The valuations for week 10 are now updated for each player who played this week. This week’s values are available for free on the valuations page and the full season numbers as well as results from week 1 through 9 are available for premium subscribers. This week I thought we would look at how the valuation compares with the team’s record through the first 10 weeks.

Overall I was pretty happy with the results here as the results we have have done a pretty decent job of identifying the good and bad football teams. The valuations are based primarily on three inputs- playing time assigned by the team, certain statistical metrics, as well as PFF grades, so its good to see there is some correlation here with winning.

The biggest teams that would look to be more off on the “outperform” side would be the Dolphins, Raiders, Ravens, and Browns. In Miami’s case I think this is due to the low values given to the quarterback play there. I would need to look closer at the numbers but in part it has to do with using two quarterbacks and Tua’s three games not being able to boost his value enough, so a bit more of a quirk with the way we prorate the games to a season.

The Browns have won despite poor QB play. Mayfield is valued about as low as you can get for a healthy QB1 and they have been able to win in spite of that. The Raiders have had solid QB play (Carr ranks 14th) despite the fact that the teams receivers have done little. Wide receivers are among the highest valued players in the NFL and you would assume they would rank at least average with decent QB play but they are way under. Pass rushers are also expensive and the Raiders have done well without those positions performing.

The Ravens are intriguing. They have no top players beside Jackson (16th rated QB), but are the only team with three cornerbacks ranked in the top 20 at the position. Ive always been of the belief that overall good play in the secondary is more valuable than one great talent and some bodies and maybe this is some evidence of that. The other teams with strong corner rankings are the Rams, Chiefs, Colts, and Saints.

The underperformers are the Broncos, Falcons, and Chargers. Two of the three are easier to explain. The poor coaching jobs in Atlanta and LA have cost those teams multiple wins and both should be much closer to that 500 line and in the playoff hunt. Instead they are at the bottom of the NFL.

The Broncos are a little different. In large part some of their player values I think have been fueled by some end of game heroics that have inflated the values of a few players. They also have had terrible QB play which is far more important to winning and losing than good performances from a left tackle, edge rusher, corner, and linebacker. I tend to think their overall values will fall in line by seasons end but we will have to wait and see.

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The valuations for week 8 are now updated for each player who played this week. This week’s values are available for free on the valuations page and the full season numbers as well as results from week 1 through 7 are available for premium subscribers. Rather than highlight the top performers for the week I thought it would be better to look at the top players at each position for the season.

Not surprisingly MVP frontrunner Russell Wilson is our top player of the year with a $38.5M valuation. On the rest of the offense it is filled with some expected heavy hitters- Derrick Henry, DeAndre Hopkins, Quenton Nelson, and Travis Kelce. They were joined by some surprising players- left tackle Garrett Bolles of the Broncos and right tackle Kelvin Beachum of the Cardinals, two of the better NFL stories of the year.

On defense TJ Watt was our top valued player at $26.9 million. Other big names to make the list include Myles Garrett, Aaron Donald, Bobby Wagner, Stephon Tuitt, and Lavonte David. At cornerback and safety we had some bigger surprised with Bryce Callahan, Brian Poole, Duron Harmon, and Jessie Bates making the list.

Here are the top rated players at each position for the season so far.

While these players are the top players of 2020 who is bringing the most value? To calculate this we subtract a players annual contract value from his OTC value to determine how much of a benefit a team realizes. These are generally rookies playing well and veterans outperforming cheap contracts. If the players hit a great season right before they are eligible for free agency or an extension they have a good chance to get a great contract. Here are the best values on the season so far.

View Week 8 Player Valuations

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The valuations for week 7 are now updated for each player who played this week. This week’s values are available for free on the valuations page and the full season numbers as well as results from week 1 through 6 are available for premium subscribers.

Top player of the week went to Drew Brees on offense and TJ Watt on defense. Our team of the week was the Chargers while the Patriots took a very unfamiliar spot as the worst in the league in week 7. Here were this week’s top valued players at each position.

View Week 7 Player Valuations

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The valuations for week 4 are now updated for all players. This week’s values are available for free on the valuations page and the full season numbers as well as results from week 1 through 3 are available for premium subscribers.

It was a good week to be a Bronco apparently this week. Here were this week’s top valued players.

View Week 4 Player Valuations

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We have updated our player values for week 2 of the NFL season and Cam Newton of the Patriots comes in as the most valuable player of the week. For those unfamiliar with our player valuation it is a metric we designed that utilizes salaries, snap counts, PFF grades, and statistics as a way to reassign the values in the NFL on a weekly basis. It is important to note that this is not a free agent value metric, but how salaries perhaps would be distributed if all contracts were created equal. You can read more about the valuation metric in our intro post from last year.

Season valuations and market visualizations are available to Premium subscribers, while we will have weekly values on the main site for the first few weeks of the year with a few random updates thereafter on the main site. If you have interest in just one individual player rather than the league as a whole their valuation for the year is updated weekly on the individual player page. You can view this weeks valuations at overthecap.com/valuation.

Players of the Week: Cam Newton and TJ Watt

Newton had a terrific game in a losing effort against the Seahawks this week throwing for nearly 400 yards while rushing for two touchdown and passing for one more. Newton’s value came in at $37.5 million.

On the defensive side TJ Watt of the Steelers took top honors at $29.6 million. Watt had two sacks, 13 pressures and 5 stops per PFF. He is going to cost a fortune to extend and should have an outside chance at becoming the first $30 million defensive player.

Team of the Week: Pittsburgh Steelers

It was a dominating effort by the Steelers players in a hard fought win against a game Broncos team that was impacted by injuries. The Steelers had a number of individual efforts on defense in particular that ramped up their value to over $350M in performance.

Notables of the Week:

Justin Herbert had a terrific debut against the Chiefs and nearly helped pull off the upset. At $30.5 million he was OTC’s 14th highest valued QB this week….CeeDee Lamb of the Cowboys put on a performance against the Falcons, coming in as our 5th ranked wide receiver at $17.9 million….The alarms are going off in Minnesota about Kirk Cousins and that is reflected here with Cousins coming in at a $9 million value for the week. $9 million is close to minimum you would be valued at if you play a full game at QB. He was the 32nd ranked QB and the worst value in the NFL considering his contract is worth $33 million….The Vikings were also our least valuable team of the week coming in at $200.8 million. Its a teamwide failure so far though Cousins will take the brunt of it…The Texans continue to be lone team that on a weekly basis can’t even match their contracted annual values.

Check Out All Week 2 Player Values

With all the talk of MVP candidates, valuable and non-valuable positions, where to go cheap and where to go expensive I thought I could use our valuation models to take a look at just where teams are deriving the most value over what would be a “replacement level” player. You can read about our valuations here but in general they are based on participation, statistical achievements and PFF grades and the market value in which the player plays.

So how did I define a replacement level talent as that can be tricky. I’m a contract guy so I went into the pool of players to try to best identify the kind of players, who actually participate, that are actually available. What is available talent?  Available talent in my mind is anyone who signed as an undrafted free agent, anyone who was available as a street free agent who signed for no more than the league minimum plus a minor bonus, and any unrestricted free agent who signed a contract that qualified for the minimum salary benefit. Why these players?  Because they are the only players who were freely available to the entire league.  Here is the breakdown of all players that fit that criteria who are on pace to play at least 75 snaps this year.

While we are dealing with a small sample especially for many positions (in particular right tackle as well as quarterback and left tackle) this at least gives us an idea of what is truly available to NFL teams that is the alternative to simply letting a player walk in free agency and replacing him with the cheapest options available. Of course even hitting a replacement level requires some skill as there are dozens of players who make it that don’t play many, if any, snaps in a given year.

To calculate value above replacement I looked at the current OTC Value for each player and calculated what the value for the average 2019 replacement level player would be if the replacement player played the same amount of snaps as the “name” player. Here is the top ranked player at each position:

Looking further I wanted to break down the groupings into players that provide the most percentage of value above replacement just to get an idea of what positions are the ones where perhaps the top end talent makes the most different. I was actually surprised, but perhaps should not have been, that among players with 150 snaps on the year it’s the edge rushers, receivers, and interior defensive linemen that dominate the lists. Top players here would be Nick Bosa, Amari Cooper, and Donald. This should have been apparent to me since those positions are often so draft heavy and there is usually a big gap in athleticism between those draft picks and the UDFA types but for whatever reason I was just assuming it would be QB. QB does jump to the top if we consider the amount of players that provide at least 25% value per snap.

Here is the breakdown of each position for players with at least 150 snaps on the year and the amount who provide at least 50% value above  and 25% value above a replacement player.

Finally I looked at every player who has played at least 10 snaps this year to determine the total level of players who perform under the replacement level.

Again since that right tackle sample is so small I’d throw out that number entirely and while all of these really require a few years of data that one in particular I think needs far more as it doesn’t really pass the smell test.  The others are not surprising. There are a large number of replaceable running backs and that’s been something most have argued for some time. Cornerback may surprise some but probably should not. Teams have to employ a lot of secondary players many of whom carry more special teams value than value as a corner. While they are in on some defensive plays that is not their primary role. Guard is a position I would like to look at more. My feeling I’ve had on guard is that teams have overvalued the position in recent years. This happened back in the late 2000’s before teams realized that there really wasn’t much of a thing as high end play and that it’s more interchangeable. As salaries rise I wonder if that happens again.

Overall I think an early takeways are that quarterback, edge rusher, wide receiver, and interior defensive line are the positions you should aim to keep each year and mainly look in the draft for cheaper talent because the market isn’t there to find viable alternatives. Safety, tight end and linebacker are also positions to likely keep in house but there is limited reason to buy a high end player if there are other options open to the team in free agency. Left tackle is probably in the same category. I think at corner there is logic to having a top talent whether through the draft or free agency but from a depth perspective there is talent available and teams should be wary of overpaying. Guard, running back and perhaps right tackle are the spots where teams can probably think most of going cheap if an existing option becomes too expensive or they need to cut back somewhere to cover positions like receiver.

As I said above this is a pretty small sample but I think a fun topic to discuss and a different way to look at things and maybe better assess the way teams build their lineups. None of this means that it’s a given you can just drop a guy and find someone on the street better as well. Even though we are giving a baseline to replacement talent remember that the NFL signs hundreds of players off the street every year who don’t even make a team. There is also no guarantee that the replacement pool would play at the same level if they were given more responsibility the way many starters are. After the season is over I think Ill go back and retroactively look at 2016 through 2018 and see how the numbers change with a better sample of players to work with.

Here are the top 100 players on the season and as I do some more work on this after the season well probably add something along these lines to our premium OTC Valuation tool.