Thursday, September 8, 2011

A Look at the Houston Texans' Draft Record

Building through the draft is obviously a critical part of the Houston Texans' strategy. How successful have GM Rick Smith and Coach Kubiak been in implementing that strategy? Let's take a look.

In particular, let's see how often their draft picks resulted in a player a) making the roster, b) starting, or c) making the pro-bowl. This is the progression you hope for with every drafted NFL football player, so these seem like reasonable metrics to use to measure success. We'll start with the 2006 NFL draft at the beginning of Kubiak's tenure, even though Charlie Casserly, not Smith, was the GM for that draft. We'll end with the 2008 draft since it's still too early to evaluate the results of the 2009-2011 drafts.

Houston Texans Draft Picks: 2006 through 2008

NFL Football Houston Texans draft effectiveness 2006-2008

The table above (click to enlarge) includes all players drafted by the Texans between 2006 and 2008. In addition, it includes

Thursday, September 1, 2011

August 2011 Stock Market Update


S&P Downgrades U.S. Debt

Even though Congress reached an early-August, last minute agreement to raise the debt ceiling, and thus eliminated the possibility of a first-ever U.S. default, the month did not start well. Subsequently, continuing concerns about the European and U.S. economies, and the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt (from AAA to AA+) by S&P resulted in the worst monthly market performance since August of last year -- a drop of 4.4%.

It was also one of the most volatile months in recent memory. Of 23 trading days, 15 showed a gain or loss of 1% or more; seven showed a gain or loss of 3% or more (3 up, 4 down). The VIX, a measure of volatility, which had been below 15 as recently as April, spiked above