Unfair or not, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots have a reputation for struggling with their second round draft picks. On Friday, New England parted ways with Duke Dawson before he ever played a regular season snap. The Patriots have their fair share of second round draft misses, but are they really worse than the league average? Let’s take a dive and see what the numbers tell us.
New England Patriots Second Round Draft History
Hit/Miss Rate
The New England Patriots second dynasty unofficially began in 2010, so let’s start with draft class. Since the turn of the decade, New England has drafted Rob Gronkowski, Jamie Collins, Brandon Spikes, Shane Vereen, Jermaine Cunningham, Aaron Dobson, Jordan Richards, Tavon Wilson, Jimmy Garoppolo, Ras-I Dowling, Cyrus Jones, and the aforementioned Dawson in the second round. Three of those picks, Gronkowski, Collins, and Vereen, were everything the Patriots could have hoped for. Spikes was unspectacular but still worth the second-round selection, while Garoppolo was a great pick who never had the chance to start.
Overall, the Patriots hit on five of their 12 selections, including a franchise-altering pick in Gronkowski. This isn’t perfect by any means, but it compares well to league-wide hit rate. Back in 2015, SB Nation’s Arrowhead Pride ran a study determining the average draft hit rate by position and round.
According to Arrowhead Pride’s calculations, the Patriots should have found 5.0 starters based on the draft capital invested. This is exactly what they got if you count Garoppolo, so this implies the Patriots are getting the success you’d expect out of their draft picks. However, it is worth pointing out that there are a few flaws in this study.
For one, the analysis only breaks down if a player is a “hit” or a miss, and doesn’t actually reflect how good those hits were. Rob Gronkowski obviously brought more value to the Patriots than Brandon Spikes, yet they’re both counted the same using this system. Additionally, Arrowhead Pride defines a hit as a player who started in at least half of their career games. This also isn’t perfect, as Bill Belichick is notorious for rotating players on and off of the field. Case in point: Shane Vereen didn’t start in Super Bowl 49, but he was one of biggest contributors to New England’s 10-point comeback.
Using Approximate Value
Fortunately, there is a better way to assess Belichick’s second-round drafting ability. Pro Football Reference created a statistic called Approximate Value, which tries to put a numerical value on a player’s performance.
Since 2010, 280 second-round players have combined to play 14,445 games and provided 5,206 points in Approximate Value. This means that the average second-round pick is expected to contribute .36 points of Approximate Value on a per-game basis.
Since 2010, New England’s second round draft picks have played a combined 400 games with the Patriots while compiling 180 points in Approximate Value. This means that, on a per-game basis, the Patriots got 0.45 points of Approximate Value from their second-round picks. Even if you remove Gronkowski from the equation, you’d still get .34 AV/game, which is a negligible difference from the league average rate.
No matter what the narratives say, Bill Belichick actually knows what he’s doing. The Patriots hit on exactly as many second-round picks as they should, and those second-round picks play better than the average second-round pick. This doesn’t even take into account that the Patriots typically pick at the end of the second round since they win so often. They have worse draft capital than just about anyone else and still manage to get good value for their picks.
Belichick has his fair share of misses, but so does everyone else. The NFL Draft is an inexact science and it’s impossible to get every pick right. Even with the misfires, Bill Belichick still remains one of the best talent evaluators in the league.
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