What Will Veach Do on Thursday Night?

The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner

The 2024 NFL Draft officially kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, April 24^th, at 6pm Arrowhead time. Today, we’re going to try to predict what Veach is going to do at the top of the draft, and we’re going to start at a seemingly unusual spot for this: the trade charts.

The trade charts include the classic Jimmy Johnson trade chart, the updated version (Rich Hill chart), and a variety of other charts that are geared more toward draft pick value rather than trade charts. I separate these charts into trade charts and player value charts.

Trade charts seek to identify what you need to offer another team in order to get them to trade with you. Player value charts look at the historical outcome of players picked at each spot in the draft and assign a number value based on that.

The specific chart I’m going to use in this analysis is the Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart, created by and for OverTheCap.com, and commonly shortened to the OTC chart. This is a player value chart that was calculated by using the amount of money a player earned in their second contract as a proxy for how much value they gave their drafted team during their rookie contract.

The idea is that a player who played very well during their rookie contract would earn a much larger second contract than a player who was mediocre during their rookie contract. Obviously there are going to be some exceptions, given late breakouts, injuries, etc., but the sample size is very large for this, so that sort of randomness is smoothed out.

What I want to do is look at how much value, based on the OTC chart, Veach has drafted for each position, plus value he has traded for veteran players (Frank Clark, Orlando Brown, etc.). Using that, plus some other things he has seemed to target, I’ll try to predict who I think he will pick on Thursday night.