Feeling a draft? A few chilling stats

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/05/2009 (6246 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to one of the greatest crapshoots in the entire sporting world!

Yessiree, watch and be amazed as eight CFL teams cover their eyes and spin a wheel in the annual Canadian Draft, then cross their fingers and pray the prospects ever amount to something!

Hurry, hurry, hurry and get your tickets now as history is both made and bungled and CFL squads solidify and condemn their futures!

 

Nobody asked me, but that’s how yours truly would write the intro to TSN’s coverage of Saturday’s Canadian Draft. Sexy? Hardly. But it is the cold, hard truth.

That said, for CFL diehards, just like their NFL counterparts, the draft proceedings are an absolute must, a signal the season is just on the horizon and it’s time to get cranked up by studying depth charts and analyzing the needs of their favourite ball clubs.

But after crunching some numbers and being provided some startling statistics by Winnipeg Blue Bombers director of player personnel John Murphy — courtesy of a third party that studied the draft for the club — we have some intriguing numbers to pass your way, namely:

"ö The success rate for draft picks is appallingly poor: In the six drafts between 2002 and 2007, CFL teams selected 310 players. Of those, only 33 (10.6 per cent) have become starters, 83 (26.8 per cent) have become backups, 10 (3.2 per cent) are in the NFL, 80 (25.8 per cent) are no longer in the CFL, and a whopping 104 (33.5 per cent) didn’t even dress for a regular-season game.

"ö During the same period (2002-07), CFL teams made 52 first-round picks. Of those, 13 (25 per cent) have become starters, including three offensive linemen selected just last spring, 17 (32.7 per cent) are backups, three (5.7 per cent) are in the NFL, and — get this — 19 (36.5 per cent) are no longer in the CFL or even played a down.

"ö Given that, teams who perennially trade their first-round draft picks — hello, Bombers — aren’t necessarily throwing away their future, but…

"ö Teams who perennially trade their first-round draft picks — hello, Bombers — aren’t likely to ever have in their lineup the CFL’s Most Outstanding Canadian (see accompanying chart, where 14 of the last 19 top Canadians in the CFL have been first-round picks).

"ö There is no clear-cut draft blueprint to make this whole thing work, other than hanging onto as many draft picks as possible. Case in point: The two teams who were in the Grey Cup last year, the Calgary Stampeders and Montreal Alouettes, have each had 28 more draft picks than the Bombers in this decade alone. Yes, given the numbers listed above, that means more room for error, but it also heightens the chance to hit a homer with a prospect, too.

"ö The third party that studied these numbers for the Bombers ranked the Stamps, Alouettes, B.C. Lions, Hamilton Tiger-Cats and now-defunct Ottawa Renegades above average in producing starters, with Calgary having the highest percentage.

"ö The Edmonton Eskimos, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Toronto Argonauts and Bombers were all ranked below average, with the Esks having the lowest percentage of producing starters.

"ö Even with all their high draft picks in this decade — Hamilton’s won-lost record is 15-57 in the last four years alone — the Ticats had 45 per cent of their picks from 2002-07 not even advance to playing a down in a CFL game.

And so, finally, what did Murphy and the Bombers learn after studying these mind-numbing stats?

First, the more homework a team does on a prospect, the less likely they’ll make a mistake. And so the Bombers are stressing a process that has each position coach rank and review players before passing along the info to Murphy, director of Canadian scouting Bob Dyce, and ultimately head coach Mike Kelly.

Is it a cure-all? No, but it sure as heck can’t hurt, either.

"It still boils down to this: You cannot blame the poor selections — or the players that were taken, or the person who made those selections — if your evaluating was not done properly," Murphy said. "Don’t say you got lost driving from here to wherever if your map was incorrect to begin with.

"Basically, (the CFL draft) is such a hit-and-miss deal, probably twice as much as the NFL. There’s so many more factors in the CFL draft than in the NFL draft or any draft. There’s no age barrier… there are guys who are 21 years old who are in this draft who have not played a down yet. And then there are guys who are 25 but still have two years of college eligibility left. So how do you judge who that 21-year-old is when he’s never played?

"It’s just so hard to bet on these guys coming out of the draft based on such a limited amount of variables and information. But the more homework you do on these guys BEFORE the draft, the better. Still, it really is a crapshoot."

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca