Quote:
Originally Posted by kccrow
You have to develop a formula for your perceived value of production. For instance, I may say that I will give 2 points for tackles net of sacks, 6 points for sacks, and 4 points for passes defensed. These are metrics the league actually tracks.
In Donald's case, he would have then had a 4-year average prior to signing his deal of 150 points. With an AAV of $22.5M, his approximate value per unit of production then is $150K.
Using the same valuation, Jones has a 3-year average of 120 points. Extrapolating $150K over 120 points yields an AAV of $18.06M. League inflation since the boom in 2013 is 7.35% per year. Since you wouldn't really be using NPV, but rather FV of an annuity to calculate TVM, and we use 7% for simplicity, the FV is $19.3M AAV. If he were to sign in the offseason next year, that is about $20.7M AAV. He'd have to break his average of 34 tackles, 8 sacks, and 5 passes defensed to impact his value versus Donald's. He'd need to duplicate last season's efforts to get a time-adjusted value the same as Donald's AAV.
Now, my system is undoubtedly imperfect. No factors for snap counts as a percentage of defensive plays, qb hurries, and other such information. It's an off-the-cuff valuation for example purposes.
The question for me is more along the lines of, can we expect Jones to have production in line with Donald's heading into his contract? Donald averaged 51 tackles, 10 sacks, and 2 passes defensed heading into his extension. Moving to a 4-3, I'd have to think that this is entirely probable. This was also the thought process on inking Donald to his contract. There was no thought that this guy would blow up for 20 sacks, and I think it would be unreasonable to have any similar expectation for Jones to even repeat last year's 15.5. Neither of these guys are JJ Watt level players, but they are the closest in the league right now.
Circling back to your value per unit salary cap, I think it's incredibly hard to use that as pure justification for who you choose to pay or not pay. I can absolutely value all players and say that I get a much better deal for a player at a position that has moderate production than a guy that gets much better production. Case in point, you pay Frank Clark $20.8 AAV for 40 tackles and 12 sacks. He is incredibly hard to block with a single lineman on a snap-to-snap basis and is extremely disruptive. The offense has to account for Clark every single play. You pay Alex Okafor $6.0 AAV for 40 tackles and 4 sacks. He isn't difficult to block on a snap-to-snap basis. He will make the plays that come to him much more so than having a large effect on the game. The offense generally doesn't need to do anything more to account for him than block him 1-on-1. So, in terms value per unit, Clark costs about $162k and Okafor $62k. Do you really want to trot out two Okafor's instead of a Clark and an Okafor? You do need impact players over and above the moneyball guys.
|
Yeah, I'm a numbers guy (to a lesser extent than you no doubt) but it's hard to quantify. You watch these teams on TV and Donald is wreaking havoc every ****ing play. Jones has a handful of good plays and disappears for stretches. So I really struggle with the differences between the two. From a stats perspective they're not
that different, so you're down to assessing a value on the plays that don't hit a stat sheet.
I don't have a good answer but here's what I know: Donald is a teir better than Jones, I'm not willing to give Jones money.
RE: playmakers vs moneyball guys.
I don't know about all that. Especially on defense. I'm going to guess that 11 guys that are sound will beat 7 sound guys, 2 great guys, and 2 shitheels. I think the shitheels will just get abused all day long.
I mean, we've been there. We've fielded teams with stars of:
Eric Berry
Justin Houston
Tamba Hali
Derrick Johnson
Marcus Peters
That couldn't go out and buy a stop.
Conversely, the Cheatriots rolled out a bunch of dudes and held the NFC champion to a butt****ing fieldgoal. There's no star power there. I mean, Patrick Chung? Gilmore? Michael Bennet? Other than being a ****ing loudmouth with his idiot brother, he's no star.
I know Belicheat is on a different level than...everybody, but an argument is there that stars are the death of defense - meaning that you're going to have to roll out some schlubs.