Hope you enjoyed your walk.
Personally I am fed up with a couple things. One is this attitude about reaching for a player in the draft. For one thing, ranking the players is just the subjective opinions of pundits. Everyone has there own opinions and rankings, and half of those ranked high turn out to be busts to some degree. There is very little difference in the top 30 or so players and one would need a crystal ball to determine who will be good, how good, and where they really should be ranked.
I generally feel this way most of the time. I disagree with you that the top 30 players are generally the same in skill set/potential. There's usually a small group of "elite" prospects, then a slightly larger group of very good prospects, and then a bulge of 25-40 guys who depend on the scheme and situation.
The Jackonville Jaguars are a team who do exactly what you advocate. They ended up drafting Tyson Alualu 10th overall in the 2010 draft when he was rated as a late-first rounder by a lot of teams. Alualu has turned out to be a pretty solid player for them.
The opposing argument is that if you really like a guy who's projected to go later, you're passing up additional value by taking him 5-10 spots earlier than his projection. You could get the same guy and an additional 3rd-5th-round pick.
This thought process also caused the Jaguars to draft punter Bryan Anger with the 7th pick in the 3rd round, before Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. Their GM's explanation was that he'd rather draft a starter than a backup whenever possible. All right, then.
Now that leads to my second thing. That is all the worry about making sure your fans know that you took the highest player ranked on your board, like you have to have some external excuse for taking a player. Sounds more like you are trying to pacify to Kipers, McShays, and the fans who buy into these Big Board predictions. Take the time to see how the top 25-50 top players ranked in last year's draft has turned out and it is laughable. If you ranked them now, the list would not even look like the same year.
Fair enough. Teams always say "We had him ranked higher!" and "We can't believe this guy was still available!" in their post-draft press conferences. It's possible that they're telling the truth. The Cards keep two boards--one of straight-up prospects, and a second board of value to the team, in the system. There are lots of players that are worth more to a particular team than they might be on the open market.
I don't think there are a lot of people who take McShay's or Kiper's or WalterFootball's or The Huddle Report's words as gospel, but I think we all use them as a general guideline and consensus about where we can expect players to go.
This leads me to my overall feeling that you should draft to fill your greatest needs. Who the hell and why would anyone think you should draft someone in a position you don't really need just because the pundits (who influence one another by the way) say they are a better pick in that spot. To me that is stupid and history doesn't justify it.
IF you have a glaring need in an area, then fill it with the very best players in the draft. It doesn't matter if you are picking 5th and this guy you need is only ranked 10th by the pundits. They are probably wrong anyway. And who the hell ever came up with the idea that this position or that should never be taken so high in the draft. If the player is that good and is just what you need most, for god's sake get him. If he is the player that is most likely to make your team instantly better and fill a hole, who cares what others think he is worth.
These attitudes drive me nuts and are so prevalent on all these forums. Sorry, I just can't buy into them like others have.
Now I got that off my chest. Time to go walk the dog.
So... we should've drafted Levi Brown over Adrian Peterson. And we should not have drafted Patrick Peterson, because we had DRC and Greg Toler. We should have taken Jake Locker, Aldon Smith, or Tyron Smith, since QB, OLB, and OT were greater needs.
Would we be a better team right now if we had done that?
