The Jacksonville Jaguars have been pretty horrific in the NFL Draft over the past decade. They’ve missed on several first-round picks like wide receiver Justin Blackmon, offensive tackle Luke Joeckel, outside linebacker Dante Fowler Jr., defensive tackle Taven Bryan, and cornerback C.J. Henderson.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that the franchise ended up 28th in ESPN’s study of best and worst NFL teams at drafting over the last 10 years. Here is a breakdown of their methodology and an example:
To evaluate the players taken in each of the past 10 NFL drafts (2012-2021), we used Approximate Value (AV) — Pro Football Reference’s method of measuring the performance of every NFL player. We took each player’s career AV and measured it against a value based on where that player was taken in the NFL draft — we’re calling it Career Approximate Value Over Expected (CAVOE).
For example, players drafted in the first or second rounds have a higher baseline for performance, so if they struggle they will have much lower CAVOE scores than a sixth- or seventh-round pick who made little impact.
To get the team ranking, we added up CAVOE scores for all players drafted by teams between 2012 — regardless of how long those players were with the team that drafted them. The idea is to see which teams drafted players who have provided the most value over their NFL careers.
