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Podcast: Benjamin Robinson on predicting the 2023 NFL draft

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Benjamin Robinson, who uses wisdom of crowds to predict the NFL draft at Grinding the Mocks, joins the show for a wide ranging conversation. Highlights include:

  • New research on predicting the NFL draft (6:56)
  • NFL big boards (10:00)
  • When to use wisdom of crowds to bet (15:00)
  • Quarterbacks (19:50)
  • The first pick (30:30)
  • Defensive players (33:47)
  • A surprise prediction (38:24)

He often talked about his NFL mock draft at Football Outsiders. To listen here, click on the right pointing triangle.

This episode of The Football Analytics Show is also available on:

Support the podcast on Patreon and get the patron only episode on predicting the NFL season with wisdom of crowds.

First RB selected in the 2022 NFL draft

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Great minds do not always think alike.

On The Football Analytics Show podcast, Matthew Freedman of FantasyPros talked about how he liked Iowa State’s Breece Hall as the first RB selected. He likes Hall over Michigan State’s Kenneth Walker partially because of their college stats, a topic we will dive into later.

On the same podcast, Dr. Eric Eager of PFF said that he liked Walker as the first RB selected. At +280, he sees value, partially because this pick won’t happen until the second round.

There are two important concepts to unpack here.

First, one of the knocks against Walker is his pass catching numbers. JJ Zachariason of lateround.com has developed a model for how college players project to the NFL for fantasy football. He has found that a running back’s top season for reception share is one of the predictors in his model.

Running backs that catch the ball in college do not necessarily become top pass catchers in the NFL. However, JJ believes that a high reception share is an indicator of all around talent. With a 5.6% reception share for his best season, Walker gets dinged here.

Second, the NFL draft becomes more difficult to predict as the picks go by. A running back is not expected to get selected in the first round. Here are the expected draft positions from Grinding the Mocks, a wisdom of crowds estimator:

  • Breece Hall (Iowa State), 36.4
  • Kenneth Walker (Michigan State), 45.3
  • Isaiah Spiller (Texas A&M), 71.5

While one often just says that the draft gets random in later rounds, let’s get more precise about exactly what that means.

With the top picks in the draft, there is more certainty about which players will get picked. The distribution has the majority of weight on one or two players.

For example, Jacksonville has the first pick. The markets have Aiden Hutchinson as the favorite (-200) and Travon Walker with the next best odds (+190). Behind these two edge rushers, no player has better than 12 to 1 odds.

With later draft picks, the probability distribution becomes more uniform over a number of players. One consequence of this more uniform distribution is there should be less certainty which running back will get picked first. This is the reasoning behind why Dr. Eager likes the longer shot Walker.

I don’t have a strong take on whether Hall or Walker will be the first RB selected. However, there are some interesting almost arbitrage opportunities.

As of Thursday morning, DraftKings has Hall at -275 as the first RB selected. FanDuel has Walker at +280, a break even probability of 26.3%. This is lower than the chance that a Michigan fan still has ulcers after the performance Walker had against the Wolverines last season.

If you have an opinion or inside information on Hall vs Walker, this is a favorable market. Another RB could be the top pick, but the wisdom of crowds projection has Spiller far behind the two top candidates.

The Late-Round Prospect Guide

JJ Zacharaison is a season long fantasy football expert. He spends the entire year running numbers and thinking about how to win your league.

After a long career at numberFire and FanDuel, he is now an independent creator at his site Late Round Fantasy Football. You can get more details on his prospect model discussed here and prospect ratings in The Late-Round Prospect Guide.

This is not an affiliate deal, as I don’t get part of the sale. I think you should check it out because JJ’s work is excellent.

First QB selected in the 2022 NFL draft

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The NFL is quarterback league. Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson made off-season changes, and they are poised to flip the fortunes of Cleveland and Denver respectively.

Despite the positional value at QB, the draft is not offering top prospects this year. The big boys will most likely dominate the top slots of the 2022 NFL draft.

According to an incredibly useful betting tool that I’ll describe later, here are the top five projected picks of the draft.

  • Aiden Hutchinson, edge rusher from Michigan. He is the favorite at -280 on DraftKings to be the top pick.
  • Kayvon Thibodeaux, edge rusher from Oregon. He was the favorite for the top pick during football season.
  • Evan Neal, offensive tackle from Alabama. He was the favorite for the top pick after the Super Bowl until Jacksonville made moves to secure the tackle position.
  • Travon Walker, edge rusher from Georgia. He had only six sacks on a ferocious Georgia defense last season, but he blew up the combine with his elite athleticism.
  • Ikem Ekwonu, offensive tackle from North Carolina State.

The quarterbacks will still get attention in the first round of the draft. The markets consider Liberty’s Malik Willis as the favorite for the first QB picked. There are questions about his accuracy and the type of competition he faced in college.

The second QB getting attention is Kenny Pickett, who exploded in 2021 at Pittsburgh. However, that was his fifth year in college, and Pittsburgh’s offense was poor in his first three years as a starter.

A few factors point to value in Pickett at +130 as the first quarterback selected.

First, Matthew Freedman of FantasyPros came on my podcast this week to discuss how he has curated mock drafts with a strong track record. Based on these sharp mocks, he thinks it’s about a coin flip whether Willis or Pickett gets selected first.

Second, the Grinding the Mocks project by Benjamin Robinson collects a variety of mock draft to make a wisdom of crowds prediction of draft position. This is the resource used for the top five prospects listed above.

Benjamin also has Willis and Pickett very close to each other (11th and 12th best prospect respectively). This also suggests a 50-50 scenario for which QB gets selected first.

Grinding the Mocks suggests that Detroit might take Willis with the second overall pick, which you can explore under Prospect Trends on the site. If Willis goes ahead of Pickett, this is a likely scenario. On DraftKings, Pickett is more likely to be the fourth or fifth pick than Willis.

I like Pickett at +130 as the first QB taken, but I also took Willis +500 to the Lions on FanDuel.

Data driven betting information

This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter at noon Eastern on Thursday, April 15, 2022. This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:

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