Football Outsiders: SackSEER 2013

Today, Football Outsiders posted their annual SackSEER article. What is SackSEER? From the article:

SackSEER 2.0 expresses its thoughts on each drafted edge rusher through two outputs: SackSEER projection and SackSEER rating. SackSEER projection projects the number of regular season sacks that a prospect will record in his first five seasons in the NFL. Unlike SackSEER rating, SackSEER projection incorporates as an additional element the prospect’s projected round drafted from NFL Draft Scout. SackSEER rating provides a historical percentile rating on the college edge rusher’s prospects for success as compared to the other prospects in SackSEER’s database, irrespective of projected draft position. For instance, SackSEER currently has 299 edge rushers in its database, so a prospect in this year’s draft who is stronger than 200 of those prospects on the historical trends identified by SackSEER would have a SackSEER rating of 66.9 percent [200/299]. So, if you want to see how the prospects stack up based on SackSEER’s trends alone, you can look at SackSEER rating. And if you want to see how the prospects stack up based on SackSEER’s trends when balanced against conventional wisdom, you can look at SackSEER projection.

Be sure to read the whole thing, but I'm going to cherry pick #1 on the list for all MCMer's to read (emphasis mine):

Barkevious Mingo, LSU

Last week, Matt Waldman covered both Mingo and Dion Jordan in his Futures column. Based on his scouting, he noted that Jordan was close to a sure thing with all-around talent at the outside linebacker position, while Mingo was a bit more of a high-risk, high-reward draft pick because his on-field technique doesn't quite match his athleticism and explosiveness.

Ironically, SackSEER has the exact opposite opinion. When it comes strictly to sack production, SackSEER sees Jordan as a high-risk, high-reward draft pick whose on-field production in college never quite matched his measurables, while Mingo is SackSEER's number-one edge rusher prospect for 2013. Mingo outrates Jordan in every single one of the elements in SackSEER, both the Combine drills and the college production measures.

Mingo is somewhat analogous to Jevon Kearse. Like Kearse coming out of Florida, Mingo has outstanding athleticism and a lot of passes defensed. Mingo’s workouts were consistently excellent -— his forty-yard dash, vertical jump, broad jump, and three cone were all well above average for the position. As was also the case with Kearse, Mingo has only lukewarm sack production. Some contend that Mingo’s production dropped this year because he was asked to rush the passer much less than in seasons past. Edge rushers with less production than Mingo have gone on to be stars at the position, so a team selecting Mingo -— even with a fairly high draft pick -— is making a solid gamble.