2013 NFL Draft - Evaluating the Day 1 trades

Note - See Day 2 evaluation here and Day 3 here

A few quick-hit thoughts on the yesterday's trades during the first round. First, here's a graphical representation of how each team did. The units, as always, are percentages of the value of the first overall pick.

2013 first round trades in the NFL Draft according to the Sports + Numbers draft value chart

1. Don't trade with the Patriots - Just don't. You won't win the trade. New England absolutely mauled the Vikings with this trade, getting a bigger haul than the Cowboys or Rams despite trading 11 and 7 picks, respectively, behind them. The excess value received by New England is roughly equal to an early 3rd round pick.


2. A new way of looking at deals - It looks like things might be moving closer to the reality of what the players are actually worth as the Oakland-Miami deal represents pretty close to fair value according to the revised chart...

2013 first round trades in the NFL Draft according to the existing "Jimmy Johnson" draft value chart

3. Long live the Jimmy Johnson chart - ...but there is still a lot of inertia around the classic chart spread around the league two decades ago. Only the Oak-Mia and Dal-SFO deals varied in any meaningful way. Everyone else - I'm looking at you St. Louis, Atlanta and Minnesota - paid out way too much value because their trade partners got them to deal on terms much more favorable to the team trading down.

4. Some additional reading - Both Chase Stuart at Football Perspective and I have put out analyses of which positions are successful (and which are not) in the first round. Two excellent reads if you have some time. Brian Burke from Advanced NFL Stats also had a post this week with some thoughts on economist Cade Massey's work on the draft (some with Richard Thaler) and the implications for NFL teams. If you enjoy the type of analysis on my site, go get much better versions of it at Brian's site and the links he cites.