How to use the data

Career Value (AV):

Approximate Value (AV) was created by PFR's founder Doug Drinen and is a measure of how effective offensive players are at generating points or defensive players are at preventing scoring. AV, similar to baseball's WAR or basketball's PER metrics, puts a single value on a player's season and is created for all positions. AV is highly correlated to EPA but, unlike EPA which is only directly available for QBs, RBs, WRs, and TEs, AV is created for all positions, allowing valuation of players across positions.
To put some context on the actual AV number, here are some examples and player classifications:

• 10+: Players with AVs above 10 are the league's best players and include players like Mahomes (19 AV in 2022), Micah Parsons (19), Justin Jefferson (15) and on the Eagles Hurts (20), Lane Johnson (15), Haason Reddick (15)
• 6-9: Solid starters like TJ Edwards (8) or above average players that may have missed some playig time like CJ Gardner-Johnson (5) and Dallas Goedert (7)
• 4-5: Average starters like Marcus Epps (5), Quez Watkins (4)
• 3 or below: Depth or part-time players and specialists like Boston Scott (2) and Zach Pascal (2) or starters that missed significant playing time like Avonte Maddox (3)

More detail can be found on PFR's website here: https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/approximate-value/

AV per Year:

Since AV accumulates each season, players that have been in the league longer will have higher AVs. Calculating a value per season (AV per year) provides a way to compare players years.

Relative AV:

The percentage of the total AV generated by a player in the draft class. Like AV per Year above, Relative AV gives another way to compare players across year. The one difference is Relative AV gives credit for career length where AV per Year only reflects , which
Example: Jason Kelce has generated 92 AV out of 4,459 total AV generated by the 2011 draft class, giving Kelce a Relative AV of 2.063 (calculated by 92/4459) and an AV per Year of 7.92. Matt Judon, drafted in 2016, has almost the exact AV per Year as Kelce at 7.86 but a Relative AV of only 1.377 as he has generated half the career AV as Kelce. Judon is a good player, but nowhere near the value as Kelce and this is reflected in Relative AV.

Player Value %:

The percentile rank of a player based on their Relative AV compared against all other players in their draft year. A player with a percentile of 80% means they have generated more value than 80% of the players in their draft class.

Position Value %:

The percentile rank of a player based on their Relative AV compared against all other players that play their position. A player with a percentile of 80% means they have generated more value than 80% of other players at their position. This helps compare players across positions given that certain positions (QB specifically) will naturally generate more AV.

Value vs Expected:

An expected value has been calculated for each pick slot using historical draft data. For example, pick 1 in the first round has an expected 65.29 player percentile, pick 2 is 64.57, and so on through the draft until pick until pick 262 with an expected value percentile of 4.98. The Value vs. Expected field is the just the drafted player's actual Player Value % - the expected value at their draft slot. Where Relative AV and Player/Position Value Percentiles give a measure of a player's actual value regardless of draft spot, Value vs. Expected measures draft efficiency or productivity.
Example: In 2022, Kayvon Thibodeaux was taken at pick 5 and generated 7AV in his rookie season, good for a 63% percentile ranking. Jamaree Salyer was taken at pick 195 by the Chargers and generated the same value (7AV). But when you consider the draft location for each, Jamaree was 51.24% above expected value in the 6th round where the majority of players never make any impact, while Thibodeaux - a solid pick - is 0.25% below expected value.

Class:

Groups players by their Player Value % into classifications. "Elite players" are the top 15% of players in the league (percentiles of 85 or above), "Above Average" are between 60-85, "League Average" are between 40-60, and "Poor" are below 40 percentile players.

Position # Drafted:

Ranks players by their position order drafted. The first CB taken will be CB1 or position #1, the second CB taken would be CB2 or position #2, and so on.

Position Value Rank:

Ranks the players by the value they generated against all others drafted at their position. Used with Position # Drafted above this shows what the draft order was vs. should have been.
Example:In 2022 CB Tariq Woolen had a "Position # Drafted" of 33 as the the 33rd DB taken at pick 153 but has a "Position Value Rank" of 2, trailing only Sauce Gardner in rookie value.

Draft Capital:

Used in the Teams page to reflect how a team invest their draft resources, I use Ben Baldwin's draft capital model (link here) based on surplus value which indexes the 1st pick to a value of 100.

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Interpreting the charts

Team Draft Performance:

On the Team Drafts page, this chart shows both a team's draft value and efficiency.

• League Average Draft Value (red dashed line): The average team draft capital and value from each year's draft
• Expected Draft Value (grey line): The selected team's draft capital based on how many picks they have and where the picks are. For each, the expected value to be received is used to total up to this line. If this line is above the red line, the team has more draft capital than the average team; if lower, the team has less draft capital than the average team
• Actual Draft Value (blue bars): The actual draft value the team attained in the draft. If the blue bar is above the team's grey line, they outperformed their expected value; if below they underperformed. If the blue bars are above the red line, the team drafted more value than the league average team; below, they drafted less value than the league average.

In the Eagles example chart above, the following takeaways are made:

• The Eagles have consistently had less draft capital than the average team (their expected value grey line is below the red line in all years). This is for two reasons: first, they have had good records over this period and have had lower draft picks and second, the Eagles traded significant draft capital away both for players (Slay, Avery, Minshew, and many others) and to move up to draft Wentz in 2016 (two 1sts, a 2nd, a 3rd, and a 4th)
• 2020 and 2021 were very good years where the Eagles both exceeded their own expected value but also the average team's draft value
• 2017 and 2019 were poor draft years
• The Eagles 2022 appears to be a poor draft but no draft pick played significant snaps. Year 1 value metrics are highly affected by playing time and it is best to value a draft after a couple of years

Team Positional Spend:

On the Team Drafts page, this positions teams into quadrants on how they use their draft capital. The x-axis shows defense vs. offense with teams that draft chart groups draft capital between oprovides a simplified view of .