Savage's legacy - by the numbers

by dvd1204 on Sep 23, 2009 3:50 PM EDT Comment 50 comments

I've been a Savage apologist and I was not happy to see him go, but there has been an ongoing debate about how well or poorly he did his job. A simple metric that has been used on this site is the number of players currently on the roster. I decided to look into this further and have run the numbers for all 32 teams'draft picks from 2005 - 2008 (the Savage drafts) and compared them to the current rosters as listed by ESPN. The results are listed below. I don't know what conclusions can be made from these results because it has no real measure of the value of the pick. For example, Charlie Frye shows up as a miss against Savage as a 3rd rounder, but backup QB Alex Smith (#1 overall in 2005) shows up as a hit for the 49ers. I'd argue that both were misses, but it is much harder to start quantifying what is a "hit" and what is a "miss", so we are left with the metric of "is the player on the roster of the team that drafted him?" (note: players traded after draft day like Jay Cutler also show up as misses). Here are the results in descending order by overall hit rate. Also provided is the hit rates by rounds (all data obtained via ESPN):

Rank	Team	# OF HITS	# OF PICKS	Overall HIT RATE	First	Second	Third	Forth	Fifth	Sixth	Seventh
1	New York Giants	21	26	0.808	1	1	1	1	0.667	0.25	0.667
2	San Francisco	22	35	0.629	1	1	0.833	0.6	0.5	0.667	0
3	Baltimore	21	34	0.618	1	0.75	0.5	0.714	0.75	0.6	0
4	San Diego	16	26	0.615	1	1	0.667	0.5	0.5	0.25	0.4
5	Green Bay	26	43	0.605	1	0.625	0.8	0.714	0.167	0.714	0.429
6	Seattle	18	30	0.6	1	1	0.667	0.8	0.5	0	0.429
7	Carolina	21	35	0.6	1	0.75	0.571	0.333	0.429	0.333	0.667
8	Dallas	18	30	0.6	1	0.333	0.5	0.5	1	0.333	0.6
9	Oakland	18	30	0.6	0.75	1	0.667	0.6	0.5	0.333	0.5
10	Buffalo	19	32	0.594	0.75	1	0.75	0.4	0.5	0.75	0.375
11	Washington	16	27	0.593	1	1	1	0.5	0.333	0.625	0.167
12	New York Jets	16	28	0.571	1	0.5	0.667	1	0.333	0.2	0.25
13	Houston	15	27	0.556	0.75	1	0.667	0.75	0.25	0.5	0.25
14	Indianapolis	19	35	0.543	1	1	0.2	0.4	0.286	0.571	0.75
15	Atlanta Falcons	19	35	0.543	1	0.8	0.667	0.667	0.4	0.143	0.4
16	Philadelphia	20	37	0.541	1	0.857	0.4	0.714	0.5	0.167	0.25
17	Arizonia Cardinals	14	26	0.538	1	0.75	0.2	0.667	0.5	0	0.5
18	Chicago	18	34	0.529	0.667	0.6	0.8	0.75	0.667	0.333	0.125
19	Tennessee	20	38	0.526	0.75	1	0.25	0.7	0	0.4	0.5
20	Pittsburgh	15	32	0.469	1	0.667	0.4	0.5	0.333	0.5	0
21	New Orleans	13	28	0.464	1	0.667	0.333	0.5	0.2	0	0.6
22	Denver	12	26	0.462	0.667	0.5	0.25	0.5	0.333	0.333	0.667
23	Minnesota	12	26	0.462	0.5	0.833	0	0.667	0.25	0.5	0
24	St Louis	17	37	0.459	0.75	0.5	0.571	0.6	0.2	0	0.444
25	Cincinnati	14	32	0.438	0.75	0.5	0.75	0.5	0	0.2	0.429
26	Cleveland	13	30	0.433	1	1	0	0.2	0.5	0.286	0.4
27	Miami	13	31	0.419	0.75	0.4	0.5	0.5	0	0.4	0.25
28	Tampa Bay	15	39	0.385	0.75	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.4	0.4	0
29	Kansas City	13	35	0.371	1	0.333	0.667	0	0.333	0	0.167
30	Jacksonville	11	30	0.367	0.75	0.75	0.667	0.333	0.286	0	0
31	Detroit	11	30	0.367	0.75	0.5	0.6	0	0.2	0	0.2
32	New England	11	33	0.333	1	0.5	0.4	0.6	0.25	0	0

By this simple metric Savage was a little below average (21st) until Ruckerwas released and that dropped him to the position you see here. Perhaps the most interesting result of this exercise is that there appears to be some correlation to how well teams are performing. One could argue, for the mostpart, that the teams at the top of this list are on the rise and the teams on the bottom are in decline or standing still at best.

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Comments

Thanks for this. It is much more complete than my efforts last year. Couple caveats to stress:
- Is it really a miss if a guy was traded for a valuable piece?
- Is it really a hit if a guy is been in the league and only playing special teams or not at all?
- Anytime you have a coach and especially a GM change, you are going to see turnover. Rucker wasn’t the only victim of Mangini and Kokinis cleaning house and getting their guys in here.

by Ryan Kelsey on Sep 23, 2009 4:15 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I agree with your comments. I would love to start placing criteria on hits. For example, 1st rounders are only hits if they are pro bowlers, 2-3 if they are starters and 4-7 if on the roster with possible bonus points if they are starters. This is a much more complex analysis and requires more data and time.

I took the easiest approach to the data. All I did was join the draft list to current rosters. I agree a traded player shouldn’t be listed as a miss, but that is due to the methodolgy used and not by design. I considered marking players as hits if they were still in the league despite the team they are currently on, but then that starts adding hits who in all likelihood are bit players on other teams and just inflates the results (like Charlie Frye who would then turn into a hit since he is on Seattle’s roster).

There is definitely holes in this analysis, but it does paint a general picture.

by dvd1204 on Sep 23, 2009 4:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i like the tactic of seeing how many players drafted are still in the league. just gives a further level of detail, and sort of says whether or not a team is drafting NFL players or not.

well done, though. i tried to start this last year, like daytondogg, and i pooped out.

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 23, 2009 5:52 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Players still in the league puts Savage at a tie for 28th at 50%. Here is the rank of teams. (Unfortunately I can’t format the data to show the entire table again)

Giants
Panthers
Raiders
Ravens
49ers
Cowboys
Bills
Packers
Broncos
Vikings
Titans
Chargers
Falcons
Jets
Eagles
Cardinals
Bears
Dolphins
Redskins
Texans
Rams
Saints
Seahawks
Steelers
Patriots
Colts
Lions
Browns
Jaguars
Bengals
Chiefs
Buccaneers

by dvd1204 on Sep 24, 2009 10:42 AM EDT up reply actions 3 recs

herculean, man. thanks.

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 24, 2009 1:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks. That does look pretty terrible.

Man, at least we aren’t the Bengals. They are below us and have had the same people making the decisions for the entire time period.

by Ryan Kelsey on Sep 24, 2009 3:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

28th out of 32? That is a step up for the Browns in drafting. And I am not being sarcastic.

by oxforddave on Sep 24, 2009 5:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Suprisingly Butch Davis’ drafts actually sit at 13th overall for players still in the league (11/28), and 16th for number of players (11) still in the league. Of course, he is last for players still on the Browns (1 – Ryan Pointbrand (sp)).

Unfortunately ESPN doesn’t give me a way to search for old rosters so that I can compare Davis’ drafts to the team in 2005

by dvd1204 on Sep 25, 2009 2:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah But

1. Is Isaac Sowells a hit?
2. Aren’t we sick of McDonald, Wright, and Poole? 2 second rounders “hit” and our secondary sucks?
3. Have you seen Brady Quinn play?
4. Didn’t we give up extra picks for Quinn, Rucker, Bell, Hubbard?

It all evens out and Savage should be embarrassed by his record given his personnel background.

by realmccoy on Sep 25, 2009 4:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I disagree with all of this, for reasons already stated above.

www.lowbrowsophisticate.com

by kwoog on Sep 25, 2009 4:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

McDonald is a 5th rounder. He is definately a hit and so are Wright and Pool

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 25, 2009 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

2. Aren’t we sick of McDonald, Wright, and Poole?

A little, nowhere close, and no, respectively.

Didn’t we give up extra picks for Quinn, Rucker, Bell, Hubbard?

Quinn’s pick was straight up our 1st rounder in 08 for Dallas’ in 07. We took Quinn with the 21st pick, and Dallas ended up with our #21 overall pick the year after.

by rufio on Sep 25, 2009 6:06 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

wasn’t the quinn trade the ’07 2nd and ’08 first?

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 25, 2009 6:08 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I thought we used the 07 second rounder on Wright

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 25, 2009 6:11 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Incorrect, we traded back up into the 2nd to get Wright. We did, in fact, include the 2nd rounder and next year’s 1st for Quinn.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 25, 2009 6:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Before the 2007 draft I was hoping that we take Adrian Peterson at number 3, and then get our LT in Tony Ugoh at 36. While Joe Thomas is definitely better than Ugoh, Ugoh has been quite good as well. We would have solidified our LT spot and still come away with Adrian Peterson.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 25, 2009 6:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

(but we wouldnt have Quinn)

by Roger Dorn on Sep 25, 2009 6:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Savage made a big gamble with Quinn, and Quinn’s performance will decide whether he was an average drafter or poor one. So far it does not look good.

by oxforddave on Sep 27, 2009 8:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I thought Ugoh was benched this year?

by Bernie19Kosar on Sep 26, 2009 4:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Thomas is A LOT better than Ugoh.

by rufio on Sep 26, 2009 6:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I haven’t paid that close attention, I’ll be fair. I do remember him having a really good rookie year.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 27, 2009 11:59 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ah yes.

My apologies.

What did we trade to get the 2nd rounder to get Wright?

by rufio on Sep 26, 2009 2:08 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

We traded a 3rd, 4th, and 6th for that 2nd and Dallas’s first 6th.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 26, 2009 11:22 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I would expect any of our GMs since returning in 99 to rank in the bottom third of the league using almost any system devised.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 23, 2009 4:50 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think Magini will cut anyone who's not his guy

not necessarily Savage’s fault.

by math_geek on Sep 23, 2009 5:21 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

great point. so we should expect to see joe thomas and shaun rogers given their outright release by, what, week 5?

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 23, 2009 5:53 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

ahh… sarcasm.
Obviously there are exceptions to any rule in football… and Mangini may have come closer to moving Rogers than you might think.

Your argument, such as it is, doesn’t really refute mine. Mangini’s Browns overhaul has been in large part stocking his depth charts with former Jets. He traded for a bunch of backups on the Jets. Those are his guys. Guys like Hank Poteat are getting playing time. His guy. Space for these dudes has to come from somewhere, clearly it’s going to come from people that Savage signed, like 4th round pick Martin Rucker.

My overall point, however, is that roster stability goes hand in hand with coaching and front office stability. Look at John Harbaugh and the Ravens. He changed a third of the Ravens Roster by the first game of the regular season. That’s normal. What differentiate’s him from Mangini, is that Harbaugh actually kept a lot of Ravens standby’s, both first stringers and guys like Antwaan Barnes, Edgar Jones, Demetrius Williams.

by math_geek on Sep 23, 2009 6:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

How likely, though, is it for the Browns castoffs to catch on anywhere? I am willing to bet most of the guys we cut amount to absolutely nothing.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 23, 2009 6:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

In a league where Gradkowski is still active, anything can happen!

by RelapsingDawgCatcher on Sep 23, 2009 8:24 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

by Bernie19Kosar on Sep 23, 2009 9:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

You know, he was a bust but he is still a starter

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 23, 2009 10:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well, that’s certainly possible. And I’m obviously not coaching the Browns, so I can’t see these players, but a 4th round pick in 2008 is someone I would think has some potential, but hardly will be ready to contribute in a year. Our picks from that range in 2008 are all backups, but still with the team.

I also always though Mangini was an overrated coach. Sure he won some in New York against soft schedules, but I never saw the Jets there as a well-coached team. Rex Ryan coming in and making the team appear a lot better certainly forms that judgment. With that in mind, I naturally look at his moves in a less flattering light.

by math_geek on Sep 23, 2009 11:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yeah, roger is right. a lot of the guys we’ve cut actually suck…we should simply keep them for continuity’s sake? hank poteat is taking minutes from…anyone?…terry cousin. if you want to argue that’s a downgrade, well, you’re going to be lonely on that one.

wimbley, hall, d. jackson, wright, mcdonald, rogers, pool, robaire are all holdovers from the savage regime. quinn, thomas, steinbach, edwards, cribbs, heiden, lewis, harrison…all further holdovers on the offensive side. those are the guys who play the lion’s share of the minutes and make the lion’s share of the contributions on this team. your argument, such as it is, has no merit.

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 23, 2009 6:34 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

with new england dead last, pittsburg 20th, tennesee 19th.. etc. i dont think this list proves much of anything? also, in my opinion, we SHOULD trade shaun rogers. why you ask? because if we’re lucky we’ll be good in about 3 years. rogers will be in his 30s then and will be on his way out. we could get a huge draft pick for him now and get someone younger that hopefully will contribute right at that 3-5 year range. now of course we are horrible at drafting it seems, but, just a thought..

by RyanBr on Sep 23, 2009 9:08 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Well New England traded for Moss and Welker.

by Bernie19Kosar on Sep 23, 2009 9:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

And you don’t trade the best NT in the NFL unless you have to.

by Bernie19Kosar on Sep 23, 2009 10:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yea lets keep the Big Boy as long as he wants to stay.

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 23, 2009 10:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It seems likely that New England is trending down. This may have to do with their last 4 years of drafting.

Also good teams are likely to have slightly less hits as they are drafting later, and have larger barriers to starting (i.e. decent incumbents).

by oxforddave on Sep 24, 2009 5:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It also hurt New England that they traded away Seymour and Vrabel, and Bruschi retired

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 24, 2009 5:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Im new Here

Hey guys Im new to this site. I am just hoping to find some good Browns discussion.

I think we are off to a bad start but still have time to turn it around.

Also I support Brady Quinn over Anderson

by TheRealSlimShady on Sep 23, 2009 10:33 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Welcome.

Few tips, dont use subject lines, use the reply button when your replying, and clean up after yourself.

Go Browns.

by Bernie19Kosar on Sep 24, 2009 12:26 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Bottom line, Browns have not drafted well since they came back in the league in 1999. To many misses.

by Grockcubs on Sep 24, 2009 12:40 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The conclusion should be: If you don´t draft well, you should trade well.

by mooncamping on Sep 24, 2009 8:12 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The Mark Shapiro school of GMing

by Roger Dorn on Sep 24, 2009 8:51 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

This is some excellent data crunching. It always makes me wonder though, what is the cause and what is the effect? Also, what is the effect of bad coaching and players not being utilized to magnify their strengths? It is definitely true that some players that seem to excel on a team go to another team and are merely mediocre (running backs from Denver for example). One thing I find interesting here too is that the Patriots end up on the bottom. I think a big factor here is that they don’t seem to want to pay their 1st tier players once they break out and become recognized. They seem to let a lot of them go once they want a big contract. Strangely enough, they also seem to do well in spite of this.
One thing I think might have hurt Savage is that he and Crennel did not seem to be on the same page. Savage would get a player via free agency or the draft and Crennel would never play him (Rucker was one of these… he didn’t even get to play at the end of last season when it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to win games).
Anyway, this work you have done should spark a lot of discussion.

Brownsyup

by Brownsyup on Sep 24, 2009 2:34 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i would say for the pats it’s more that they don’t have a lot of room for young guys, given how good they are, and less that they aren’t that interested in paying “break out” contracts—although, that is certainly true.

the pats are a large part of the reason i like to look at “players still in the NFL”. it’s hard to say the pats haven’t drafted well merely b/c their draft picks aren’t still on the team…which is an awesome team.

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 24, 2009 4:22 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Here is a relevant article. Not terribly scientific, but I think it gets more to the heart of the point: hitting on 3rd rounders and up is really, really rare. Also, he doesn’t mention guys like Cribbs, McDonald, Harrison, who are quality contributors.

www.lowbrowsophisticate.com

by kwoog on Sep 24, 2009 3:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

That is in general my opinion. Savage was no great shakes, but the two regimes before that were just plain awful. Maybe because I am a Browns fan, the awful seems more likely than the average, but the 09 draft is looking quite awful.

by oxforddave on Sep 24, 2009 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

2 games

by DontCallMeJoey on Sep 24, 2009 6:50 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Savage may have drafted poorly, but if not for him we may have missed one of our more memorable seasons since 1999.
Also he did make a couple of good trades/free agent signings… Shaun Rogers, Trading to move back into the first round and getting Brady Quinn (after selecting Joe Thomas at #3), Got Hank Fraley from the Eagles(he’s been pretty serviceable for us), signing D.A., Eric Steinbach, Joe Jurevicius, Reuben Droughns, Jamal Lewis (just to name a couple). If Romeo Crenel ran a 4-3 defense I’m sure the Corey Williams trade would have worked out, but its been said time and time again he’s not meant for a 3-4 defense.
He was usually pretty good at signing free agents and making quality trades, he just had no clue what to do in the draft.
I’m not by any means trying to say he was a good GM, but at times he did show glimpses, maybe if Phil brought in a coach other than Romeo we may have been better.

by BornInThePound on Sep 25, 2009 3:05 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs