Why are NFL teams still valuing Draft picks the same way they were three decades ago?

If you click on this link, you will find a video replaying one of the most famous drives in NFL history. With 3:10 left on the clock in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XXIII, Joe Montana took over on his own 7 yard line with his team trailing by a field goal. What followed a masterclass in quarterback play and offensive football as Montana led the 49ers 93 yards down the field for a game-winning touchdown. The win gave the 49ers their third championship, cemented them as the team of the 1980s, and allowed legendary head coach Bill Walsh to ride into the sunset. It was Walsh’s final game as NFL head coach.

The 49ers had the most innovative offense in football at the time. If you watch it now, however, you will likely be struck by how it compares to modern offenses. San Francisco was in an obvious passing situation for the entire drive. Yet, they didn’t operate out of the shotgun. They also ran formations with two wide receivers, a tight end, and two backs. This would never happen today.

For its time, however, the 49ers offense was transformational. You can see the DNA of the Walsh system in every current NFL playbook.

San Francisco’s offense was based on precise timing in the passing game. It made all five eligible receivers viable threats and aimed to force a defense to cover the entire field. Walsh’s 49ers were not the first team to utilize these concepts in the history of the league. In fact, the 1980s 49ers were not even the first team to execute an offense like this coordinated by Walsh. Many of the concepts were rooted in philosophies Walsh learned in his time coming up the coaching ranks as an assistant. But the Niners played a big role in popularizing these concepts. For a while, you would hear media pundits talk about Walsh’s “West Coast Offense.” These days such a descriptor is meaningless. Every playbook in the league adheres to Walsh’s principles, whether or not the coach in charge of the offense has a direct lineage with Walsh’s coaching tree.

Still, nobody is running their offense exactly like the 49ers of the 1980s. Heck if Walsh was still alive and coaching, he wouldn’t be running it either. At the time, what he was doing was revolutionary. It moved football forward. In the years that have passed, other great minds have built on Walsh’s progress. We have seen formations stretch the field horizontally presnap to a greater degree. We have seen teams adopt up tempo paces to throw defenses off. We have see a third wide receiver replace the fullback in the base formation of almost every offense.

That’s the way it should be. Progress never stops.

Just weeks after the 49ers won that Super Bowl, the Dallas Cowboys were bought by a brash Arkansas businessman named Jerry Jones. Shortly after taking control of the team, Jones fired legendary head coach Tom Landry and replaced him with University of Miami head coach Jimmy Johnson.

Less known is Mike McCoy. McCoy was part of the Jones’ investment group and took a 5 percent stake in the Cowboys. Two years later, McCoy set out on a project. He analyzed four years’ worth of trades involving NFL Draft picks. Based on his research, he created a chart that assigned a point value to each pick in the Draft. The first pick was worth 3,000 points. Each subsequent pick decreased in value.

It became known as the “Jimmy Johnson Chart” because Johnson used it to maneuver in the NFL Draft, and built the league’s next dominant team.

As with Walsh’s offensive principles, use of the chart spread across the league.

Just a few weeks back, former NFL general manager Scott Pioli confirmed the chart is still used around the league.

That leads to a question. Why?

The league owes Mike McCoy a debt. He put in a lot of research to try to quantify exactly what a Draft pick is worth. He went where nobody has gone before and provided us with enlightenment. For its time, McCoy’s worth was revolutionary. He figured out exactly how Draft picks were valued by teams across the league. Prior to the development of his chart, teams made trades involving picks seemingly at random. McCoy took us to a place of greater enlightenment.

Still, it has been more than three decades since this chart was developed. We have far more information at our disposal than we did in 1991, and we can access it far faster than we did then.

Walsh receives nothing but respect from the league for taking offense to a better place, but teams were not afraid to build on what he did. Why can’t the league do the same on McCoy’s chart.

The McCoy chart quantifies how teams value picks. It does not, however, tell us whether these valuations are actually correct.

There are many ways to test this out, but let’s keep it simple. Imagine in the 2024 NFL Draft that the Bengals call up the Jets looking to trade up from 18. The Cowboys chart values the 10th overall pick, which the Jets hold at 1,300 points. The Bengals’ pick at 18 is worth 900 points. Their second round pick at 49 is worth 400 points. That is the basis for a trade.

It also suggests the Jets would be foolish to move down to 18 unless they got a second round pick. Is that true, however?

Using the Stathead database, I took a look at the outcome of every 10th overall pick and every 18th overall pick since 2000.

The players drafted 10th overall have started a combined 1,791 games, been selected to 24 Pro Bowls, and made 8 All Pro First Teams.

The players drafted 18th overall have started a combined 1,959 games, been selected to 23 Pro Bowls, and made 4 All Pro First Teams.

Contrary to the idea that picking 10th over picking 18th is such a premium that it should require a second round pick to move up, there doesn’t seem to be that great of a difference in expected outcomes between the two selections.

This of course is but one example, and the statistics we utilize are raw. Still, this squares with a lot of data, some of which we discussed yesterday that teams tend to overrated their own ability to find top talent at the top of the Draft and underestimate the talent available later on.

A number of other analysts have built their own value charts based on actual performance of picks at each slot. Among them are Over the Cap founder and Jets fan Jason Fitzgerald along with Brad Spielberger. The two authored a book about value in the NFL Draft.

Based on what we saw above, an accurate chart would probably suggest the value difference between pick 10 and pick 18 is small. Of course pick 10 is more valuable. If I offered you a choice of the two, you would take pick 10 no matter what. But we aren’t talking about a wide chasm.

The Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart offers a very different take than the original McCoy chart. According to Fitzgerald and Spielberger’s calculations, the 10th pick is worth 1,833 points, while the 18th pick is worth 1,535 points. That 298 point difference is worth the equivalent of a mid-sixth round pick. That is a far cry from the notion that a drop of eight slots requires a second rounder in return to justify. A sixth round pick might not be much, but you aren’t sacrificing much. Yes, there will be individual years where the tenth overall pick is a great player, and the 18th won’t amount to much. But we can see on the whole that is not going to happen with anywhere near the frequency most people would imagine.

I’m not exactly breaking new ground when I note that the McCoy chart overestimates the value of high picks and underestimates the value of picks in the meat of the Draft, especially rounds two through four.

All of this suggests there is a substantial market inefficiency in how Draft picks are valued. It is sitting there in plain sight for smart teams to exploit. So why don’t they?

Pioli dances around the topic in the video above. He gives lip service to the idea that teams have crafted their own charts, but need to value picks using the common McCoy chart in order to actually execute a trade. That doesn’t seem like a particularly compelling explanation, though.

I would submit that teams are afraid of appearances. If a team traded 10 for 18 and a third round pick, it would get roasted in the media and their fanbase even though more often than not they would get good value. The chart says you need to get a second round pick after all.

Teams have the ability to break down data in far more intricate ways than we just did. Most of them probably know how flawed the chart is. But the price of not comforming is great in this league.

When you trade up, there is praise for “being aggressive” and “getting your guy” the same way teams that spend lavishly on big names in free agency receive roses from the national media.

Good team building is far more deliberate, and much more about steady accumulation of assets and sound decision making than flash.y

It’s the same old story in the NFL. People in the league are afraid to rock the boat and do something unconventional even if there is evidence it is the smart thing to do. At various points in his career, Walsh himself and his unconventional system were doubted until the 49ers won big. After you win, the league copies you.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Walsh’s 49ers and McCoy’s Cowboys, two innovators, dominated their respective decades and ended up having legions of copycats.

One day a team will actually value picks in a more accurate way. The team will make a series of trades that get mocked because they don’t adhere to the Cowboys chart. Then most of those moves will work out. Eventually the conventional wisdom will change. That’s how it always is in the NFL.

Is it too much to ask for the Jets to be a trendsetter for something….anything one time? Probably, but I can still hope.