Excellent+10.77 contribution1st of 42 picks for this GM
Games: direct team-season record. Starts: direct team-season record.
An Excellent pick
Patrick Willis was Scot McCloughan's 1st-best of 42 picks across his career, the best pick of the entire tenure.
His retained-value contribution score (opportunity plus quality plus recognition, with related outcomes collapsed inside each bucket) is +10.77. This is a per-pick accountability metric, separate from Scot McCloughan's leaderboard composite θ.
The walkthrough below shows which bucket carried the pick: playing time, value quality, or league honors.
Opportunity
Did he earn the field?
Games played
112
on drafting team
Games started
112
on drafting team
Snap-z
0.9
2 modeled seasons
Quality
Was that time valuable?
On-team AV
108
modeled; full weighted AV 93
AV / 1k snaps
10.1
1,283 snaps in rate base
AV-rate z
+0.6
position-year adjusted quality
Recognition
Did the league notice?
Pro Bowls
6
7 full-career
AP1 All-Pro
5 AP1
all on drafting team · AP2 context 1
All-Decade
1
context only
Did this pick move Scot McCloughan's grade?
The first chart removes the time axis: every Scot McCloughan pick is sorted by retained contribution across opportunity, quality, and recognition. Patrick Willis totals +10.77. The second chart breaks that same contribution into the seasons when the evidence arrived. Opportunity and quality can move separately, which keeps high-snap, low-AV profiles from looking cleaner than they are.
Aggregate contribution by player
Incremental contribution by season
Above expectationBelow expectationPatrick WillisGM total -3.4Patrick Willis by season +22.2
How much retained production did Patrick Willis return vs. his slot?
Each mark below is one player's model value above slot. Light gray marks are slot-similar peers: LBs drafted within ±5 picks of Patrick Willis since 2010 (12 players).The score is the retained production/value bucket from the pick-residual model: on-team AV plus AV-rate quality, adjusted for draft slot, position, and era. Opportunity snaps and league honors are excluded.
Patrick WillisSlot-similar peers (12)
Cumulative value over time
Year-by-year running totals since draft. Left axis = games started. Right axis = honors (Pro Bowl / AP1 / AP2). Pre-2013 picks have no games-started line because that comes from per-game snap counts (not available for older players). Honors extend back to 1980.
Games started (cumulative)Pro BowlsAP1 All-ProAP2 All-Pro
Full-career season history (8 scored seasons)
Year
Team
GP
GS
Snaps
Snap-z
AV
AV/snap
PB
AP1
AP2
2007
SF
16
16
—
—
17
—
✓
★
2008
SF
16
16
—
—
13
—
✓
·
2009
SF
16
16
—
—
20
—
✓
★
2010
SF
15
15
—
—
14
—
✓
★
2011
SF
13
13
—
—
16
—
✓
★
2012
SF
16
16
—
—
15
—
✓
★
2013
SF
14
14
917
1.2
10
10.9
2014
SF
6
6
366
-0.3
3
8.2
How to read this
The current model groups outcomes into three buckets: opportunity (games, starts, snap-z), quality (on-team AV, AV/snap quality when available), and recognition (Pro Bowl, AP1).
Season rows show full-career context across every team. The draft-credit cards above contain the team-specific totals used for GM accountability. Snap-z is position/year-normalized playing time; AV/snap is shown as AV per 1,000 snaps where snap evidence exists.
AP2, full-career AV, HOF, and All-Decade are displayed as context only. They are not active outcomes in the current θ model.
Pre-2013 playing-time rows may show "—" where weekly snap evidence is unavailable; AV/snap quality is snap-era only.
