Koufax

I don't know. If the gist of this is negativity, then yes, we should laugh at it. But if the gist of it is understanding that great drafts depend on talent evaluation and good luck, and not always the highest picks, then we can learn something from this as well, regarding our expectations as fans and the strategy we want to see our front office pursue. I have in other threads defended the strength of the Lynch/Poz/Trent draft, even though they haven't turned into our three cornerstone Pro Bowlers. I think they were pretty good draft day decisions, even though the wisdom of trading up can usually be questioned and value isn't usually there. But the Jets got Revis/Harris with their picks after, both after we got Lynch/Poz respectively. You can nit pick every draft this way, and that isn't productive. It is different than Whitner/Ngata or Maybin/Orakpo where there was a lot of agreement who the best player was, and we didn't pick him. But still it is illustrative of the fact that we need three things going our way on draft day: 1) Buddy making smart talent assessments on how good each football player is. 2) Us taking the best football player. We took Lynch because RB was a need. The needs move like a revolving door from year to year (even when we don't pick those needs like our LT/QB need draft last year). Getting great players matters most. 3) Some luck. Both in determining the best player, and then on that player developing and staying healthy. Scouting isn't an exact science. Some teams do it better than others, and on the aggregate reap the rewards, but each draft is full of uncertainty no matter what. Those things at the moment guide the only semi-informed fan that I am towards the unpopular pick of AJ Green. I don't see Dareus or Peterson or Bowers as as talented a football player right now. I'm sure Nix is working on a lot of different information than we are, but I hope the methodology of his decision is the same. BPA isn't just the highest guy on Kiper's board or the best college performer. It is the best likely expectation of what the player will do over five or more years, and that takes some complex assessment of talents and a lot of projection. And while Harris has proven to be the more successful player, I think that Poz was the reasonable draft day BPA, and I'm okay with the draft choice because of that.

I didn't say they were all okay or good. I rated four, giving two a Good, one an okay, and one a weak (or maybe a stronger word, but I wasn't going with a Spinal Tap/Homeland Security eleven step rating system). Your individual points on players are right, and I was not ranking individual picks. I was ranking what we got out of the draft over several years. So no rating on 2010 or 2009 makes sense (agree with Maybin blowing, agree with wanting more from a #9 rookie RB). my appraisal of 2007 is not about Fletcher, or Trent having a fork stuck in him, or Lynch making his beast mode a national event in Seattle. It is about getting a 1000 yard back who gets in the end zone, a starting LB, and a starting QB (who forever changed when his head hit the ground in Arizona in October 2008. That strikes me as a pretty good draft when you aren't picking in the top 10. It was not a great draft like the Revis/David Harris one the Jets got in players we passed on. But we got three good starters (traded one, one has missed time to injury, and one has been released after having his brain scrambled). I think the expectations of drafts are often a little too high, and looking back at draft history helps to better understand it. If you look even at the Steelers, they tend to hit their top pick full of super stars (something we should really expect our front office to do), but their overall drafts aren't night and day different beyond that. So I hope CJ is a playmaker, but am not pining away for Bulaga.

Right, but we have added Troup, Carrington, Merriman, Moats, Edwards to our front 7. We need to add more, but that doesn't mean it has to be at #3. Some reasons we might be better against the run in 2011: 1) Troup, Carrington, Moats get better in year 2 than as rookies (remember, Kyle was a 5th rounder and not a pro bowler as a rookie). 2) Everybody learns the scheme and gets better at it (typical in year 2 of a change in scheme) 3) Merriman stays healthy and contributes 4) We add a front 7 impact player at #3 5) We add front 7 contributors after round 1. 6) We add front 7 contributors in free agency. 7) DW helps this team be coached better and use the talent on the defense to perform better (whether hybrid or just doing better 3-4) Those seem like a lot of places for improvement, and not all loaded into the #3 pick. I actually think we will be better off defensively if we could improve our pass rushing than our run stopping with #3 in a perfect world. But in an imperfect world, at #3 I want to get the best football player possible...someone we think will go to Hawaii with a Bills helmet and will be able to at least dream of Canton. I would love it to be our Bruce Smith or Jim Kelly, but I don't mind if it is our Andre Reed or Bennett or Ballard, as long as he is truly an excellent football player at whatever position he plays.

I don't think the Lions regret taking a receiver. They regret taking bad receivers. The reason Suh and Calvin Johnson are great for the Lions is that they are amazingly talented impact players. Right, I have said many times that player evaluations are not exact nor is your big board. Saying that someone who is a 93 is better than a 91 is just not true. Your margin of error is greater than +/- 2, so those players are relatively interchangeable talent wise. If their positions are of the same importance or depth chart, take the guy rated 93, but if the 93 is a WR/RB in this year's case, and the 91 is a DE/LB I happily take the 91 without considering him a lesser player. If he is an 83, I have reason to think he really is a less talented player, and taking him based on need is dumb. As for the doctor thing, I think that analogy was soundly beaten into the ground in another thread. We don't need a urologist, and we aren't suggesting drafting seven RBs this year or having a roster of 53 DBs. On the individual pick going with the talent matters. And with a medical specialist analogy, you only need one allergist, but want him to be a great one. On a football team you need depth at every position (more so at some than others). But even with your analogy, passing on a great allergist when you have an okay one and taking an okay urologist is going to mean you are not going to see a great doctor when your pee is red OR your throat is swelling shut, and that sounds pretty sucky. If I can get a Mayo clinic allergist and put my mediocre allergist on the bench, then I can draft a pretty good urologist later or sign a free agent urologist. In the end my way has a great allergist and a pretty good urologist. I personally don't have enough reason to think that Green or Peterson are enough better than the front seven guys available at #3 to pick one of them. I will gradually form a fan-level opinion between now and the draft, but that will pale in comparison to what Buddy will have in making his big board. My only request for him is to put his big board in order of projected football playing ability over five years, and take the top talent with each pick (using need as tie breaker when it is close). If that lands Green or Peterson or Dareus or Fairley or Newton, so be it. I will trust his evaluation skills way ahead of my own.

+1 I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I don't think this will be looked at as a bad draft three or more seasons down the road, which is when you can realistically grade drafts. How great it is will be determined by what these players contribute over the next few years, and I see reason for optimism. Kiper graded the perceived value right after the draft based on his projections, and then amended it to the first year impact in this article. Both are fun, and the second is somewhat important, but what really matters is what these players contribute over a number of years. 2005: We didn't have a 1st, and we end up with Roscoe on our 2011 roster, and nothing much else useful in between. WEAK 2006: Whitner, Youboty, Kyle, Ellison. Obviously we would like Ngata, but four contributors, one of them a pro bowler is a pretty GOOD draft 2007: Lynch, Poz, and Trent. Trent fizzled after the concussion, but not a bust for a 3rd round QB, Lynch performed and gave us a 4th rounder, Poz is a contributor when healthy, but not the impact we hoped. OKAY draft. 2008: McKelvin, Ellis, Corner, Bell, Stevie. McKelvin wasn't worth #11, but definitely a GOOD draft, especially in the seventh round with starting LT and #1 receiver 2009: Too soon, but Maybin bust partially offset by Wood, Byrd, Levitre 2010: Too soon, but I like our chances as explained by Kelly below

Taking an inferior DE over a superior WR is a great way to build a mediocre roster and avoid the Super Bowl. Getting as much talent on our roster as possible with each and every pick matters most. Evaluating that talent correctly and efficiently to identify the best value is crucial, but needs change year after year, and expecting a rookie's main contribution to be filling a need in year 1 that might not be there in his other years is a great way to get mediocre in a hurry.

That's not my issue with him. My issue is with him being a useless football player. Taking useless football players in any round sucks, but in round 1 it is worse. Getting a good to great player at that pick (or where we were before the trade up) is what matters. We didn't and our roster is weak because of it. Every team will hit and miss. But the goal of each pick has to be getting a good football player and making your roster better. Do that often enough and good things happen, do that not so often and bad things happen.

If Peterson is Revis-like or Green is Calvin Johnson-like I would be happy with either of them. So if either of them is much better than the alternative a positions we crave, then I am happy with them. Remember last year when we had to solve QB and LT. Now we have our QB (for now) and our LT without drafting those positions. We drafted d-line in 2nd and 3rd and still were a wreck. I think the guys we have now will go out there and do a lot better next year, with Troup and Carrington and Moats developing, Kyle becoming a star, and Merriman in the mix. We definitely will add more talent to the front 7 in the early rounds of the draft, and I love Dareus at #3. But if we don't go front 7 in the first round it is not the end of the world, especially if it is to get a better player.

I completely agree with everything you have said, and looking at the top 10 picks over the last 20 years, and seeing that the expectation of a RB is to be really special, I would much rather have a blue chip LB/LT/QB/DE/WR in general. So I think that making a top ten slot on your draft board as a RB takes a really high evaluation for all of your reasons and more. It is definitely possible that Spiller was ranked too high by our front office and by a bunch of teams that saw him in the top 10. The problem I have is with those who think we should have passed on a top 10 ranked RB because of need/luxury/tickets/salary/defense/roster. There is one reason I pass on Spiller: if he isn't my top guy available at #9, or another player is ranked very similarly. Passing on him because you don't need him etc to take an inferior player is a bad move. Taking a LB, etc. you have rated almost as high sounds great to me because of the lack of precision. But not if it isn't close. We may have messed up that evaluation and made a mistake by having CJ #9 or higher on our board. That evaluation involves a lot of different things about the player, and about how the draft works in general, and we might have been way off. But that is a player evaluation error. If he is a situational scat back as Kelly said, then he has no business being in your top 10. I still think he will be an impact player for this team over his first five years, and not put in the reach category of Whitner or McKelvin or Lynch, and certainly not the bust category of Maybin and Mike Williams.

Right, if he is a "part time gadget player scat back", then he was misevaluated by many teams, and should not have been a top ten pick by us or anybody. That was not his draft expectation, and people were looking for something in between Reggie Bush and Chris Young. I am basing my assessment on what was known on draft day, not how 2010 shaped up. Running back IS a position that routinely has players excel who are not top picks, and is more interchangeable than others, and also is one that we were two deep with good players. Those are all reason to not have CJ in your top ten on your draft board. Explosive talent and speed are reasons that he would be high on your board. But all of those evaluations done, a lot of teams had him as a top 10 guy on their board, mistaken or otherwise. The question is, when it is my turn to pick at #9 with the eight players off of the board (some of whom would have been in my top ten with Spiller), is he my top guy left? And if he is, do I pass on him for another player because I really need a NT/LB/LT? If he is my top guy left, I compare my ratings on him closely with the #2 guy on my list, as well as the best NT/LB/LT if further down the list, and I think long and hard at how much better I think he is than those guys. If it is very close and likely a toss up, I happily take someone else at another position, due to all the uncertainties and the inexact science of my ratings. If it is not close I take Spiller. And as a 6-10 team not expecting to jump to 10-6 in one year, I make sure the difference is significant before I deviate from taking the top guy on my board. It is not going to be a one year turn around, and I want to infuse as much football playing talent onto my team as possible. I agree with some of your arguments, but they are arguments as to why CJ should not be in our top 9 going into the draft, and NOT why we should pass on him because of his position / our need, etc. It is the same reason that DTs don't usually go in the top three, why corners don't go in the top 3, and why QBs are always up there along with DEs. I agree with you that to be a small back in this league and be on my top 10, you have to be really special. And I agree with you that the backup plan for missing out on a special top 10 back is pretty good, and a lot more likely to be successful than finding Tom Brady in the 6th. But all that aside, our front office and many others (including the very talent shrewd Chargers) had CJ very high on their boards. If that is the case, you have to trust your evalutations and pick that player. In 2010 he didn't look like he deserved that grade (although I continue to ask who the Orakpo/Ngata is that did), but he still has a good career ahead of him if he puts it together. As for the five year thing...that might often be true, but of top 15 picks: 2005+ too recent for durability 2002-2004 nobody taken in the top 10 2001: Tomlinson, Good past five years 2000: Dayne (best year was in year 8, but mostly a bust) 1999: Edge, Ricky, both good well past five years 1998: Enis (bust), Fred Taylor (good well past five years) 1997: Dunn #12, good past five years 1996: Lawrence Phillips (bust), Eddie George #14, good past five years 1995: Ki-Janna Carter #1 (bust) 1994: Faulk (good past five years) 1993: Hearst (good past five years), Bettis (good past five years) So in the last couple decades, I don't see one single top 15 back who performed well in his first five years but ran out of gas and fell off. I see 4 busts, and 9 guys who were good deeper in their careers. So, again, you can question putting CJ as special enough to be top of the draft material, but when a back makes that cut, durability is not generally your biggest concern, and I think the success rate seems pretty high. Again, if there was a draft day Orakpo or Ngata to get mad about, I would be more frustrated with CJ's performance this year. But there isn't, and I'm still optimistic about him getting in the end zone, making plays, and helping us win games over the coming years. Putting him in your top 10 can definitely be questioned, but that generally isn't the grounds for questioning the pick. Passing on him once he is in your top ten because of need or position doesn't seem like a good decision to me, even though it hasn't worked out so far.

Kelly and others covered most of what I think, but I always have to chime in on BPA conversations. BPA means trying to get the best 5+ year playing contribution from your selection. Over that 5 year period needs changed dramatically, and most players don't make big enough first year impact to address a need (although it is great when they do). If you pick someone else who is an inferior player because you think he is more of a need (Bulaga over Spiller), over the course of the 5+ years, you will have less talent on your roster, and less individual contributions towards victories, which leads to fewer victories. There are certainly some wild cards to this. 1) Hindsight is 20/20, but draft day evaluations are very often not good, and a lot of other times circumstances and injuries step in. But I honestly feel that at #9 Spiller was the draft day BPA, and Maybin and Whitner were not. I think it is very likely that someone taken after him will outperform him, but without a crystal ball picking that player instead of Spiller would have been lucky and not smart. 2) There are special positions like QB where if you have a good one, you would pass on the BPA at QB, and if you don't have a good one, you might have to overspend if there is a good one (even if there is a better player at another position, as long as the QB is considered a good one). 3) Player ranking boards are not exact, so when players are rated very close, they can be considered interchangeable on the BPA chart even if you have one higher, and you can pick the player who better fits your needs and depth chart, as well as taking into account picks in previous rounds (so you don't end up with a 7 LB draft). Spiller didn't play 2010 like the best player at #9, but I still don't see who the Orakpo/Ngata who we should have picked, and I think he has a very good chance to be an impact player over the next few seasons. The reason people are down on Spiller (maybe rightly so) is because he didn't play well in 2010, not because he was a RB, or wasn't the seeming best player when picked. He doesn't have to play LT or LB to make people happy...he just has to play well and make an impact. I think Troup and Carrington were not picked as BPA, and they were uh-oh picks related to the 3-4 switch. While I don't love that decision, I like both players and I think it is an understandable reason to deviate slightly from BPA if you still really like players.

Are you grading the year or grading the draft? I'm not going to argue any grade someone wants to give to our draft, because we probably could have gotten to 4-10 if all picks had year long hold outs. I think Spiller is getting thrown under Maybin's bus a little too early though, and I think round 2,3,4 will all be starters on this team. What bugs me the most is Spiller as a luxury pick, which is a pretty dumb term to me. I think the idea is that a good team can afford to waste a draft pick who might not crack the lineup, but a bad team can't. I think instead a bad team has more of the luxury of taking players who might be slow developing but will contribute more later in their first five or six years. But either way, any team needs to get the most on the field contributions over the 5-6 years. Year one can show a lot about what the coming years might bring, but year one is probably the least important year in actual contribution. If you saw things in year 1 that show that CJ will not be a contributor (can't hit the hole, can't pick up the blitz), then grade him low. But the fact that he disappointed this year is not a huge blow (we had depth at RB, unless it is an indicator that he won't be the star that people predicted. If it is a slow start and making adjustments, we can forget about it in the next couple years.

Buddy won't reach (fortunately), so unless by April he has reason to have Miller as a top-3 talent in the draft, this will not be our pick. Mocks are all amusing and fun, and it is entertaining to talk about, but nobody out there has a top 10 even close to what the actual top 10 will be. And if you can show me any case in the past of anybody having the top 10 correct (even in the wrong order?) in January, I will be very surprised.

Best player available is never a luxury. I know you are really excited about the 2012-2014 freddie and marshawn, but I will take CJ. Or were you going all in on the 2010 season and not looking for the most useful contribution over five or six years? And just for the record for future reference, tell me who you wanted? Who is the Ngata in this mix?

I am with you on Ngata and Orakpo, and so is every person on this board, including 99% of them prior to the draft and on draft day. I don't agree with you on last year, and wouldn't trade Spiller for any of those guys. The rest seems like cherry picking that you could do with a bunch of teams in each draft. And NO I don't think Revis over Marshawn would have been the right decision at the time, and certainly taking Ed Reed #4 would have been a huge "reach" based on the knowledge we had then. So I think your list should be players we "COULD" have drafted, not players we should have, unless you are going with the full knowledge of the future being assumed, in which case we should have just bought winning lottery tickets (since we know the numbers we should have bet now), and used the billions to create a New York Yankees like economic juggernaut in the NFL.

+1 Great football players is what we need. Not patching the weakest links in the (fifty)Three Stooges. I love how LT and QB were our two weaknesses, and then this year they aren't even though we didn't draft anybody. And we drafted two DL in rounds 2 and 3 and had another emerge as a pro-bowl player, yet DL is our big need right now. Don't think you can really know the needs in April, especially with the CBA likely postponing free agent signings, and don't think a draft pick can fill a need faster than another is created. Get the best football player you can each pick, repeat that for a number of years, and then look at your roster and compare it to the 2010 team.

I love that 1-2-3 combo, and Dareus is what I am hoping for. I think I prefer him to Fairley, but wouldn't mind Fairley either if things shake up before draft day. I'm not sold on Peterson or Prince being an absolute lock to be a top shutdown corner in this league yet, and I don't think getting a good CB is as important as getting a good DL, so I would only be happy with those guys if after careful vetting by Chan and Buddy they really really think one of those guys is a lock to be a pro-bowler. Dareus makes the most sense, and I think will be there at #3, and has a good chance of being both BPA and NEED, which is a pretty exciting combo. Then Ralph will probably make us draft Green or Mallett anyway...

"I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!" We need to get better at just about all of our 53 positions. I don't see a QB at #3 who will help us get better as a defensive player at #3, but that's because I find it a big stretch to imagine having one of these QBs as a top three player on our draft board based just on talent and expected NFL performance. Given that Fitz is playing well enough that only Luck would really move ahead of him for our opener, we would be drafting a project to start the next season on the bench and play who knows when. I would rather have an impact player ready to go on day 1, like Dareus or Fairley. If there were an impact QB available who we loved, I would take him. And neither of those choices would be based on thinking that good QBs have lost playoff games this year or teams that have won have good defenses.

I'm calling bull**** on this, and that you cannot draft a player who has not declared and sign him after his following college year. Otherwise we have been wasting our 7th rounders by not taking the top guys from the next draft. No need to waste a #3 pick! Take the two best players coming out the following year with our 6th and 7th rounders!

They don't need to just improve the defensive front, they need to improve the TEAM. And if Peterson and Fairley are there and rate similar, sure, take Fairley based on position (or Dareus). I am definitely not advocating Patrick Peterson because I don't know enough about him, and unlike the linemen, I have not seen him play. But if Peterson is clearly superior to anybody else available, I take him even though I don't want to take a CB. You might draft a need if you are a player or two away, maybe. If you are a decade without playoffs and a mediocre talent top to bottom, you take the player you think has the best chance of being great, of wearing a yellow jacket, of being a year in year out pro-bowler. There was no LT or QB we considered as talented as RB Spiller last year, and I am happy with that decision making (even if not with his rookie year). I expect that the decision making will be the same. What I see as different is that there are fortunately D-Linemen who will be at the top of our talent board when we pick at #3. But I would like to say it one last time: our first round busts are all that because they are not great players, not because we didn't need a shutdown corner or a left tackle or a QB. Find great players and nobody will complain what position they play a few years from now. Settle for mediocre players based on position, scheme, etc., and you will be talking about busts in a few years. I don't care that we picked a safety over a DT, I care that we picked a pretty good player (Whitner) over a great player (Ngata). I don't care that we picked a DT over a RB, I care that we picked a not so good player (McCargo) 24 picks before a great player (MJD). So I don't care what position they play (okay, I do a little). I hope that at #3 and beyond we are trying to get great football players.

Yes, and fans be quiet too until 1 hour prior to kickoff in our opener. No need to talk about football either as a player or a fan. Just focus on taking care of business and getting ready to cheer at the stadium for us and make tackles for him. Any deviation from this focus, any discussion of things, and any entertainment will not be tolerated. I'm not saying he needs to try to take the division's unfounded smack talk title away from Ryan, but I think it is great to generate some excitement and confidence. And who are you "quoting" with your "air quotes"?

Who did you want? I'm not sure I see the Orakpo or Ngata in this one, and am pretty optimistic about what Spiller will mean to this team over the next five years.

Wait, I thought we needed LT and QB? No, nevermind, that was our supposed needs last draft when we went drafted D-Line in the second and third before adding Merriman. I'm not saying I love our front 7, and I really hope we find excellent football players to help them out. We better use our 1st and 2nd on great football players, and not to try to patch a short term perceived need with inferior players. I don't see Mallett as having any chance at #3, and I would much rather have Fairley/Dareus at that spot than Newton, but I really want the best player possible at that spot. As Chan says, when you are 4-12 you have needs at all 53 positions, and I don't see any of our 53 getting a yellow jacket in the future. So whether it is a shutdown CB (everyone will boo) a small fast running back (okay, not this year, but I don't disagree with our pick last year), or a beast D-Lineman, I just want the most talented football player at each pick, based on what we think he brings to the table over the next five years. I personally would love to see Chan get a QB he likes with our second pick, but am fine with Chan and Buddy picking up the QB they want any time in this draft or next draft (the one position that has some more complex reasoning than just BPA).

Dec 2009 Bleach Report Mock Aren't winter mock drafts fun? Take a look at this one a few weeks earlier than now, but from roughly the same point last year. Claussen #1, Spiller #22, Bradford #6. It is fun to talk about, but just realize that no mock around now will be even close to the actual draft, even in just the top 3, so now is not a time to speak about absolutes. Also, looking back on things with a smile, it was very intersting to compare Claussen's 2009 with Luck's 2010 in terms of expected #1 pick "can't miss" stuff. I hope we pick the guy that Chan and Buddy think is going to be the best football player over the next five years, and what Kiper thinks we need, or what Ralph wants, or what Modrak thinks is smart, or what the fans agree on (although with Ngata and Orakpo of past drafts, I would put us a close second behind Chan/Buddy).

+1 A lot will change between now and the draft. We will have the opportunity to draft some great players at #3. We have to wait three and a half months, then we have to wait 20 more minutes to see what Carolina and Denver do, then we can get one of the top 3 talents in the country before waiting a bunch more for training camp. I definitely think Fairley is way ahead of Cam on my draft board, but on just the QB side I like Mallett ahead of Cam too, but don't really like either of them at #3. Take a QB in round 2 if someone Chan likes slides, otherwise wait until 2012.