(04-30-2023, 05:13 AM)irontrooper83 Wrote:

(04-30-2023, 02:30 AM)Eric1 Wrote: Baalke can't draft past round 3.

His past 2 drafts with us have all been garbage after round 3 and pretty much all of his drafts with the 49ers were garbage after round 3.

Don't see any reason why this draft will be any different.

This.
Last year (on top of his day 3 history as you already pointed out) there was another good exemple of that that had consequences this year too: Baalke used a 5th and 2 6th rounders to move up for short yardage RB Snoop Connor.
He was so good in fact that he decided to spend a valuable 3rd rounder on another RB this year  (who I think is a good player, not a star, but that's not the point) all on top of having a 1st round starter and good depth with Hasty and Johnson.

I don't hate the players we drafted although I would have preferred a different strategy. I liked other TEs but on Strange I will trust Doug evaluation and how he wants to utilize him.
The guy looks like he can move and has great hands on top of being a capable blocker so again I'll trust Doug.

I don't buy that Baalke couldn't find willing partners to trade up in a draft that was historic in terms of trades being executed. It all depends how much he was offering.

I think he had a great day 1 as I loved the Anton Harrison pick both from a talent standpoint and strategic standpoint (protect  Trevor, get ready to replace Cam ASAP,  offers versatility and I trust Rauschner judgment on the guy) while accumulating more picks.

I think that after that Baalke probably failed to predict how the board would fall and some "I'm smarter than you" tendency came up in him.
It's speculation of course but as it seems that they missed out on some guys they wanted to trade up for I think he that it was partially because he wasn't decisive enough with the trade up package he was offering (I know better, I'll keep trading back and came back later again line of though.....too bad the talent pool was drying up and later picks were losing value to other teams) and partially because probably there was an unexpected sudden run on some guys they were eyeing.

We ended up drafting mostly backups even on day 2. Other than TE where our TE room was basically zero depth level they added RB where we have a good room already and LB where they invested massively over the last 3 years and it's hardly a need.

Again, I don't hate the players and we could have found some gems on day 3, that's not the point. I think they ended up scrambling as they spent months talking about needing to invest at the pass rush and Doug Pederson was big on that on pre draft but the board feel how they weren't expecting and them possibly being cheap with trading up after day 1 made them run out of their favourite options there and at other positions.

I wish they'd be way more aggressive on day 2 right away rather than getting 200000000 picks for day 3 and next year.

Again though: I like some of these players and I'll root for them. Some of them could be heavy contributors right away (other than the obvious Harrison I think Strange could be big for us soon) or down the road (I love the way Parker Washington moves and catches, in an ideal world he turns out to be another Christian Kirk in a couple of years, Antonio Johnson could replace Jenkins and so on).

Let's just hope a couple of others are the unexpected gems that could give the team cheap help.
Realistically more than half of day 3 picks won't make the team will be on PS so coaches job to try and develop some diamonds there.