Thoughts On and Predictions For the 2024 NFL Draft
The most important weekend on the NFL calendar for roster construction kicks off in Detroit on Thursday at 8PM ET
An Ode to the NFL Draft
Great NFL Teams are built on Draft Weekend. While Free Agency generates a lot of fan excitement and trades are an underutilized tool to improve rosters, neither of them can make up for consistently poor drafting. Put simply, the best teams in the league are finding most of their best players through the Draft and then never letting them hit the open market until they are past their peaks.
The NFL Draft was one of my first loves as a kid, and I distinctly remember making embarrassing YouTube videos in Middle School with my predictions and analysis on the Annual Event. As I moved into High School and College, these turned into annual post-Draft slideshows analyzing the Patriots’ draft classes that racked up several thousand views each. And although starting a career in Investment Banking forced a pause to my Draft videos, I have greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to work on Draft-focused analyses over the past several months as well as the opportunity to go down to Mobile for the Senior Bowl.
My first memory of the NFL Draft was listening to it on the radio as a 4th grader when the Patriots took Guard Logan Mankins out of Fresno State with the final pick in the 1st Round. I remember the pick stunning most analysts, who had Mankins slotted as a 3rd round pick that year. The following year, I put together my first NFL Mock Draft, which unfortunately was saved locally on a computer that was long ago thrown away, and watched it on TV for the first time.
Since then, I’ve never missed a Draft - spending countless hours reading about the prospects, consuming Mock Drafts, and endlessly using online Draft Simulators until Draft Day finally arrived. Along with Christmas, it was one of the days every year that I found it impossible to fall asleep while growing up. The three days over which the NFL Draft takes place remain some of my absolute favorites in the year.
What makes the draft so fun is that it is a celebration of football - both for the players getting picked and the teams and their staffs. For the players, it is the realization of what was likely a lifelong dream of making it to the NFL. For the teams - a culmination of a year’s worth of work grinding tape, analyzing tracking data, conducting character assessments, and more. And of course, there is the suspense and entertainment factor as well. I look forward to enjoying the Draft for years to come, and it will continue to remain circled on my calendar year in and year out.
Thoughts on Analytics and Draft Processes
It has been over ten years since Professors Cade Massey (UPenn Wharton) and Richard Thaler (Chicago Booth) released a paper on the NFL Draft. In it, Massey and Thaler argue that teams are paying far too much to move up in the Draft when the data shows such moves are not worth it - unless for a Quarterback or at the very least a player at a premium position. Countless other analyses have backed up this claim - both from an economic and on-field standpoint. Yet - teams still fail to realize this, and we’re almost certain to see at least one team this year trade up for someone they should not be trading up for.
Massey and Thaler cite overconfidence in one’s ability to pick players as a driving force for this inefficiency. MIT Sloan Professor Andrew Lo’s Adaptive Markets Hypothesis makes the case that evolutionary biology, from which overconfidence arguably stems, drives financial markets so it is entirely logical that it plays into picking football players as well - especially since the Draft is in essence a marketplace. While conviction in the draft process is important, so too is an appreciation of the inherent uncertainty of draft picks. While I’ve haven’t (yet) sat in a draft room, I’d guess that the teams that are humble and realistic about their own abilities to pick players are the ones that tend to make better decisions in the long run. It could explain why over 60% of teams trading down in deals executed between 2013-22 involving a non-QB ended up “winning” the trade as measured by AV added.
This isn’t all to say that analytics are perfect or that the Draft should be outsourced entirely to an algorithm. I believe that large sets of quality predictive data can actually help empower scouts. Furthermore, I think that at least being aware of the pitfalls stemming from overconfidence can help reduce biases and improve a team’s chances of success in the Draft. We’re certainly starting to see teams get smarter and empower their analytics departments, but I believe there’s room for further growth. And while it might sometimes make sense to go against the data, and trade up for a non-QB for example, such decisions need to be backed by sound reasoning beyond just confidence in one’s ability to pick players. Those moves may sometimes workout even without sound logic, but the Draft should be an exercise in maximizing the probability of success - not hoping for low probability outcomes.
Massey and Thaler conclude their paper with a quote from Mark Twain “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.“ I believe that perfectly describes so many errors in team-building in the NFL, and decision-making in most industries.
2024 NFL Draft Predictions
I’ll consider myself lucky if more than one of these hit, but I thought it would be fun to share some high-level predictions on what I think will happen when the 1st Round of the NFL Draft kicks off Thursday night.
The Chicago Bears, Washington Commanders, and New England Patriots will all stay put in their current draft spots at No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 respectively and select Quarterbacks. The Bears will almost certainly take USC’s Caleb Williams, considered to be the best QB prospect since Andrew Luck in 2012, and it would potentially be the biggest shock in NFL Draft history if they passed on him. Ultimately, I believe the Commanders will take UNC’s Drake Maye, opting for the higher ceiling as compared to LSU’s Jayden Daniels, who I believe the Patriots will happily take third overall.
As has long been speculated, I believe the Minnesota Vikings will trade up to No. 4 overall, sending a package of three first round picks (No. 11, 23, and a 2025 1st) to Arizona in order to select Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy. Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is the first in the NFL to come from primarily an analytics background (after a career working on Wall Street) and made the decision to acquire the 23rd overall pick from the Texans - giving him two picks in this year’s 1st round. I do not believe that the analytically minded Adofo-Mensah would have made that move without being certain he’d package that pick to move up again for a QB, given what the data says about trading up for non-QBs.
That being said, I think the Bears - who also hold the 8th overall pick - will trade up with the Los Angeles Chargers at No. 5 to select Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr. MHJ is widely considered to be the best WR prospect to come out of college perhaps since Calvin Johnson in 2007, and I think the Bears will find it hard to resist the temptation to pair Williams and MHJ together - a QB-WR duo that has the potential to be one of the best in the league for years to come.
I think that Quarterbacks Michael Penix Jr (Washington) and Bo Nix (Oregon) will both be 1st round picks, but not get taken until the very end of the round. I believe both players will be taken by teams looking to move from the early 2nd round into the late 1st so as to take advantage of the 5th year option that teams get for 1st round picks. Gun to my head, if I had to pick who each player went to, I’d guess Penix goes to the Las Vegas Raiders and Nix to the New York Giants.
There are always a couple of players projected to go in the 2nd-3rd round of the Draft that end up being taken in the 1st. This year, I’d guess that one of those players will be an Interior Defensive Lineman with pass rush capabilities such as Florida State’s Braden Fiske or Ohio State’s Mike Hall Jr. We’ve seen contracts for these types of players explode in value over the past few years, and teams are rarely finding top IDLs outside the 1st or early 2nd round. I believe this will push a team picking towards the end of the 1st round and not again until the late 2nd to pull the trigger a little early on a player like Fiske or Hall.
Lastly, I think the abundance of top prospects at Wide Receiver and Offensive Tackle will mean that quality players at those positions may slip in the Draft. I believe teams may opt to fill holes at other positions and address WR or OT in the 2nd or 3rd round when quality starters are likely to remain on the board. Alabama’s J.C. Latham would be my pick for biggest faller in this year’s draft due to his size potentially confining him to Right Tackle, a lack of athletic testing numbers (very important for OTs), and the number of former Crimson Tide Offensive Linemen that have been disappointments at the NFL level relative to their draft statuses in recent years.
Stay tuned for some bonus content on the Draft this week! Tomorrow, an OpEd I worked on with some of my classmates at MIT Sloan last spring is slated for publication in the Sports Business Journal as part of their daily newsletter - Unpacks. On Thursday, I’m hoping to publish a 1st Round Mock Draft and share some thoughts on Day 2 and 3 prospects that I am excited about. Draft Day cannot come soon enough, and I am excited to see where all the prospects land!