Draft grades are inherently flawed, but we like them anyway. (I’m guilty, too. I did SI’s draft grades this year and found the process surprisingly fun.) The biggest gripe about draft grades is that nobody really knows how draft picks will develop, and so how can we grade them before we know what they’ve become?
That’s immensely fair, but it’s also just part of the issue. The 2014 draft—where we now do know what has become of the players—still has loads of unknowns that should factor into the team’s “grade.” For example:
• Do we grade a team down if a player has battled injuries?