Chuck Wagon

Clay's contract is much worse than Dareus's. At Dareus's peak performance, he might be the best DT in all of football. At Clay's best, he's a borderline Pro Bowler. We badly overpaid him to "steal" him from a division rival, meanwhile Miami has made the playoffs and just got Julius Thomas (a better player than Clay) for a guy they had no long term plans for in Albert.

I mean, Mahomes could clearly beat out Smith and create a Wentz - Bradford situation for the Chiefs. Or Smith could go down week 3 and Mahomes pulls a Dak or a Brady and the Chiefs roll. It's not exactly a guarantee they'll get nothing out of Mahomes.

I wish we would have given up the 3rd we got to move back up to get Howard. Dropping from 10 to 18-19 and getting Howard along with a next years 1st would have felt like a major win. I would have been fine if we stayed at 10 and took Mahomes, but I wouldn't have sacrificed a next years first to get him.

That's the biggest factor in the whole deal. If Mahomes (and to a lesser extent Watson) are great, this is going to be something that makes us feel very bad until we have a QB. If they bust, it's a clear win. The Browns are the biggest example of this right now. Their fans think the new regime is brilliant, but if they are all fired in 3 years as the browns keep spinning through 3-6 win seasons with no QB and Watson is playing Wentz in the Super Bowl, they'll be feeling pretty poorly.

Right, not to mention the Chiefs and Texans can feel pretty comfortable thinking their pick is going to be in the mid 20s compared to the top of the draft. There's just as good of odds we'll be picking top 8 as we will be closer to 20. There's a big difference in value.

I like Mahomes, would have been fine taking him at 10 but not giving up next years 1st to do it. I think Garrett and maybe Adams & Solomon Thomas were the only guys in the draft worth giving up our next years 1st to get. Then again, we are a treadmill team stuck in the middle and maybe I'd feel different if I believed we were strong QB play away from the Super Bowl, like Chiefs or Texans fans may feel at this point.

The Chiefs getting a 1st place schedule (aka playing the Texans and Steelers), the AFC West being a tough division and having the NFC East in the cross conference certainly puts a 6-10 / 7-9 type year in play. Then again the Chiefs are like a cockroach and find a way to win 9-11 games more often than one would expect with Alex Smith at QB.

Drugs are great, but then you get older and real life responsibilities get in the way.

Welcome to football in 2017 it's all just kill shots, the Seahawks have made waves about switching to a more rugby style of tackling, but 220 lbs guys who run 4.4s and who are trying not to be tackled are tough to tackle. This isn't high school football where 150 lbs kids who are more concerned about their date to the homecoming dance are form tackling each other.

How does one get to living life in delusion? Seems much better than reality.

Pats. Cheering against the Chiefs in every game. We aren't winning the division anyway, so other than the 2 times we play them, I don't care what the Pats do.

Cam Robinson Delvin Cook Kevin King Kizer Lamp Malik McDowell Budda Baker Any of those guys and I'd be pretty happy, most of them were expected to be 1st round picks but only so many guys can go round 1. I don't care about positions anymore. We are going to suck at some spots. Just take good players.

I think Hyde can be a useful player, but he fell out of the Packers rotation and they didn't even bother to begin contract negotiations with him, people can stop pretending he's the next Polumalu anytime now. Other than Hyde (who we could have signed along with Gilmore given some cap gymnastics) we just got a bunch of depth guys with the extra cap space. Sure, they all "do it the right way" and maybe that will go along way towards changing the culture, but I'd rather have guys who can make game changing plays than guys who can't with good attitudes. Letting Gilmore walk, using his cap space to sign a bunch of overpriced backups whose spots should have been filled by previous better drafting, then using a 1st round pick to replace the spot is a poor use of resources. Gilmore was the casualty of Rex and Whaley just needing to steal Clay and needing to expend late draft picks to move up and get certain players, some of which don't fit our scheme now. McD had to start his regime by correcting mistakes from the past, the 3rd we picked up replaces the 4th we lost, the future 1st is a nice start on building next year. This offseason hasn't been about raising our talent level, it's been about fixing past screw ups and last night was a microcosm.

Seems the biggest qualifier for a good draft pick for a large portion of the board is "Does he seem happy?"

Ultimately it comes down to Mahomes. Some of the people I respect the most both on this board and in the media are sold on the kid. If he pans out, it's going to be something we lament until we have a QB. If he doesn't its a great deal. There's no in between.

You are missing the point. The point is we clearly value DBs enough to use high draft resources on them, but we don't value them enough to pay them. Are we going to extend Darby here soon, or are we going to let him walk and use another high draft pick too? It's been the same formula the last 20 years, either you value DBs enough to draft them highly and you pay the ones who can play, or you don't and you find guys with later draft picks. It's inconsistency in the approach. But again, it wouldn't be a massive deal if we weren't on 20 years of no playoffs, 20 years of garbage at RT, 20 years of garbage at QB, 15 years of only 1 good WR. We let Gilmore walk, basically so we could sign Andre Holmes, Patrick DiMarco and resign Jordan Mills. We received no compensation for Gilmore. We used a high 1st round pick to replace him. I know people were done with Gilmore because he didn't smile when he got drafted and he missed some tackles (FYI, White isn't a hitter either), but I don't understand why people feel the need to defend every decision by a franchise with a 20 year track record of making the wrong ones, or not making enough right ones.

Gilmore, Ramczyk and a '18 1st.

Some of us are just tired of the carousel, using a high draft pick on a DB, not paying him, then having to replace him. Meanwhile RT has sucked for 20 years, we haven't had 2 good WRs in 15 years, Clay is the best TE we've had in 30 years and he's nothing special and oh yeah, we still don't have a QB. We keep flushing draft picks on DBs and linebackers, letting the good ones walk and keep the same holes on the roster over and over.

Hate it. Foster, Ramzcyk and Njoku on the board but of course we do the Bills thing and take another DB we won't pay in 4-5 years in a loaded DB class.

She's been the one voice all along saying the Browns are taking Garrett no matter what. Knowing the Browns, this Trub stuff the last couple of days could have been gauging backlash if they did it and the reaction was so negative they might be scared off. Or it might all be smoke screening (Mary Kay is their propaganda machine) to try and drive the price down on a trade. They've played their hand so hard on Trub any move up for #12 will likely come at a steep price, so either they screwed themselves or it was a smokescreen the whole time. One thing is likely true though, if Wentz is playing Trub (playing for someone else) in the Super Bowl in a few years and the Browns still don't have a QB, there's going to be a whole bunch of guys who popcorn salesman is the only way they are working in the league again.

Even in 2006 the drama was dead after the Texans announced Mario is going #1 the night before.

It feels like a massive standoff at this point. The Titans might be the quiet key in this. The Browns clearly want to take Garrett and Trub. The 49ers want Garrett to fall either for themselves or to sell for a kings ransom. Tennessee may be in play for Garrett or may be looking at Thomas if they stay at 5. San Fran wants to trade down and knows if they only go to 5 on selling Garrett they still get one of Thomas / Adams or Fournette if they want. The Browns know they likely need to get above the Jets to get Trub, but it benefits everyone to force them to take Trub 1. If Haslam is truly all in for Trub, I'd have to believe either they just take Trub at #1 or give San Fran a massive overpay to get pick #2, which stands against every Browns belief. I think this is the most interesting top of the draft I ever remember in the last 20+ years. Not to mention there's starting to be a lot of heat about the Jags taking Watson, which could be legit heat or it could really be playing the Browns if Trub is their smokescreen on Watson interest.

I wouldn't say only guy. That's likely where Elway needs to get for McCaffery, above the Chargers and Panthers. Given his relationship to the family and Stanford ties, it's a very real possibility he goes all out for him.

You could move down 17 times and you still aren't filling all those needs. Just because you put a warm body in there doesn't mean the need is filled and it doesn't mean the guy you pick is better than what we have already. Every team has needs, those needs increase throughout the season as injuries come up, but the belief that whoever we take in round 3-4 is automatically going to be better than Philly Brown, Seymour, Jordan Mills, etc is just wrong. People need to accept the fact that guys we have on the roster and guys who go undrafted / get picked up after being waived are going to have shots at some of these jobs. McD and co isn't going into the draft saying "OMG, we need a RT, a WR, a QB, a CB, a safety, a linebacker"!!!!!!!!! It's his first year, we are going to cycle through a lot of players, if we scout well we'll fill some holes, but there's going to be spots that cost us games this year, it's what happens when we've failed to fill the roster with cheap talent through the last several drafts.

I think there's a bit of a ledge around pick ~25. The guys you mentioned will all likely be gone just about by that point and there's a pretty clear difference between them and the next group IMO. I don't love the idea of dropping from 10 to 31, I think that's a pretty clear talent difference, though Matt Ryan getting hurt could make a future Falcons 1st VERY interesting. That being said, if we can drop to 14 and still get a guy we thought about at 10 or even drop to the Giants pick where we may still be looking at Foster / Ramczyk / Bolles, we could certainly use a few more guys in that top ~70 tier.