(03-18-2018, 05:07 PM)JackCity Wrote:

(03-18-2018, 04:20 PM)Bullseye Wrote: I disagree about the NFL draft and team building as a whole being all about value.

First, there's no way to determine at what point the true value of a move has been realized.  Given what Cleveland got from Philadelphia in the immediate aftermath of the trade from 2 to 8 in 2016, you'd think they got great value from the trade.  Several picks for one, including an extra 1 and 2 in the future.  Yet examining the trade two years removed, the Browns sold the family cow (Wentz) for a handful of not so magic beans (the picks not named Wentz) that gave them severe flatulence and indigestion when thinking about the loss of the family cow, yet still left them starving.

If you were looking at the Tom Brady selection in 2000 at the time it was made, very few people would have called it phenomenal value.  Most likely, people responded to that pick with a shrug.  There weren't teams willing to trade future first round picks for the 199th selection in that draft.  Some 18 years later, it was quite possibly the most valuable pick in NFL history.  Conversely, there have been plenty of trades up for first round picks that garnered more in value in return than that 199th pick in 2000 that wound up being worse than less than the face value of the 199th pick in 2000.

It always has been about correctly evaluating talent, however.  It's always has been about knowing how the players remaining on the board best fit your scheme, how their character and physical traits will transition into a career as an NFL player, and making the best decision from there.  NFL teams don't care what outsiders think about the value they got for their pick or picks.  At the end of the day, the concern is the same-did the player help the team win?

How do you build a consistently good team without being great at getting value? ...

Correctly evaluating talent is directly linked to the pursuit of "value" though. As is selecting players that best fit your scheme.

Precisely.  If you correctly evaluate talent, the value takes care of itself.

The problem in this discussion and those like it is that value is way too often determined by whether you traded down to get your guy or not, absent other considerations.

If you spend your time chasing value instead of talent, you end up like Cleveland, who traded their way out of Wentz, Conklin, and Watson.

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