Does it make sense to select the star tight end at the end of the first round? Ian Allan takes a closer look.
Does it make sense to draft Jimmy Graham at the end of the first round? I was faced with that question last week, and now the draft has progressed to the point where we can look back and compare. We can use hindsight to see how it grades out.
This is in the Fanex Draft. I had the 11th pick, and I went with Graham. Now that the first seven rounds are in the can, we can do some cross-positional comparisons.
I went with Graham. If I hadn’t chosen him and was committed to having a tight end by the end of the 7th round, at pick 7.11 I could have chosen Jason Witten. I’ve got Graham at 259 points (PPR format). Witten is at 172 points. Net gain there is 87 points.
Wide receiver. Let’s suppose, however, that we backed it up, and I went with a wide receiver instead. Think Brandon Marshall, Julio Jones, Randall Cobb or Julian Edelman. Those guys I have projected with about 260 points. The best receivers available at the end of the seventh round are guys like Dwayne Bowe, Mike Evans, Riley Cooper and Brian Hartline. These guys tend to go for about 175-180 points. So the difference is 80-85 points. That’s pretty similar to the tight end gap.
Quarterback. Does it make sense to select Manning, Brees or Rodgers at the end of the first round in this PPR format? I’ve got those guys projected at about 370 points. At the end of the seventh round, I just selected Tom Brady. I’ve got him at 339 points. That’s only 31 points back. If you don’t like Brady, then I’ve got a half dozen other guys projected around 320. That groups includes Cam Newton, RG3, Colin Kaepernick, Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson and Andy Dalton. There’s only a 50ish point difference between them and the very best quarterbacks, so it definitely makes more sense to select Graham than one of those top quarterbacks.
(Again, this is assuming that my projections are correct. If you think Manning’s going to thrown 45-plus touchdowns again, it changes the math substantially.)
Running back. If you want to pick a running back at the end of round 1, then Giovani Bernard, DeMarco Murray, Arian Foster, Montee Ball, LeVeon Bell are the guys you’re looking at. I think the best of those guys are worth about 235 points. If you instead skip those guys and choose that running back at the end of the seventh, I think you’ll be looking at Lamar Miller, Pierre Thomas, Maurice Jones-Drew or Danny Woodhead. Guys like that. In this case, all of those guys were just chosen, but I’m going to suppose that in most drafts, you would be able to get one of them there, and you’d be looking at about 165 points. That’s a difference of 70 points. In the same ballpark as the tight ends, but doesn’t look any better.
The Fanex League is actually two separate 12-team leagues. Graham went with pick 1.12 in the other league. Paul Charchian took him. His options at the end of the seventh round are slightly different.
Tight end. Witten is gone, but Greg Olsen is available, and I have Olsen worth 5 more points, reducing the difference to 82 points. Quarterback. Brady’s gone, so he’d have to settle for one of the 320-point guys. About 50 points net. Running back. Lamar Miller and Pierre Thomas are there. About 70 points. Wide receiver. Brandin Cooks is sitting there. I’ve got him about about 190 points (I selected him at 5.11 in the other draft) which would reduce the differential to about 70 points.
Net conclusion: At the end of the first round Graham makes a lot of sense – seemingly slightly more than a running back or a wide receiver. And quarterbacks don’t add up properly to be merited picking in that spot. This is for a PPR format, and this is using my stat projections. If you think so-and-so’s going to catch 110 passes or this guy’s going to score 17 touchdowns, that changes things.
—Ian Allan