A few weeks ago, Greg Gabriel tweeted the following--
Being close to how the prospects come off the board on draft night is not evaluating. Evaluating is being right on your opinion of the player. It’s a couple years before we know real answerHe captures something I’ve been thinking about for a number of years.
How could you really judge someone’s ability to evaluate NFL talent and predict who will succeed and who will not?
Mock Drafts and Top 100 lists are fun and entertaining, but as Gabriel points out, they don’t go far enough in really evaluating the evaluators. Plus, for the most part , they are forgotten quickly.
So here’s my idea: A Different Kind of Top 100 List
After the draft you take the Top 100 list of players chosen (That’s rounds 1-3). You could use more players, but Rounds 1-3 are the key rounds and it works out to exactly 100 players.
Anyone who wanted to participate would then label each player as HIT or MISS.
Will that player be a Success or Failure in the NFL?
It forces the evaluator to put it on the line and make a judgment for all 100 players: Are they going to be a Hit or Miss? Are you correct in your opinion of each player?
That’s what NFL scouts and personnel people get judged on and if they have too many misses, they get fired.
After 3 or 4 years, one point is awarded for every player correctly evaluated. So the score range would be 1-100. The score would reflect the percentage you have correct.
Obviously, there are a few drawbacks in doing this:
1) You have to wait 3 or 4 years to score it.
2) You have to come up with a criterion on which to judge who is a Hit or Miss and someone has to make the ultimate call for each pick.
3) Not that many would participate because not that many really evaluate players closely.
4) Someone has to manage it....keep track of it, etc.
**If we started with this year’s draft, we would have the first scores at the end of the 2020 season (if it was a 3 year waiting time). Once you get to that point there would be scores every year. Another option would be to do a preliminary score after 3 years, and then a final score after 4 years.
**Picking a judgment criterion is a little more tricky, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be done immediately. It could be debated and discussed until I bet we could come up with something that most would think was fair. You could also use a panel of 3 to score each pick.
**As far as participation goes, there would probably be people who don’t study real closely, but would still want to participate, just for fun to see how they do. It would be fast and easy to submit your picks. Also, picks wouldn't have to be finalized to maybe the start of training camp for that year.
**I don't have the tech ability to put it this together, so others would have to be involved.
So that’s my idea. It may never go anywhere, but I wanted to put it out there.
Feedback welcomed. Fire Away!
