Sources close to the Dyna Hard camp have compiled the following document, said to contain a combination of the thoughts of the team GM, Chris Braithwaite and the results of alleged conversations and emails between Braithwaite and Jimmy Johnson. The veracity of the document is unknown.
Holding the first pick in the draft gets you thinking about trades. That’s what I’ve found anyway. So I used my contacts to get in touch with Jimmy Johnson, creator of the most widely accepted NFL Draft Trade Value chart, to see whether he wants to use his knowledge of the Dynabowl (he’s a big follower – and a massive East Flanders fan) to create a prospective chart for the league as it heads in to its first rookie draft. Being that its out of football season and Johnson’s time isn’t taken up with applying ludicrous amounts of hairspray, the former Cowboys coach was delighted to take up the challenge.
The first issue that Jimmy told me we had was accounting for there only being 10 teams in the league. “Well Jimmy,” I said, “why not just collect the picks in your chart into groups of 3 or 4, and average them out?”.
Jimmy thought this was an interesting idea. “So, the first 3 picks in the NFL draft are worth 3,000, 2,600 and 2,200. That means in the Dynabowl they would be worth a total of 7,800, and an average of 2,600. Good plan. Let’s do it.”
So using this methodology, picks 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 10 of each round were the average of 3 NFL picks. Picks 3, 4, 8 and 9 were average across 4 picks. So here’s the Jimmy produced.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| 1 | 2600 | 563.33 | 260 | 108 | 42 | 26.6 | 13.8 |
| 2 | 1700 | 530 | 245 | 96 | 39.5 | 25.4 | 12.6 |
| 3 | 1375 | 505 | 232.5 | 85 | 38.25 | 24 | 11.2 |
| 4 | 1255 | 465 | 212.5 | 75 | 36.25 | 22.8 | 10 |
| 5 | 1050 | 430 | 195 | 72 | 34.5 | 21.4 | 8.6 |
| 6 | 908.33 | 400 | 180 | 66 | 33.03 | 20.2 | 7.4 |
| 7 | 810 | 370 | 165 | 60 | 31.8 | 19 | 6.2 |
| 8 | 730 | 325 | 147.5 | 53 | 30.4 | 17.6 | 4.8 |
| 9 | 660 | 305 | 134 | 48.5 | 29.2 | 16.4 | 3.6 |
| 10 | 603.33 | 276 | 120 | 45 | 27.8 | 15 | 2.3 |
“I love it! Love it!” exclaimed Jimmy.
I, however, was less enthused. “I’m not so sure Jimmy. This is great, but there’s a problem. The Dynabowl and the NFL aren’t quite equivalent.”
“Well sure,” said Jimmy. “The Dynabowl is far more important. The Super Bowl trophy doesn’t even have an animal on it.”
“Good point Jimmy, but that’s not what I mean. The big issue is that the Dynabowl doesn’t draft offensive linemen. There are roughly 25 core players in an NFL team, but 5 of them are ineligible for the Dynabowl. We need to fix the chart to factor them out.”
“Hmmm. Well, no one notices the big galoots unless they mess up, so I’m in full agreement with the Dynabowl eliminating them. So what do we do?”
“Well Jimmy, the Dynabowl doesn’t use 20% of the players the NFL drafts, so we need to remove 20% of the picks from the chart somehow.”
Jimmy thought for a moment. “No one likes offensive linemen. But don’t tell Larry Allen I said that. He’d eat me. We could just remove the bottom 20% of picks?”
“So from the 224 non-compensatory picks, we’d remove 45 picks? That would mean that our draft includes the first 179 picks in your draft chart?”
“You got it skipper.”
“Skipper? Ok Jimmy. So the Dynabowl draft has 70 picks. 179 into 70 is about 2.5. So that would mean we’d just count down your chart, and do the value of each 2.5 picks.”
“Exactly champ, exactly. Explain it to me?”
“Champ? You know I’m picking first overall, right? So the first 2 picks are worth 3,000 and 2,600. That’s 5,600. The third pick is worth 2,200. We take half of that value… 1,100 Jimmy, stop looking confused. That means the first pick is worth 6,700. The second pick gets that half of the third pick, plus the value of the next two picks (1,800 and 1,700), so its worth 4,600. The third pick is worth the 6th, 7th and half the 8th, so 3,800.”
“Brilliant! Perfect! Those are all definitely numbers. Can you just fiddle around with the rest of the chart for me? That’s how we did it in my Cowboys days – everyone else did the work and I took the credit.”
“We know Jimmy, we know.”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| 1 | 6700 | 1710 | 955 | 522.5 | 238 | 114.5 | 79.3 |
| 2 | 4600 | 1590 | 905 | 490 | 216 | 108 | 77.5 |
| 3 | 3800 | 1480 | 845 | 460 | 204 | 102 | 74.3 |
| 4 | 3350 | 1400 | 780 | 427.5 | 191 | 100.75 | 71.7 |
| 5 | 3025 | 1330 | 726 | 397.5 | 179 | 97.25 | 69.3 |
| 6 | 2725 | 1270 | 678.5 | 365 | 166 | 94 | 66.7 |
| 7 | 2400 | 1205 | 647.5 | 338 | 154 | 91 | 64.3 |
| 8 | 2175 | 1145 | 615 | 312 | 141 | 87.75 | 61.7 |
| 9 | 1960 | 1080 | 585 | 288 | 129 | 84.75 | 59.3 |
| 10 | 1840 | 1020 | 552.5 | 262 | 120.5 | 81.7 | 56.7 |
“There you go Jimmy, what do you reckon?”
“That looks great! Brilliant! Fantastic! Jerry will love it.”
“Who is Jerry”? Never mind. It seems fairly sensible. The league kind of agrees that picks below the 2nd round are likely to have minimal value, and it seems to show that to trade up to get a pick in the third you shouldn’t have to pay too much. I think it overvalues the number 1 pick a little bit (which I’m not gonna complain about as the owner of it this year). To go from number 3 to number 1 you’d have to give up your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th round picks. That’s not right. But apart from that it looks great. But then that’s a criticism of your chart in the NFL too.”
“Look kid, this draft value chart thing is hooey. We made it to try to cheat the system, and its seems to have become the system. Every team has different values on picks, and that changes based on who is available at any given pick. Sometimes people will overpay based on this, sometimes people will underpay. Our chart was based on a series of pick trades over a series of years, and its stood up even over different collective bargaining agreements. But only time will tell if its applicable to your league. Quit worrying kid. Now how much am I getting paid for this?”
“Kid? I’m 30. As to money… I’ll just pop out and get it for you.”
I wonder if he’s still waiting there?
