It’s not a surprise that drafting well has a big impact on a team’s long-term success. It isn’t the only thing – if you don’t have at least a win-with quarterback, almost nothing else matters. And as the Rams showed, teams can succeed on free agency and trades for some amount of time, but adding veterans without drafting well eventually catches up.
With the salary cap, no matter how much people claim “the cap doesn’t matter”, teams have to be able to continue to add cheap, young talent. Below shows the impact of drafting well or poorly on the go-forward three-year win percentage. Even a single good (or bad) draft has a big impact on winning and multiple drafts in a row have an even bigger impact.
| Draft Performance | 3-year win % change following single draft | 3-year win % change following 2 or more drafts |
|---|---|---|
| Really good draft: 90th percentile draft | 13.0% | 20.3% |
| Good draft: 75th percentile draft | 7.9% | 9.8% |
| Bad draft: 25th percentile draft | -10.6% | -11.5% |
| Really bad draft: 10th percentile draft | -11.3% | -18.8% |
The above uses Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value (AV) as a measure of draft value and compares to the league average draft to define “good” or “bad” drafts. If you want more detail on the data behind this, go to my insights page on draft value here: “Draft performance and winning“
But consistently drafting well is hard. A quarter of teams can beat the league average 2 years in a row but that falls to 12% that can do it 3 years in a row. Several years ago the Colts and Saints were lauded as top drafters, but that was short-lived for both.
The Eagles are currently in a really good drafting period with back-to-back strong drafts in 2020 and 2021 (2022 could end up being a third but because most of the picks didn’t play much, it has low value after the rookie season). And their 2009-2013 stretch was one of the better stretches by any team with 5 consecutive years beating the league average.
The chart below for the Eagles draft history – the blue bars are their actual drafted value and the red line is league average value. Any time the blue bars are above the black line, they outperformed the league.
(We have more readers from other teams and if you want to see your team’s draft performance, you can see it here: Draft Performance Data)
Looking back at 2022
If you go back to the start of last season, here’s where every team sat. The x-axis is their prior 3-year draft value and the y-axis is their prior season (2021) win percentage. Teams whose win percentage dropped materially in 2022 are in red and teams who improved are in green.
To make it simple, teams in the top left are probably on borrowed time, holding a good win percentage but not drafting well. Conversely, teams in the bottom right could be poised for a positive surprise.
Not shocking, draft value tells a lot, but not all, of the story. Teams like Jacksonville, Detroit, and the Giants were pretty bad teams that had drafted well and improved into 2022. Jacksonville obviously got their QB and upgraded from a disastrous coach, but they still drafted well.
On the other side, New Orleans, as mentioned above, once heralded as a top drafting team, hadn’t had a good draft since 2017 and it caught up to them, no matter how much they kept trying to keep it together. Here is the Saints draft value to show how poorly they drafted after 2017, both underperforming the league average and their own expected draft value:
The Titans came back to Earth and the Rams, fresh off their Super Bowl win with their “f*** the picks” approach, were a team on borrowed time that came due in 2022. Here is the same chart for the Rams which shows a 3-year period where they drafted poorly with their limited capital.
There are, of course, some outliers.
Tampa and Denver drafted relatively well but both had collapses at the most important position, quarterback. The Raiders had an awful 2022 draft and also had QB issues with Carr not finishing the season.
And on the positive side, both Seattle and the Jets had really good 2022 drafts that improved their fortunes. Seattle not only had the best 2022 draft but the best value drafts over the past 5 years. This reinforces the data above of how even a single really good draft can make a material impact.
How does 2023 look?
Below is the same draft value vs. win percentage chart from above but here the colors denote the 2023 draft capital each team has. Teams in the top third of the league in draft capital are in green and teams in the bottom third are in red.
There are a handful of interesting things that stand out:
The rich get richer?
The two Super Bowl teams, Philly and Kansas City, are the only two that aren’t near the bottom of the league in 2023 draft capital. Philly’ has t’s 2020 and 2021 classes were the 3rd best in the league and can expect a further bump from the 2022 class as Nakobe Dean and Cam Jurgens barely played.
The Chiefs have the bounty from the Tyreek Hill trade and have been the league’s most efficient drafting team over the past 3 years – despite being 20th in the league in draft capital, they have attained the 3rd most draft value. Both teams can stay atop the league if they continue to hit with impact players in this year’s draft.
The optimism is deserved…
Jacksonville and Detroit aren’t really sleepers anymore as both are expected to take a big step up this year. Both have benefited from a lot of draft capital but have both drafted very well – Detroit is 6th in draft value attained over the past three years and Jacksonville is 4th. And both likely have weakening divisions that they should be able to feast on.
My favorite team to exceed
The Falcons get forgotten by many. Expectations are still low for 2023 and not saying they will win the division, but I’d be shocked if they don’t outperform. They have had back-to-back top drafts and Desmond Ridder, if even decent, should be an upgrade over what they got last year. They had a good free agency, their line is improved, and add in what is projected to be one of the easiest schedules and they are my favorite team to outperform in 2023. With good draft capital including the 8th pick, they can really improve this year.
Good teams that REALLY need a good draft
There are always teams that drop off and surprise. Minnesota and Buffalo are two good teams that really need a good offseason to prevent being one of them. Neither has good draft capital this year (Buffalo is 26th in the league and Minnesota is 30th) and both are projected to have two of the hardest schedules in the league.
To be clear, I am not saying the Bills need to draft well or they are going to collapse in 2023. They have a great roster, a top of the league QB, and have had a good offseason. But they have not drafted well over the past three years, 23rd in the league in draft value with really only Gregory Rousseau, Gabriel Davis, and Spencer Brown making any impact out of their 23 picks made. Looking ahead, they are near the bottom of the league in projected cap space in 2024 and Allen will need to be restructured to lower his massive cap hit. To the point of this entire article, you cannot succeed forever without drafting well and the Bills could use some hits this year.
On the other hand, Minnesota fans should worry. The Vikings have barely had a good pick since Justin Jefferson, lost a lot more than they added in free agency especially on defense and in the secondary, and they had a better record than their play implied last year.
And an opportunity to jump?
Like the drop-off candidates above, there are the opposites that surprise to the upside. The Raiders, Bears, and Colts are three that stand out. Las Vegas, long rightly mocked for poor drafts, have a good opportunity to be an upside surprise. Jimmy G may not excite you but a lot of teams are worse off at QB than him. They have holes but Dave Ziegler is in his 2nd year with the 3rd most draft capital in the league. They really have to hit.
The Bears have suffered from lack of draft capital after the trade-up for Justin Fields but they have drafted much better than people realize, beating league average the last 3 years even though they had less-than-average draft capital. With the 5th most draft capital this year, a really good free agency, and what I think is a franchise QB, this is their chance to make a jump.
I’m not saying the Colts are going to be good, they lost a lot in free agency and are thin at receiver and the secondary which isn’t a good place to be. But they could surprise vs. low expectations. So much for the Colts swings on what their move is at QB, but like the Bears, after two years of lacking draft capital, they now have the 8th most in the league with nine picks including picks 4 and 35. They must draft well this year. If they do, add in an easier schedule, new coach, and hopefully some improved luck (they were 4-7 in one-score games last year) and they could surprise a bit.
It’s going to be tough…
Tennessee got some value in the draft last year but is still near the bottom of the league over both the last 3 and 5 years in draft value. With lots of roster holes, more losses in free agency than gains, and few resources, things aren’t looking good. Talk of them being open to a rebuild or potentially trading up for a QB make their situation even murkier.
Cleveland gave up so much for Deshaun Watson but has also underperformed in the draft 4 of the last 5 years. Their first pick is pick 74 this year where the chance of an impact player isn’t great. They still have a solid roster and will have Deshaun for a full year, who didn’t play to expectations when he did play last year. It would be ironic if Deshaun left the Texans to just join… the northern Texans…
If you are interested in digging into this data deeper, there is an interactive page where you can see every team’s historical draft performance vs. winning here.
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