Every Chiefs’ fan has a list of their personal favorite draft picks. Jordan Mannix created a formula to create definitive rankings to settle the matter.
You see lists all the time that subjectively evaluate a team’s best moments such as draft picks, players, seasons, etc. It’s fun to sit around the bar with your friends and rattle off the list of your favorite players or your team’s biggest busts just to pass the time until football season starts again. That’s where we’re at right now, waiting for football season to start.
In the meantime, can we actually accurately evaluate these lists? It turns out, it’s pretty easy. I’ll begin with the NFL Draft, since we just passed the 2019 NFL Draft a few weeks ago. I’ll structure a simple way to evaluate who are the top 10 best draft picks in Kansas City Chiefs‘ history.
The formula will be comprised of seven variables. Here is each variable with a brief description. First, each player receives a score for their corresponding pick value. This score is equal to the round in which they were drafted. The first round equals one point, the second round equals two points, and so on. This highlights the increased value of drafting a long-time star in later rounds.
Second, each player receives a score for position value. There are 14 position values, with quarterback being the most valuable and receiving a score of 14. These values are based off average market salaries for each position which is arguably the best measurement for position value. Obviously, these have changed over time. Even so, I will be using the most recent, and trustworthy market values I could find.
As such, QBs are the highest paid on average and receive the highest point total. Wide receivers are the second highest paid on average and receive the second highest point total, and so on. The rest of the chart is posted below:
Third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, each player receives 10 points per Pro Bowl selection, 25 points per First Team All Pro selection, 30 points per MVP award, and 30 points for ROY, DPOY, or OPOY. Finally, each player receives one point per game started for the Chiefs.
All these factors will total the player’s career impact with the Chiefs. To normalize these numbers, since each player has had varying tenures with the team, they will then be divided by the number of years a given player played for the Chiefs. This will give us our final annual impact score to rank each player by. For reference, the variables and formula are listed in the following image:
It’s likely there are a number of Chiefs’ fans with differing viewpoints of what makes a player impactful. These are simply seven, arbitrarily chosen variables that I feel can help us objectively evaluate who are the best draft picks in Chiefs’ history.
Further, the following 12 players were curated from a list that originally comprised 35 names from drafts dating back to 1961. It’s possible I left someone out that is a personal favorite of yours. For that, I apologize, but I’m confident this is an extremely strong list of candidates for the Chiefs’ top draft picks of all time.