The Washington Redskins have a choice to make at No. 2 overall in the 2020 NFL draft. They have three realistic options:
Select Ohio State edge rusher Chase Young
Select Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa
Trade down to acquire more picks
Most signs are pointing toward them going with Option No. 1 and taking the class' top prospect in Young. But that might not be so smart, even if it looks great on paper. In fact, it's arguably the worst of the three options when you dig a little deeper.
Surprised? Allow me to explain ...
Trading down vs. selecting Young
In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, new Washington coach Ron Rivera did not sound particularly keen on the idea of trading out of the No. 2 pick. "If you're going to make a trade and you're going to go back, that guy you take at that spot has to be able to make the kind of impact you need to validate missing an opportunity to take a player that's a high-impact guy," he said.
But as good of a defensive end as Young may be, he's also just that: a defensive end. A non-quarterback. And the Redskins can extract a quarterback's worth of value out of the pick if they don't select him.
For the moment, let's put aside the option of the Redskins drafting Tagovailoa themselves and work under the assumption that the team is sticking with Dwayne Haskins Jr. at quarterback. After all, they did spend the No. 15 pick on him just 12 months ago.
With that shelved for the moment, we have to evaluate the value of selecting Young against trading down in the draft order. And there are a couple different ways we can do that.
Approximate value
Let's use our own draft value chart based on projected approximate value (AV) for each draft slot. This method, first popularized by Chase Stuart, considers the expected production levels for players for each draft slot in the modern game. The difference is well-known at this point: The AV model believes that the draft curve is flatter and early picks are therefore generally overrated by the market. In other words, NFL teams following the Johnson chart aren't as good in knowing which draft picks will be better than others as they think they are.
So what does that mean for a potential Young trade? We have to consider the relative value of the No. 2 pick against what Washington would get in return. A logical trade partner is Miami, which sits at No. 5 and presumably is in the market for a rookie QB.
Conveniently, a trade of the No. 5 pick and the No. 18 pick (also Miami's) for the No. 2 pick would be even in the Johnson chart. Given that teams often are willing to pay a premium for QBs, that's probably on the low end of what the market for the second pick would bear, but let's be conservative and roll with that.
With the more modern AV approach, Washington would come out significantly ahead on this deal on average. The second overall pick is worth 8.6 AV per year over the first four years, but the combination of Nos. 5 and 18 is worth 12.2 AV per year over the same span.
To be clear, this may not be a bad deal for Miami. It's an asymmetric trade in that the Dolphins are trading up for a QB who has higher upside than the non-QB Washington would take if it stayed put. And while the Redskins would surely lose out on Young in this scenario, the projected output of the two players they draft in his stead would be expected to be worth about 42% more than a typical No. 2 overall pick.
And none of that is even considering that picks coming later in the first round generally have more surplus value than earlier ones, a revelation discovered by Richard Thaler and Cade Massey in 2005.
So this is all good. What's the downside to this approach so far? It doesn't specifically consider Young and his potential. But we can do that.
Player projections
ESPN's NFL draft projections are mostly based on a qualitative input: Scouts Inc. grades. We add in some combine and measurement information as well, but you can think of our projections largely as a translation of grades into a range of outcomes for a given prospect.
The range of outcomes for Young -- who is Scouts Inc.'s top player in this year's draft -- is very favorable. The model estimates that Young has a 52% chance to develop into a Pro Bowl-caliber player (the top designation), a 35% chance to be just a starting-caliber player (so 87% chance to be at least a starting-caliber player), a 12% shot at being a bench player and a virtually nonexistent chance of becoming anything short of that. In a world where plenty of highly touted prospects end up as a duds, that's a strong projection.
But would that be worth as much as the players the Redskins would get at No. 5 and No. 18, the hypothetical trade discussed in the previous section? Here we can actually put some names to those picks and make a determination.
Let's work under the assumption that the Dolphins select Tagovailoa, the Lions take Young, the Giants select Isaiah Simmons and Washington goes with Ohio State CB Jeff Okudah. Okudah has a 42% chance to become a Pro Bowler -- 10% short of Young. But with the 18th overall pick, the Redskins get to grab someone else. In Todd McShay's latest mock, that's Alabama safety Xavier McKinney, who has a 31% chance to end up a Pro Bowl-caliber player.
So for the price of Young (0.52 expected Pro Bowl-caliber player), the Redskins land Okudah and McKinney, who are a combined 0.73 expected Pro Bowlers. That's better.
I didn't just pick out those two because they are high on our projections sheet. You can pick up plenty of similar combinations and find the same result. Other examples might include:
Simmons and Patrick Queen (1.17)
Jerry Jeudy and K'Lavon Chaisson (0.67)
Derrick Brown and CJ Henderson (0.82)
The obvious question here is positional value. Is a Pro Bowl defensive end worth more than a Pro Bowl cornerback? It's somewhat hard to know, and this is a largely unexplored area. But research from Pro Football Focus last year indicated pass coverage is more important than pass rushing, and positional variances from our own explorations into adjusted plus-minus in college football have shown defensive end to be among the less important positions in terms of impact on the passing game.
If anything, we might adjust the value of a DE down relative to a cornerback or wide receiver. At the very least, it seems reasonable to not assign Young extra credit for being a defensive end relative to positions such as corner and receiver.
The other option: Taking Tua
The best approach for the Redskins may be to simply select Tagovailoa themselves. Washington is a year into the Haskins era, but Tagovailoa is a higher-regarded prospect than Haskins was in 2019, and Haskins is coming off a poor rookie season. Our projections support this move.
Why? Tagovailoa has a 23% chance to become a Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback and 66% chance to end up at least a starter. That's far ahead of the 4% and 22% chances for those two categories for Haskins, respectively, by the same model going into his own draft. (It's worth noting that our draft projections have been improved since the last draft, and our published numbers for Haskins were a good deal higher on him 12 months ago, though still short of Tagovailoa's.)
Rex Ryan explains why Tua Tagovailoa's durability makes him the riskiest pick in this year's NFL draft.
Though we don't update future projections after a player has hit the pro field, there's only one direction Haskins' outlook would have gone: down. He finished No. 41 in QBR out of the 42 players who threw 100 pass attempts last season.
Drafting a first-round QB two years in a row is hardly ideal, but the price is not impossible to swallow. Teams pay multiple firsts (via moving up) in order to acquire first-round quarterbacks, and in this instance, Washington would be able to flip Haskins for a lesser pick, Josh Rosen-style. Alternatively, they could hang on to Haskins and maximize their chances of having an elite QB by needing only one of the two first-rounders to develop into one.
The verdict: What the Redskins should do
Given the importance of acquiring a franchise quarterback, selecting Tagovailoa is probably the most advisable course of action. Opportunities to draft a QB prospect of his caliber without having to trade up to do so do not come around often.
But there's an argument for trading down too, especially if Washington can glean an even higher price than the one discussed above. At least one other quantitative analysis came to the same conclusion: Washington would be best advised to take one of those two options.
There is room for debate about what Washington should do. But the evidence is clear about what it should not do: take Young at No. 2.