Episodes
Friday May 01, 2015
Ted Thompson vs. Ron Wolf: Who Was Better on Draft Day?
Friday May 01, 2015
Friday May 01, 2015
On Monday's podcast, we compared every draft pick Ted Thompson and Ron Wolf ever made to try and see who was the superior General Manager on draft day. As promised, I have included our rankings of each pick and some other statistics regarding this comparison. As expected, it’s four days late.
Here’s how we compared picks: we assigned a simple 0-5 grade for every single pick made by the two GMs (96 for Wolf, 95 for Thompson).
0 - No Value - Didn't make team/short career1 - Little Value – Role player for short period of time2 - Marginal Player - somewhat productive3 - Good player4 - Star player for short period/solid player for long period5 - Star player for extended period
Now, we know this is a very limited way to rank players, but we just wanted to get a general sense of who has been more successful. Also, we solely ranked the players. We did not consider draft value (i.e. if you are a great player, you’re a 5 whether you were picked in the 1st round or 7th round). I am not going to justify each of these rankings here, but we did open them all up for discussion on the podcast. You should really consider listening while using this as a visual aid.
So let’s get to it:
Here is the final tally of each grade for each GM:
Finally, here are the 20 individual drafts ranked. Wolf may have had the better average per pick, but Ted turned in 2 of the top 3 drafts between the two. Pay little attention to the 2014 ranking. That surely will rise in the years to come.
So according to this quasi-statistical breakdown, Ron Wolf comes out slightly ahead of Ted Thompson. The most interesting thing to me was that by using this simple method, you can see the difference between the two styles. Ron Wolf swung for the fences with every pick. And while that led to him having more home run 5s and 4s, he also struck out far more often, with over 1/3rd of his draft picks being dead weight. Ted is looking to put the ball in play. He’s going to get value from every swing, but sometimes he'll pass up that chance at a home run for a sure RBI double. In the end, both methods are very successful.
One last note: last night, Ted surprised most of us by selecting hybrid CB/S Damarious Randall out of Arizona State with his first round draft choice (and Ron Wolf-tying 96th career pick). It will be interesting to see how he performs in whatever role the Packers decide fits best for him. Will he be successful? Only time will tell. But before you worry too much about Randall not being a good fit for the Packers, take another look at the 5s list up top. Just two of the twelve 5s picked by Thompson and Wolf were first round picks. In fact, there has been a 5 selected in every single round of the draft. So sit tight. Odds are the next great Packer will be selected sometime today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.
-Eric
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