Ryan Poles Doesn't Understand Positional Value At All And It's Going to Be the Death of Me

 

The always-great Fitzgerald over at Over The Cap had a really great article on the success rates teams have on finding top players at each position using top-tier draft picks vs top-tier cap spending. 

TL;DR - there are some positions that you can consistently expect to find a top player for readily available in free agency (for example, linebacker), and some for which you will never, ever find one available (IE-DL [abbreviations are fun! So are parentheticals!]). So which is which?

So when we look at positions of need over the last two years (so ignoring QB and WR), we see that far and away defensive lineman are found in the draft - Edge players around 75% of the time, and interior defensive lineman like 90%. If you need them (we do) you draft them. On the other hand, the most freely available top players are in the positions of Center, Tight End, and Safety, and to a lesser extend LT. Alright, no need to spend draft capital there - they're easily available any free agency. Now let's check our top draft picks—

Oh. Oh no.

Wait what is Fitzgerald saying here—

Ultimately if you draft the proper positions and then use the money you have to go and buy the top players at the available positions you should create a far superior team to the one drafting the wrong positions and then overpaying for lower quality free agents at the more expensive positions.

Well "overpaying for lower quality free agents at the more expensive positions" just means EDGE and interior DL, right? I'll check our top cap spending but I don't thi—

Ah. 3 of our top 5 cap hits were aquisitions on the DL.

Well

Alright then