I don't know if that's fair. The Strange pick is pretty much the most universally questioned pick league wide and was literally the only selection in the first round where every network covering the draft didn't have tape on the player qued up because it was massive reach. Curran is in line with over 95% (made up number) of the assessments on that pick. He's not being a contrarian like Felger looking to manufacture the narrative to be negative. It is just a straight up negative. The Pats passed up one of the top CB's in the draft, another highly touted CB, two offensive lineman who were projected far higher than the one we got, and the first two LB's selected in the draft in the spots they lost from the trade down. Then took a guy that by all indications was viewed as closer to 3rd roun pick.
Multiple longtime draft analyzers have been very down on that pick. You can't blame Curran for his take. Even if Strange turns into a Mankins, we could have likely just taken McDuffie and then Strange in the second.
When there is a "reach", it means the media draftniks failed to forecast correctly. If they had known what they were doing, they should have said something like "we believe most teams had [3rd round] grades on [player], but some teams might have him as high as a [1st round] grade on him because [reasons]". When they are surprised (like with Strange) it means they failed in their forecast, and cover it up by blaming the team that made the surprisingly early pick.
Doubters would feel different about the Strange pick if the media draftniks had forecast it correctly.
It's even worse when there is a "steal", because in that case a draftnik touted player is publicly passed over by
every team, completely invalidating the draftniks consensual hallucination. To cover their failure, they claim that the team that eventually picks the player as having made a "steal" when it was instead a massive forecasting failure by draftniks. The correct analysis would have been something like "we believe the highest any team will take [player] is round [n] but we also believe the player should actually be picked in round [n + m] for [reasons].
"Reaches" and "steals" are just indicators of failures to forecast draft day. True "value" of players picked and the true opportunity cost can only be determined years later based on actual performance, and even then there is uncertainty because of semi-random factors like injury and the difficulty to even retroactively assess team specific fit.
This is not to say the draftnik efforts are useless; they are hugely entertaining to us the public and provide us very interesting detailed introductions to players (even more so if they are team specific like BGC's) And the draft scoring game is fun just like fantasy football is fun.
But draftnik efforts are not particularly relevant to
teams. I believe the only teams that factor in media pre-draft consensus about "value" are teams that have ownership, management or coaching running scared about fan opinion because of a record of poor actual team performance.
To illustrate the level of BS involved, consider Mike Mayock's fate: he was highly respected by the public as a media draftnik and hired because of that -- but was a joke as an actual general manager. Now he can't show his face in public.
