Top 10 Highest Graded Seasons for College Centers in PFF Era

[CJD]

(04-05-2018, 10:17 AM)ochocincos Wrote: EDIT - And even if you took out the "nobodies", Ragnow (x2) and Daniels would still top the list. So the rest of the players on there don't matter.
What's the purpose of your criticism btw? Do you think Ragnow and Daniels aren't that good? Do you think Billy Price is a better prospect than either of them? If so, why?

The point of my criticism is you take a prospect who is a 2nd round player. You assign these stats to them and now people are saying we should take him in the first round.

That wreaks of panic.

These players are graded on a number of things. On field production is part of it, but far from the defining factor.

I'm happy that James Daniels and Ragnow are at the top of the list. I even have Daniels as my first round pick in my most recent mock draft. I would be thrilled with either player on my team. But upgrading a player from where he is likely worth the slot, in the second round, to a first round grade is just alarmism at its best. And I don't want this board to descend into that again. I remember back in 2012, we were convinced, absolutely convinced, that we would have no shot at all at drafting a guard in the first round because DeCastro and Zeitler were almost assuredly going to be top 15 picks. When DeCastro fell out of the top 10, I remember people SCREAMING to trade up to get him.

I just don't want to repeat this process with Center this year. We'll get a good Center prospect. It may be in the first round. It may be in the second round. But interior offensive linemen don't fly off the board typically. I think either Daniels or Price will go in the first. I expect Ragnow or the other one to be there at our 2nd round pick. I may be wrong, but I don't think we need to reach for Ragnow at 21 just for fear that he won't make it to our 2nd round pick.

I also have a bit of an ax to grind with PFF regarding their college player projections. They rank players every year based on production in college and their rankings often have extreme outliers compared to other drafting sites. And then those players almost never go where they expect them to go and follow the other more conventional sites better.

I also find it really really shady that PFF deletes their articles after 2 to 3 years. They're basically erasing their accountability on the grades they assign these players.

I have multiple pages from PFF bookmarked where they rave about various players, including rankings that don't match how the draft went. I just checked those bookmarks and they all lead to a blank page now:
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/04/16/cff-overview-lb-top-of-the-crop/
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/04/16/cff-overview-lb-buyer-beware/
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/05/06/10-biggest-draft-reaches/
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/05/07/10-biggest-draft-steals/

These are 4 links from their 2015 nfl draft coverage that had incriminating data, like regarding Dawson as a steal and several good players that were "reaches."
They're all gone now. I don't know if they deleted them because they have incorrect information or if they just happened to be automatically archived/deleted as soon as the players reach the point at which they could prove their projections right or wrong.

As an example of how their grades don't mean much on draft day, look at their board from last year:

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/draft-final-pff-draft-board-top-250-prospects-of-2017

They got Garrett right, but then Allen 2 (went at 17). Barnett 3, went 14. Foster 5, went 31. Dalvin Cook 9, Carl Lawson 14, Jordan Willis 15, Fournette 23, Lewis 24, Williams 26.

These rankings make sense if you look at only production, but once you consider projectibles, physical traits, injury history and the like, they start to make a lot less sense.

Or how about this:
https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/focus-draft-round-1

They had us drafting Trey Flowers in the first round in 2015. He went in the 4th round.

It's stuff like that that bothers me when people try to use PFF rankings as if they mean anything.