By the numbers: When should the Steelers target a tight end?

How does the scoring system work?

And so, after thinking about all of this I decided it would be a good idea to analyze every pick between 2010 and 2018 taken in rounds 2 through 5 by every team in the NFL draft. Good idea, right? It was far more difficult than I imagined. First of all, I had to come up with a way to rate players as objectively as possible. To do this I created a simple scale.

Score 0:  Bust. Washed out of the league. Fewer than 15 games played. Think Curtis Brown.
Score 1: Career backup. Special teams contributor. Think Landry Jones.
Score 2: “Unremarkable” starter. Replaceable after 2 to 3 years. Think Sean Davis.
Score 3: Starter for multiple seasons. Good player. Think Marcus Gilbert.
Score 4: Elite player. Multiple Pro Bowls/All-Pro. Think Le’Veon Bell.

Cool! I created a rating system but now the hard work began. I loaded every draft pick by every team into an excel document and began the arduous task of researching every player, their contribution, and ultimately assigning them a score. It took three days to complete.

By the time I was ready to start parsing data, I’d already learned quite a lot. For example, when people state that the draft is a crapshoot, they’re not kidding in the slightest. Proof? Take a look at the first two picks of the 5th round of the 2017 draft. With the first pick of the round, the Denver Broncos selected much-ballyhooed and decorated tight end from Michigan, Jake Butt.

Many had seen Butt as a first-round talent but for the tragic ACL injury, he’d suffered that year in the Wolverine’s Orange Bowl loss to Florida State. But this wasn’t the 1990’s.  Medical technology has rendered the ACL injury much less devastating than it had been in previous decades and pundits everywhere sang John Elway’s praises. He’d gotten a steal.

With the next pick in round 5, the San Francisco 49ers selected a much lesser-known tight end from Iowa named George Kittle. Maybe he’d develop. Nobody sang John Lynch’s praises.

What happened over the three years since that draft? Kittle is one of the two best tight ends in football. He’s the elite of the elite. Butt is coming off multiple ACL injuries that have occurred since being drafted and will never be the player the Broncos had hoped when they “stole” him in 2017.