AFL Autopsy R20: Smashed by the Saints, and the season is cooked.

[jdstorm]

As was posted, 3 debutants in 2 years is the issue. The club was (& probably still is) deluded enough to think it was on the cusp of something & just needed to tinker at the edges & it would all come together.

At the start of the year that was looking true. They were a good defensive and contested side who just needed to get better attacking in transition and kick a few more goals. While comfortably sitting in the top 4….

Then after rd 10 (and setterfield getting hurt/dropped) the team fell apart and has been awful defensively and in contested situations while not improving their transition or potency

 

[eth-dog]

As was posted, 3 debutants in 2 years is the issue. The club was (& probably still is) deluded enough to think it was on the cusp of something & just needed to tinker at the edges & it would all come together.

It's a bit of a nothing stat. Who, other than Roberts is ready to debut? Hayes has things to work on before he's ready. Jayden is a long way behind where he needs to be. SEH and Hunter injured.

 

[ant555]

I hate this it’s just such an excuse…

Assuming Cox counts as a forward.

Forwards Wright, Cox, Caddy, Stringer, Langford, Perkins Gresham

That group has 5x top 10 draft pics. 2 x AA, Wright has a 50 goal season, and Gresham a band 2 level free agent.

Def: (not including Martin cause he’s a wing and shouldn’t be playing here)

1x Band 1 free agent 2x AA players 1x no1 overall pick with a top 10 pick injured and a high 2nd playing well in the vfl

Wings: Martin Dursma Jones…
1x elite wing, 1x FRP who’s playing well and 1x 196cm wing who’s still working out how to play there but has high upside as he’s only been playing there a month.

Mids:
Merrett possible AA Captain this year
Parish/Sheil -former AA players
Hobbs/Tasatas/Caldwell FRPs
Durham - great player found in midseason draft.
Setterfield - Journeyman drafted top 10 good league standard mid/forward. Pushed out of 2 stacked teams (Giants/Carlton) Can’t play wing/HB

That’s a lot of high picks and AA players. A higher percentage of these players should be good then are at Essendon which comes down to culture and development

Edit: there’s so much confirmation bias in sport. Ie team lost = shit talent. Team
Won = good talent.

There is also rose colored glasses.
Seriously.
Wright 2 good seasons out of 8.
Gresham . Who cares what band FA compo we got . B grade player.
5 top ten draft picks in the forwards . Who cares. You do not win games based on draft position.
I could go on but it is just so obvious you over rate us by a long way.
It is not an excuse. It is not confirmation bias.
You will die on the Peter Wright hill.

 

[jdstorm]

There is also rose colored glasses.
Seriously.
Wright 2 good seasons out of 8.
Gresham . Who cares what band FA compo we got . B grade player.
5 top ten draft picks in the forwards . Who cares. You do not win games based on draft position.
I could go on but it is just so obvious you over rate us by a long way.
It is not an excuse. It is not confirmation bias.
You will die on the Peter Wright hill.

Ive had Peter Wright and Darcy Parish as my most likely to be traded candidates all year.

Just think if they are on the team you should try and get their best from them because that’s pretty good.

When it comes to pics and FAs you assume $$$ and draft position is linked to expected production. If actual production and expectations (based on industry standards) are significantly misaligned then the most glaring factor as to why that is would be club/environment

With regards to Tsatas, Hobbs, Perkins, Cox, Reid, Caddy they weren’t outlier pics. Most clubs had them in similar spots so that’s why I point to their lacking production as worrying and more about environment then talent

 

[ant555]

Ive had Peter Wright and Darcy Parish as my most likely to be traded candidates all year.

Just think if they are on the team you should try and get their best from them because that’s pretty good.

When it comes to pics and FAs you assume $$$ and draft position is linked to expected production. If actual production and expectations (based on industry standards) are significantly misaligned then the most glaring factor as to why that is would be club/environment

With regards to Tsatas, Hobbs, Perkins, Cox, Reid, Caddy they weren’t outlier pics. Most clubs had them in similar spots so that’s why I point to their lacking production as worrying and more about environment then talent

Best not to asume . You are so far off the mark with that assumption it is not funny.

Caddy . Not evens ure why you netion him.
Hobbs was actually a pick that slid back a little but has been going along okay anyway.
Perkins / Cox / Reid came from a draft with a big gap in actual playing and Cox was considered more a mid teen pick.
Tsatas not being able to kick is not a result of our development.
And the industry does not always nail the top picks. The industry did not get Aaron Francis right just to use one of our own.
Club has not spent well on development in recent years for sure but the "talent" is not as good as you seem to think it is.

 

[Call Me Cake]

The club was (& probably still is) deluded enough to think it was on the cusp of something & just needed to tinker at the edges & it would all come together.

You're deluded if you think that. The club saw an opportunity to fill out holes in the side with players that suited the demographic of the list without jeaporadising the draft hand.

If your assumption was correct we would've done something like signing a 29 year old Barrass with first rounders going the other way.

The very fact that we prioritised safeguarding our draft hand was a result of our desire to bring in youth and have them debut accordingly. The very fact that we focused on players that suited the demographic was with the hope that they would have time to gel with the list and push forward as a collective in the coming years, it wasn't just about this year. Everyone knew the players we brought in weren't A-grade players, we knew full well they were additions for the sake of balancing out the side.

As was posted, 3 debutants in 2 years is the issue.

The graphic posted had us debuting the least this year, with Roberts upping it thereafter, however debutants aren't a sole key metric for success, nor are they going to be a common sight when players already in are humming and are overachieving.

Even if our aim wasn't to contend, it makes no sense and also would be destabalizing to those playing well to just omit someone for the sake of debuting. The best words in footy are "unchanged", and when a side wins, you are better off keeping it that way as long as possible to earn synergy and reward those that have played their roles.

The best way to develop a side is to have them play as much footy undisturbed as possible in order to gel. Of course, with gelling sides inconsistencies will come and hence the ability to omit and debut is easier to justify or more necessary.

Nevertheless, when most of your debuting has been done in previous years (as shown in the graph before), the less frequent debutants will become. Whereas when sides like Collingwood, Richmond (and as have Geelong) eventually have a mass exodus or retirements, you'll naturally see more debutants there as they'll have positions to fill and aren't in the business of trying to find their best 23. Debuts aren't always going to happen when the bulk of the list is at the 21-26 range, you've already had that phase by then and that's common sense.

 

[jdstorm]

Best not to asume . You are so far off the mark with that assumption it is not funny.

Caddy . Not evens ure why you netion him.
Hobbs was actually a pick that slid back a little but has been going along okay anyway.
Perkins / Cox / Reid came from a draft with a big gap in actual playing and Cox was considered more a mid teen pick.
Tsatas not being able to kick is not a result of our development.
And the industry does not always nail the top picks. The industry did not get Aaron Francis right just to use one of our own.
Club has not spent well on development in recent years for sure but the "talent" is not as good as you seem to think it is.

We know the exact rate the industry nails draft picks at. There’s a chart that can give you a percentage chance of what they typical expected/median outcome of each pick should become.

They don’t get everything right. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at it but I believe it’s about a 50% chance you get 1xAA and 200 games out of pick 1 and gets progressively less impactful as you go further down.

Similarly we know the salary cap (around $12 million per team per year. Now an average team should win 50% of their games so that means it’s about $1M a win is expected average production. So if Gresh is making say 600k he should be worth about .6 wins if his production is equal to his contract.

These are the assumptions I’m talking about.

 

[ant555]

We know the exact rate the industry nails draft picks at. There’s a chart that can give you a percentage chance of what they typical expected/median outcome of each pick should become.

They don’t get everything right. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at it but I believe it’s about a 50% chance you get 1xAA and 200 games out of pick 1 and gets progressively less impactful as you go further down.

Similarly we know the salary cap (around $12 million per team per year. Now an average team should win 50% of their games so that means it’s about $1M a win is expected average production. So if Gresh is making say 600k he should be worth about .6 wins if his production is equal to his contract.

These are the assumptions I’m talking about.

Of course the chart would be great if it was about one person making the decisions every year . However it is not. Then there is the fact that not every draft is equal .
We also know that the market is skewed towards paying overs to get players on board so really the comment about Gresham is to me total rubbish.
The system I worked in for a long time won premierships so I will back what I know from that every day of the week. As the bloke standing on the bottom rung of that ladder I got to see how it was built. It looks nothing like anything we have done recently so forgive me for using years of experience to say the list is not that great.

 

[jdstorm]

There’s little doubt that Essendon has looked nothing like a successful professional club for a long time. I agree with you there.

One thing that’s clear is that every premier of the past 20 years has won a championship due either taking advantage of atypical talent pathways or an afl sanctioned unfair advantage to allow access to elite talent. Since elite talent matters a lot.

Be it Father Sons, Academy players, priority pics, a cost of living allowance, finding stars via unlikely pathways (later draft pics or VFL ), career longevity and raiding poorly run clubs (mostly Gold Coast, Geelong got Danger/Stengle/Cameron from other teams)

To me Essendon right now looks like they are trying to bridge the gap to talent by frontloading contracts, building depth to hopefully have enough assets to attract a free agent or trade for elite talent.

(Not that it will matter given Dogs getting 2 top 3 KPP as freebies in the 2020s + Brisbane, Suns and Swans academies)

What’s also clear is every line across the ground is disfunctional and there will need to be lots of trial and error to untangle current list and try and extract positive value via trade/versatility.