Why You Should Almost Never Draft a Tight End in the First Round

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Todd Heap
Originally uploaded by Keith Allison
Two days ago I took a look at the immediate impact that first-round tight ends typically have on their team's offense and found that the impact was surprisingly low. The results were in line with my initial impression when the Detroit Lions drafted Brandon Pettigrew--that drafting a tight end was a "luxury" pick that was very unlikely to bring the sort of transformative change to the Detroit Lions that an 0-16 team needs. Now, however, after looking into the relative success of tight ends drafted in the first round I am ready to go a bit further: as a general proposition, NFL teams should almost never draft a tight end in the first round.

Why? Let's start with the value that a tight end brings to the team. The best measure of the value of having a star tight end relative to other positions on a football team is probably market value. Although NFL contracts can be irreducibly complex, the NFL does give us a pretty good sense of market value in the form of "the Franchise Tag" which averages the salaries of the ten most highly paid players at each position. By this measure, the market value of a tight end is very low compared to other positions. Here are the numbers for the 2009 franchise tags, which are calculated by taking the top ten most highly paid players at each position:

POSITION
Quarterbacks
Cornerbacks
Wide Receivers
Defensive Ends
Offensive Linemen
Linebackers
Running Backs
Safeties
Defensive Tackles
Tight Ends
Punters/Kickers
FRANCHISE NUMBER
14.651 Million
9.957 Million
9.884 Million
8.991 Million
8.451 Million
8.304 Million
6.62 Million
6.342 Million
6.058 Million
4.462 Million
2.483 Million

Yikes. Although I would not go as far to say that a great tight end brings "no value" to a football team, it appears that NFL franchises at least, would rather have star defensive tackles, quarterbacks, wide receivers, etc., although they apparently prefer Tony Gonzalez to Adam Viniatieri.

However, just because NFL tight ends have low value in a relative sense, does not in and of itself mean that drafting them is unwise. For instance, I have always understood that guards and centers have low relative value compared to left tackles and quarterbacks, but when you draft a guard or a center in the first-round, it is a safe investment. In other words, when you draft an internior lineman in the first round, the lower upside of the pick is offset by much lower risk.

However, I wasn't able to find any evidence that this is the case. In fact, the opposite appears to be true: first-round tight ends are less likely to be stars the best at their positions than other first-round draftees. What follows is a list of football positions and the percentage of the players drafted between 1990 and 2008 at that position who have made at least one pro bowl:

POSITION
Centers
Guards
Running Backs
Linebackers
Defensive Tackles
Quarterbacks
Offensive Tackles
Defensive Backs
Wide Receivers
Tight Ends
Defensive Ends
% THAT MADE PRO BOWL
42.9
41.2
41
38.3
37.3
32.6
30.8
28.7
26.9
26.1
25.3

This is a pretty rough way to measure success, but it is effective. The position that yielded the second-lowest number of pro bowlers on a per pick basis were tight ends, with only stars at the defensive end position being rarer. Although there were some more tight ends drafted in the 80's who made some pro bowls, even if we expand the inquiry to include players drafted from 1980 to 2008, tight ends are still the group that yields the second-smallest number of pro bowlers on a per pick basis.

I also wondered if maybe the problem was that tight ends tend to go later in the draft, so the question should not be "are tight ends more or less successful than first rounders" but "are tight ends more or less successful than late first rounders." However, of the fourteen tight ends drafted in the second-half of the first round (picks 16-32) only Todd Heap and Eric Green made a pro bowl, while 22.5% of other players drafted in the second-half of the first round made the pro bowl.

None of these numbers prove definitively that tight ends are the riskiest proposition in the draft, but I do think it indicates very strongly that drafting a tight end is not any less risky than drafting any other position except for maybe defensive end.

So where are all of the good tight ends in the NFL coming from? All over the place. Here are the top tight ends drafted (and undrafted) from 1990 to 2008, who have made the pro bowl and their draft position (or lack thereof):

POSITION
Tony Gonzalez
Shannon Sharpe
Antonio Gates
Ben Coates
Jason Witten
Alge Crumpler
Jeremy Shockey
Mark Chmura
Frank Wycheck
Bubba Franks
Eric Green
Todd Heap
Chris Cooley
Dave Moore
Byron Chamberlain
David Sloan
Ken Dilger
Stephen Alexander
Brian Jennings
Kellen Winslow, Jr.
Owen Daniels
DRAFT POSITION
1(13 Overall)
7(192 Overall)
Undrafted
5(124 Overall)
3(69 Overall)
2(35 Overall)
1(14 Overall)
6(157 Overall)
6(160 Overall)
1(14 Overall)
1(21 Overall)
1(31 Overall)
3(81 Overall)
7(191 Overall)
7(222 Overall)
3(70 Overall)
2(48 Overall)
2(48 Overall)
7(230 Overall)
1(6 Overall)
4(98 Overall)

As the above chart shows, good tight ends can pretty much come from anywhere. Sure, Tony Gonzalez was a high first-round pick, but there are a heck of a lot of six and seventh rounders on the list.

So, adding this all up, successful tight ends provide the least value to an NFL team of any other position besides kicker and are less likely to come from the first round than perhaps any other position. First-round tight ends come with nearly the highest risk and nearly the lower reward. So why would any team burn a first-round pick on a tight end?

Of course, bust-hood for Brandon Pettigrew is far from certain, and he could very well be the first first-round slam-dunk success at the position since Tony Gonzalez in 1997. Pettigrew has been hailed as the best blocking tight end to go in the first-round in some time. He has good size for the position, and if he learns how to use it, he could be a very dangerous receiver in traffic, able to pluck passes from hungry defenders with his exceptionally long arms.

However, Pettigrew has serious questions about his long-speed. Ultimately, tight ends go to the pro bowl based on their receiving skills. If Pettigrew's lack of long-speed prevents him from being able to outrun linebackers and split the safeties deep down the middle, he ultimately becomes a Michael Gaines: a good blocker who is nearly useless in the passing game. These concerns are underscored by the fact that Pettigrew was not as productive in college as the typical first-round tight end, cracking the 500 yard receiving mark only once in his college career.

Pettigrew's selection came at the expense of players at other positions that have traditionally been "safer" picks that add more value to the team. Specficially, the Detroit Lions passed on OT Michael Oher, CB Vontae Davis, DT Peria Jerry, C Alex Mack, and ILB Rey Maualauga. Only time will tell if the Lions have made a shrewd pick that will buck historical trends or if they are indeed the "same old Lions."


Brandon Pettigrew: What Will His Immediate Impact on the Offense Be?

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Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Scott Linehan recently indicated that brand new first-round tighet end Brandon Pettigrew could have an impact on both the passing game and rushing game next year. This begs the questions: how much of an immediate impact does a first-round tight end typically have on the rushing game and the passing game?

The answer? Not much on either account. All other things being equal, teams who have drafted a tight end in the first-round have see their passing games improve by only 29.5 total yards and its rushing games by only 17.9. I was initially surprised at how insignificant the changes were, but the history bears it out.

It is true that, with a big season, a rookie tight end can have a large impact on his team's offense. Jeremy Shockey had 894 receiving yards as a rookie, and the Giants' passing yards increased by 393 and their rushing yards increased by 98 over the previous season. However, Shockey is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, Kellen Winslow, tied with Vernon Davis as the most highly drafted tight end of the last two decades, had no immediate impact on his offense's fortunes. Kellen Winslow's Browns actually got slightly worse: with their passing game dipping by 10 yards and their rushing totals decreasing by 13 yards. Although that is hardly a surprising result considering that Kellen Winslow was hurt most of the season, there are plenty of healthy rookie tight ends who have had similar results.

There is a much more powerful force at work here that actually works in the Detroit Lions' favor: regression to the mean. In other words, teams who have great seasons passing and rushing tend to have less spectacular seasons the following year, just as teams who have poor seasons passing and rushing totals tend to improve. The Detroit Lions, unsurprisingly, fared poorly in both metrics: garnering 2960 yards passing and 1332 yards rushing. Based solely on their performance last season and the miniscule "tight end bump," regression to the mean would bring the Detroit Lions to 3196 yards passing and 1619 yards rushing. And it doesn't even cost a high-round draft pick.

Matthew Stafford: Should He Start or Sit?

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The popular belief amongst fans and national media is that the Detroit Lions would be best served to sit shiny new quarterback Matthew Stafford on the bench for his rookie year. For instance, Sports Illustrated's Don Banks has advocated for giving Stafford a "redshirt" year, and Drew Sharp, ever the prophet, has vaguely counseled the Lions to exercise "patience" in rushing Stafford into the line-up.

I have always been skeptical of the idea that whether a quarterback starts as a rookie has much bearing as to whether he succeeds or not. The reasons why quarterbacks succeed or fail is sort of a "chicken or the egg" problem. Did Joey Harrington fail because he was on the Detroit Lions, or was he on the Detroit Lions because he was Joey Harrington (in other words, did Joey Harrington fail because he was in a "bad situation," or did the Detroit Lions draft Joey Harrington because they are poor judges of talent). I have been firmly in the camp that professional quarterbacks were "born and not made," but I understand why others think differently.

One of the key tenets of the "quarterbacks are made" theory is that teams are best served to sit quarterbacks for a year rather than bruise their fragile psyches by giving them too much playing time too early. Although I recall that the excellent blog over at Pro Football Reference did a similar study, I couldn't find it, so I was curious enough to try it on my own. I took all of the quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 1998 and measured the strength of the correlation between their pass attempts as a rookie and their ultimate success in the NFL. This, I think is the best measure, because the more a quarterback has to drop back to pass as a rookie the more chances, in theory, that that quarterback has to have his confidence shattered by an ill-tempered defensive lineman. "As a measure of "success" I used Football Outsiders' innovative DYAR metric (divided by number of passes attempted), which measures the value that a player adds to a team over a replacement level player. Here is a list of all of the quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 1998 sorted by the number of pass attempts that they had as a rookie:


QUARTERBACK
Peyton Manning
David Carr
Matt Ryan
Kerry Collins
Joey Harrington
Joe Flacco
Byron Leftwich
Tim Couch
Matt Leinart
Vince Young
Ben Roethlisberger
Ryan Leaf
Cade McNown
Patrick Ramsey
Kyle Boller
Donovan McNabb
Eli Manning
Alex Smith
Akili Smith
Jay Cutler
Michael Vick
Steve McNair
Rex Grossman
JaMarcus Russell
Aaron Rodgers
Philip Rivers
J.P. Losman
Chad Pennington
Carson Palmer
Jason Campbell
Daunte Culpepper
ROOKIE ATT.
575
444
434
433
429
428
418
399
377
357
295
245
235
227
224
216
197
165
153
137
113
80
72
66
16
8
5
5
0
0
0

Sure, David Carr is number two on the list, but Peyton Manning is number one and Matt Ryan is number three. Despite the heavy rookie workload, Peyton Manning has become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, and Matt Ryan, based on his rookie numbers, projects to be a perennial pro bowler. While Carson Palmer sat for his entire rookie season and became a very good NFL quarterback, except for five passes, J.P. Losman sat out his entire rookie year and has been one of the worst quarterbacks ever drafted in the first round. Alex Smith, Akili Smith, Rex Grossman, and JaMarcus Russell, all had comparatively little playing time as rookies and have not performed well afterwards.

The correlation between rookie pass attempts and success is exceedingly low with an R-squared of 0.04%, which means essentially that a 0.04% of why a quarterback succeeds can be explained by how much playing time they receive as a rookie. It's not statistically significant, and actually runs opposite to the conventional wisdom: quarterbacks who received lots of playing time as rookies actually performed slightly better over their careers than those who did not. Although it is true that there could be a trend that is simply not showing up in the data, it suggests that there really is not a lot of evidence for the "you need to let a quarterback sit" theory.

So should Stafford start or sit this year? I would suggest that there is actually an advantage to getting Stafford in the line-up sooner rather than later. Although there is no significant correlation between rookie pass attempts and success there is a fairly strong correlation between rookie quarterback performance and ultimate NFL success. Although it is true that most rookie quarterbacks perform poorly, the quarterbacks who turn out to be truly awful perform much worse than those who become good to great quarterbacks. What follows is a list of all of the quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 1998 sorted by their rookie performance (minimum 50 pass attempts). Again, success is measured in DYAR/pass, DYAR being an advanced stat from Football Outsiders which (among other things) adjusts for the strength of competition:
QUARTERBACK
Ben Roethlisberger
Steve McNair
Peyton Manning
Byron Leftwich
Matt Leinart
Vince Young
Patrick Ramsey
Cade McNown
Jay Cutler
Joey Harrington
Kerry Collins
Rex Grossman
Eli Manning
Kyle Boller
Michael Vick
Tim Couch
JaMarcus Russell
David Carr
Akili Smith
Ryan Leaf
Donovan McNabb
Alex Smith
DYAR/Pass in Year 1
2.81
1.31
0.95
0.73
0.61
0.26
0.084
0.024
-0.10
-0.61
-0.64
-0.67
-0.93
-1.17
-1.42
-1.46
-1.92
-2.07
-2.46
-2.54
-2.82
-4.49

Admittedly, this is a small sample size, but the relationship is strong. Everyone at the bottom of the list turned out to be poor quarterbacks except for Donovan McNabb--and he had a huge bounceback season in his second year. If Stafford gets significant playing time this season, the Detroit Lions will have two full season of tape on him, and if he is a bust, the Detroit Lions can move on.

This is intuitive to me. College football quarterbacks who perform at a high enough level to become high NFL draft pick are not delicate snowflakes: they are tough guys. If you're Peyton Manning, you're going to eventually be Peyton Manning whenever you start--irrespective of whether you throw 36 interceptions and or are sacked 60 times. However, if you're J.P. Losman, it doesn't matter if you have two years to learn and sit on the bench--when you are inserted into the line-up, you are going to fail.

The Detroit Lions almost made the right play with how they treated the "development" of Joey Harrington. Although they correctly inserted Joey Harrington into the line-up early, they refused to move on when he failed. The Detroit Lions, determined to throw good money after bad, refused to acknowledge their mistake. This failure came with a huge opportunity cost. If they had recognized that they had failed with Harrington, they were in a great position to draft Ben Roethlisberger in the 2004 NFL Draft. Similarly, if Stafford plays poorly in his first two years, the Detroit Lions shouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on a quarterback like Jevan Snead or Jimmy Clausen in the 2011 NFL Draft.

So put Stafford into the line-up, and if he succeeds, great. And if he doesn't, at least the Detroit Lions need not again pass up on a two-time Super Bowl quarterback in a future NFL Draft.

 

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