(04-22-2024, 09:07 AM)Mikey Wrote:

(04-21-2024, 07:25 PM)flgatorsandjags Wrote: Ive said many times there are instances you dont take the top guy, its just rare becuase most teams arent stacked to a point where they wont need a good player at a position this year or next.  Some GM's just fill holes for need and some take the top guy even if its not as big of a need.  There are BPA type GMs and there are needs based drafting GMs.  

Thats bolded isnt debateable either because we dont know what their board looked like and dont know if we took the top guy or not. 

 Im going to believe they took the top guy because neither TE or RB were a bigger need than G.  You could still debate the Strange and Bigsby picks and come back in a year and check it out but we just dont know if they truly were the top guy available on their board.  CB is the biggest need on the team but if Bowers falls im taking him even though i dont think TE is a huge need.  If i have one of the pass rushers available thats higher on my board over a CB ill take them as well or OT etc. even though corner i feel is the biggest need.  Some GMs wouldnt do it because they dont think its a bigger need.  Some on here have said they dont want Bowers because its not a need.  That is needs vs PBA drafting.  Thats the debate.

It absolutely is debatable. We may not know what their board looked like, but you can say whether a pick was an excessive reach or not. I can all but say absolutely that Strange and/or Bigsby were not the top guy on their board. But, when their time came to pick, the team saw positional value, roster need, and remaining board strategy as ways to dismiss other players on their board. We have no idea if they attempted to trade back, or had offers from other teams to trade into our picks. Could we have landed either guy if we moved off the picks? Maybe not. Could we have picked more immediate needs that might not have been ranked on our board as highly? Maybe.

Any and all of these factors help shape the argument whether a pick was a reach or not. We don't need the absolute for a debate. If we had a picture of their board, a statement from all the other 31 owners regarding their strategies with respect to each player, and a full foretelling of their future performance it would simply be statement of fact, and not any debate as to whether the selection was a reach or a savvy choice.

Well yeah you can say it or anything you want for that matter, but can you say it while also knowing it's in fact true?  I don't see how.  The talking head created big boards and mock drafts are fun and might loosely be where the consensus of 32 team boards are, but the further away you get from pick 1 overall the looser it gets and the confidence level goes down.  Each team is doing significantly more work on their board than any talking head or fan will ever do.  So if Mel Kiper says a particular pick was a reach, great.  He's welcome to his opinion, but he can't possibly know where said player was on any team's board unless a picture of the draft room and board is leaked ala Dallas during the Alualu draft years ago or unless after the draft someone from a particular front office offers up the info (rare).

We actually traded back and landed Strange while missing out on Torrance.  Who knows for certain whether that was the plan all along or if a tier grade on our board disappeared before that selection, but usually trading back a few spots means one of a few things.  Either there are several guys you have graded at a similar tier and no real preference on which one you get as long as you get one of them, OR, in the case of Harrison, being relatively certain you will still get your guy while picking up some extra draft capital, OR lastly, a grade tier perhaps evaporated just before your pick and you are trading back to regroup and re-think your strategy because you have no obvious target any longer at that particular point in the draft.  The first and 3rd explanations are similar except in the 3rd one you probably have a lot of guys now graded similarly in the lower tier you find yourself selecting from all of a sudden.

There are of course scenarios where it makes sense to grab a player from a position of need where the well is running dry and perhaps there is one last viable DT candidate while there are plenty of solid WR candidates.  Perhaps you select the lower graded DT while hoping to still get a solid WR in the following round where DT would no longer be a wise choice.  I think, on hypothetically taking the DT earlier in this scenario, that he'd still have to have a quality grade and be in a similar tier as the WRs, otherwise I don't know how smart it would be.  I guess it's all very scenario specific, but I could see scenarios such as that where not taking the 88 graded WR over the 86 graded DT, because there are 5 other receivers with 80+ grades, one of which might be there for you the following round where the next DT behind 86 is a 75 grade.  Take the DT and hope the odds are in your favor for WR in the following round vs. taking the WR and knowing you're getting just a rotational guy at best at DT in the following round.

In short, positional scarcity can drive up grade/value as it does every year with QBs getting pushed to the top of the draft when there are better overall prospects at other positions. Positional scarcity can and does manifest itself at various positions at various points in the first few rounds of a draft in any given draft.

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