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  • 6 hours ago
RJ and Bobby took us Inside The Star and discussed if the Cowboys should trade up in the NFL Draft, including a call to the Cardinals for the 3rd overall pick. They broke down trade scenarios, the cost using the Jimmy Johnson trade value chart, debated whether they should trade up or down, and more.
Transcript
00:00There's a question out there that's beginning to build, Chop.
00:02Yeah.
00:03Which is, do the Cowboys say, let's roll the dice and let's go up?
00:09Which, there's a thought process here.
00:14You do not have a second round pick.
00:16Okay?
00:17You've added a third finally, but you don't have a second round pick.
00:20You've got your two firsts.
00:23In a weaker draft, do you say,
00:27well, then I think the pressure is on to trade up even more
00:31because you've got to make sure you get one of the guys?
00:35Or do you say in a weaker draft,
00:37no, you need to bail out of there then
00:40so that you don't get stuck with bad value at 12
00:42and you just try to pick up as much capital as you can
00:44to try and spend to get you as many pieces as you can
00:48so that you can get a decent class from all the picks you've spent?
00:51I've always been of the mindset of trading.
00:56I mean, I'm a seller.
00:58I want to sell.
01:00I want to sell at the trade deadline.
01:02ABS?
01:03Yeah.
01:04Or ABC.
01:05Always be closing.
01:06Always be closing.
01:08You know, to me, if you were to go back and look historically,
01:11sellers win, buyers lose.
01:13Yes, typically in draft trades they do.
01:16Yeah, so I always want to be the one selling.
01:19So that would be you would want to bail out of both picks or one?
01:22I would like to bail out of both.
01:23I would like to go for 12 to 16 and 20 to, you know,
01:28probably not to the second round.
01:29But if I go back to, you know, 29 and pick up an extra whatever,
01:34yeah, I think that's how you really build your roster.
01:36So there have been some suggestions out there in recent days that...
01:39And by the way, if I stayed at 20, I'm fine with that too.
01:41There have been some reports that maybe the Cowboys could be interested
01:46in going up a little bit.
01:47Todd McShay even went as far as suggesting, did not report,
01:50but suggested maybe three.
01:53Maybe the Cowboys go up to three for David Bailey.
01:55Arizona, right?
01:56Mm-hmm.
01:56And the Cowboys, there have been reports out there that they have had visits
01:59with Arvel Reese and visits with David Bailey.
02:02So to go from 12 to three, you're going to have to give up 12, 20,
02:06and next year's...
02:08I don't know.
02:08Let's take a look at that and see what it is.
02:10So here's the thing.
02:12The 30 visits that teams get, these are like really strong indications
02:17of guys they want to get answers about or guys that they're interested in
02:20or whatever it may be.
02:21The fact that they're interviewing Arvel Reese and David Bailey,
02:25as reported by Ian Rappaport on Friday,
02:28those are two guys not supposed to get out of the top three.
02:31Right.
02:31That sounds like a team that's wanting to go up.
02:33And there's rumors that the Cowboys could go up to three,
02:36could go up to six, could go up to nine.
02:39So what exactly would that cost?
02:41Because we've all heard about the trade value chart.
02:44The very famous Jimmy Johnson trade value chart.
02:46Which has been changed a lot.
02:48Now it's more based off of position and not number.
02:50Well, it's still used sort of, like, I mean, it's applied in the same sort of way,
02:56which is every single pick, for those of you that don't know,
02:59every single pick has a point value on it.
03:01Right.
03:01All the way down through, from pick one, all the way down to pick, you know, 251.
03:07And pick one, for instance, is worth 3,000.
03:11Pick two is worth 2,600.
03:13Pick three is worth 2,200.
03:14And you keep on going down.
03:16And then you start at top of the second round.
03:18Top of the second round, pick 33 is worth 580.
03:20Then 560.
03:21And by the time you get into the fourth round, you're under 100 for a point value.
03:25By the time you get into the seventh round, everything's under five.
03:28So, that's the way that point values have generally worked.
03:31And it's something that people reference all the time.
03:32When a trade goes down with draft capital, they go, okay, let's take a look.
03:35Let's see if, did the points match up?
03:36Who won?
03:37Who got a good value there?
03:38And I was curious over the weekend, how much teams have followed that?
03:44Like, how much is there actually a commitment to this point value?
03:47And if it's not a commitment to the trade value chart consistently,
03:52what do we need to adjust?
03:54And what do we need to change our expectation for?
03:56Well, no, just because the point values match up there,
03:59that does not mean you can go up and get that.
04:00Right.
04:01Like, to me, if I was looking at this, my interpretation of it is if I was a team,
04:06let's say I was Arizona.
04:08And let's say, for example, this was a draft where there was multiple quarterbacks in the draft.
04:12And you're wanting to go from 10 to 3.
04:16I know you're going for a quarterback.
04:20Right?
04:21I'm going to charge you more to go from 10 to 3 to get a quarterback
04:25than I would charge a team going from 10 to 3 that is just going to take an edge rusher.
04:28Maybe.
04:29If I was the team that was at the third spot, I was like, oh, look, I know you're getting
04:33a quarterback.
04:34This is worth, you know, a top-flight quarterback is worth three edge rushers.
04:39So I'm going to charge you more for this.
04:40So I took a look at teams in the last five years.
04:44I've got data from further back.
04:46But I really sorted and organized everything from the last five years.
04:50And I only did trades that involved, that were first-rounders.
04:54And I only did trades that involved picks.
04:56So I did not include, for instance, the Bears trade with the Panthers
05:01because the point values don't match up.
05:04But DJ Moore was also thrown in there.
05:06So I don't know how much they would have valued DJ.
05:09We could speculate, but then we're inserting speculation instead of just looking at the value numbers.
05:13You're taking away trades with players.
05:15Yes, which is not a ton of them, but there have been, you know, three or four of them that
05:19have existed.
05:20And then what I've got is the value return.
05:23So the value return is going to be you take the total number of points.
05:28Let me try to explain this in as simple terms as I can.
05:30If you're Dallas at pick 12 and you're trying to go up to pick six, pick six would be worth
05:391,600 points.
05:41So we would take the 1,600 points you have coming in and then the total points from your picks
05:47that you gave up.
05:49And whatever the difference is, if you gave up 1,800 points, for instance, and you ended up receiving 1
05:55,600, that's a 200-point difference.
05:58So the difference in the points there is then a percentage of the team's outgoing value.
06:05So basically 200 divided by 1,800, what is that percentage?
06:10And then if it's minus 200 by 1,800.
06:13So you then get an idea of percentage-wise how far.
06:16By the way, I said, yeah, but that math went right over my head.
06:18I know, but what I'm saying is basically you don't want a negative number.
06:21A negative number here means you overpaid by a percentage.
06:24A positive number means you got good value back.
06:29And then what I did was I eliminated from this anything that was between 3%.
06:34Okay?
06:35So if, for instance, you spent, if you acquired something that cost 1,000 points,
06:41if you were either in the positive or the negative within 30% of that 1,000,
06:50then I just went ahead and said that you were following the trade chart.
06:53Because you're not going to match up points exactly.
06:55So 3% there, if you're 30 points for every 1,000,
06:59I'm going to say that you're playing within the chart.
07:01And so that's just a zero value difference.
07:03That's you followed the trade chart.
07:04So all that to say, in the last five years,
07:08the most expensive trade-up,
07:10the one that cost the absolute most by a ridiculous margin,
07:15was not for a quarterback.
07:17It was actually last year when somebody valued a certain Tennessee volunteer
07:21a great deal.
07:23James Pierce?
07:24The James Pierce trade-up from the Falcons is the most expensive trade-up
07:27in the last five years by far.
07:29And they went, what was that, 30, 29?
07:31They went up 20 spots.
07:33They went from 46 to 26.
07:37And what they offered up was, let me see what the exact,
07:41because they traded their first rounder this year.
07:42They don't have one.
07:44So they traded a first for a future trade-up.
07:46I'm trying to think,
07:46the only other one that I can think of in recent history that's happened with
07:49for an edge rusher was Sean Payton did that for Marcus Davenport,
07:53where he traded up and dealt away a first rounder.
07:57But they gave up a ton of capital there.
07:59The second biggest trade-value trade-up,
08:01where they lost the most points on it.
08:03And this, by the way, for Atlanta to the Rams,
08:05the biggest trade-value, minus 22% for Atlanta on this trade-value return.
08:10The second highest one is actually Chicago to the Giants,
08:18which is Justin Fields.
08:20That's the Justin Fields trade-up,
08:22so we had a quarterback involved there.
08:23But the third highest one is Detroit going up to Dallas last year.
08:29When Dallas traded back for Tyler,
08:31or two years ago, when Dallas traded back for Tyler Guyton.
08:34Oh, wow.
08:35And Detroit had moved up for,
08:36I can't remember who they went up and got,
08:37but it was not a quarterback.
08:39It was, I don't know who it was.
08:40It was, uh...
08:43No, I thought I was going to say it was Jack Campbell.
08:45I think that was Terry on Arnold.
08:46Maybe.
08:47That is who that was.
08:48And then the third biggest trade-up,
08:50or the fourth biggest trade-up,
08:51Miami to Philly going 12-6 in 2021 to take Jalen Waddell.
08:56And they gave up 10.9% on the deal.
08:59So three of the biggest four trades don't even involve quarterbacks.
09:03Which is...
09:04That's surprising to me.
09:05That's surprising to me.
09:06Now, out of these 28 first-round trades that I've looked at,
09:1016 of them were either zero on the trade value chart,
09:15like they matched up the trade values,
09:17or they were actually the team that traded up one points on it,
09:21and actually one value in trading up.
09:24Oh, wow.
09:25Which just sounds like somebody screwed up.
09:27But those instances, that's only happened three times.
09:2913 have been done.
09:30But that means 12 out of the 28 times,
09:32you're overpaying by some amount to go up.
09:35Yeah, I suppose when they trade up and they get...
09:37The people who trade up actually win the deal,
09:39I think part of that is that team that was trading back
09:42didn't have a whole lot of takers.
09:43They were like, look, I'll just take 75 cents on the dollar.
09:46Because I've seen that spot.
09:48If I was a team that didn't want...
09:49If I was picking third, and I'm Arizona,
09:52and I don't want to pay a super high-priced lotto ticket,
09:57right, because that's what it is,
09:58it doesn't matter who it is, right?
09:59That person's going to be a high-priced lottery ticket.
10:03Yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I'll trade down,
10:04and you don't want to give me...
10:05And it's worth 1,000 points.
10:07And you want to give me 900 points?
10:09I'm like, all right, fine.
10:10That's close enough.
10:12History has told us, basically, so let's take a look.
10:13The Stouts does not have the capital to trade up to 3,
10:16based on this history.
10:17If the league is telling you this is what market value is...
10:19You mean in this year's draft?
10:20They don't have the capital to go to control.
10:22They have to give up 20, and then next year's 1.
10:24Probably.
10:25And that's just a no for me.
10:27Because then, like, you trade Micah for just two players.
10:33In fact, next year's 1 doesn't even...
10:35No, next year's 1 gets you close.
10:37Probably about that, yeah.
10:39It'd be 20 and next year's 1 to get 3.
10:41It's a lot.
10:42It's a lot, man.
10:43And I wouldn't want to do that.
10:45So, Cleveland at 6 is a really popular one.
10:47And we had talked about 12 and 20 for 6 and 39.
10:51If you trade your 12th pick and your 20th pick for the Browns' 6 in the first round,
10:56and then they're 39 in the second, that's even trade value.
10:59So, you're like, okay, perfect.
11:00I can go make that swap.
11:02History tells us you're paying about a 10% tax to go up that high
11:06and to make that sort of a deal.
11:08So, that means what's actually likely, Chop,
11:11is that Dallas would more likely have to go 12 and 20 for pick 6 and then 70.
11:18So, you would not be getting that second rounder in all likelihood.
11:22You would be going up to 6 with 12 and 20,
11:24and then what you'd be getting back to kind of even the count would be their third rounder.
11:28And is that nearly as attractive to go up there and lose that extra first?
11:32Again, I don't think so.
11:34And then Kansas City, if you were to do 12 to 9,
11:39and you were to let Kansas City come up from 29 to 20.
11:42So, you basically just trade your firsts.
11:4412 and 20 for 9 and 29.
11:47That trade right there gives Kansas City about 50 points on you.
11:52Like, they get the value by about 50 points.
11:55Is it sort of a fifth?
11:56No, that's about what it costs.
11:58To go up even three spots would be just a small,
12:00basically you've got to eat a small cost.
12:02That says, all right, you've got to eat a little bit of that.
12:04So, Dallas in all likelihood is not just going to get even trade value.
12:07From the 401, I don't know where that is.
12:10In my opinion, you have to go up.
12:11You have no difference makers on defense.
12:13Downs would change a lot.
12:14Sounds stupid trading up for safety, but he's going to be vital.
12:17I don't think it does sound stupid 401.
12:19I think that he is a difference maker.
12:21And in today's NFL and in Christian Parker's defense,
12:23since those safeties, those hybrid nickel players are massive pieces.
12:27I love them.
12:28I don't know that I'd trade up to five or six for them.
12:30That's a lot.
12:31Because like you said.
12:32I do think nine makes some sense.
12:34If it takes just a you swap your firsts with Kansas City,
12:37I think going up three spots to ensure you get one of the
12:41Monsoor, Delaney, Sonny Stiles, Caleb Downs,
12:43because there's probably one of them left there.
12:45Yeah.
12:45I think that's worth it.
12:46All right.
12:46Well, that's good stuff, Bobby Bell.
12:48Good stuff.
12:49A little trade value rumors swirling.
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