Despite the lack of games, this is a fun time of the year to be a football fan.  The offseason is full of possibilities; every trade made is for the betterment of the team, all Free Agents will work out, and there's no chance of drafting a bust.  Right now the Front Offices around the league can do no wrong.

Of course, we know that's not how it will work out once the games are played, but being fans we're sure that the mistakes will all happen to other guys.  As a Panthers fan, the cuts were all necessary, we won't miss Peppers (and he won't help the Bears in the NFC North), and every pencilled-in starter in 2010 will make you wonder why we didn't boot all those other players earlier.

And, of course, the draft is looming.  What fun!

This is where we all get to find out who our future stars are.  There are no Eric Sheltons yet, every player we're considering is either a day one starter or a potential stud on Special Teams.  Remember Captain Munnerlyn?  That's the benchmark for us.

So of course, draft sites abound on the net.  Each one promises that their brand of analysis is superior, they alone know what teams really want and need, and that their player rankings reign supreme across the web.

And of course, all of them offer mock drafts that seem so authoritative you wonder why the league even bothers with the real event.  And then the real event finally comes around and makes fools of all the prognosticators.  It happens every year.

Because face it, no one really knows what the GMs around the league will do.  Its easier to understand what women really want than it is to predict Al Davis' next move.  No one knows what trades will happen.  And when you combine an unexpected move with shifting needs, well it's understandable if people consider a 30% prediction rate a success for the first round.

But predict they do!  And not only do they predict, the analyze and research and invest hours in playing the armchair GM.  Which, as appealing as it sounds, is beyond my skill.  

I like to think that I'm good at research, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the time to watch a hundred players on YouTube over and over again to try and figure out who's more likely to contribute on Sundays.  That doesn't mean I'm not willing to take advantage of other people's work though.  And that's what this series is all about.

Today's entry is on the "Big Boards" out there.  Every other Draft Site purports to know which players are NFL-ready, and which are more ready than others.  

To do the analysis, I started with Google.  I did a search, and chose the most reputable looking sites I could find that offered top 100 player lists.  Being cheap, I also didn't bother with any of the pay sites.  Based on the reviews I've read, all these pay sites get you is another place to look at the same information that's already out there, tied up in the opinion of someone who isn't any better than the rest at predicting who's going to do what.

So for this exercise, I used nine sources.  I took the top boards of http://www.fantasyfootballjungle.com, http://www.cbssports.com, http://www.cdsdraft.com/, http://www.nfldraftdog.com, http://www.drafttek.com, http://www.nationalfootballpost.com, http://www.walterfootball.com, http://www.fftoolbox.com, and http://www.sidelinescouting.com.

If you're like me, there's a lot of negative things you can say about each site.  But there are a lot of positives as well, and none of them seem to be run by some kid in is parent's basement, acting like an expert on a sport he's never played.

Armed with those sources, I compiled the results in a spreadsheet and then ran a simple average.  But while that got me part of the way towards a nice, consolidated big board, it wasn't enough.

It seems that each board had it's own few pet players; every one out there had a guy who was good enough to be ranked in the top 50 on their own board, but who at the same time managed to escape the notice of everyone else.  For my simple "Everybody's Top 100" list, I had 182 players  to choose from.

How do you average them?  In the end, I simply decided that these players were all almost good enough to be listed on the other boards, and were in fact tied for the 101st best player on all of them.  So, if not too many people shared the National Football Post's opinion that Ciron Black was the 56th best player available, and didn't even list him, I just gave him scores of 101 on all their boards.  In that way, instead of him enjoying an average score of 79.6 on the three boards that listed him, he had a weighted average of 106, which better reflects what everyone thought of his skills.

Some interesting information emerged after consolidating.  For instance, the variations in rating certain positions reveals how much more difficult it is to decide who's more NFL ready among different positions.

For Tight Ends in the top 50, there was a spread of 55.33 between the average high draft position and the average low one.  In other words, everyone agreed on who should be included, just not on where.  For a DT, maybe because of the two at the top, the range was a much lower 17.33.

When you get to the top 100, where a lot of people made one list but not another, the spread becomes even more pronounced. Linebackers and Tackles seem like the safest picks in terms of gaining consensus, and Tight Ends become even more uncertain.

That shows how much easier people think it is to predict success for some positions.  Here's a quick table showing the averages among the consensus top 100 by weighted versus actual and high versus low, then the same information for the top 50.

	Top 100		Top 50
	Average vs. Weighted	High vs. Low	Average vs. Weighted	High vs. Low
CB	8.74	49.75	1.25	37.40
DE	4.12	44.09	0.82	38.43
DT	5.42	31.00	0.00	17.33
ILB	3.05	51.25	0.00	33.00
OG	6.97	59.50	0.00	39.00
OLB	3.39	42.43	0.00	40.67
OT	3.08	40.88	0.00	39.33
QB	4.22	49.60	0.00	38.00
RB	5.17	47.38	0.00	47.25
S	5.66	52.25	0.00	38.75
TE	10.26	55.88	0.00	55.33
WR	4.33	51.90	2.09	51.50

That's kind of interesting in a geeky sort of way.  It gets better when you look at the various mock drafts out there.  A lot of prognosticators want to sell you on how good a player is on their big board while taking them with a relatively late selection themselves in their mock. 

For instance, a guy like Trent Williams is barely cracking the top 20 on the big boards out there, but several mocks have him as a top ten pick.  And everyone knows Sam Bradford is the number one pick, but he's still considered the fifth best player out there. 

But that analysis is for a future article.

Without further discussion, here's the combined Big Board from the aforementioned sites.  Enjoy, and don't forget.  We're just the messenger here. :)

 

	Name	Position	Average Rating	Weighted Average Rating	Highest Rating	Lowest Rating
1	Ndamukong Suh	DT	1.22	1.22	1	2
2	Eric Berry	S	2.78	2.78	1	5
3	Gerald McCoy	DT	2.89	2.89	2	4
4	Russell Okung	OT	4.56	4.56	4	7
5	Sam Bradford	QB	9.22	9.22	1	31
6	Rolando McClain	ILB	9.67	9.67	5	17
7	Derrick Morgan	DE	10.67	10.67	6	25
8	Joe Haden	CB	11.22	11.22	7	22
9	Dez Bryant	WR	11.56	11.56	6	19
10	C. J. Spiller	RB	11.89	11.89	5	22
11	Bryan Bulaga	OT	12.89	12.89	6	23
12	Jimmy Clausen	QB	15.22	15.22	5	51
13	Jason Pierre-Paul	DE	17.11	17.11	8	44
14	Mike Iupati	OG	19.00	19.00	8	29
15	Brandon Graham	DE	20.22	20.22	11	37
16	Dan Williams	DT	20.56	20.56	16	29
17	Earl Thomas	S	23.44	23.44	10	53
18	Trent Williams	OT	23.44	23.44	8	75
19	Bruce Campbell	OT	23.89	23.89	9	63
20	Anthony Davis	OT	24.44	24.44	8	65
21	Kyle Wilson	CB	25.33	25.33	18	32
22	Jerry Hughes	DE	26.00	26.00	12	38
23	Taylor Mays	S	27.56	27.56	13	60
24	Sergio Kindle	OLB	28.00	28.00	15	71
25	Brian Price	DT	28.67	28.67	14	53
26	Sean Weatherspoon	OLB	28.67	28.67	20	49
27	Jared Odrick	DT	29.00	29.00	17	36
28	Maurkice Pouncey	OG	30.67	30.67	4	61
29	Everson Griffen	DE	31.44	31.44	10	70
30	Jermaine Gresham	TE	31.44	31.44	10	49
31	Jahvid Best	RB	31.56	31.56	9	57
32	Golden Tate	WR	32.78	32.78	12	72
33	Arrelious Benn	WR	33.22	33.22	14	55
34	Terrence Cody	DT	33.33	33.33	19	49
35	Devin McCourty	CB	33.89	33.89	23	62
36	Carlos Dunlap	DE	36.89	36.89	22	63
37	Charles Brown	OT	36.89	36.89	22	60
38	Ryan Mathews	RB	40.56	40.56	22	85
39	Daryl Washington	ILB	43.78	43.78	30	84
40	Ricky Sapp	OLB	48.56	48.56	31	68
41	Demaryius Thomas	WR	43.00	49.44	34	101
42	Rob Gronkowski	TE	50.56	50.56	35	78
43	Patrick Robinson	CB	44.88	51.11	37	101
44	Kareem Jackson	CB	52.11	52.11	33	88
45	Damian Williams	WR	46.38	52.44	12	101
46	Jonathan Dwyer	RB	52.67	52.67	21	82
47	Aaron Hernandez	TE	54.00	54.00	6	90
48	Nate Allen	S	54.00	54.00	27	88
49	Corey Wootton	DE	49.25	55.00	40	101
50	Brandon LaFell	WR	55.67	55.67	34	73
51	Eric Norwood	OLB	58.22	58.22	33	73
52	Colt McCoy	QB	46.57	58.67	35	101
53	Rodger Saffold	OG	54.13	59.33	37	101
54	Chad Jones	S	54.88	60.00	38	101
55	Dominique Franks	CB	56.63	61.56	45	101
56	Navorro Bowman	OLB	56.75	61.67	40	101
57	Brandon Spikes	ILB	59.63	64.22	18	101
58	Morgan Burnett	S	55.00	65.22	23	101
59	Chris Cook	CB	62.25	66.56	39	101
60	Vladimir Ducasse	OT	50.17	67.11	43	101
61	Tim Tebow	QB	64.75	68.78	43	101
62	Jon Asamoah	OG	69.22	69.22	44	91
63	Brandon Ghee	CB	61.00	69.89	32	101
64	Dexter McCluster	WR	66.75	70.56	52	101
65	Toby Gerhart	RB	64.43	72.56	38	101
66	Arthur Jones	DT	58.50	72.67	38	101
67	John Jerry	OG	65.14	73.11	14	101
68	Sean Lee	ILB	66.86	74.44	45	101
69	Tyson Alualu	DT	67.43	74.89	45	101
70	Jason Worilds	DE	76.22	76.22	33	91
71	Mardy Gilyard	WR	69.29	76.33	40	101
72	Matt Tennant	OG	66.00	77.67	20	101
73	Jacoby Ford	WR	71.71	78.22	56	101
74	Koa Misi	OLB	66.83	78.22	58	101
75	Ed Dickson	TE	62.20	79.44	40	101
76	Perrish Cox	CB	68.67	79.44	52	101
77	Cam Thomas	DT	62.80	79.78	52	101
78	Greg Hardy	DE	71.83	81.56	39	101
79	Lamarr Houston	DT	68.00	82.67	56	101
80	Montario Hardesty	RB	74.00	83.00	50	101
81	J.D. Walton	OG	61.25	83.33	25	101
82	Jermaine Cunningham	DE	61.75	83.56	47	101
83	Tony Pike	QB	78.71	83.67	53	101
84	Eric Decker	WR	70.80	84.22	46	101
85	Anthony McCoy	TE	63.75	84.44	43	101
86	Reshad Jones	S	76.50	84.67	43	101
87	Alex Carrington	DE	77.00	85.00	59	101
88	Jared Veldheer	OT	77.83	85.56	68	101
89	Thaddeus Gibson	OLB	78.67	86.11	70	101
90	Ben Tate	RB	79.17	86.44	71	101
91	Dorin Dickerson	TE	74.80	86.44	51	101
92	Anthony Dixon	RB	70.50	87.44	55	101
93	Jimmy Graham	TE	76.80	87.56	48	101
94	Trevard Lindley	CB	42.50	88.00	29	101
95	Donovan Warren	CB	78.20	88.33	62	101
96	Geno Atkins	DT	82.00	88.33	77	101
97	Jerome Murphy	CB	75.50	89.67	38	101
98	Mike Johnson	OG	81.20	90.00	58	101
99	Kam Chancellor	S	68.33	90.11	37	101
100	Tony Moeaki	TE	68.33	90.11	42	101