Primetime I see your point. If there was a recent track record of hitting on second rounders, I'd be more enthusiastic. This draft needs to be a home run. Unfortunately I have zero confidence in the guy making the picks.
That depends on what your expectations are. After reading this thread I think a lot of people's expectations are too high.
Next season is a write off, IMO. We've done a bunch of salary dumping and are burning through cap hits this year. We're coming off a streak of two SB wins, a SB appearance and a playoff appearance as well. We actually did go for it last year. We used high draft picks on WR and RB in recent years, we kept a bunch of aging higher priced vets, we tried to add one in Sanu, and it didn't work.
Now we've let vets walk and moved down in the draft to try to get core players. There's no way it gets turned around in one season. Next year will be about plugging in young players to see what they got, and the following one will almost certainly be more of the same. Stidham will get a year to show what he has. If he's good we can move forward with him. If he sucks, we'll have $100M in cap room and Aaron Rodgers will be available
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I think the rebuild will be two seasons, and that assumes (a) Stidham's development trend line is that of a franchise QB and (b) this year and next year's drafts are good. If Stidham isn't good enough, then it's more than two seasons.
Common mistaken beliefs about the draft that create a good deal of misery and disappointment:
1. The purpose is to provide high impact players to fill immediate needs for the upcoming season. This rarely happens outside of the top 10-15 players taken.
2. The players rated the highest at a given position are going to be stars in the NFL. For example, this year's TE crop may not provide a single starter.
3. Players taken in the 2nd and 3rd rounds should always become good players in the NFL. The odds are less than 50%.
4. Picking at the end of each round due to two decades of success is has no impact on success in the draft
I don't get it. Even after sleeping it off. You had Queens sitting there. Other great prospects. How can you be sure the guy you want will be there in the second? What if he isn't?
The Pats do not fall in love with one guy! They have a points system that tells them how well each player will fit their system. They obviously see lots of guys who have high scores in the later rounds so it makes sense to trade down. They don't really care at this point in time if the players with high scores are WR, RB, OL, CB, etc. All they care is that they see more value in trading down than not trading down.
a study of the ‘great players’ we’ve missed out on by trading out would be an interesting project. That’s not sarcasm but genuine.
Every team has its list of 'great players' they have missed. Everyone had 198 chances to pick Brady, we did at 199. Feel free to make lists for all 32 teams going back to the beginning of the BB/Brady era. Then feel free to compare based on record of success. I'm sure we'll look great. That’s not sarcasm but genuine.
