The 1st pick in the draft is ONE pick better than the SB winner.

[cmasspatsfan]

I was confused by the thread title so opened the thread and the first post confused me even more. I do not see the logic in it at all.

He's saying other than that top pick the rest of the draft is pretty equal so you need to do something great with the first pick to gain an advantage. If you can turn that one pick into 2-3 really good players or even if it's one great player that's the advantage, if you miss, it's a huge miss.

 

[Jim Beankie]

wow, this is mental gymnastics to the fullest on the draft - would you rather a snake draft? Yes, the team needs a qb...But I would have no qualms, say Zappe starts the rest of the year and goes 3-3 or 4-2, going with Zappe next year and dedicating every ****ing pick to offense - receiver, tight end, qb, line and no running backs. drafting a qb high is not a fool proof recipe for success.

I'm amazed at the salary scale for the NFL picks. $25mill signing bonus for pick #1 down to $12.4mill for pick #10 and down to $5.7 for pick #32 (per Spotrac). Unless there's a generational talent (and I mean real generational not the watered down crap people have been spewing out seemingly every year), if the Pats had a top 3 pick, I'd fully expect them to trade down unless it's MHJr.

 

[XLIX]

A) List all the picks of the first team in the draft and the SB winner.

I decided to do just this for the past 15 years.... the problem is that when a #1 overall is a bust, that gets way, way more attention than when #32 is a bust.... so here are the first overall compared to the final pick of the 1st round (which sometimes wasn't the SB winner):

1st overall (11 Pro Bowlers):
Bryce Young
Travon Walker
Trevor Lawrence
Joe Burrow
Kyler Murray
Baker Mayfield
Myles Garrett
Jared Goff
Jameis Winston
Jadaveon Clowney
Eric Fisher
Andrew Luck
Cam Newton
Sam Bradford
Matt Stafford

Final pick of the 1st round (2 Pro Bowlers):
Felix Anudike-Uzomah
Lewis Cine
Joe Tryon-Shoyinka
Clyde Edwards-Helaire
N'Keal Harry
Lamar Jackson
Ryan Ramczyk
Germain Ifedi
Malcom Brown
Teddy Bridgewater
Matt Elam
David Wilson
Derek Sherrod
Patrick Robinson
Ziggy Hood

That top group, while not perfect, dominates the bottom group in terms of talent and career success. Not even close.

 

[Rob0729]

Nobody's dismissing the pick. It's just that it's not as great of an advantage as some people think, even if the team hits on it, which in the case of Bill is not as often as it should be.

The first overall pick has a great advantage over the last overall pick in the first round. I don't know how you can argue that. There are 30 players or more taken in each round between those picks. The team with the first overall pick has far more quality players to choose from each round. That is a huge advantage.

The great equalizer is how good are the people making the picks and how well they scout the players. A bad talent evaluator and/or scouting staff can ruin any pick no matter where it is.

The draft is a crap shoot no matter where you pick, but good talent evaluators find talent and hit on more picks than most. Drafting 30 spots sooner only gives them more of an advantage.

A big reason why many early picks are busts is because bad teams don't have good front offices and make poor selections and don't good coaching staffs to develop players.

 

[1960Pats]

All you did was rephrase your poor thesis:

"Take away 3,000 draft points from that team with the #1 overall, and you are in a worse situation than the Super Bowl winner!!"

I'm no draftnick but I'll have to check and see exactly what the point difference would be in my example, with teams picking 1st and 15th.

 

[Hyped]

Eagles drafted the defensive rookie of the year after making the super bowl. Bill is drafting Boney T and Harry. Time for a new GM.

We had no first round pick in 2017....and only 4 selections that draft, but drafted Wise and McDermott....two guys who started on Sunday....

Then the following year we took Wynn and Michel...both who helped us win a SB. PLUS, we got J.C. Jackson as an UDFA...and pulled some probowl years out of him....and got him back just now with the Chargers footing the bill. He was out there on Sunday as well...

 

[Hyped]

And the OP's premise is a weird one man...

Yeah...the #32 pick is as good as the #33 pick..I get that, but we are comparing #1 vs. #32 and then #33 vs. #64...and so on.....the advantage is HUGE.

 

[Patjew]

He's saying other than that top pick the rest of the draft is pretty equal so you need to do something great with the first pick to gain an advantage. If you can turn that one pick into 2-3 really good players or even if it's one great player that's the advantage, if you miss, it's a huge miss.

It is the OPPORTUNITY to turn that one pick into one or more great players which is what makes it so valuable.

 

[1960Pats]

I decided to do just this for the past 15 years.... the problem is that when a #1 overall is a bust, that gets way, way more attention than when #32 is a bust.... so here are the first overall compared to the final pick of the 1st round (which sometimes wasn't the SB winner):

1st overall (11 Pro Bowlers):
Bryce Young
Travon Walker
Trevor Lawrence
Joe Burrow
Kyler Murray
Baker Mayfield
Myles Garrett
Jared Goff
Jameis Winston
Jadaveon Clowney
Eric Fisher
Andrew Luck
Cam Newton
Sam Bradford
Matt Stafford

Final pick of the 1st round (2 Pro Bowlers):
Felix Anudike-Uzomah
Lewis Cine
Joe Tryon-Shoyinka
Clyde Edwards-Helaire
N'Keal Harry
Lamar Jackson
Ryan Ramczyk
Germain Ifedi
Malcom Brown
Teddy Bridgewater
Matt Elam
David Wilson
Derek Sherrod
Patrick Robinson
Ziggy Hood

That top group, while not perfect, dominates the bottom group in terms of talent and career success. Not even close.

You're comparing the top picks to the last picks in each round. Of course it's not even close. And in the years when the 2 pro-bowlers were picked last in the first round I'm sure that there were players drafted in the other 30 rounds who never played or were gone soon. It's a crap shoot I tell ya.

 

[1960Pats]

It is the OPPORTUNITY to turn that one pick into one or more great players which is what makes it so valuable.

I'm not saying it isn't valuable or an advantage, it's just that the value and advantage lessens each round after the first pick is gone.

And how much of an advantage does the team picking at 1 have over the teams picking from 2-5? Some idiot owner could step in and force the GM or HC to take the wrong guy at #1, like Carolina's owner did when he missed on Stroud.

 

[mgteich]

I'm amazed at the salary scale for the NFL picks. $25mill signing bonus for pick #1 down to $12.4mill for pick #10 and down to $5.7 for pick #32 (per Spotrac). Unless there's a generational talent (and I mean real generational not the watered down crap people have been spewing out seemingly every year), if the Pats had a top 3 pick, I'd fully expect them to trade down unless it's MHJr.

Consider if we pick 5th and pay the player $34.5M. [some #5 picks might be worth it, other not]

We could trade for #11 and #45 and also have about $5M of additional cap space for a free agent.

Obvious, all this depends on how the draft plays out. The top 5, as of now, seem to be 2 QB's, 2 OT. and a WR. I could see us trading down if we don't get one of the top 2 picks. The salary differences are huge. If you think that you have all pro, then sure pay the $34.5M for the #5 pick (or more for a higher pick).

 

[lancerman]

Oh that's weird. You always used to say that it's a team game and a QB doesn't magically win a game by himself.

What changed with you Wozzy?

Because it suits his argument now.

 

[lancerman]

That's what posters told me about Cam when he went to Carolina in 2021... now he's out of the league.

But let's revisit this later, should be funny...

1. Nobody said that.
2. Cam was very clearly at the end of his rope and not all that good.

 

[1960Pats]

FIRST, Bill has done very well with picks in the first half of the first round.

ALSO, if we can't get one of the top 2 QB's, trading down might give us lots of possibilities of help in the first 50, perhaps 3-4 players.

How many 1st half of the 1st round picks have there been and how many of them did he keep? It doesn't seem like there's been many.

I've always been a fan of trading down for more picks. Mainly because it's a crap shoot and more picks gives the team more chances. It also, along with FA pickups, gives the team first look at those players.

 

[1960Pats]

1. Nobody said that.
2. Cam was very clearly at the end of his rope and not all that good.

My biggest question about QBs is a simple one. WTF happened to Mac Jones? He was decent at first but got progressively worse each season since.

 

[lancerman]

Some look for one player to make all the difference with their top 10 pick.

Others use the value chart and get 2-4 players.

The truth is it depends on the position and team need.

QB is a position where your odds of getting a franchise QB dramatically go up in the first 15 picks and go dramatically down immediately after that and go further down every round going forward. If that is a position of need, it is just in your best interest to invest high even if you can potentially get a king's ransom elsewhere. Because the odds that you get 2-4 hits lower in the draft that make up for the potential to hit on a franchise QB are just not there, and you aren't always going to be in a great position to have your pick of the litter. Next year it's more likely the Pats go middle of the pack and have to settle if they don't go QB now. Really the 2020 team should have been close to their pick of QB that year and they ended up winning some meaningless games against bottomfeeders and got the 5th QB that was considered to be a 1st round prospect and didn't get to choose from the lot.

After that it becomes more about the type of player and the need of the team. Like it's kinda dumb to pass up on a world class pass rusher at the top of the draft. If you are the Patriots, it would also be stupid to pass up on a Marvin Harrison Jr type prospect as well if you don't like the QB's there because you very rarely get a high ceiling/low floor WR like that and your team needs it.

You can find good OL across the draft and a lot of the top OL prospects over the years haven't really panned out. RB's just don't have the value to draft high even if they are generational (and the Pats really don't utilize a feature back, so it would be an even bigger waste here).

 

[archstanton543]

My biggest question about QBs is a simple one. WTF happened to Mac Jones? He was decent at first but got progressively worse each season since.

No investment in the Oline and more importantly WR.
Three different OC's in three years
A defensive guy at OC one of those years
A rash of injuries/lack of talent on the OL that allowed the shortest amount of time to throw almost until the middle of this season
WR's that can't beat man coverage

 

[lancerman]

Looks like 75% of all management should get fired ? Half teams don’t make playoffs ? Really hard to measure what’s inside a young man’s heart and mind. Like betting on the ponies… hard to make a living

There's a giant difference between a bad team that is building up and showing improvement and a team that spent 5 years trending down and is further away than they've ever been

 

[lancerman]

And the OP's premise is a weird one man...

Yeah...the #32 pick is as good as the #33 pick..I get that, but we are comparing #1 vs. #32 and then #33 vs. #64...and so on.....the advantage is HUGE.

It's dumb because he's ignoring the highest value pick in the draft where you pretty much get your choice of the field and can have any generational type player and the theoretical best pick at any position you want and trying to say, "oh if we ignore how incredible valuable and franchise changing that pick can be, then it's really like we basically are picking after the Super Bowl team the rest of thedraft. No the Super Bowl winner will always be waiting 31 picks behind the last place team. When you get 1 pick they have 0 for 31 picks. When you get 2, they only have 1 for 31 picks.

We used to always joke that we'd trade out of late 1st round because at that point the preemium players are gone and you are effectively getting high 2nd round talent. So now you get the best pick AND still get a comprable pick to what we got all the years we won Super Bowls. Then you get the best 3rd round, and 4th round etc.

 

[Nehalem]

Yes, a top 5 pick is important. Folks seem to think that we have advantages throughout the draft, We do not.

After the first pick, the worst team picks one AFTER the Super Bowl winner throughout the draft (ignoring trades and comp picks). Let's say we are the 1st pick and PHI is pick 32.
============
1. NE gets the first pick.
2. PHI gets 32, NE get 33.
3. PHI gets 65, NE gets 66
4. PHI gets 97, NE gets 98 (actually lower because of comp picks.
4. PHI gets last in the 4th, patriots get first in the 5th (the next pick)
and so on.
===============
BOTTOM LINE
After the results of the first pick, we have slightly less draft resources than the SB winner.

We are kidding ourselves if we think that we make a meaningful step toward the SB by drafting a WR or OT at 4 or 5. There is only one FAST step toward being a good team: getting a top QB. To me, FAST to me means 2-3 years. .

Counterpoint: You have a MUCH better chance of drafting the top QB in the top 5 then at 32.

Counterpoint 2: You are basically say that excluding their top asset the Patriots still have as much draft capital as the Super Bowl winner.