Sorry I'm not brushed up on this but what does all index mean and how is it measured?
Just a compilation of metrics by this site to determine whos invested resources and who is tanking.
Our Method
Teams have two main types of capital: money and draft picks.
The Ringer’s All In-dex measures both. A team’s All In-dex score is 50 percent how a team pays its players and 50 percent the value of its draft capital.
Measuring Draft Capital
In terms of draft capital, less is more—the less draft capital a team has, the more all in we consider it to be. In nearly all cases, teams without future draft capital have exchanged those picks for veteran players or the ability to move up in past drafts (unless you’re the Dolphins and you were stripped of your first-rounder for breaking the rules by trying to tamper with Tom Brady).
We measured a team’s draft capital by adding up the value of its draft picks in 2022, 2023, and 2024. To get those values, we used the
Chase Stuart Draft Value Chart. The chart assigns a point value to each pick in the draft. Having the first pick is worth a bajillion points (give or take), while the last pick in the draft is worth essentially nothing. So if you add up the point values for a team’s picks, you get the value of its draft. Compare each team’s ranking to each other, and we see their relative draft capital.
For example, the Giants had the most valuable draft in 2022 largely because they had two picks in the top seven of the first round. Meanwhile, the Rams did not pick in the top 100 and subsequently had the one of the least valuable drafts in 2022. So since the Rams’ draft value is much lower than the Giants’ draft value, the Rams are more all in than the Giants in terms of their draft picks this season.
To be clear, we are not measuring the players themselves. The Giants took Oregon edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux no. 5 and Alabama offensive tackle Evan Neal no. 7, but we are not evaluating whether those were good choices or whether those players will have good careers. We are merely measuring that, historically, the fifth and seventh picks are very valuable, which means the Giants are investing in their future.
Spending
With spending, more is more. The more money a team is pouring into its team, the more all in we consider them to be. We use two metrics to evaluate how all in a team is financially.
- How much cash is the team spending? This is how much money the team is paying players on its roster this year. Confusingly, this is NOT the salary cap figure. It might sound strange to not include the salary cap in a spending analysis, but our reasoning is simple: The salary cap is accounting, and therefore misleading. It is fluid, flexible, and can be finessed (like your taxes). We get a more accurate picture of a team’s money by tracking the cash spending being paid to players. Think of this number as real money spent—the money a team is paying via direct deposit in a given year.
- What is the team’s average annual cost of all its player contracts? This is the average annual value of every player’s contract combined.
Here’s an example: Let’s say a player signs a two-year contract for $10 million total. For the sake of the example, let’s say they get $0 in Year 1 and $10 million in Year 2. The cash spending in Year 1 would be $0, but the
average value of the contract in Year 1 would be $5 million. (The cash spending tracks payments). The average value is the snapshot of the roster’s perceived value. We need both numbers to track how all in a team is for a given season.
We measured team spending and average annual team value for 2022 and 2023 only. Numbers for 2024 and beyond are available, but usually include dummy years on contracts that players won’t actually play on. Our financial numbers come courtesy of Jason Fitzgerald’s salary cap tracking website,
Over the Cap.
Building the All In-dex
We calculated a draft capital score and a spending score. Each score is normalized so the average is 100. If a team’s spending score is 90, it is spending less than the average team. If that same team’s draft capital score is 110, it has less draft capital than the average team (probably because it traded some picks away). Combine the team’s scores—a 90 for spending and a 110 for draft capital—and it gets an average of 100, giving it a perfectly average score on the All In-dex. (For the record, the most perfectly average team in this exercise is the Dallas Cowboys.)
OK, the boring methodology is over. Here is the All In-dex for 2022.
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