This is good to see: the 2022 NFL draft is less than a week away, and the stakes are high for the New Orleans Saints. The team traded with the Philadelphia Eagles to add another first-round pick (at No. 19) and move up to No. 16 from their initial choice (at No. 18), with other premium selections slotted in at Nos. 49 and 98. And the team must hit on each of those picks to help the post-Sean Payton era start off with success.
So it’s encouraging that an ESPN study found the Saints rank among league leaders when it comes to getting a good return on their draft picks, dating back to 2012. They specifically ranked the Saints at No. 8 among the NFL’s 32 teams, ahead of NFC South challengers like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (No. 9), the Carolina Panthers (No. 11), and the Atlanta Falcons (No. 17). Here is their methodology:
“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).”
