Much has been written of the Eagles poor drafting over the past decade which made the 2021 draft critical to restocking an old and depleted roster. This draft is widely viewed as one where Howie and the staff finally stuck to BPA, leaving some still glaring roster holes like cornerback. This will not be a draft grade article as a million of them have been written and they will all be wrong. But hopefully this will show why past data points towards a higher quality draft than the Eagles have had in a while.
As background, I have been using past draft data and ProFootballReference’s Approximate Value (AV) player value metric to analyze the draft and all of the analysis below uses 2010–2019 draft and player value data (I intentionally left 2020 draft data out as the player value data in a rookie season is not extremely useful). If interested in more detail on the data set, you can see a deeper description here.
Analyzing the Eagles draft history
The below shows the career value percentile rank using AV (vertical axis) and pick slot (horizontal axis) for every Eagles draft pick between 2010–2019. I group these percentile ranks into the following:
Elite — 90th percentile (top 10%) players
Above average — 60th to 90th percentile players
League average — 40th to 60th percentile players
Poor — Below 40th percentile players
Leading the Eagles unsurprisingly as “elite” drafted players are Fletcher Cox and Zach Ertz with Kelce, Lane Johnson, Wentz, Miles Sanders, and Goedert right behind them. In the “league average” (40th to 60th percentile middle section) are a whole list of players that have had flashes in their careers but overall solid starters, including Jordan Matthews, Avonte Maddox, Seumalo, and Agholor. And at the bottom of the chart are noticeable draft misses (Marcus Smith, Thorson, Jaiquawan Jarrett, the fireman, and Sidney Jones) as well as some players early in their career with great potential but just haven’t shown consistent value yet like Mailata.
Comparing to the top drafting teams, what is obvious for the Eagles are two well-understood things: (1) they have not had the home run picks that others have had and (2) the volume of solid, starting picks is too low with too many misses across the draft. Just for a visual, here is what Seattle’s and Green Bay’s (the two top drafting teams over the past decade) draft value charts look like. Their median pick isn’t really any better than the Eagles history as the trend line shows, but it pops out visually how many more upper percentile picks they have had compared to the Eagles.
Why we should be optimistic on the 2021 draft
Round 1: DeVonta Smith, WR
First, in all transparency, all draft season I felt like the President of the Cornerback Fan Club as I pounded the Twitter table that the right pick in the first was CB (here is an entire article I wrote with the analysis of why CBs are more valuable round 1 picks than WRs if interested). But Horn and Surtain were off the board by 12 and I could not be more excited for the Smith pick.
Since 2010, there have been twelve top 10 WRs drafted:
- Three were misses (Kevin White, John Ross, and Justin Blackmon)
- One grades as a league average player (Tavon Austin) but has some dual-threat uniqueness
- The other seven average out to generate over 8 AV per season, putting them in “elite” range (includes players from Julio at the top end to Mike Williams as the lowest of the seven)
Why DeVonta is likely one of our best draft picks ever: If DeVonta is not a “miss” and performed at the average level of these seven, he would be in the 90th percentile of players and above all Eagles draft picks in the chart above except Fletcher Cox and Zach Ertz. If he is at the low-end (“only a Mike Williams”), he will still be the best draft pick since Goedert.
What could go wrong? The only concern on DeVonta is his weight — not his skill, measurables, route-running, level of competition, or intangibles. Could he fail? Sure. But the Eagles went BPA and history shows it is highly likely the Eagles just drafted one of their best players ever.
Round 2: Landon Dickerson, Center
I absolutely love Philly fans, but what originally got me into looking deeply at draft data this year were a couple of common views that are just not true based on history. The first was “you don’t draft CBs high” (mentioned above) and the second was “we can get a center late in the draft like Kelce and let Stoutland develop them.” Both of these just aren’t true. Yes, we got Kelce late but he is a really rare exception.
I posted on Twitter why I thought center was a priority and one to be drafted high (link here to see the whole thread) but will summarize here. Since 2005, 14 centers have been drafted that graded out as “Above Average” or better (above 60th percentile):
- Only 2 were drafted after the 3rd round (Kelce and Corey Linsley).
- Of the rest, 6 were drafted in the 1st round, 5 in the 2nd round, and 1 in the 3rd. The best centers like Elgton Jenkins, Alex Mack, Maurkice Pouncey, and Travis Frederick are drafted high.
Why Landon is our next franchise center: Landon was widely viewed as the consensus top center in the draft but fell because of his injury history. Historically, the top centers drafted have averaged 8 AV per season, again grading out in the 90th percentile as “elite” and up there with Fletcher, Ertz, Lane, and Kelce.
The second reason to love this pick is that Howie is right about investing in the lines. Football Outsiders has great data here that shows that DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average) declines by 108% when a QB is under pressure, resulting in 4.1 yards less per play. While Kelce was a rock last year, the Eagles OL was a mess overall and investing here will improve the entire offense.
What could go wrong? Easy, obviously his injury history. Between my deep dive on CBs and researching microdiscectomies for Caleb Farley and now Landon’s ACL, I feel like part data nerd, part orthopaedic. The best study I could find on recurrent ACL tears was this one which did show an elevated risk or re-tearing the same ACL, but it is only slightly higher than initial tears (12% re-tearing same ACL vs. 9% in the control group). Me, I will bet on the guy who went out in the national championship for the final ceremonial snaps a week after his ACL tear and famously showed off his cartwheels in Mac Jones’ interview.
Round 3: Milton Williams, DT
Historically, by the middle of the third round the chance of getting a league average player or better falls below 50% so picks from here on out are much harder to count on. The best drafting teams, like Seattle and Green Bay above, consistently find quality starters here though. And a lot points to the Eagles having a good shot at a quality starter here.
Why Milton Williams took advantage of a possible draft inefficiency: As the draft goes on, it is more and more important to draft based on inefficiencies in the draft — either relatively higher value positions, players with concerns that dropped them in the draft (small school, opting out and limited tape, injuries, etc.), or as with this pick, an under-drafted position in the draft.
The 2021 draft was not expected to be a great DT draft with not one selected in the first round. By the time the Eagles selected Williams, however, he was only the 4th DT taken (in comparison, in the past 10 drafts, over 7 DTs have been drafted by the time the 73rd pick arrives). This matched pre-draft rankings as Williams was generally slotted between the 3th and 5th best DT prospect.
Historically, the average value of the 3rd through 5th DT selected is the 50th percentile which would put Williams between Bennie Logan and Mychal Kendricks. Add to that that Williams was the 4th highest rated defensive lineman since 1987 on Relative Athletic Scores and it is reasonable to believe he will outperform that projection. He is a player I mocked a lot to the Eagles
What could go wrong? This really could have been a historically weak DT draft class and the perceived value was a mirage. Of all positions, however, DT has the 4th lowest year-to-year variance in total actual draft value measured by average AV per player drafted. This means that despite supposed “strong” and “weak” draft years, DTs show a fairly consistent amount of draft value.
Day 3 Picks:
This would lose all credibility if I forecasted sleeper after sleeper with the Eagles remaining 6 picks on day 3. It’s just not going to happen as the likelihood of getting quality starters here is just too low. The Eagles have been a relatively better team at later round picks, though (this is good, but it isn’t how you build a team when early rounds suffer from under-performance). Below shows all Eagles picks with the actual draft value vs. expected draft value — after the 150th pick, the Eagles start outperforming the league as the trend line increases above 0.
Based on history, you can expect 4 of the 6 day three Eagle picks to be “Poor” players and 2 picks to be “Average” or “Above Average”. This draft will likely be worse than normal given the fewer number of players that declared for the draft and instead returned to college for another year. Here’s my quick take:
Most likely to be an above average pro:
Round 5: Kenny Gainwell, RB
Gainwell is widely viewed as the Eagles steal pick and I agree. Two pieces of data:
- Gainwell was only the 9th RB taken as RB, similar to DT, was under-drafted in 2021. On average, over 14 RBs are taken by this point in the draft. This pushes value deeper into the draft.
- His pre-draft consensus was the 4th top RB prospect. Historically, this would equate to a 55th percentile player, on the border of average and above average and the Eagles best 5th round pick in the last 10 years by a good margin.
Round 6: Marlon Tuipulotu, DT
Another potential draft inefficiency as DTs were under-drafted and Marlon was projected as more of a run-stuffer. Bennie Logan is an interesting comparison here as somebody without the stat line but had very underrated value to the Eagles — defenses let up 50 fewer rushing yards when Bennie was on the field vs. not on the field. Marlon was the 14th DT selected and over 40% of DTs selected in that range are still average or better starters in the league — a very good hit rate for a round 6 selection.
Other day 3 picks:
Zech McPherson was the 18th CB taken in a heavily drafted CB class. Some had him as a top 100 pick and see him as a potential sleeper, but the data is stacked up so heavily against any CB taken here. I really want him to succeed. Avonte is a good comparison and probably likely best case here as a league average player. But I will be rooting for much more here and would not be surprised if he is our nickel corner moving forward.
Tarron Jackson is raw with the intangibles you absolutely want and comes from a less-drafted-from-school. Success rate on EDGEs at this point in the draft is very low and one of the worst positions to draft late historically, but Tarron showed extremely well at the Senior Bowl. He has the time to learn behind Graham, Sweat, and Barnett, but is exactly the type of player that could be undervalued in the draft. Like Milton Williams, Tarron is a player I mocked a ton to the Eagles. I’m excited to see his potential and think it is another place where Howie found value.
Both JaCoby Stevens and Patrick Johnson were drafted late and are going to switch positions in the pros. The upside here is the change in position and if they were both passed on by others due to fit.
What this draft really could look like
Again, DeVonta could be too small, Landon could get hurt, this could have been a uniquely bad DT class… but below is what this draft class could look like just based on the talent drafted, the draft inefficiencies that the Eagles hopefully took advantage of, and what history tells us about these types of picks.
Drafts take years to know how they actually turned out, but the Eagles went BPA, invested in the lines that they value, and appeared to have taken advantage of some draft inefficiencies that should yield benefit. Four or five picks should significantly outperform expected value in this draft, with two elite or near-elite players, and some of the best day 3 value picks the Eagles have made. This will go a long way towards rebuilding this roster.