I like the woulda coulda shoulda game. It allows you to evaluate drafting acumen. Some picks are totally out of the blue; for instance there is no reason to roast the Patriots for not taking Marques Coleston but there is every right to roast the Patriots for (say) taking Chris Canty while Sam Madison was still on the board (one of the worst whiff in Patriots history with the worst being Kliff Kingsury).
I like playing woulda-coulda-shoulda, too.
In 2006, instead of trading our #52 (and #75, IIRC) for GB's #36 to take Chad Jackson, we
coulda stayed where we were and taken Greg Jennings. Sounds simple, yes? Ahh! But this is where the dominoes of possibility then begin to fall in
several other directions.
Let's start with the possibility that GB
woulda taken Jennings with their #36 anyway, or Sinorice Moss, who was also still available (or Daryn Colledge, who they took with their #47). Either way, now Chad Jackson is available to ATL, OAK, PHL, DET, ARZ, CHI, NO and the Giants. The Giants took Sinorice Moss at #44, so maybe they
woulda taken Jackson instead. That is, unless Al Davis had jumped on Jackson first at #38, thereby allowing LB Thomas Howard to slide to someone else.
So, there's a distinct possibility that none of the 2nd round WRs are available when we pick at #52. What then? Based on what positions we actually filled later in the draft, let's say we went with one of the TEs at #52. Let's say Scheffler. Now, for Denver picking at #61, Scheffler is no longer on the board. Sure, maybe they simply go with one of the next TE's that actually went off the board - Pope (ARZ at #72) or Thomas (NE at #86). However, Denver's next pick after #61 is #119 (where they took Brandon Marshall). That's about 60 other players that they might have taken instead (including one or two who, in reality, were picked before #61, BUT, in this alternate past, might have fallen to them unexpectedly).
Anyway, the point is that "woulda, coulda, shoulda" doesn't stop with making a simple one-for-one substitution which
woulda made everything better for us. Any change to what
we did would certainly have generated a cascade of changes for every other team. That, coming back around, would have altered the landscape for our subsequent 2006 picks. It might even have affected the order of finish in the 2006 season and the subsequent 2007 draft. For instance, let's say Oakland takes Jackson at #38 in 2006 and then they trade Randy Moss
to some team other than NE during 2006 training camp.
Oops! Maybe that seemingly little, isolated change that woulda seemed better in the short run would actually have made everything much, much worse in the long run.
Seriously, didn't any of you guys see "
Back to the Future"?