Sovic Post: Most Valuable Players

So as a follow-up to yesterday's Projected Points rankings, I realized it'd be relatively easy to input the amounts we paid for each player and take a look at who got the most bang for their bucks during the draft. With that in mind, I divided each of our starting players' projections by their cost to find out who were the most valuable draftees, i.e. who was projected to score the most points per dollar. Of course at the top of the rankings were a bunch of quarterbacks and defenses who went for $1 each, so to avoid just publishing a list of those people I set a minimum cost of $5. Here were the top most valuable draftees at each position, along with their projected points per dollar (pppd) and owner.

QB

1) Freeman 21.86 (Beb)

2) Flacco 20.96 (xAdam)

3) Schaub 15.46 (Beb)

4) Cutler 15.22 (Sovic)

5) Roethlisberger 14.69 (Larson)

6) Rivers 11.45 (Sovic)

7) Romo 10.63 (Trey)

8) E Manning 9.99 (Hollywood)

9) Ryan 9.86 (Whiteford)

10) P Manning 9.77 (Schank)

11) Vick 8.01 (Hollywood)

12) Griffin III 7.96 (Forshay)

Amongst quarterbacks, the value list is mostly composed of those guys that we're probably all targeting as our OP QBs, though Eli and Matt Ryan stick out as guys who are definite QB1s with value. It's also worth noting that Matthew Stafford, who went for $51, was 13th on the list. He was definitely the most valuable of the "big money" guys. You'll notice that Hollywood and I are the only folks with both of our starting QBs on the list. Considering that I had toyed with the idea of spending big on two top-flight QBs (as Will did), it'll be interesting to see as the season goes on how Billy and I fare as compared to Will.

RB

1) K Smith 32.46 (Hollywood)

2) S Ridley 23.96 (Schank)

3) J Stewart 23.77 (Forshay)

4) Ingram 20.77 (Beb)

5) Green-Ellis 10.95 (Sovic)

6) Sproles 10.23 (Hollywood)

7) R Bush 10.05 (Shoaf)

8) Gore 8.73 (Dois)

9) Turner 8.53 (xAdam)

10) S Jackson 8.08 (Dekker)

11) A Bradshaw 7.75 (Larson)

12) F Jackson 6.87 (Whiteford)

There's a definite template for the most valuable running backs, which features mostly guys with defined lead roles in unexciting offenses (Smith, Ridley, Green-Ellis, Bush, Gore, Turner, S-Jax, F-Jax). These are high-floor, low-ceiling guys. With the RB field seemingly so thin, there is obviously a premium on the elite rushers, so it's no surprise that Foster, Forte, Rice, and McCoy had the lowest pppd (in that order).

WR

1) S Johnson 35.08 (Shoaf)

2) Maclin 25.26 (xAdam)

3) D Moore 24.88 (Trey)

4) D Jackson 24.21 (Dekker)

5) A Brown 24.2 (Dekker)

6) P Garcon 22.4 (Sovic)

7) T Smith 21.64 (Hollywood)

8) D Bowe 21 (Schank)

9) Harvin 18.83 (Whiteford)

10) Decker 15.96 (Shoaf)

11) Colston 15.44 (Forshay)

12) Austin 13.28 (Schank)

Wide receivers dominated the pppd rankings, further underscoring the notion that there is plenty of wide receiver talent out there to be had this year. Shoaf, Dekker, and Schank stand out as owners who were able to take advantage of that abundance of talent to get some good value.

TE

1) A Hernandez 25.8 (Forshay)

2) Daniels 24.3 (Beb)

3) F Davis 23.53 (Sovic)

4) V Davis 21.64 (Schank)

5) Gates 16.3 (xAdam)

6) Finley 13.53 (Larson)

As the draft wore on on Wednesday night, Bardey and I kept asking each other if Aaron Hernandez was still on the board, surprised that he hadn't gone yet. I already had a TE and Bardey was out of money, but there were still nine more of you out there that should have bid Forshay up on Hernandez, who went for $6. Compare that to Graham ($40) and Gronkowski ($41), who went for far more and could end up with similar numbers. Nice steal, Forshay.

Finally, I picked out the best values from each tier of cost, as shown below:

Best $5-9: Steve Johnson

Best $10-14: Josh Freeman

Best $15-19: Ben Roethlisberger

Best $20-24: Philip Rivers

Best $25-29: Tony Romo

Best $30-34: Michael Vick

Best $35-39: Wes Welker 

Best $40-44: Jimmy Graham

Best $45-49: Maurice Jones-Drew

Best $50+: Matthew Stafford 

If you look over the list, you'll see that Hollywood, Schank and I have the most appearances (five players each), while Trey (two) and Dois (one) have the least. It'll be interesting to re-visit this list later in the season and see if that translates to actual success. To that end, Willy, I'd appreciate it if you'd post this on the uberblog (if that's still a thing) to make it easier to refer back to.