Draft Metrics: Linebackers

Linebackers are the multi-tool of the defense. Some come blitzing off the edge, others fill running lanes, while some frequently drop back in coverage. The wide variety (or combination) of objectives makes them hard to compare, so I'll be leaning on pro-football-reference.com's Career Approximate Value (CarAV) to help me rank players. Similar to defensive backs, I've broken down picks between 2000 and 2008 into starter quality (starts at least 80% of seasons), journeyman (at least 50% of seasons) and the rest. I've correlated these with CarAV ranges to get an idea of what level of play is required for each bucket, and will look at player yields from the draft using these points of reference.

By inspecting the list of players, the 'elite' range for CarAV is above 9, and 'good' is above 7.5. Starter quality players average about 6, so I'll consider this the cutoff for an 'adequate' starter. The bottom third of the journeyman range is 4.5, which will become the cutoff for a bust ('backup'). Now let's see what the data shows.

Round 7:
Of 45 picks, there are 2 backup level players.

Round 6:
Of 37 picks, there are 1 good, 2 adequate and 1 backup players.

Round 5:
Of 44 picks, there are 3 adequate and 3 backup players.

Round 4:
Of 42 picks, there are 5 adequate and 4 backup players.

Round 3:
Of 53 picks, there are 1 elite, 1 good, 4 adequate and 6 backup players.

Round 2:
Of 39 picks, there are 3 elite, 2 good, 8 adequate and 5 backup players.

Round 1:
Of 27 picks, there are 5 elite, 6 good, 6 adequate and 5 backup players. 5 players were busts.

Conclusion:
We see the similar trend of little differentiation in rounds 5 through 7. Less than 5% of picks are of adequate starting caliber, and only another 5% are destined to backup duty. In rounds 3 and 4, the odds of each double, but even building depth is a slim proposition. Things change drastically from here though, as nearly half of 2nd round picks seeing significant action, with 1 in 3 being starter quality. We also see about 1 in 5 picks end up in the good or elite category. Round 1 yields about 2 starters per 3 picks and those are equally likely to be good or elite. The bust rate is less than 1 in 5.

Based on past pick history, teams should not use a top-10 pick on a linebacker. Brian Urlacher is the only good or elite pick in that range (#9). The other 4 (Arrington, Hawk, Sims, Rivers) have been quality players, but didn't reach the higher status for one reason or another (Arrington and Rivers missed significant time to injury). Looking more closely at the draft history, the quality starts to drop off pretty significantly by the middle of the 2nd. The range is just right for every team to get one good shot at a starting linebacker.