Agree with all this. They go through the exercise of grading even if they are a 4-3 team and a 360lb slow NT isn’t who they’d take. That guy will be on their board and that’s when “groups” of like rated players come in. Within those groups, need becomes more and more the driving factor. Rightly so.
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When you have a need at almost every position they are one in the same
Instead of “need”, use “positional value”.
Unless you have a VERY high pick (like Detroit), you really have no idea who you are getting in the draft. You fill your “needs” with free agency and then try and bring in the best talent you can get throughout the draft.
Positional value adjusts with each piece you acquire. Let’s say you bring in a pair of new QB’s as back ups (thus filling the need) and then a QB you had rated as late 1st or early 2nd falls to your 3rd round pick.
The need is no longer there but the value is.
No, not in these sense that most of us talk about a true BPA.
I think the OP question goes something like this:
If, in your scenario the man-cover corner was rated a 94 instead of a 90.5, do they pick him then? (i.e. is your “downgrade” worth missing on a unicorn)?
If the answer’s ‘yes’, you say that ‘positional need’ is factored in from pick 1. But the answer could reasonably be ‘no’, if there is someone available who is SO good you can’t pass on him regardless of everything else.
Great points!
We have only had a few good coaches here in our lifetime. Sadly that’s almost regardless of age given the fact that we’ve been inept for 60 plus years.
What we saw las these was actually quite encouraging, and in my opinion the main reason why I think the playoffs are in our future by 22’, or possibly 22’…
Josh Reynolds was discarded by Tennessee mid season, and immediately he looked like a borderline NFL starter.
C Reynolds was famous round these parts for work Ching Netflix before he got the call to join the team 2 days before a solid game day showing.
E Brown, Kraemer, Jacobs, Parker, Raymond, R Patterson, and the above held their own.
Sewell and obviously St Brown we’re studs each having a PFF rating over 77 as rookies! Iffy and McNeill both rated over 60, and while some gave our rookie DTs grief, McNeill had 40 tackles, 2 sacks, a pass defended and a fumble as a rookie NT! That alone is one HELLUVA draft class… Levi O was definitely disappointing with just one sack as a rush specialist, and Barnes showed Higgs and lows with 67 tackles and 2 sacks in modest snap share…
My point is the difference between a J Jacobs and D Trufant, or AJ Parker and J Coleman is barely noticeable…
Does anyone else feel like Charles Harris gave us exactly what we expected from Flowers “1-2 years ago” for about 18,000,000 less!!!
Filling in your team with guys who fit the scheme and can be coached up is a joint effort between HC and GM…
Deciding which guys are “glue guys” that need to be extended as integral parts of the team are HC driven decisions.
Finding the best talents in the draft is on the GM and scouts.
Rick Wagner, Marvin Jones, TJ Lang, Justin Coleman, Trey Flowers, Nick Williams, Jesse James, etc…
All guys we paid 5M, 6M, 8M, 9M even 18M per year who had decent to solid success with previous teams, and we heavily overpaid.
Most of the above- if not ALL were drafted round 4 or later… sure Jones Jr turned out to be solid value here, decent value in Jax, but the rest were awful and aside from 1 year, Jones jr was more good than “really good.”
That’s why I was upset when we gave up on Glasgow, Warford, Reiff and tried cycling in Wagner, Lang, and Big V
We let homegrown 3rd, 3rd and 1st rounders walk, and replaced them with 5th, 4th, and 5th rounders.
There was a drop off in raw talent, and yet somehow we decided to pay similar money to other teams coached up late rounders… vs keeping our talented high round picks who were getting average at best coaching.
Note to self- don’t sign mid to late round free agents from teams who consistently win while letting such players walk!
If a 2nd round talent drops into round 5 to meet a scenario like your talking about then either your grade is off or there’s another factor causing that players side. Like character or injury concerns.
The grades between a late first rounder and a late 2nd rounder rounder are closer than people realize.
What’s a true BPA?
I’ve never seen a draft where everyone in the 1st round has an actual 1st round grade. Most drafts have 2nd round grades beginning in the middle of the 1st.
Most drafts have a handful of players with a super high difference maker type of grade. Then about 10-15 players with a first round grade. That usually gets you to about pick 18-22 or so.
Then there’s a ton of players grouped closely together. Like the next 40 players or so.
My point I’ve been trying to make is that teams always draft based on need to a degree.
If they have choice in group one of those 5 or so players they take the biggest need.
In group two they may skip a WR who is slightly higher graded for a CB. If there are few CB’s that fit their scheme while the WR class is deep enough to get one later.
I believe that’s exactly what happened with DET last year when they chose DT over WR.
I’ll bite: Lets throw ths out there as a strawman as to what people mean when they say BPA: The person who plays football at the highest level anywhere anytime, devoid of a particular team’s needs and a particular teams schemes.
Sure – but that isn’t even close to the scenario I was asking to be addressed.
We have a need for the best players available.
Which is what I said, too.
I doubt there’s a great deal of consternation if it’s between a player graded a 84 vs 86, which is why I referenced Quinn’s “tiers”.
If there’s a tier 2 OL player available when we’re picking at 32 (not a position of “need” meaning that there’s no obvious opening on the roster for him) and the next best player is a LB in tier 3, you take the OL. If you take the lesser player just to fill an open roster spot (position of need), you’re cheating your team.
All of that assumes we’re only discussing players with traits WE are looking for. We are not considering players who fit other schemes. We’re talking about players on our own board as potential targets. If you trust your process, you have to trust your grade when it tells you the available player is a measurably better talent than the next guy. Forget filling the hole in the draft, stock your roster with the best player available and then fill the hole in FA post-draft.