It happens
CB group as a whole fell.
Hood round 2
Ponds Cisse late 2
McCoy / Miami DB 4
Guys do fall. We capitalized to the max with Abney a round 3 guy we got at 5
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Literally thousands? Literally? Thousands?
Go on, name just 1,000.
Come on, man.
My point is that trusting the collective wisdom of 50-100 draft media guys, most of whom aren’t full time draft analysts and whose job it is to create content rather than actually be accurate, over the ~1,000 full time professionals working across 32 NFL front offices, who have access to more information about each prospect and more sophisticated analytical tools, is just plain dumb.
Yes, a player might fall a little bit dependent on team needs, but when you have a player like Abney, and get excited that one or two draft media folk had him in the 2nd round, and the entire NFL lets him fall to the 5th, then those draft media guys were just flat wrong in their evaluations.
Trust the people that do more work on prospects over the people that do much, much less. Draft media guys are snake oil salesman and fans should be aware of that and give them a lot less credence than they do.
https://x.com/i/status/2048488732005695771
The article linked in this tweet elaborates on how there’s no such thing as a steal in the draft if you’re interested.
Forget the quotes.
On one side you have draft media. 50-100 individuals who don’t watch as much tape, don’t have access to as much information, don’t need to be accurate to maintain their career, mostly don’t do player evaluation full time, and don’t have access to sophisticated analytics.
On the other side you have 32 NFL front offices. Roughly 1,000 people who are full time professionals reliant on being good at evaluation to keep their jobs. They watch more tape, have access to much more information about each prospect, and have better analytics.
Out of those two sides, who are the experts, and who are the amateurs?
The things that Brad Holmes saw in Abney that made him give him a 3rd round grade aren’t the same things that those on draft media saw to give him a 2nd or 3rd round grade, because if an ‘amateur’ in draft media is seeing something then every single NFL front office is seeing it too. Brad may also have been embellishing slightly, one thing you never hear from any GMs is that they had a rough draft, and missed out on picking guys that they wanted, although that surely happens all the time.
Aside from the steal stuff, which I mostly agree with. Kevin Cole says grading a draft immediately is the way to do it and that waiting years is not the way to do it. I fundamentally disagree. In the comments of the article, he had this to say about the Lions draft in 2023:
“Mostly bad on those teams. Lions got trade value, and I like the Hooker pick, but the rest was rough”
He ranked the Lions draft as 21st. This is EXACTLY why grading a draft immediately is ridiculous. Gibbs, Campbell, LaPorta, and Branch were rough and Hooker was the good pick? 
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