(10-12-2021, 09:33 PM)SeldomRite Wrote: (10-12-2021, 09:24 PM)Bullseye Wrote: The troubling aspect to me-aside from the 20 consecutive loss thing and the mounting injuries-is how little quality contribution we are getting from the rookies.
Doing the rookie watch analysis every week this year has been sad, quite frankly.
We had extra draft picks this year thanks to the Ramsey, Ngakoue, Campbell and Bouye trades. We had an extra pick in the first, second, 4th and 5th round.
T Law has had his rookie struggles, but I'm happy with how he has played thus far, all things considered. He shows some signs he could be great with time, health and better surrounding talent and coaching.
Everyone else? Pfft.
Etienne was injured for the year in preseason.
Tyson Campbell has been mostly bad when he's been in, and he's been banged up too.
Walker Little has been inactive most of the year and I don't think he's gotten any regular season snaps. Granted, the O-Line has been playing better than expected so far. Nevertheless, it's disappointing he hasn't played well enough or developed enough yet to merit playing time...or at least even being active.
We all anticipated Andre Cisco would at least be a contributor, but he hasn't cracked the starting lineup, either.
Jay Tufele was just made active this past week. Jordan Smith has been a complete non factor.
Luke Farrell has made modest impact for a 5th rounder, but certainly hasn't been much of a difference maker.
All of this "non impact" for an 0-5 team.
What's worse is the bulk of these guys aren't even getting game reps to gain experience for next year.
Based solely on the contributions-or lack thereof-from this rookie class, we seemingly have a young nucleus of one to count on for improvement next year.
I cringe typing this.
As outlandish and unpleasant as these analogies are, nobody can really disagree with them.
I keep saying it, but it never stops applying: this is what needs based drafting does. The team would have been better just letting an algorithm make their draft selections over the years, just always selecting whatever guy was ranked highest in an aggregate of rankings.
I agree that if you are judging by immediate impact, this was bad drafting, but I'm not sure this was needs based drafting. Granted, we had needs all over the roster so in theory if every pick were a BAP pick it would fit a need. But clearly there were some needs bigger than others, and the draft did not strictly reflect that. The most obvious example was Etienne at 25 when we had Robinson already on the roster. We followed that up with Tyson Campbell, when CB was not necessarily a HUGE need when we had Henderson and signed Griffin. Of course, reasonable people can disagree about Herndon and Sidney Jones, but if your 3rd and 4th CBs are dictating your top of the second round pick, need couldn't have been too much of a factor unless the plan at draft day was to rid ourselves of Henderson. T and TE were bigger needs than either CB or RB, but we picked a T after that and drafted no TE despite one being on the board in the middle of the 2nd round when we picked Little. After free agency, I would not have characterized S as a particularly huge need, yet we picked Cisco at the top of the 3rd.
I am trying not to hit the panic button. After all these are rookies. But they were drafted early with an abundance of early draft capital, and only Lawrence has made any discernible impact on a winless team. That terrifies me.
(10-12-2021, 09:34 PM)MoJagFan Wrote: Bullseye I sadly agree. They blew this draft outside of the obvious pick. That is an awful trend and we know a thing or two about bad drafting, because we have endured too many.
Frankly we are squandering multiple rebuilds by blowing talent evaluation, retention and acquisition.
What's even more chilling is pondering the question of what if the Jaguars and Meyer part ways between now and the end of the year.
If they go outside of the organization to replace him (which they should), how does that impact the development of these rookies?
Does it set them back?
Are they jettisoned as non scheme fits?
Worst to 1st. Curse Reversed!
