Why a geek should never be allowed to be GM ( Ode to P Emery)

Analytics group calls Raiders trading Khalil Mack the best move of the year
Posted by Michael David Smith on March 18, 2019, 4:36 PM EDT
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The Raiders’ decision to trade away Khalil Mack was widely panned by football fans and the media. But not everyone hated the move.

In fact, in the sports analytics world, the Raiders were given credit for a smart decision. The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at MIT honored the Raiders with the Best Transaction award, calling it the single best move that any franchise made, in any sport, over the last year.

Why the disconnect between the analytics people and everyone else? Analytics generally favors completely tearing teams down before rebuilding, rather than trying to make patchwork fixes on a bad team. The Raiders were 6-10 with Mack in 2017 and may have needed to get worse (as they did, falling to 4-12 in 2018) before they got better. Analytics also says there’s a lot of value in draft picks, and the Raiders got a big haul of draft picks in the deal, with two first-round picks, a third-round pick and a sixth-round pick going to the Raiders in exchange for Mack and a second-round pick. And analytics generally says teams in sports with salary caps should avoid paying out huge contracts. Mack was already due a big salary last year and was demanding a much bigger contract. The Raiders saved a lot of cap space with the move.

Ultimately, the Mack trade will not be judged on Year One, but on what happens in the years to come: How well Mack plays for the Bears, how well the Bears recover from those lost draft picks and the big piece of their salary cap Mack is taking up, and how well the Raiders use those picks and that cap space. The Sloan award suggests the analytics community believes that in the end, the Raiders will come out on top.

If mayock was gm of the Raiders last year does he trade Mack/cooper?

I think bears got more than their money worth between cap space and draft capital lost. Salary part hurts but the draft picks used don’t matter to me we weren’t going to find another Mack in the draft. If we would have got another Floyd with the pick I don’t see fans being happy with that

Have we not traveled this road enough?

It was a great move for the Raiders for all the reasons listed above, but that does not mean it was a bad move for the Bears. Ideally both teams "win" in every trade.

Sidenote: "Bad Moves Bears" actually sounds like a great FF team name. Might have to take it this season.

^^^^^ @dabears70 ^^^^^

Jamais Vu said:

Have we not traveled this road enough?

It was a great move for the Raiders for all the reasons listed above, but that does not mean it was a bad move for the Bears. Ideally both teams "win" in every trade.

Sidenote: "Bad Moves Bears" actually sounds like a great FF team name. Might have to take it this season.

^^^^^ @dabears70 ^^^^^

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My bad. I ignored all the fresh Bears news to post a new article about an old Bears topic. I will try to stick to the more relevant, women beaters the Bears did not sign and failed addicts swirling the toilet drain of football type posts in the future.

It was a win/win trade for both sides. Mack is not only dominant, he makes everyone else on defense better. You can't put a draft pick value on that. Raiders are doing the right thing to get real good

iueyedoc said:

My bad. I ignored all the fresh Bears news to post a new article about an old Bears topic. I will try to stick to the more relevant, women beaters the Bears did not sign and failed addicts swirling the toilet drain of football type posts in the future.

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Jeepers.

I was just commenting on the article and spitballing new FF team names. Did not mean to question your entire posting habits.

Jamais Vu said:

Have we not traveled this road enough?

It was a great move for the Raiders for all the reasons listed above, but that does not mean it was a bad move for the Bears. Ideally both teams "win" in every trade.

Sidenote: "Bad Moves Bears" actually sounds like a great FF team name. Might have to take it this season.

^^^^^ @dabears70 ^^^^^

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That and 'Analytics also says there’s a lot of value in draft picks'. Really? A couple of late ones vs a high 2 plus potential DPOY. There's stats and then there's some misguided statisticians. I think this works for both teams because the Raiders looked to be years away and needs those picks but they got taken because they didn't try to make this move until just before the season. Besides the issue of rosters being settled and other considerations, time was compressed and the number of team with enough remaining cap space to entertain a trade was limited. Had They offered him for trade on or before FA opened, they could have done much better. That alone say that there was poor planning and by association, not a great deal for the Raiders.

iueyedoc said:

My bad. I ignored all the fresh Bears news to post a new article about an old Bears topic. I will try to stick to the more relevant, women beaters the Bears did not sign and failed addicts swirling the toilet drain of football type posts in the future.

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Good. Dont let it happen again

Draft picks are useless unless you nail them. Look at the Pats and Packers. Both have great QB's and usually have close to the bottom draft picks for the past decade. Why are the Pats winning a SB in '18 and the Packers fall off to towards last in the division is a direct correlation to talent evaluation. Coaching does play a big part, but finding talent that fits the coaches is paramount. Maybe Mayock can get Gruden the exact talent he's looking for and the Mack/Cooper trades pay off for them in the future.

Bearly said:

That and 'Analytics also says there’s a lot of value in draft picks'. Really? A couple of late ones vs a high 2 plus potential DPOY. There's stats and then there's some misguided statisticians. I think this works for both teams because the Raiders looked to be years away and needs those picks but they got taken because they didn't try to make this move until just before the season. Besides the issue of rosters being settled and other considerations, time was compressed and the number of team with enough remaining cap space to entertain a trade was limited. Had They offered him for trade on or before FA opened, they could have done much better. That alone say that there was poor planning and by association, not a great deal for the Raiders.

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Can you imagine if the Bears had traded 3x Probowl 2xAll Pro Urlacher after the 4-12 2002 season like the Raiders did with 3x Pro Bowl 2xAll Pro Mack? Exchanging Urlacher for a late 1st rnd pick and a swap of picks that likely will garner 10-15 earlier spots next season would have been akin to the Cubs Lou Brock trade. Saying this trade was good for both teams is coke bottle glasses myopic.

LMAO, I first read geek as greek.

It's an unspoken given that greeks should never be a GM.

iueyedoc said:

It's an unspoken given that greeks should never be a GM.

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Jimmy The Greek would have made an excellent GM. He probably wouldn't have made that horrendous trade for Mack.

blinddeafmute said:

Jimmy The Greek would have made an excellent GM. He probably wouldn't have made that horrendous trade for Mack.

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Of course he wouldn't have. He was well aware of the superior athletic breeding stock of NFL players of color.

I thought the Raiders were forced to move Mack because the owner didn't have enough 'liquidity' to pay Mack a large upfront bonus. So I'm not sure how it was a 'decision', as they had no choice but to get rid of Mack.

There is no way you can wrap analytics around. There is no way to calculate how many wins players will bring or what effect it has in other areas of the franchise.

And in the end does it matter the exact numerical value?

We don’t know the exact reasons why the raiders traded Mack,

We sort of know the odds of a 1st rounder performing like Mack. But there are way too many unknown variables too calculate.

If both teams are happy nothing else really matters.

modo said:

We sort of know the odds of a 1st rounder performing like Mack. But there are way too many unknown variables too calculate.

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The underlying problem with this type of 'analytic' is not understanding how the NFL draft works. Even today, some analytic articles refer to Jimmy Johnson's "draft value chart", which is completely outdated with the advent of free agency, salary cap, etc. but was also not correct to begin with.

Analytic sites like FootballOutsiders overvalue draft picks because they lump all 1st round picks together and have a clear round-by-round hierarchical value. This is wrong. There are three values in the draft....elite value of the first 3-7 picks of premium players, with the actual number being dependent on that particular draft class...good value of picks 7-65, basically the rest of the 1st round into round 3...and then everything else.

For the Raiders to get compensatory value for Mack, at least one of those draft picks have to be "elite value", and because the Bears improved with Mack, those draft choices are going to be in the middle-to-end of the round.

Rory Sparrow said:

The underlying problem with this type of 'analytic' is not understanding how the NFL draft works. Even today, some analytic articles refer to Jimmy Johnson's "draft value chart", which is completely outdated with the advent of free agency, salary cap, etc. but was also not correct to begin with.

Analytic sites like FootballOutsiders overvalue draft picks because they lump all 1st round picks together and have a clear round-by-round hierarchical value. This is wrong. There are three values in the draft....elite value of the first 3-7 picks of premium players, with the actual number being dependent on that particular draft class...good value of picks 7-65, basically the rest of the 1st round into round 3...and then everything else.

For the Raiders to get compensatory value for Mack, at least one of those draft picks have to be "elite value", and because the Bears improved with Mack, those draft choices are going to be in the middle-to-end of the round.

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The easiest thing to calculate this trade is direct value received vs direct value given. There are a lot more considerations but no one knows what "butterfly effect" those things had because they aren't public.

Right now there is no way to directly calculate it because we don't know how the players that the Raiders will draft will perform. So realistically no way to judge. Also, what if the Raiders trade up with those draft picks.....it still can't be a one for one calculation because the Raiders are then using their own draft capital. What if they trade down? Then you have to look at those players stats vs replacement players stats vs Mack.........it gets stupid after a while.

As you pointed out you could use the draft point chart but it is outdated and that could have been flawed to begin with.

Its kind of funny that when Rickey Henderson stole 130 bases, no one talked about how he was caught stealing 42 times.

I don't know if the draft value charts agree with this article, we will have to see where oakland and chicago finish next year to finish the math:

The Bears gave up the 24th overall (740 draft points).
If you extrapolate this to next year, the formula is this:

1480 points (2 24th overall) - 540 points (36th overall) + 155 points (88th and 216th overall) = 1095 total points.

1095 points is the 14th overall selection in the draft. Khalil Mack got traded for a mid 1st round draft pick.