Keeping 4th-round pick good value for Telesco
Oh, so this is what the fourth round is for.
The Chargers on Saturday spent the 102nd pick in the NFL draft on an inside linebacker who seems like he will be pretty darn good – for what he is.
Joshua Perry appears limited enough in his skillset that he couldn’t justify a higher pick. But there appears little doubt he will contribute at a high level when he does play.
That should be included in the definition of fourth-round pick.
READ MORE: Urban Meyer praises, recommends Perry
The Chargers had in each of Telesco’s first three years traded away their fourth-round pick – in 2013 to move up to select Manti Te’o in the second round, in ’14 to move up to get Jerry Attaochu in the second round and last year to move up and grab Melvin Gordon in the first round.
That contributed to the Chargers having the second-fewest picks in the NFL in that span. And it probably limited the contribution the Chargers got from those draft classes.
Players drafted in the fourth round over the past three season have an approximate value of 3.5, according to pro-footballreference.com, compared to 2.9 for fifth-rounders. (The approximate value is similar to baseball’s WAR metric, in that it attempts to measure how well a team does when a player is in games.)
Chargers Draft Picks
- First round: DE Joey Bosa
- Second round: TE Hunter Henry
- Third round: C Max Tuerk
- Fourth round: ILB Joshua Perry
- Fifth round: LB Jatavis Brown
- Sixth round: P Drew Kaser
- Sixth round: FB Derek Watt
- Seventh round: G Donavon Clark
For comparison sake, the approximate value of first-round picks over the past three years has been 14.7.
Of the 611 NFL players who participated in at least 500 of their team’s offensive or defensive snaps last season, 12 percent were former fourth-round picks. That compares to 15 percent coming from the third round, 20 percent from the second round and 35 percent from the first round.
When factoring in the relative risk to the team, a fourth-rounder becomes even more valuable. Or a better value.
Joey Bosa will get a signing bonus of around $17 million. Perry will get slightly more than $600,000. Over four years, Bosa is virtually guaranteed almost $26 million to the $3 million Perry will earn if he plays the entirety of his four-year rookie deal.
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Perry’s limitations have been judged as speed and athleticism that won’t allow him to remain on the field and be in coverage on passing downs. The Chargers defense is in its sub packages about 70 percent of the time, which could mean Perry plays about 30 percent of the time.
For the record, Perry believes he can be an every-down player.
“I played a lot in passing downs at Ohio State in versatile roles, used to rush a bit, they’d ask me to cover,” he said. “… I think some of the deficiencies I have in the passing game, if you want to call it that, are things that can be taught, a lot of technical things and thing I’ll pick up. Just from work and repetition I’ll be able to do those things.”
