An interesting, contrary view on Tennessee Titans GM Ruston Webster

So aside from Ken Whisenhunt, maybe no one took more heat for this bad 2014 season than Ruston Webster. People berated him and gave him a hard time for drafting Taylor Lewan (a move I was not behind at the the time) instead of an instant starter.

However, a new metric shows that Ruston Webster is finding value in the middle/late rounds of the draft that might make up for taking best player available in round one.

This is a very hard concept to explain, but National Football Post released a list that basically does this:

1. Looks at which picks a GM has.

2. Looks historically at those picks and comes up with an "average games started" number to determine how much that pick is worth.

3. Looks at the player the GM drafts there and how many starts that player has made and is projected to make next year.

4. Then finally you come up with a "surplus number" which shows how many starts over that projected number a general manager has gotten from his picks.

The key to winning this metric is getting a lot out of late picks like Jurrell Casey, Justin Forsett and Red Bryant ( the last two were during his time in Seattle).

Ruston Webster ranks tied for 7th on that list with an average annual surplus number of 15. If you find this interesting or the concept of "draft value" interesting, this is an article you really need to read. I have linked it in that previous sentence and up at the top.

Also, it should be noted that NFP gives a disclaimer that it impossible to truly rank GMs from top to bottom and that this is only one thing to consider:

"There is no perfect way to statistically analyze a General Manager’s draft performance. What is presented here is one way of doing it. A surplus can result from drafting more NFL starters, players with longer careers than typical or some combination of the two."