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The Draft Value Index (DVI) Revisited, Part III: The Panthers 2012 Big Board

Good afternoon Panther fans! By now, many of you know what the DVI system is all about, and now we can dive into the meat and potatoes of why this metric is useful... coming up with a theoretical "Big Board" for the Panthers that balances Need and BPA. With the draft starting up tomorrow, I am sure many of you are anxious to see how the prospects grade out, and what a balanced Panther Big Board may look like. If you are not up to speed on the system, you can catch up using the links below.

View the "original" DVI concept from October 2011 here.

  • Part I was an introduction to the system as a whole, and detailed the TS or "Team Situation" metric.
  • Part II detailed the PQ or "Player Quality" metric.
  • Part III (this article) will put it all together in an attempt to formulate a Panthers big board based on a balanced strategy and serve as a prediction for the draft.
  • After the draft is concluded, I will give a synopsis of how the system held up, and analyze each pick within the DVI confines.

Without further ado.. I present to you part III of this series, the DVI metric and Panthers Big Board.

Part III: The DVI rating

As stated in the introduction to the DVI system, the DVI rating is a metric that balances team need and BPA by assigning a value to players based on their quality (the PQ rating) and the teams situation (the TS rating) combined. This helps us to formulate a big board based on the team following a balanced strategy. While I don't believe any team attempts to balance needs with BPA on every pick, this provides a framework for teams to follow no matter which side of the scale the pick lands on.

  • Pure "Need" based picks would be the player (or rather player position) with the highest TS ratings. In the case of a tiebreaker, teams would look at the DVI rating to find the best quality player where needs are equal.
  • Pure "BPA" based picks would be the player with the highest PQ rating. Tiebreakers in this case go to the DVI rating, as if you are going for best player available, you might as well fill whatever need you can when players are of equal talent.
  • For selections where a team wants to find a balance, they look at the DVI rating. If numerous players have the same DVI rating, talent leaning teams should look to the PQ rating for the tiebreaker. If a team is more desperate to fill its needs, it will look to the TS rating. This is purely at the teams discretion. In the case of the Panthers, and past tendency to go BPA, we will look at the PQ rating for the purpose of predicting our first round pick.

How DVI changes during the draft

As needs are fulfilled by drafting players, it is fair to assume that since a team has filled a positional need by selecting a player, then any further picks at that position would be based on a player being BPA. Yes, a team might want to draft 2 or even 3 players at the same position for competition, but in this case they are probably looking at high upside guys. Therefore, once a position is selected, the TS metric automatically drops to ZERO.

The Panthers 2012 Big Board

Finally, we turn back to our basic formula, which is...

DVI = TS + PQ

Below I will layout a Panthers big board that is sorted by DVI rating highest to lowest. Some of the ratings may surprise you, some of them may not. Either way, I would like to hear lots of discussion based on what you see here.

Player Name Position PQ TS DVI
Luke Kuechly ILB 11 7 18
Morris Claiborne CB 9 9 18
Fletcher Cox DT 9 9 18
Dre Kirkpatrick CB\S 9 9 18
David DeCastro OG 12 5 17
Bryan Anger P 10 7 17
Michael Brockers DT 8 9 17
Stephon Gilmore CB 8 9 17
Matt Kalil OT 10 6 16
Dontari Poe DT 7 9 16
Janoris Jenkins CB 7 9 16
Jerel Worthy DT 7 9 16
Andrew Luck QB 11 4 15
Justin Blackmon WR 9 6 15
Riley Reiff OT 9 6 15
Kendall Wright WR 9 6 15
Stephen Hill WR 9 6 15
Reuben Randle WR 9 6 15
Drew Butler P 8 7 15
Jayron Hosley CB\PR 6 9 15
Ryan Tannehill QB 10 4 14
Kevin Zeitler OG 9 5 14
Alshon Jeffery WR 8 6 14
Jonathan Martin OT 8 6 14
Trumaine Johnson CB 5 9 14
Chase Minnifield CB 5 9 14
Robert Griffin III QB 9 4 13
Michael Floyd WR 7 6 13
Joe Adams PR\WR 7 6 13
Brian Quick WR 7 6 13
Mohamed Sanu WR 7 6 13
Zach Brown OLB 8 4 12
Lavonte David OLB 8 4 12
Amini Silatolu OG 7 5 12
Trent Richardson RB 10 1 11
Quinton Coples DE 9 2 11
Bruce Irvin OLB 7 4 11
Ronald Leary OG 6 5 11
A.J. Jenkins WR 5 6 11
Mark Barron S 8 2 10
Keenan Robinson ILB 6 4 10
Melvin Ingram DE\OLB 7 2 9
George Iloka S 7 2 9
Chandler Jones DE 7 2 9
Orson Charles TE 6 3 9
James-Michael Johnson ILB 5 4 9
DeQuan Menzie CB\S 6 2 8
Kelcie McCray S 5 2 7
Janzen Jackson S 5 2 7

So, as you can see, going by the DVI metric we have 4 players that are in play to be our first pick. Those are...

Luke Kuechly, Morris Claiborne, Fletcher Cox, Dre Kirkpatrick with a DVI of 18.

As I stated before, where DVI values are equal, it makes the most sense to get the best player you can, so we look to the PQ rating. In this case...

With the 9th overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft, the Carolina Panthers select...

Luke-kuechly_medium

Luke Kuechly, LB, Boston College.

As stated above, the tie goes to the PQ rating, as the Panthers tend to trend toward BPA over team need. Of course, it is possible that they are totally comfortable with the teams situation at linebacker, and that I am overstating their needs, however with two starting linebackers coming off major injury, it would make sense to me that the Panthers look for a player who is arguably the safest pick in the draft.

In the real world, if Morris Claiborne is still somehow available at our pick, I would think he gets the nod... as the Panthers buck their BPA tendencies for a change to shore up a position in dire need. However, I think there is only a slim chance of that actually happening. With Dre K the only CB still left on the board to fill this need (with a BQP of 8 as opposed to Claiborne's 9), they would certainly turn to Kuechly instead, who is a much higher quality player.

We could also look to Fletcher Cox and shore up the interior of our D-Line. While I think this would be a great pick, the team currently seems to be happy with their situation at DT (having drafted 2 players last year).

So there you have it Panther fans, stay tuned after the draft for Part IV, where we apply the DVI system to what actually happened in the draft and see how well it held up!

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