We're always busy looking for new ways to break things down at Pro Football Focus. Inspired to some degree by the "Moneyball" phenomenon, we combined our own grades and players' cap hits to find out which NFL players truly were the most over and undervalued.
You can read a little bit about the concept of "Performance Based Value" here, but essentially what it has enabled us to do is put together a team that is the most overvalued in the league based on the players' performance relative to their cap hit. (Tomorrow we'll look at the NFL's most undervalued players.)
Let's take a look at the team composed of 24 of the most overvalued NFL players. (Note: We've excluded those who missed a significant amount of time due to injury.)
Offense
Quarterback: Philip Rivers
Cap difference: minus-$10.3 million
Rivers edges Michael Vick because Vick missed time due to injury, though that shouldn't be used to deflect any criticism directed at the Chargers' quarterback. Obviously protection was a problem in San Diego, but there also were obvious times when Rivers was anticipating pressure that simply didn't manifest itself. That led to a ridiculous 42 balls thrown away (the next most was 30), with 15 of those throwaways coming on plays he wasn't pressured.