column about your mother, it as if an old friend was telling me the news. By letting us into your home, it has made us appreciate your column all the more. You have welcomed us into your family, and we welcome you into ours. Your mother must have been most proud." Thanks so much. I think she was. I hope she was. HOW CAN YOU PICK PALMER OVER LEFTWICH? From Will Lincoln of Tallahassee, Fla.: "I read your suggestion to Marvin Lewis that he take Carson Palmer over Byron Leftwich. How do you, jumping on the bandwagon along with everyone else, justify picking a guy who had one successful year in college over a guy who has proven his worth from one year to the next? I believe Leftwich is more your 'Manning'-type player and Palmer more your 'Couch'-type player." You could be absolutely right. No question. This business of quarterback-projecting is downright impossible. I based my opinion on watching three college game tapes of each player, and then watching those tapes with four experts in the field, which I write about in Sports Illustrated this week. In my opinion, Leftwich clearly has the better arm and clearly has more experience playing well. Palmer, however, was significantly better in 2002. He appears to be more accurate, more mobile, and seems much more deft at throwing the ball to spots before receivers even start coming out of their cuts (a valuable trait for NFL passers because coverage is so clingy). And when you throw in Leftwich having broken his left leg in two different spots, it would make me uneasy to take him first overall and risk $15 million of guaranteed money on him. Yes, it bothers me that Palmer was mediocre his first three-and-a-half years. It bothers me a lot. But there's more that bothers me about Leftwich than Palmer. WHY THE PRESSURE TO TAKE A QUARTERBACK? From Adam Strandberg of Chicago: "This is not another Tejadagate letter, so breathe easy. Fans recognize the hit-or-miss nature of picking a quarterback high in the draft, the media recognizes the risks, and certainly the poor GMs saddled with high picks recognize the risks. If we all see it, why would a team drafting high feel the need to nab a quarterback? Where does this pressure come from?" What a letter! Fantastic! I'll tell you where the pressure comes from. Three places. One: If the GM has a huge void at quarterback and he can get one who looked terrific in his last college season or so, and if his scouts say that QB projects to be a good NFL player, that GM is going to want the quarterback. It's natural. Two: What if he passes, and the kid goes somewhere else and become John Elway II? The GM would never live that down. Three: You pay the first pick in this draft $15 million just for signing a contract. (Don't say you wouldn't do it, because you can't buck the system now.) If there was an unquestionably great player in this draft -- and maybe you think that applies to Charles Rogers or Newman, though I have my doubts -- then it would make sense to bypass the quarterback. And maybe it makes sense to take a pretty sure thing such as Newman or left tackle prospect Jordan Gross of Utah No. 1 overall instead of a questionable quarterback. Your question should make everyone in the football business think about what they're doing high in the first rounds of drafts. YOU NEVER EXPRESSED A CHAD MORTON OPINION. From Aaron Sacks of Baltimore: "What happened with Chad Morton? You seemed so sure there was no way the 'Skins would win the arbitration case for him. Was this arbitrator way off, or was the league wrong with respect to the CBA and the way justice was done?" First of all, I'm sorry to have ignored this last week, because I feel strongly about it. I do think the Jets should have retained Morton, and I do think the arbitrator's decision was faulty, though I understand the Jets did risk losing him by not matching every term of the deal. That's not why this stinks. This stinks because, even if arbitrator Richard Bloch is as fair and honest and noble as Mother Teresa, there is no way on God's green earth that he should be adjudicating a case involving a team to which he has obvious ties. The man has season tickets to Washington's games, for heaven's sake. This is an outrage, and the NFL and the Players Association should remove Bloch from any Redskins-related cases for good. Now, as for the Jets not voicing their disapproval of Bloch's involvement in the case once they found out he owned Redskins season tickets, that was stupid on their part. But for the NFLPA and the league to allow Bloch to be involved with Redskins cases in the first place invited trouble. The only thing dumber than Bloch being assigned to this case is the NFLPA justifying his involvement in it. How ludicrous and out of touch with ethical realty was that?
1. I think the Bengals' priority now is to sign Palmer. If they can't get it done with him, they'll turn to Leftwich. I'd advise Palmer to make the deal, because he could fall seven or more spots if he doesn't. 2. I think I'm the only guy left on earth who thinks Terence Newman's a better fit with Houston than Andre Johnson is, though I understand why the Texans would go after Johnson. They have to have a big-time target for David Carr. It's what Tim Couch hasn’t ever had in Cleveland. 3. I think the Bill Self story reinforces exactly what is wrong with coaching contracts in college sports today, the same way these stories rear their ugly heads every month. Self, who coached Illinois' basketball team last season, was handed a five-year contract extension, at $900,000 per year, in December. Over the weekend, he walked away from that to take the job at Kansas. My question is the same as it is every time this happens: What does the word "contract" mean in this case, exactly? College coaches should re-name these pacts "one-way agreements." And the only way I'd give one of these, if I were an athletic director in Division I, is to say to the coach: If you leave before the end of the contract, you have to pay me back every dime we committed to you. Ridiculous? Maybe. But not as ridiculous as a coach signing a contract to be somewhere for five years and lasting five months -- and going somewhere FOR MORE MONEY AND PRESTIGE! 4. I think these are my personal thoughts of the week: a. I have received many e-mail messages asking, of all things, for my thoughts on this year's Six Feet Under episodes. Now, I loved this show last year, and I've missed three of the shows so far this spring. But I watched the April 20 episode Sunday night, and I have the gist of what's happening. My comments are these: This show's going way, way, way too far afield. What happened to chronicling the lives of undertakers? This show has turned into taking the characters on as sordid a path as is humanly possible. I suppose it's possible that there's an undertaker with as strange an existence as any of the four working at this funeral home. But in Sunday night's show alone, the show's four main male characters experienced the following plot lines: one was engaging in three-way homosexual sex, another beginning an affair with a woman about 45 years older, another coping with a strung-out wife while his kid was ordered home from school with a head-lice infestation, and another high-wiring between two women so narcissistic and whacked-out that I bet either could kill him at any time. Now, I'm not asking for the Cleavers. But I'm also not asking for the Munsters on acid either. b. You may have noticed a couple of mentions of a baby named Sofia Gault in this column in the past year. Sofia, 10 months old, was the daughter of very good friends of the family. She was very high on the New York-area heart transplant list, but died of heart disease two weeks ago ... a few days after doctors almost found a donor match for the heart. The death is tragic enough, because I have never seen a child who was loved more by a caring family. But I would urge everyone who reads this to please consider organ donation. Some people can't do this; and I understand that the thought of it for some is too strange. But some people don't do it because they just don't THINK of doing it. Did you know that every day, 63 people get an organ donated, but another 16 die because there isn't a pool large enough to serve everyone waiting for an organ? For details on how to donate, visit this Web site: http://www.organdonor.gov/. c. Coffeenerdness: Interesting note this week from Rob in Milwaukee that I thought I'd share. Rob says he heard a story on NPR recently about dark-roast coffees -- the kind I'm partial to -- being as much as 20 percent charcoal, of all things. I find that stunning. Is there anyone out there in a coffee-roasting position of authority, say at Starbucks or Peet's, who might be able to enlighten us on this? Do coffee roasters introduce harsh elements aside from the coffee bean itself to make a coffee darker? d. Frasier was the 57th-rated show in America a couple of weeks ago. What in the world happened to cause this precipitous decline? Is Niles Crane playing center field for the Mariners? e. Montclair (N.J.) High Softball Note of the Week: The Mounties head into the new week 3-0 after two successful games last week. Two MMQB fans nice enough to introduce themselves dropped by the Nutley diamond Monday -- I think they wanted to see if Mary Beth King was real -- and saw the junior lefty shut out the Maroon Raiders 3-0 on three hits. The Mounties traveled to Paramus Catholic, a team we hadn't topped since 1997, on Wednesday and a real classic developed. Hot day, strangely; about 87 with bright sun on the heels of winter still lingering from a couple of days before. We knew this would be a different kind of game when Mary Beth retired the first two batters of the day, then the third lined the first pitch she saw on a frozen rope down the third-base line, foul. The Paladins have some impressive hitters and a very nice pitcher, and we found ourselves tied at 3-3 after six innings. We got nothing in the seventh (that's the end of a regulation softball game), and nothing in the eighth. Mary Beth had thrown 111 pitches after eight innings, and had some sort of stomach bug that hadn't allowed her to eat that day. In the top of the ninth, our stud rifle-armed shortstop who throws and hits like her hero, Derek Jeter, senior Kaitlin Giannetti (Johns Hopkins-bound to play soccer and save the world), lined a two-out single to right. She stole second. Up to the plate came Mary Beth. Ping! Liner to left center. Kaitlin scored. Montclair up 4-3. Mary Beth got the first two outs on a pop and grounder in the bottom of the ninth. Their pesky leadoff kid fouled off the 2-2 pitch, then hit the next one into center. She stole second. Mary Beth had to get their second hitter. It was hard to tell exactly what she threw, but I'm guessing a riser for strike one, fastball for strike two. The kid was a good hitter, and I was hoping Mary Beth would throw a change. The wind, and the pitch, and it's was change, low and away. The hitter chased it, and the Mounties got out of there with a win. Some days you're angry with your kid, some days you're proud of your kid, and some days you're really proud of her. This was one of the thir option. And one other thing: This Kaitlin Giannetti is worth the price of admission. You should see her field and hit. 5. I think I admire Drew Henson's public stance that he's a baseball player all the way, and he won't consider going back to football. But what's he going to do if he struggles this year as mightily as he struggled last year? Play in the Northern League when he could be franchise football player? 6. I think it was pretty classy for Junior Seau to praise the man who fired him from the Chargers, the late GM John Butler, in the first words out his mouth after signing with the Dolphins. 7. I think of all the points recently made in a spate of stories about first-round quarterbacks, the most important one is this, from a talk I had last week with Cal first-round quarterback prospect Kyle Boller. I asked him if he were a GM considering drafting a quarterback in the first round, what would he consider very important. "You have to assume if he's a prospect that high in the draft he's going to be a good player," Boller said. "So the main thing I'd look for is character. What kind of person are you getting? Is he a competitor? I think there have been a few cases where the guy who got drafted wasn't really a solid guy. Will he crumble when things go bad? How will he deal with adversity, because there's going to be a lot of it. When you get drafted high, people are going to want to see results right away. If you don't produce those results, how are you going to deal with that?" 8. I think, because of those points, the most important thing I'd do with my quarterback is what the Oilers/Titans did with Steve McNair, and what the Jets did with Chad Pennington. Wait. 9. I think, speaking of Boller, the point he's tried to make to teams (and the point his agent Mike Sullivan has tried to make) is that his first three years at Cal have to be separated from his fourth, the same way Carson Palmer's mediocre start is different than his 2002 season. Sullivan wrote this in a letter to teams looking at Boller: "Without trying to be too harsh, I would suggest that including Kyle's first three years at Cal in his current evaluation would be similar to including high school performance in evaluating a college freshman's performance. Kyle got more than a fresh start with Coach [Jeff] Tedford. He was remade. And it is this Kyle that is coming into the NFL." 10. I think I would not want to have that kind of pressure on my shoulders -- the decision about whether a kid who had one good college season is worth handing a multi-million-dollar check to, or of putting my franchise in his hands. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space every week. Click here to send him a comment. |
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