This is a follow up to Who is a 'Brad Holmes' draft pick?: Diving into Brad's pick history, which I suggest reading if you haven’t already for an overview into this to know what I’m talking about.
Now let’s get started…but first a couple of house cleaning items:
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This is obviously not an end-all, be-all for draftable prospects. Combine numbers will make a difference, as will the interview process (intangibles) to which we will never have the full evaluation.
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This is based purely on PFF scores. I don’t care if you don’t like PFF. I’m using it as a frame of reference and drawing trends and analysis based on the scores of the players that Brad has picked in the past and the ones that are available for this draft. If you don’t like PFF at all and thinks it’s baloney, this list probably won’t be for you. And that’s okay!
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Don’t be upset if your favorite guy isn’t on the board. There are a lot of guys who I like, who didn’t make the board, but I’m following trends, and starting with the PFF scores only because that is what is currently available. Their big board will change, RAS scores will need to be entered, and again, we will never have access to the one-on-one meetings to determine certain personality traits. Again, this is based purely on PFF scores until I have more data.
First, when looking at trends of Brad’s draft picks, there are a few things we can deduce as covered by the previous post:
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Brad values college production. Especially in their final college season.
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When drafting in the top 100 picks, these are the picks and PFF scores for the last season played by each player: #2 - 94.5, #7 - 95.8, #12 - 81.6, #41 - 82.5, #46 - 90, #72 - 90.7, #97 - 90.4. As you can see, of the 7 picks made in the top 100, 5 of them have PFF scores over 90. The two who do not are Levi’s 82.5 (although the previous year he had a 90.8) and JaMo with 81.6.
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Beyond that, of the 9 picks made before 113, in the 27 season elgible grades, 24 of the grades are above 71.7. The only 3 season grades below that are JaMo’s first two years at OSU (55.5 & 59.5) and Joseph’s third year removed from entering (52.6)
That sets up some easy criteria for us to start to eliminate some players. Any player that has more than 1 season score below 70 is eliminated. The only exceptions to this rule in the 15 picks made by Holmes was JaMo and his two seasons in which he only collected 461 snaps at OSU, and then Barnes and Lucas, who were undoubtedly helped by their RAS scores.
For now, we eliminate those with more than one sub 70 season to get an idea of the guys we might be looking at. After the combine, we can come back and see who gets dropped because they test poorly and which borderline guys who didn’t quite qualify based on PFF scores get bumped up because they tested well.
Some exceptions were made if the player were injured or had extremely low snap counts for a low-graded season. There are also some prospects that have chosen to go back to school. Those who I know of were not added to this list.
AGAIN, THIS LIST IS FOR IDENTIFYING PLAYERS WHO MAY FIT INTO BRAD HOLME’S DRAFTING PATTERN BASED ONLY ON THEIR PFF SCORES. I’m not saying if a guy isn’t on this list, he’s not draftable, I’m just trying to use data to determine if we can figure out who Brad is going to target.
I’ll be posting these by position, I guess and sorting them out by current PFF rankings. I don’t know the best way to display all of this as it’s kind of just a hot mess and 500 lines in a spreadsheet. But here goes. OVR rating is averaged based on snap count for each season’s grade. Here we go:
| QUARTERBACK |
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| RUNNINGBACK |
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| WIDE RECEIVER |
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| TIGHT END |
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| OFFENSIVE TACKLE |
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| INTERIOR OFFENSIVE LINE |
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| DEFENSIVE TACKLE |
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| EDGE |
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| LINEBACKER |
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| CORNERBACK |
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| SAFETY |
|---|
So that’s it. That’s the list as of now. I’m interested to see how this all plays out with RAS and when media starts leaking interview/character issues. The next step is to probably go through and narrow down by motor/football guys and remove any questionable prospects and then when the combine happens, update it again.
Again, if a guy isn’t on this list, it doesn’t mean the Lions won’t draft him - there are ALWAYS outliers and we’re still not working with a complete data set (RAS) and never will be (player interviews). There are some guys that were really close to making the list by a point or two, but I held to the data. I know who those borderline guys are and will be eagerly awaiting their RAS scores.
Hopefully you enjoy. I’ve spent way too much time on this so far. Please excuse any errors or spelling mistakes in any part of this.
