Quote:Not a failure by any stretch - but they look pretty darn smart being able to take a valuable player or two ahead of him and still land a franchise QB.
Smart, stupid and lucky all at the same time actually. Smart because they got a franchise QB in the 3rd......stupid because they passed on a franchise QB in the 1st and 2nd......lucky because he turned out to be so good
and no one else grabbed him sooner.
Quote:And then there are those who trade up for guys like Blaine Gabbert and Mark Sanchez.
Get the evaluation right, and get the value right. When you do that, you assign the risk appropriately.
Most important. As you know (we've debated this numerous times), I'm fine with sacrificing value for a qb if the you evaluate him as a franchise qb.
Quote:Most important. As you know (we've debated this numerous times), I'm fine with sacrificing value for a qb if you evaluate him as a franchise qb.
But, why draft him in a higher round when he will be available later? You are sacrificing value when you don't have to.
Quote:Smart, stupid and lucky all at the same time actually. Smart because they got a franchise QB in the 3rd......stupid because they passed on a franchise QB in the 1st and 2nd......lucky because he turned out to be so good and no one else grabbed him sooner.
No, simply smart. You have to be wise enough to let them go if the value isn't right.
Quote:But, why draft him in a higher round when he will be available later? You are sacrificing value when you don't have to.
Bingo.
Quote:Kaepernick was viewed by most draftniks, including CBS and NFLdraftscout, as a 2nd-3rd round draft pick. He was chosen in the 2nd. If Gene would have taken him at 16, the world would have viewed it initially as a reach (not reasonable value). Hindsight is always 20/20.
By the time the draft arrived Kaepernick was widely viewed as a late 1st / low 2nd, so taking him at 16 wouldn't have really been seen as a reach......certainly no more so than taking EJ Manuel in the mid 1st like last year.
Quote:And then there are those who trade up for guys like Blaine Gabbert and Mark Sanchez.
Get the evaluation right, and get the value right. When you do that, you assign the risk appropriately.
You liked Gabbert, and bashed people who identified early that Gabbert wasn't any good with the Jags.
I think this is a good question. First of all, most general managers have a pretty good idea of where most draftable players will be taken. Let's take Brady as an example. It was highly unlikely that anyone would take him prior to the 3rd -4th round based on his performance at Michigan, his pre-draft workouts and measureables. Therefore, it would have been crazy for the Patriots to take him in the first round even if they secretly thought he was a combination of Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas and Dan Marino. Why not get 2 great players with first round value instead of 1? They certainly deserve no credit for taking him in the 6th round and were fortunate he was still available. However, they would have still been credited with a great pick if they took him in the 2nd or even 3rd round.
In the case of Russell Wilson, I think the Seahawks were fortunate to get him in the 3rd and don't deserve much credit for the pick. Many thought he would be selected in the 3rd so he could have been selected in the 2nd by 1 team who fell in love with his athleticism and leadership causing the Seahawks to lose their franchise q.b. of the future.
As far as this year's draft, there are 3 quarterbacks most teams have going in the 1st. If the Jaguars "love" any of the 3 and 1 is available at this spot (I'm not a math genius, but I think this is likely), they should select this player. Therefore, either Bridgewater,Manziel or Bortles will be the pick- even if Clowney is on the board and they have an equal grade for each player since a q.b. is more important. However, if they only "love" 1 of the 3 q.b.'s and he gets taken by Houston or a team like Cleveland that trades into the number 2 slot, the Jaguars should not "settle" for a guy they think has much potential but also a lot of risk. It would be much wiser to take the player rated highest on their board who would probably be Clowney if Bridgewater and Matthews were taken with the top 2 picks. They would still have the option of taking a quarterback in the 2nd round or possibly even trading into the back of the first round for a q.b. they are very high on, but not enough to have taken with the 3rd pick. I am not a scout and haven't seen enough of any of the other q.b.'s to have a definite opinion on who that player is. However, if Caldwell and his scouting dept. are high on Boyd, McCarron, Murray or Carr I would have no problem with them taking 1 of these guys with their 2nd round pick or trading up to get this player. Caldwell has only one draft to be judged by, but it appears his 1st class is deserving of anywhere from a B to A grade depending on how Joeckel pans out. So I trust that he will take the correct quarterback, even if it's in the 2nd round.
I do feel that it isn't a great idea to select a q.b. after the 3rd or 4th round since the odds of them becoming a franchise q.b. are extremely remote. For every 1 Tom Brady, there are 100 Jonathan Quinn's. It would be better, especially for a talent starved team like the Jaguars, to select an interior lineman, defensive tackle or running back who would have a much better chance of making the team and possibly even becoming a future starter.
Quote:No, simply smart. You have to be wise enough to let them go if the value isn't right.
How can the "value" not be right for a franchise QB in the first round? In the entire NFL how many franchise qb are there as of this moment?
They deserve every bit of the credit. Those were the teams willing to give them a chance after others passed.
Quote: How can the "value" not be right for a franchise QB in the first round? In the entire NFL how many franchise qb are there as of this moment?
You don't draft in hindsight, which you're using for your post-valuation. Follow your board. You don't draft someone you've graded sixth round in the first. It's asinine, even if it is Tom Brady. Tom Brady didn't become Tom Brady until after the fact. Drafting isn't taking a guy as early/high as you can... it's the exact opposite. That's what makes it so difficult. Not everyone understands the concept because it's counter intuitive, but once realized it's a moment of clarity on the topic.
Plus... I don't see any sure franchise candidate in this draft. That doesn't mean I don't think we should take one, it's just that I don't see any worth the first overall pick of this draft (and perhaps not even our third.)
Quote:You don't draft in hindsight, which you're using for your post-valuation. Follow your board. You don't draft someone you've graded sixth round in the first. It's asinine, even if it is Tom Brady. Tom Brady didn't become Tom Brady until after the fact. Drafting isn't taking a guy as early/high as you can... it's the exact opposite. That's what makes it so difficult. Not everyone understands the concept because it's counter intuitive, but once realized it's a moment of clarity on the topic.
Plus... I don't see any sure franchise candidate in this draft. That doesn't mean I don't think we should take one, it's just that I don't see any worth the first overall pick of this draft (and perhaps not even our third.)
Drafting 101? Excuse me for saying so, but it's all rather self-evident. Hindsight is, however, the only way you can evaluate how well you drafted. Not only the performance of the players you chose, but also that of those you didn't. How many GM's are asking themselves how they "missed" on Russell Wilson? How many may have had Gabbert on their board for later in the first or an early second and have since sent Gene Smith a thank-you card?
Drafting at any position is a gamble, even more so at QB. As you mentioned, it's also a poker game with 32 players at the table.
I don't know if any QB in this draft can be THE GUY, but it's obvious we're going nowhere without a decent starter.
To answer the OP's question:
If you KNEW Tom Brady is a bonafide superstar in the making, can be your franchise QB for years to come, etc - you pick him with your very first pick.
Because he would have been the top player on your board. You don't know where he is on someone else's board, so you don't let him slip away, ever.
People that say "you should wait if most GMs think he's a later round pick" are being silly. IF you have evaluated him to be on the top of your board, chances are someone else has also. You take him as early as you can.
Quote:Where are the decent low cost veteran QBs that have the potential to legitimately aid in a SB run nowadays? Holmgren also had Favre and Hasselbeck, how often was he desperate for a QB?
Just look at the rosters of NFL teams. Lots of backup quarterbacks are low-rent guys. "Legitimate Super Bowl QB" was not a criteria that Holmgren used when choosing his backup QB. The criteria is usually more along the lines of "he won't blow my team apart if I have to play him for 3-4 games." If a guy can legitimately aid in a Super Bowl run, he's probably not your backup.
Quote:You reach cause you don't have one. Let me ask you this. When you go somewhere, say a theme park, and you desperately need and want a bottle of water, do you say oh hell naw I'm not buying this $3 water I'll wait another 5 hours and drink from that nasty fountain at the other end of the place or do you suck it up and drink your cold rejuvenating water. You either pay more upfront with the odds being better it will actually be good water, or do you allow yourself to be thirsty as hell, and get the sucky water? Probably bad analogy but whatever.
That is a highly entertaining analogy to describe the Gene Smith model of running a football team. "I desperately need a defensive tackle, and there's this one here staring me down at the tenth overall pick, so I'll reach like crazy for him here instead of drafting a higher-quality guy at another position here and addressing tackle later on when there's better value available."
Quote:You liked Gabbert, and bashed people who identified early that Gabbert wasn't any good with the Jags.
There's this entertaining fallacy on message boards--not just this one--that liking a player early on automatically disqualifies you from acknowledging down the road that said player sucks. I was a fan of Gene Smith's early work, and was one of those "one more year" guys in 2010. That worked out well. I also believed that Gabbert deserved a clean slate in 2012, as the jacked-up nature of his "ascension" to the starting job when he was woefully unprepared for it should have been treated as a redshirt year. Even before this season, I was of the opinion that we didn't have any better options available (take that, Geno lovers) and might as well let it roll with Gabbs, knowing that we had a backup in Henne who couldn't possibly be any worse. Conversely, I hated the Blackmon pick from the start for a multitude of reasons, including the Soward-like tendencies that ended up landing him an indefinite suspension.
Here's the thing: GMs admit their mistakes all the time. It happens when a big-name free agent is cut after the first year of his deal, or a first-round bust is traded away after his rookie year. Even Caldwell's already admitted a mistake by cutting Mo Mass in camp after giving him as significant a deal as any Jaguars free agent got this year. I don't get the attitude on message boards that you're never allowed to be wrong. Everyone's wrong. If someone's man enough to own up to it and say that, yeah, well, Gabbert sucks, Gene Smith set the franchise back by five years, and taking Mojo in the third round of my fantasy this year was a stupid, STUPID idea, why is that then held against them?
Quote:To answer the OP's question:
If you KNEW Tom Brady is a bonafide superstar in the making, can be your franchise QB for years to come, etc - you pick him with your very first pick.
Because he would have been the top player on your board. You don't know where he is on someone else's board, so you don't let him slip away, ever.
People that say "you should wait if most GMs think he's a later round pick" are being silly. IF you have evaluated him to be on the top of your board, chances are someone else has also. You take him as early as you can.
Nobody knew that Brady would be a superstar. Most draftnik sites wrote him off completely as a guy who wouldn't last a year. If we were to rewind to 2000 and tell everyone that Brady would win three Super Bowls and mature into one of the greatest QBs of all time, Cleveland would probably have rethought that Courtney Brown pick. If, though, you rewound to 2000 and didn't tell anyone that, just left Brady to be drafted in a position commensurate with his talent and potential, he'd probably fall all the way to the end of the sixth round again. You've chosen a very extreme example here. Sometimes you're smart, and sometimes you're lucky. As it relates to Brady, there was a lot of luck involved.
Quote:
There's this entertaining fallacy on message boards--not just this one--that liking a player early on automatically disqualifies you from acknowledging down the road that said player sucks. I was a fan of Gene Smith's early work, and was one of those "one more year" guys in 2010. That worked out well. I also believed that Gabbert deserved a clean slate in 2012, as the jacked-up nature of his "ascension" to the starting job when he was woefully unprepared for it should have been treated as a redshirt year. Even before this season, I was of the opinion that we didn't have any better options available (take that, Geno lovers) and might as well let it roll with Gabbs, knowing that we had a backup in Henne who couldn't possibly be any worse. Conversely, I hated the Blackmon pick from the start for a multitude of reasons, including the Soward-like tendencies that ended up landing him an indefinite suspension.
Here's the thing: GMs admit their mistakes all the time. It happens when a big-name free agent is cut after the first year of his deal, or a first-round bust is traded away after his rookie year. Even Caldwell's already admitted a mistake by cutting Mo Mass in camp after giving him as significant a deal as any Jaguars free agent got this year. I don't get the attitude on message boards that you're never allowed to be wrong. Everyone's wrong. If someone's man enough to own up to it and say that, yeah, well, Gabbert sucks, Gene Smith set the franchise back by five years, and taking Mojo in the third round of my fantasy this year was a stupid, STUPID idea, why is that then held against them?
TJ Bender, I agree with what you are saying up there in principle. However, if you've actually followed this board regularly over the past several years, pirk deserves no free pass here for all the crap he gave people that labeled Gabbert a bust or realized early that Gabbert simply didn't have it. pirk did the same with Leftwich too.
Some of you have hinted at it, but haven't stated it:
The term "overdraft" exists only in the PAST tense.
There are many that thought Seattle overdrafted Wilson. I agree with TMD's assertion that Kaepernick would have been a great pick at 16, and many in Cinci wouldn't have minded if they'd picked him with their first overall pick. But both teams would have been blasted by their fans and the press for not getting "value". Seattle, by the way, were blasted for reaching throughout the 2012 NFL draft - including the Wilson pick.
Re-do the 2000 draft today, and Brady goes first overall. I'm totally against pirk's advice: You like a guy, you take him. That's what Seattle did, and that's what the Patriots did.
Don't chase "value." Get a good player.
Quote:Some of you have hinted at it, but haven't stated it:
The term "overdraft" exists only in the PAST tense.
There are many that thought Seattle overdrafted Wilson. I agree with TMD's assertion that Kaepernick would have been a great pick at 16, and many in Cinci wouldn't have minded if they'd picked him with their first overall pick. But both teams would have been blasted by their fans and the press for not getting "value". Seattle, by the way, were blasted for reaching throughout the 2012 NFL draft - including the Wilson pick.
Re-do the 2000 draft today, and Brady goes first overall. I'm totally against pirk's advice: You like a guy, you take him. That's what Seattle did, and that's what the Patriots did.
Don't chase "value." Get a good player.
Good luck with that. Overdraft also exists in the future, leading up to the draft, and presently when the pick is made, too. Those are the times when it is most pertinent.
If you draft Andy Dalton in the first round, you don't draft A.J. Green in the first round. Who are you going to draft in the second round who equals the value of Green/Dalton?
Seattle wasn't really blasted for Wilson, as much as you say they were. Only by those who value the draft based on need, not BAP. They didn't need Wilson because they had Flynn, according to them.
You want to redraft 2012? Which pick do you want to replace for Wilson: Anger, Blackmon, or Branch?
The problem with your argument is, there are no re-do's. Drafting Brady in the first 4-5 rounds is overdrafting him, leading up to the 200 draft, during the draft, and even afterwards. Drafting him before that is "chasing value", exactly what you say to not do. The Patriots did not do that. They drafted him in the 6th round.
Half of your argument is invalidated by the other half of your argument.
Agree anonymous. It's easy to judge value AFTER the fact.
Again, if you believe strongly in a guy you dont risk someone else taking him before you pick again. That is just stupid logic. If he is the top player on your board you pick him. The key obviously is getting the evaluation right. Of course if you get it wrong people will say you "overdrafted" because they are using hindsight.
Quote:The problem with your argument is, there are no re-do's.
Actually, give it another read. My entire argument is that there are no re-dos.
We never know when a player we're waiting for in the 4th round will get grabbed in the 3rd. There was a chance that Wilson could have gone undrafted, and I'm not interested in the revisionist historians stipulating otherwise. I was alive and paying attention that year. Does that mean Seattle overdrafted him? According to many here, the answer is yes, even though history has proven otherwise.
Edit: You misunderstood my term "chasing value". What I meant is that teams will wait to draft a guy because they think he will be available later, and instead choose players with "higher value"- the players that are "supposed" to go higher due to the Kiper and McShay grades.
Quote:Again, if you believe strongly in a guy you dont risk someone else taking him before you pick again. That is just stupid logic. If he is the top player on your board you pick him. The key obviously is getting the evaluation right. Of course if you get it wrong people will say you "overdrafted" because they are using hindsight.
Wish I'd read this first. It's exactly what I'm trying to convey.