Since I wrote the opus of "the sky is falling" posts in April, I probably should have been the first responder
. I didn't even wait until the draft was over. I went nuts (literally) after the Mallet pick, and never heard the rest of the draft. So clearly I have some mea cuplas and hail mary's to make before the altar of Bill.
But in all our defenses there are 2 mitigating factors in our failure to see the value in the draft.
1. I think everyone's expectations are formed from the weeks running up to the draft. We are constantly going over the many mock drafts. We listen to all the predictions. We add all of that to our own perceptions of what we need and how we see the "ideal" draft projecting. Then when it goes COMPLETELY opposite to our expectations, it can be pretty frustrating.
So when everyone was expecting a draft heavily weighted in DEs and OLBs, two positions of perceived need, and when we pick NONE of these positions, AND add a relatively high pick QB, a position of NO need....questions (to understate it) will be raised
2. As usual we clearly didn't have the big picture. I'm sure in the run up to the draft BB saw the opportunity to add players from the deep FA DL mix, that HE thought would be better for us in the short term than training rookies, especially when we already had so many young DL men. After the mid first round I doubt he felt that there were any OLB candidate better than what he had already or could pick up in FA. I expect he had made the Haynesworth decision and decided on the defensive changes that we have seen manifest over the first weeks of camp.
I will always wonder if he would have made the Solder pick if he had known that Light would resign. Maybe he did and did it anyway. BTW Solder did NOTHING last thursday to may anyone think that he wasn't worth the pick. He did VERY well for a kid who had been in camp only a week and had like 3 padded practices.
