(05-03-2021, 05:17 PM)Bullseye Wrote:

(05-03-2021, 04:27 PM)TrivialPursuit Wrote: Pretty clear they had no idea what they were doing... that's why Urban wanted Baalke. A useless yesman.

But many observers gave the team an "A" for their draft.

I mean if they had "NO idea what they were doing," how did they end up with Lawrence?  How did they end up with A grades?

100% of mock drafts that I saw had Lawrence going first.  My niece who doesn't watch football could have picked Trevor Lawrence.  Someone could have been pretty clueless and made that pick.

As for the grades, I addressed this in a message earlier.  First, not all gave "A" grades.  The average came out to B+, which isn't bad, but not everyone gave the team an A as you implied.  Second, that B+ grade was highly influenced by the Trevor Lawrence pick.  I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but one basically said something along the lines of "When you draft a generational quarterback, your draft gets an A."  In other words, the Jaguars could have royally screwed up the rest of the draft and still gotten an A.  I don't think that gives many Jaguars fans comfort as they knew and have known for months that we are getting Trevor Lawrence.  We wanted the team to do well with picks #2 through #10 as well.  My guess is that many of the grades would have dropped by a full letter grade if it weren't for the Lawrence pick.  That B+ probably goes down to around a C+ without Lawrence and any GM in his right mind would have taken Lawrence.  Third, many graders base it upon what you got and not how well you did with the draft capital that you had.  As I pointed out previously, three teams didn't have a first round pick.  Those three teams got the three worst grades in the entire NFL for their draft.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  They got bad grades (at least in part and probably in large part) because of their draft position and not how well they did given their position.  When you have more and earlier picks like the Jaguars, you should expect to get more.  When you are picking at #1, #25, #33, #45 and #65, you should expect to walk away with more quality players than a team whose first pick was #67.  To me, that's not the standard and you don't deserve a good grade for passing that extremely low bar.  The standard is how well did you maximize the benefit from picks #1, #25, #33, #45 and #65 (and the others)?  Would another GM have done better?  Fourth, most national graders are not going to be familiar with all 32 teams and many of them will be completely ignorant of the Jaguars and their needs.  They are lazy and will assume if the Jaguars took a position that they must have needed it.  The Jaguars had a couple of a major failures in terms of need early in the draft.  Most national graders won't adjust the team's grade because of it, but the more knowledgeable Jaguars fans will.  Hence, the lower draft score.

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