Packers 2017 NFL Draft position rankings: Building a collaborative draft board

The 2017 NFL Draft is just around the corner, and here at Lombardi Ave we decided to do something different as we breakdown this year’s deep class of prospects.

Rather than just present one person’s position rankings, we decided to assemble a team of writers and draft analysts to build a collaborative draft board. For this project I turned to site editor Freddie Boston, draft contributor Kyle Fellows, and fellow staff writer Ralph Mancini to join me in building comprehensive position-by-position rankings.

Each contributor brings their own perspective and draft expertise to the table, offering a more well-rounded view of the prospects. For this piece, I asked each writer to rank their top-10 prospects at each position. I then gave each player a numerical score based on where they rank at their respective position on each writer’s board.

A player earned 10 points each time a writer ranked them as the top prospect at their position. They earned 9 points for being second at their position, 8 points for being third, and so on until we got to 10th, which is just worth one point.

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We then added up each player’s point total among the four individual draft boards to make one comprehensive draft board. If each writer ranked a player as the top prospect at their position, for example, then that player would have a total of 40 points.

It was this total point score that ultimately determined where the player fell in our final position rankings. This became our method to negotiate between four different draft minds and keep the players at the top each of us valued.

With the intersection of varying perspectives, we were able to shape an interesting and well-balanced draft board. The following slides show how our final position rankings turned out.

I also included each writer’s individual position rankings at the end of the post just in case you’re curious as to where each contributor stands on this draft class.