## Podcast Episode 24 - Brian Burke

Brian Burke returns to recap his busy summer offseason. After a brief lesson on the rules of Gaelic Football, Dave and Brian discuss what we can learn about NFL win shares from Jimmy Graham’s contract, some new updates to the site (WOPR, and Win Probability Model) and the 2014 season predictions Brian made for ESPN the magazine. Dave also issues a call for podcast contributors, looking for anyone interested in contributing their technical expertise to the show.

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## Win Values for the NFL

Jimmy Graham's contract values him at about 0.9 wins per season. Here's how I came to that estimate.

In 2013 the combined 32 NFL teams chased 256 regular season wins and spent \$3.92 billion on player salary along the way. In simple terms, that would make the value of a win about \$15 million. Unfortunately, things aren't so simple. To estimate the true relationship between salary and winning, we need to focus on wins above replacement.

Think of replacement level as the "intercept" term or constant in a regression. As a simple example think of the relationship between Celsius and Fahrenheit. There is a perfectly linear relationship between the two scales. To convert from deg C to deg F, multiply the Celsius temperature by 9/5. That's the slope or coefficient of the relationship. But because the zero point on the Celsius scale is 32 on the Fahrenheit scale, we need to add 32 when converting. That's the intercept. 32 degrees F is like the replacement level temperature.

No matter how teams spend their available salary, they need to have 53 guys on their roster. At a bare minimum, they need to spend 53 * \$min salary just to open the season. We can consider that amount analogous to the 32-degrees of Fahrenheit. For 2013, the minimum salaries ranged from \$420k for rookies to \$940k for 10-year veterans. To field a purely replacement level squad, a franchise could enlist nothing but rookies. But to add a bit of realism, let's throw in a good number of 1, 2, and 3-year veterans in the mix for a weighted average min salary of \$500k per year. The league-wide total of potential replacement salary comes to:
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