The Weighting Game - A Filtered Jets Draft Board

At this time of year, one of the biggest challenges for bloggers and draft fanatics is to attempt to cut through the rhetoric and figure out draft tendencies.

It's not easy to spot patterns and even when you think you're onto something, you have to remember that some teams will weight certain factors more heavily than others. Also, when accounting for the net effect of these factors, you must then apply them to your overall assessment of the player.

Nevertheless, attempting to identify such patterns is a potentially helpful exercise that, if we revisit it after the draft and repeat the process with more focused intent, could lead us to formulate some more accurate theories. Also, it gives us something else interesting to consider.

With that in mind, looking at the last couple of draft classes for the Jets, some patterns are starting to emerge. There seem to be three categories, the results of which most of the selections had in common.

Length

Not every draft choice Maccagnan has made has had good length, but it does seem to be a trait that most of the players he's brought in via the draft or free agency seem to share. Both his first round picks had good length and the trend last year was moving towards targeting that type of player.

It seemed to be less of a priority in 2015, but last year all of the position players drafted and most of the undrafted rookies had better than average length with Jordan Jenkins and Charone Peake in particular close to the top of their class.

The thing about length is that while it's useful for linemen in the trenches, can benefit the catch radius of a receiver and enhances range in coverage, it doesn't benefit all players equally. For a running back, for example, you might be better off without length if you want a low center of gravity and a powerful body and for quarterbacks it's practically irrelevant. While we might ignore it for certain types of player in the future, we'll include it in our analysis for all players here.

Off-field Issues

It's certainly not unprecedented for a general manager early on in his tenure to target high-character players to build his team around. That seems to have been the case for Maccagnan, who had the added motivation of wanting to change the culture after the lack of accountability towards the end of the Rex Ryan era.

Ultimately, though, will he start to take a few chances on players perceived as an off-field risk? One reason why he might is because the roster is perceived as lacking in talent. So, they might feel they can't afford to pass on talented players, regardless of any red flags. Another situation might be that once the culture is in order and you feel confident the support structure is in place to handle any volatile personalities, you could be more comfortable about being able to get the best out of a player.

After last year, the former seems more likely and the Jets have targeted a few guys with issues such as Austin Seferian-Jenkins and Mike Pennel. They're yet to surrender significant assets in doing so though.

Eric Mangini is a good example of someone who initially seemed to exclusively target high-character individuals but then when the team started to add talent, they softened their stance somewhat. It's unclear as to whether Mangini, Mike Tannenbaum or even Woody Johnson was behind that though.

Another issue with off-field issues is that there are varying degrees of "issue" arising. A one-off weed suspension is not going to turn you off anywhere near as much as a serious domestic violence charge or sexual assault allegation, especially in Maccagnan's case given that his wife is involved in an anti-domestic violence campaign.

Despite that fact, for the purposes of this analysis, I have treated off-field issues as a binary issues. Either a player has them or doesn't.

I've treated things like drugs test failures or arrests as relevant enough to move the needle but ignored matters such as Christian McCaffery sitting out his bowl game or Leonard Fournette getting into a minor pre-game shoving match with an opposing team's official.

I would also point out that even unfounded allegations would still count as an off-field issue, because the concern would currently still be there even though the outcome is uncertain. Therefore some of the guys listed may not even be guilty, but - as with La'el Collins a few years ago - the issue still exists at the time of the draft and will have a material effect on some boards.

Player Age

The last area where the Jets seem to be specifically targeting players - and we know this because they alluded to it after last year's draft - is in terms of younger prospects.

Leonard Williams, a third-year pro coming off his first pro bowl appearance, is still only 22. Last year's top three picks were all 21 when drafted and undrafted free agent Jalin Marshall is still only 21.

The team definitely sees value in drafting younger prospects, so that they are still in their prime if you sign them to an extension at the end of their rookie deal.

Again, this has been an emerging trend in the Mike Maccagnan era and one it will be interesting to see if they continue to follow moving forwards.

Note: I was unable to find an accurate date of birth for Ryan Ramczyk or Forrest Lamp, but I believe 22-23 would be accurate, so I've assumed 22 in each case.

The Board

I did the research for a bunch of guys who have been talked about as possible high picks that could be options for the Jets at 6 or 39 - or somewhere in between in a trade up/down scenario.

In the following image, green indicates a desirable quality for the Jets (according to our hypothesis), while red means a negative or potential red flag.

I've then sorted the players broadly into the order in which the listed players would appear to most closely follow the Jets' requirements based on these categories. At the moment, this weights all three categories equally, which may not reflect reality perfectly. If we learn anything from reconsidering this after the draft and then next year with a larger sample, perhaps we'll eventually be able to weight these factors accordingly.

So, that's the board. But what does it tell us?

As you can see, David Njoku is top of the list. Now, that doesn't mean he's #1 on their board. However, what it does mean is that if they place importance on these matters as we assume they do, then he has a higher chance of being selected than a similarly rated player without those qualities. Ultimately, they might value him higher than other teams who place a lower importance on such issues.

Interesting, Jamal Adams is #2 and, unlike Njoku, he would be a realistic target with the 6th pick, should he fall that far. This seems to line up with recent reports that the Jets really like him.

At the bottom end of the board, you see the players who lack at least one of the three qualities the Jets seemed to be looking for, although that doesn't necessarily rule them out from consideration, because there have been exceptions to these rules. They're perhaps more likely to deviate with the lower picks though.

Certainly the last few guys on the board would not seem to meet the criteria that they usually seem to look for in a high pick. To select any of those, unless they fell to a point at which their potential value outweighed any concerns, would represent a departure from the recent strategy.

Of course, after last year, maybe the Jets will have placed different levels of importance onto certain areas. That, in itself, would be a revelation if it enabled us to identify where their thinking has changed and how that could allow us to project their targets in future.

So, while the predictive value of this board might be limited, it might give us some small clues about what to expect, either this weekend or down the road.

Let us know your own thoughts on these issues and what the analysis tells us in the comments.