NFL offseason thread

Chad being Chad ... http://deadsp.in/11NzLxl

 

I think it's hard to evaluate a draft immediately. Who knows how any of these players are going to turn out? I think it takes 3-5 years to get a real read on a draft class. Some guys will play right away; others will sit and learn and develop slowly. If you have a good team, you can afford to do that.

Interesting that had Matt Barkley been in last season's draft, he probably would have been a first-round pick. Now he went fourth round. He was sort of the opposite of Robert Griffin III, who some people had as a fourth or fifth round pick before he had a stellar junior season at Baylor.

OK, so Barkley cost himself some coin by staying for an extra year, but I'm not convinced that's the make or break. I think it has more to do with getting good coaching and, obviously, working to develop your own skills. I really think which organization drafts you is more important than what pick you get selected with. If you can play, you'll earn the money back

 

Yeah, it takes at least three years. Should be common knowledge by now, but we still get the instant grades. Does that distract us so we don't grade the experts' mock drafts?

 

I still somehow love the draft, despite coming to despise everything that precedes it and immediately follows it.

 

I love the draft, too. But this year's was so underwhelming, I skipped watching it and just tracked it online. On the plus side, I missed everything Kiper said.

 

Watched NFL Network. Can't stand Mayock as a color guy, but he's great on the draft. Didn't hear a single word this weekend from Kiper, Berman, etc.

On a related note, mock drafts have less credibility than recruiting "news."

 

Since the draft is like a cross between a jigsaw puzzle and dominoes, I can see how it would be pretty darn hard to predict most of the picks in advance. One curveball by one team and it changes who is available and thus changes decisions for plenty of other teams, too. If you can get, say, 7 out of the first 10 picks right, that's pretty good. Too many variables on the later selections.

 

Tebow cut by Jets.

 

Dr. Z's mocks were legendary. Pre-Internet, he'd have to submit it presumably no later than the Sunday or Monday before for the magazine and he'd project trades and frequently be right on...

Granted, this year probably would have been tougher than almost any other year... I love mock drafts, but anyone who reads them expecting people to get even half of them right is delusional.

 

Agreed. It's usually a matter of luck or some really good inside information to get anything write.

I've seen some beat writers have remarkable success rates predicting who the teams they cover will take, but I don't know of anybody who consistently does mock drafts even that accurate.

 

I remember the late Steve Schoenfeld being something like 17 for 17 at one point in one draft in the early 1990s.

 

Dr. Z was pretty close to that with the Aikman-Mandarich-Sanders-Thomas-Deion-Broderick draft in 1989. To be fair, when the top six go exactly as expected, that can help...