NWSL College Draft Thoughts
Before I get to the draft stuff (full disclosure: I wrote most of it prior to today's media availability so excuse any wild tonal shifts) I wanted to share my takeaways from the time Bev and Ryan spent talking to the media Tuesday morning. As always, bullet points probably make for easier communication and reading for this type of thing.
Bev Yanez is so enthusiastic that it's hard to be in the same room with her and not get super excited. I immediately felt better about Racing's offseason as a whole and their approach to next year after listening to her for 5 minutes. I had to actively remind myself to calm down. I do wonder if Bev's exuberance will always serve her best. You want to believe that she can move mountains and transform paupers into kings when you hear her speak. However, I would advise that we all would be better served managing our expectations of her. She inevitably will need time to grow into the role of head coach and unreasonable expectations are unfair and we should manage them appropriately. I believe that the organization believes that she is a slam-dunk hire, and that's all that really matters.
Bev did talk at some length about how the coaches collectively are preparing for the draft. She specifically called out Sergio and Mario for their scouting and player evaluation.
Bev also shared that the “style” of this year’s team would be different than last season. When pressed on exactly what that meant she was appropriately cagey as you don't want to tip your hand until necessary. Personally, I think cohesion and players’ understanding their teammates’ strengths are the biggest room for growth, but there isn't any reason to suspect that Bev missed what we all saw last season which was a clear lack of being on the same page at some points.
Bev's coaching staff will be augmented by one more assistant. In addition a couple more support staff will be added including a player experience staff member (In Racing’s first season, there was a Director of Player Experience, Brynn Sebring.) All of this seems close to being announced.
Ryan Dell and Bev both shared that there were some player moves that hadn’t been announced yet. Expect a couple of those by week’s end by the sound of things.
I asked Ryan Dell what he thought of the draft as a “player acquisition mechanism” and he stated that he saw it as more of a piece of the entire player acquisition process rather tham necessarily the primary mechanism. He also shared that he didn't really like the expansion draft and that he had worked the phone tirelessly to try to avoid losing a player.
Here is what I wrote yesterday (slightly edited with tibbits from today).
The 2024 NWSL College Draft is scheduled to take place on January 12th. As it stands right now, Racing Louisville will have 5 picks (6, 15, 29, 42, and 48). Let’s do a quick comparison to the 2019 Draft/Season to illustrate the leagues growth.
In 2019, there were 36 picks in the four rounds. This year there will be 56.
In 2019, the number of NWSL players was roughly 230. This year it will be roughly 360.
In 2019, the number of opening day starters was 99. This year it will be 154.
Players are expected to report on January 22nd according to Dell. This means a six-week-ish window for the preseason. A trip south and to Europe are likely with the European trip possibly being available to stream as part of a tournament or tournament-like event.
All of those represent about a 55% increase. The good news that the jobs in this league went up by 55% in five years. I won’t call it bad news, but it does mean the overall quality of the league could take a downturn if the teams don’t manage their rosters correctly. The number of starters in 2024 (154) would have made up approximately two thirds of the entire league in 2019. Quick expansion will do that to a league. It will be interesting to see if we detect a drop in the quality of play this season. I don’t personally believe that it was noticeable to a tremendous degree in the last two seasons, but at some point, continued expansion will make it noticeable to the average fan.
I personally believe that the draft is quickly becoming outdated and that smart teams will begin to treat it as a 2-round, if not single round, endeavor. Racing continues to put in a good amount of effect and resources into the draft and Ryan Dell shared that Racing held what he believed to be the first ever “Pro Day” for what I understood to be later round prospects. I am of the opinion (backed up by my own analysis here) that there are very quickly accelerating diminishing returns after the first few picks in the draft. However, I want to make a clear distinction between the numberer “pick” and the value of the players selected with that pick. The numbered pick has intial value in terms of how much it is worth prior to being used (Dell shared that he too sees picks as a tradable/negotiable assets). Once that pick has been exercised, its value is now player and team specific. Historically, most of your starter-level talent is coming out of the first 15-20 picks. If you see a team signing their 3rd and 4th round draft picks, that’s probably a sign that there is a rough season ahead (or possibly in Racing’s case that their “Pro Day” or scouting worked out as they are not in need of tremendous upgrades other than goal scorers which are a very rare commodity).
One thing to remember is that in essence, a draft pick in this league is just the exclusive right to negotiate a contract for a limited time. In other sports/leagues that use a draft process, players often have fewer options, especially equal or better ones past the draft for which they are eligible. In the NWSL any player drafted can still play outside of the league and Europe is becoming more attractive (Mexico and Australia too). In the NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL dratfts, the pick often has a salary expectation associated with it. Especially in the NFL, draft picks slot into a salary structure based on the pick. Even if this happens to some degree in the NWSL, the salaries aren't high enough to make this a real negotiation point. (I specifically asked Dell about how much insight the team gets into other teams contracts. He stated that he doesn't directly get information but that player agents help in letting clubs know what the going rates are.) When you get to a 3rd or 4th round pick, there isn't much value in those picks as things stand.
The draft kind of stinks for some of those 3rd and 4th rounders. Instead of getting to choose where they might be the best fit for the end of the roster, they get stuck in Portland or San Diego or (God-forbid) Cary, North Carolina for a winter knowing that they probably don’t have a shot. In a year like this, a winter in Utah, San Jose, Seattle, or Chicago might be more worth their time. I personally think Gotham FC has the right idea. Get out of the draft with as few picks as possible.
With Racing's announced trade of Hillary Beall to the Wave for their 2nd rounder next year (I would project this being in the 23-28 range) I think you could infer that Racing sees some, but not tremendous value in the pick. I think a second-round pick for a backup keeper who is never likely to play for Racing is about right.
I really would like to see the draft cut down to a single round or maybe two. That would be 28 players, and I think history has shown that identifying the quality of a player after that is difficult in the current system (no combine, no real NFL-style draft industrial complex).
The other draft-related tidbit: I am still quite bitter that Racing didn’t take Trinity Rodman. The longer time ticks on the more I am convinced that they should have taken her. There is nothing I nor anyone else can do about that now, but it did make me develop my own personal hierarchy of needs for player acquisition when specific needs aren’t an issue.
Priority 1: Goal Scorer. This can be a pure striker or a winger, but you need someone to give you consistent goals. Goals are the most important things. Find someone who can score them or prevent them.
Priority 2: Central Defender. See above.
Priority 3: Attacking Midfielder. Creating goals is next to scoring goals.
Priority 4: Midfielder. Controlling possession is always better than not.
Priority 5: Attacking/Defending Winger. If you could score you would be in the Priority 1 category.
Priority 6: Utility Player. You will have injuries. This is an effective way to plug the holes.
Priority 7: Goalkeeper. Unless you have Katie Lund or some other alleged “top keeper” you should be able to find one outside of the draft.
While I have a rather mild disdain for the NWSL Draft itself, I have a tremendous disdain for what quickly follows, which is the draft analysis or draft grade content. Immediately after the draft is definitely too early to grade a team’s draft and I would say that one is probably much safer evaluating it 2 years down the line and taking into account the offseason as a whole. It is a symptom of one of society’s ills that people feel the need to evaluate something immediately when time, data and perspective will surely enhance that evaluation. Sometimes it’s in your best interest to work with limited data when speed of decision is key. However, I can’t imagine much of anything with lower stakes than the analysis of a team’s draft performance the day or week after it occurs. All that is going to tell you is how close the picks matched up to the evaluator’s inherit biases. Anyway, if you think it’s fun to read those, I guess I would say, “to each their own”, but I wouldn’t put too much if any stock in it.
