2031 Draft Class

[Aston]

Utah!

1.13 — WR — Bruce Perkins
The Middle Tennessee St. product is the next Bee 1st rounder. Swinging for the fences!

[Guest]

Where'd his BPR cone out in the interview?

[Aston]

[Guest]

Bastard Bees!!

Praying he'll bust!

[Guest]

I had him VU also ...

[Guest]

I had him VU also ...

My scout also had VU on Perkins. I took a long, hard look at him at the number 10 pick, and not just because my receiving corps is the worst in the league. In the end I had to pass on him in favor of a safer bet. Utah has the talent to fall back on if they strike out on a first round pick, we don't.

While looking at Perkins I went back and compared him to previous players to see how he compared to other "high BPR/low everything else" guys.

Bruce Perkins 2031 1.13 BPR 80+
37 4.46 13 7.20 106 43
Initial: ?? TC: +? Final: ??

Jeffrey Barton 2027 4.22 BPR 80
18 4.39 11 7.16 109 26
Initial: 26 TC: +0 Final: 24

Tyrus Dennis 2019 1.05 BPR 98
29 4.33 11 6.92 107 52
Initial: 27 TC: +8 Final: 55

Byron Blackshear 2018 4.21 BPR 99
15 4.38 12 7.06 106 44
Initial: 28 TC: +0 Final: 27

Hunter Vandersommen 2018 3.15 BPR 78
27 4.44 12 7.07 107 42
Initial: 25 TC: +6 Final: 42

Barton was the most recent one I could find but he's not really a very good comparison. Unlike Perkins, Barton has better 40 time and garbage at pretty much everything else. In particular his Position Drill is dreadful and his low Solec score+high Intelligence means he was never going to be a good route runner (RR zero!)

Tyrus "Tex" Dennis also came to mind when I was looking for a comparable player, but Dennis' 40 Time, Agility and PosDrill were markedly better. While only his 40 time was really in exceptional territory the other two scores were close enough that there wasn't too much doubt about how he would turn out. With Perkins I just didn't see that. Sure his Solec score is very good, but his Intelligence is also very high. Meanwhile his Agility drill is dancing just above my "Don't draft this guy" line.

Blackshear is closer to Perkins than Dennis in most of his combines. Although his 40 time is higher. It is not quite into the exceptional range, but it is high enough that his big BPR bar could be explained by something other than very heavy masking. He also had that one horrible stat (like Barton, the terrible Solec score with a non terrible Intelligence) that says he's not going to be a great player or even a good one.

Finally there was Hunter Vandersommen, who not coincidentally seems to have spent the best part of his career in Utah. He had the lowest BPR bunch, but overall his combines seemed the most similar to Perkins. Nothing great, nothing terrible and with a big static bar well beyond what you would expect given everything else you see. Vandersommen got a nice bump in his first training camp and turned into a serviceable, if rather one dimensional player It just so happens that one dimension is the most valuable in the game.

I don't really see Perkins turning out any worse than this, barring the VSOD of course, and probably even better. The only real question will be how much use can Nutah get out of him before the next version of the game comes out?

[Guest]

Good write up rando... it'll be interesting to see how he turns out..

btw.. if you want jeff barton you can have him for a 7th. :)

[Aston]

Excellent coverage, rando.

Barton's certainly got the position drill as a disqualifier — those avoid / adjust bars weren't going anywhere. Both he and Blackshear also had pretty good 40 times to start with, and he was absent any corroborating signs of masking.

Blackshear, I checked, and he had a number of other high bars. Sure, not as high as the BPR, but not low, particularly relative to the combine. Surprised his BPR came back so high, however.

Vandersommen, you nailed it, is probably the most similar. Tex Dennis had a truly different bar profile, along with different combines. He was actually "High BPR, low everything else" with the combine to indicate it was all going way, way up.

Vandersommen, like Perkins, was high BPR + single other bar (courage for the former, adjust for the latter). A couple of other WRs who I believe fall under this category include Ray Mansker, Shane Littlefield, Bob Hansen, and way, way long ago (around the '14 or '15 drafts) some guy named Adrian something who was drafted in round 2 or 3.

I definitely hope he'll be better than Vandersommen. If his BPR is 100 as Tex's was, he has the tools to match him step for step. If he's a little short, that's OK. As you say, the big concern is what his value is going to be in the next version of the game. That's going to up the pressure to play him early.

I was considering going with a safer pick, too, but that option went off the table at 1.12 and made the decision easy for me. It would have been incredibly hard to pass up an 80-rated tackle, who probably has no way of not being a reliable 10+ year starter regardless of game version...however, the Bees can afford to totally blow a pick and absorb the hit, so we were pretty comfortable with taking the risky option.

Even without Perkins, we have a projected 53 that we're quite comfortable with...and there was probably no shot at landing a potential 100-BPR otherwise. Frankly, if it's not 100, it's going to be a disappointment.

[prinzar]

I'm loving that Herb Midget is listed as "below average" for his height

[Aston]

Hehe. Awesome name. We drafted him last year, but didn't like him enough to keep around.

We're really liking our draft so far. Reached a bit on the center at 2.32, since our roughly equivalent choice went in the mid-4th, and then our more-than-solid backup plan fell to us at 5.27 anyways.

But overall I'm feeling pretty good about this one. I got on top of things after a few FA stages, reducing the list of players I was looking at helped a lot, and hopefully we come away with some nice toys.

[sirem]

I was hoping I would get a shot at grabbing korey

[Aston]

Mua, ha, ha....

For our penultimate magic trick, the Utah Bees select the next QB Boone!

[nelmsm]

Okay, here are some draft statistics if anyone is interested.

Players picked by position (lowest ranking selected within position)
QB = 21 (46th)
RB = 21 (40th)
FB = 4 (4th)
WR = 28 (56th)
TE = 11 (46th)
T = 17 (29th)
G = 20 (27th)
C = 7 (28th)
Total of 129 offensive players
DE = 18 (35th)
DT = 16 (23rd)
ILB = 11 (14th)
OLB = 18 (26th)
CB = 16 (23rd)
S = 14 (42nd)
Total of 93 defensive players
P = 2 (2nd)
K = 0!
Total of 2 special team players

I used Excel to filter by position and did a separate tab for each position and from that I got the ranking within each position and therefore determine what the lowest ranked player by position selected.

Lowest ranked player selected was #777 TE Wesley Waite

[Aston]

I thought we had an unusual # of QBs drafted this year -- they seemed to go left and right! -- and was surprised that one of the guys I thought was worthy, Jackie Boone, was the 21st QB drafted. Hopefully some day they make a really long ESPN documentary series called "The Jackie Boone Twenty".

Last time you did this, there were only 12 QB drafted: http://simgamingnetwork.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=15347

Also a lot of guards, and noticeably fewer defensive players overall.

[nelmsm]

Yes, I was kind of surprised how many more offensive players then defensive went this year. Guess it comes down to the draft class each year somewhat.