2017 Draft Redux—Golladay a top 10 pick

@JustinRogers
2h

How good of a value did the Lions get with Kenny Golladay in the third round? ESPN did a re-do of the top-10 picks of the 2017 draft and had Golladay going No. 7 overall.

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Fire Quinn!

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That was.a great pick. Where did they have Tabor going?

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It’s easy to point at bad individual picks. Every GM has their fair share.

I would be interested to know Quinn’s hit rate in each respective round compared to the avg GM.

While I understand why you want to know “per round” how each GM has done, I think you are asking the wrong question. From my experience, the real question is per draft. That’s not to say round is irrelevant, but it kind of is. How many quality football players did you walk away with? Each round is just another chance to get one.

An interesting case study is the Packers. They spent many years amongst the very best in the league at drafting in the mid to late rounds. But you know what else? They kind of sucked in the 1st round…relatively speaking. Many of those mid to late round gems would have never seen the field had some of their 1st round picks worked out.

The real hit rate on players is a lot lower than many fans realize. Go get players, that’s what I say. If you can go get players year after year, you are building something.

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I don’t know if I’d put Golladay in the Top 10 but he’s been an outstanding pick for us.

Personally I think BQ has done a good job at drafting so far. Good not great. I think he’s been playing it fairly safe getting players who have a high floor. I still think we lack difference makers but the team has much fewer gaping holes too.

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Ok, so I cherry picked one really bad pick. But that pick was Millen bad. It’s one thing when we all get upset about Golliday or Walker because nobody has ever heard of them. Tabor was a guy everyone knew about and everyone could see the numerous red flags. I wanted nothing to do with him before the draft even started.

Overall his drafts have been ok. Finds some quality guys in the mid rounds but drafts for need in the early rounds and I think we miss out on impact players because of that.

I would go as far as to say his drafts have been slightly above average. His free agent signings, however, leave a lot to be desired. Not sure he’s gotten good value overall for all the money he’s thrown at free agents. A few nice ones, but quite a few guys who got paid huge and have been underwhelming.

A round by round analysis yields different data. It speaks to the relatively low chance of each pick “hitting”—and those chances get smaller in each round.

Having an avg hit rate in each round gives a normalized basis of comparison for how likely each pick is to make it. This allows both a cumulative and round-by-round assessment of a GMs drafting ability.

Can you imagine our offense if we went Kamara as opposed to Teez.

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Lol. Yeah, its hard to swallow the Aaron Donald for Ebron type stuff, but drafting is a little more of a crap shoot. I think what hurts this team more is spending top dollar for free agents on guys like Wagner, Lang, Wiggins, Jones, Daniels, Flowers and James and getting a very small return.

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I’ve analyzed Quinn’s tendencies in the draft (I actually nailed the Davis in the 1st and the Golladay pick in the 3rd round in the draft contest that year). He tends to take safer players in round one, guys you know will start and be at least average, high character, hard working guys, but never any “flash”. After round 1, he targets players wit a very specific set of attributes and they almost always have a high RAS score. One of the exceptions?? Yep, Teez Tabor…BUT, Tavai also scored poorly. I think Tavai, as Quinn pointed out, is a player with a very specific skill set and body type they were looking for.

At the time, Tavai was rehabbing from a leg injury as I recall.

I think it was a shoulder, in any event, he’s not fast…but neither is Dont’a Hightower.

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Agreed. Yes Quinn has blown a few picks, but he’s also shown sheer genius enough to where IMHO his player aquisitions (draft, trades and FA) have been great overall. It’s almost unsettling as a Lions fan to have such a great GM. But I mean he has been. Ragnow is the #1 Center and Glasgow is what the #3 OG? It takes balls to draft a Center that high, but if you knew Ragnow was going to be the very best in the NFL do you really feel that bad about it?? Heck no! To boot, Quinn has generally shown that he does not compound his mistakes by riding them too long.

He dumped his drafted Long Snapper when he saw that Mulbach was better. He took one year too long with Tabor, but he kept Mike Ford instead and look how good he played against KC when called upon. I think giving Decker the 5th year option was a bit of a bad move and not moving on from Wagner has been a spotty decision, but way more good than bad.

Hightower ran 4.68 in the forty coming out. That .15 seconds faster than Tavai. I still think Tavai is going to be a really good player for us for a long time as long as we’re in this scheme. Ninkovich ran a 4.91 and he became a really good LBer in that scheme (though he played a lot of DE too and was a tiny bit bigger than Tavai)

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I agree with your sentiment. What stands out to me with Quinn in comparison to our previous GMs is that we don’t have entire draft classes gone after 3 or 4 years.

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Regardless of hits or misses with the draft or FA since Quinn’s arrival, I feel we have a team that many believe can take a big step this season.

I think he has put together a good squad and staff. Now the guys just need to execute on the field and limit the mistakes.

Again, I really want that next step against Green Bay…right on the back of their fricken neck.

if you watched golladay’s interviews as a rookie, you could see he was a serious kid with a lot to prove and determined to put the work in to be good. combined with his physical traits his ceiling was pretty high. lots of kids / adults talk but the words are empty. he was different out the gate. he wasn’t coached by his agent to say things he didn’t understand or embrace. glad to see him doing well. nothing i love more than seeing a rookie stiff arm and own a veteran multiple times in his first year as an nfl player.

Not bad for a 3rd rounder who was apparently a reach at the time, not bad at all.
I don’t know if I agree with him ahead of Kamara but still nice to see him getting the respect he deserves.