I'm a little surprised you take that position. I understand that the approach hasn't worked all that well in Fisher's tenure as coach, but that doesn't mean the plan itself is flawed. It just means the individual players haven't worked out (nearly) as well as one might have hoped.
It absolutely means the plan is flawed. Hoping you get lucky and hit on a OL later in the draft because you're devaluing them is a FLAWED plan. But Fisher and Co. seemed to realize that last year when they tried to get both Robinson and Martin in the first round.
Every year, our sucky OL hinders our offense. So the idea that every off-season, people devalue OLs in the draft just seems so crazy to me. It's like people forget what happened.
You can bet on trying to hit on an OL in the 2nd or the 3rd or the 4th or even later...but your odds of hitting on them decrease the longer you wait. Which is why the smart money is to attack it early and often...especially this year where the value will line up with the need.
That all said, as I said before, I'm taking Amari Cooper at #10 if he's there unless a team offers us a RGIII trade for him. Because I think the world of that kid.
Unfortunately, there just is no guaranteed 'fix the line' approach. You could use first/second round picks on all 5 positions, and who's to say one of them wouldn't turn out to be injury prone from the get-go, and another might be Jason Smith redux.
Guaranteed? No. But over the last 10 years, there have been 19 interior OLs drafted in the first round. Of those 19, I see only two players that I would call busts...Jonathan Cooper(might be able to get his career back on track) and Danny Watkins. I see another two that I would call disappointments...James Carpenter and Charles Spencer. That leaves you with the following 15 players:
1. Zack Martin
2. Chance Warmack
3. Kyle Long
4. Travis Frederick
5. David DeCastro
6. Kevin Zeitler
7. Mike Pouncey
8. Mike Iupati
9. Maurkice Pouncey
10. Alex Mack
11. Eric Wood
12. Ben Grubbs
13. Davin Joseph(in his prime, he was quite good)
14. Nick Mangold
15. Logan Mankins
So while it is not guaranteed, based on past history, your percent chance of hitting on the pick are at close to 80%.
I think this approach is as close to guaranteed as you're going to get. Now, as I said before, there's gotta be an OL worth taking and I have to rank him as the BVA. But I doubt that's a problem this year. And as I also said before, this year is a great year because we can likely move back and pick up more picks and still come away with a very talented OL if we want to.
It wasn't that many yr ago, many fans were saying 'Don't draft another DL in the first round...the Rams don't do well with them' (or words pretty close to that). And if the front office had followed that thinking, they'd have never drafted Quinn or Donald.
So you're supporting my argument then? Because that's exactly what I'm arguing against. The people saying, "Don't draft an OL in the first round unless they're a LT."
If that is aimed at my argument that waiting is a flawed approach, it's ineffective because in that case, people are arguing that we SHOULD WAIT and you're saying that we made the right move by not waiting. We made the right move by spending high picks and attacking the problem head on. That's what I want.
Its much harder to find a skill position player later in the draft than a lineman. And the best wr in last years draft was taken at 12 overall. Imho Cooper is a very similar player to Beckham. I know that linemen are a very large need but reaching for need over a higher rated player is what gets teams in trouble. In my mind Cooper and White are higher rated than any of the linemen in this draft.
Is it really? Or is that simply just what people tell themselves?
Yes, the best WR in last year's draft was taken at #12 overall. But here are some WRs outside the first round that were productive:
Jordan Matthews (2nd) - 67 catches, 876 yards, and 8 TDs
Jarvis Landry (2nd) - 84 catches, 755 yards, and 5 TDs
John Brown (3rd) - 48 catches, 696 yards, and 5 TDs
Allen Hurns (UDFA) - 51 catches, 677 yards, and 6 TDs
Taylor Gabriel (UDFA) - 38 catches, 633 yards, and 1 TD
Last year, 21 WRs had 1000+ yards receiving...here's where they were picked:
1st - 10
2nd - 6
3rd - 4
6th - 1
We can stop with the "reach" claim. I'm not advocating reaching. But you're also not advocating not reaching. Your reasoning wasn't, "Cooper and White are the two best players available so we should pick them." It was:
I have a hard time drafting a guard or rt at 10 you can get really good guards and right tackles in the second, third, fourth rounds. The top ten is for left tackles. It just doesnt seem like a good value...
Well, there were as many 1000+ yard WRs drafted in the 2nd and 3rd round as there were in the 1st round last year. So wouldn't it be bad value to draft a WR in the 1st round when we can just get a 1000+ yard WR in the 2nd or 3rd?
No? I agree. But your reasoning against OLs would indicate otherwise.
If White and Cooper are simply higher rated, that's fine. But I just don't like the logic being used against OLs(devaluing them) when every year, we lament the fact that our OL sucks and it significantly hinders our offense.
