I've Wanted to write a post similar to this for awhile now. At first, it was because I wanted to prove the value of Matt Cassell, Then I wanted to Prove the monetary value of our key players, then I wanted to prove Why money is the most important factor to a football team. Frankly, I'm just going to present some stats and some very sabermetricy ideas.

I think part of the reason That this type of analysis of player valuation hasn't caught on in football, is that. there are alot of small sample sizes. In Baseball we look at 500 plate appearances and 162 games. In football it's different. We may look at 100 catches and 16 games. We all know from basic statistics that small sample sizes can greatly skew numbers like these.

We're going to jump right into it anyway.

I had a short debate earlier that centered around my thesis that Money drives the game far more than an altruistic desire to win championships. In baseball, There are a few metrics that have been used to put a monetary value on a playoff appearance and on a player's worth in reference to wins. I'm going to do my best to apply that to football. I'm taking general principles from the book "Baseball, between the numbers: why everything you know about the game is wrong".

I'm going to adapt the formula by basically multiplying the value of an individual game or win by 10 162/16 is about 10. I realize that the numbers won't fall in line perfectly. It assumes that the NFL and MLB have similar gross revenue. And it doesn't have an adjustment for park factors or local socio economic factors, it's just a rought draft. If you have a better way to do it, please share.

The book asses that in baseball an extra win, is approximately worth $1,196,000 so in Theory if a football player somehow can be worth an extra win by himself he's essentially worth $11,960,000. The hard part comes from the fact that we Have a stat Like wins above replacement for baseball, and really no stat that can value a win in terms of football. 

In all honesty we're basically going to have to make up a number based on DYAR on football outsiders. As a point of reference. DYAR means Defense adjusted Yards above replacement. In baseball the stat is already nice and tidy and estimates wins above replacement. We need to Figure out how many Yards equals a win.  Also, replacement level means any of the 22 guys off the street that Haley can pick up. As a side note. LJ has been -103 DYAR. That's pretty bad.

The best way I found to do this was to take the top QB, RB, WR, and  TE.  from each  team and add up their DVR and divide by the number of wins. I had to leave out the win less teams because a bunch of zero's would have screwed up the calculations. I know this isn't perfect, but it's just an estimation. If you've got a better idea of how to calculate this please let me know.

The numbers come out to be about 50 yards above replacement level equals 1 win, DYAR is heavily slanted toward QB, as it should be, in reality a QB is much more valuable than any other position, but in terms of DYAR it says Drew Brees is worth about 8 times what Adrian Peterson is worth. So it all should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe I should be dividing the DYAR of a QB by three in order to get a more level playing field. Seeing how roughly a 300 yard passing game and 100 yard running game are equivalent. Maybe I'll try that later. Let's stick with the status quo.

Assuming all of these things I expected Matt Cassel to be more valuable than he has. Obviously it's easier for these metrics to work in baseball because one player is independent of another on most plays, in football, there are alot more variables.

There are a few things that really stick out. The value of a True Franchise QB, is basically off the charts and becomes a statistical anomaly All of these mythical wins are also based on offense alone, Meaning they might have to be halved in terms of total cash value considering you'd spend roughly half your cap on offense and defense...

Lots to think about here This is just a jumping off point... points of discussion...

Let's think about LJ for a second. He is -103 DYAR meaning a replacement level player would be about 2 wins more valuable than he is.... Negative numbers really throw the stats off, but in general you get the idea he's been pretty bad.

As for Cassell. He's been about -49 DYAR meaning he's roughly a game worse than a replacement level player. Certainly not playing up to that 60 mil contract (to be honest when I started this I didn't expect him to have a negative number.)

Bowe had a positive 71, so he's been worth about 1.5 wins Thus far. By far our most productive player. worth about 18 million to the front office in terms of gross revenue.

Like I said earlier, I know some of it is flawed due to the nature of football.

Here are the issues I can identify.

I need to adjust for roster size

The Salary Cap.

Find a way to quantify blocking skills.

And positional weights need to be adjusted.

I also divided by 4 (the number of player's DYAR I added together) If I multiply that back out. It takes about 200 yards to equal a win on your own. It balances out the skewed QB numbers but I think really devalues running backs. In that equation it values the best running backs at a bout .75 worth of a win. And it only put's LJ at about .5 of a loss.... Which might be accurate... Hmmm Not sure.

I think we can look back and say that if we based cassel's value at the end of they year on this rough valuation equation, he wouldn't get anywhere near 60 million. We can also look back and Say LJ is one of the worst 3 backs in the league. And we can also say that Bowe has been a lone bright spot.

The other thing that this shows, is that Management can put a number on a player's worth from a strictly business point of view. If we were to perfect the calculations we could say, this player was worth this amount of gross revenue to the team, and deserves this raise. We can also see who is under performing or outperforming their contract. I haven't figured out a way to turn gross revenue into player salary, but that's next.