A fairly interesting take on trying to objectively gauge the value of a signed 2017 free agent player by making a projection based on past performance while also factoring in his 2017 FA contract.
A couple of Reese's signings, Fluker and Marshall rate highly. The one rated low, Ellison, is explained by the "metric" they developed not properly accounting for the value of a blocking tight end.
| You can almost set your watch by the annual shock over major NFL contracts. With the salary cap increasing by more than $10 million for the fourth consecutive season, we have seen yet another round of eye-popping or record-setting deals. |
| Once again, we're using Pro Football Reference's Approximate Value statistic as our measure of player quality. As you might expect from a stat that seeks to quantify a wide range of different positions and skillsets across decades of NFL play and squash it down into a single number, it's not without its issues. It can't really differentiate between a great blocking tight end and a bad receiving tight end ... |
Take Dont'a Hightower, for example. Hightower's new contract with New England is for four years and $35.5 million, or $8.875 million per season. That's $8.1 million more than the veteran's minimum of $775,000, so he needs to generate $8.1 million worth of value above replacement each season for his new deal to be worth it.
Linebacker is generally one of the cheaper positions to fill. Looking at veteran contracts over the past three seasons and adjusting for the expanding salary cap, we can determine that an average veteran linebacker costs about $1.13 million per point of AV added (in 2017 cap dollars). Now, we can estimate Hightower's needed AV to justify his contract:
Needed Future AV = 3.36 + ($8.1 million)/($1.13 million) = 10.53
To project Hightower's performance for future years, we used a regression that looked at his performance over the last three years and his age. The regression accounts for potential nonlinearities in the relationship. From this projection, we get Age-Adjusted Value, our estimate of the value that a contract either creates or destroys. Don’t'a Hightower's Age-Adjusted Value of plus-0.03 projects him to produce 0.03 AV more per season than he needs to in order to justify his contract. |
I don't know how to link the data tables, so you'll have to go to the link below to see the details.
Hoping FO's metric is correct relative to Marshall and Fluker.
FO - 2017 Free Agency Cost-Benefit Analysis Link - (
New Window )
On the flip side, it projects Terrance Williams re-signing with Dallas to be the best WR move at 1.04.
Haha I started reading it and staved off a seizure by skipping past it. I got about 15 words in before my brain said enough.