Chuck Wagon

My two predictions at this point: Watson will be off the board before pick 10 and Mahomes will be the 2nd QB drafted.

Copy and pasted directly from wikipedia

I'm not sure we could get anything for Preston. I think it may be worth it to actually have depth at a position, Ragland is coming off a major injury, Z. Brown has had injuries in his career and Klein has never been a full time regular. Keep Preston and allow competition to bring the best 3 to the top.

http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/chicago-bears-new-york-jets-brandon-marshall-jay-cutler-cool-020416 Last year he said he hasn't talked to Jay for two years, one of those years he was still with the Bears. He's kind of been all over the board on Cutler, will say something bad about him but then something good. With how outspoke Marshall was about the toxic Jets locker room, I'm just not sure they bring Cutler in. Just trade Cutler for Osweiler and be done with it.

I firmly believe success breeds success in the NFL. This isn't the NBA where you draft Lebron and it turns everything around. Even in baseball you can draft a group of kids and they have success together before the reach the Majors, similar to what happened with the Royals in their turn around. In the NFL guys need to perform almost at Day 1, if they aren't surrounded by vets who are able to help them both on and off the field you are going to end up with a whole team of guys who doesn't truly know what it takes. Basically the Raiders did what the Browns are trying to do when McKenzie took over. But the Raiders didn't just sit on piles of unused cap space, they signed a bunch of veterans like Charles Woodson, Justin Tuck, Lamar Woodley. Those guys were at varying levels of still being able to play, but they were constant guides to the young players on the roster. Then they stayed at the top of the draft board, took elite players in Mack and Cooper, lucked into Carr in round 2 and immediately brought in good vets around them. It's too early in Cleveland's reset to make any judgements, but if they don't add elite players in this draft and aren't able to use their cap space on free agents with upside or vets willing to help younger guys out then this regime is just setting things up for the next one. Depth is very important in this league, but a roster full of B- players does not equate to an A- team.

Lebatard's is the only one on ESPN worth watching/listening to. I enjoy some of NFL Net's stuff (I like the DDFP and like their radio hosts). First Take is the worst, it's the one that's set the bar for the worst. Bayless is terrible, so maybe First Take is better now that he's gone, however no one should watch it to find out. PTI jumped the shark a long time ago. Mike & Mike is just milquetoast, it seems like Greeny is ready for something else.

I think all 4 of these guys are going to go higher than the majority of the mockers have them. It does a team no favors to come out and say they like a guy at this point and look at the Jags with Bortles, they kept that extremely close to the vest. Each QB has things that can scare you off, but at the same time each QB has traits that make you come back for more. I expect all 4 will do very well with team interviews and given you have the Browns / 49ers / Bears / Jets / Us / Cardinals / Texans along with some wildcards like the Chiefs and Redskins all likely in the market for QBs I do believe all 4 will be off the board by the time we pick in the 2nd round.

The playoffs are a matchup game. Yes, it's possible the Bills could beat a Houston or Kansas City type team in the playoffs. But we've seen repeatedly what happens when we play a motivated Brady-Pats team, we saw what happened when we played the Steelers, eventually you are going to run into a game where you need to outscore the opposing team. With Tyrod at QB the team is not built to win those types of games.

I would be pretty excited about taking Hooker @ 10 then pairing him with Budda Baker in the 2nd. IMO those two would compliment each other very well and could make the position a major team strength for a long time. If we are mainly running zone, a nickle package of Darby - Graham - Williams - Hooker - Baker could be pretty interesting in that scheme.

We can't rely on one of the top 4 QBs being there for our pick in round 2, especially the one we have on the top of the board. It would require Cleveland to pass on QB 3 times, the 49ers / Bears / Jets to pass twice and teams like Arizona / Houston / Washington / Miami / Chiefs who could all take one. I think 10 is in the dead zone for QBs, where you are better taking a blue chip talent at a different position, but it's clearly a major need position for us and if a guy is evaluated to be our guy, take him at 10 and ignore the howling by the Mel Kipers of the world.

It's not simply Tyrod vs Cardale, it's Tyrod vs Cardale + ~$17 mil in cap room.

Welcome to the "I've heard of him" portion of the post season. Cruz is washed up.

I apply the same rule to him as I do to Kiper and McShay....If they were really "gurus" some NFL team would be paying them A LOT more money than ESPN.

No, I did not say TT is the answer. In fact I've said several times that we simply can't keep him on the contract he's going to receive. But we did not have the pieces to allow any passing game to prosper last year.

Alabama used Ragland as a pass rushing DE on 3rd downs often. Carolina's DEs aren't much bigger than him, especially if he worked to fit into the position. I'm not ready to say there's no role for him in McD's D.

There are likely a half dozen "franchise" QBs who'd look lost throwing the likes of Clay, Salas, Justin Hunter, Goodwin, etc. Did Tom Brady flip a switch as a player when Troy Brown and Jabar Gaffney were replaced by Randy Moss and Wes Welker and he started breaking records?

Ehh, they had the same line and McFadden performed pretty admirably for them in 2015 and they were one of the worst teams in the league with guys like Cassel / Weeden / Kellen Moore playing QB. Dak was put in a position to succeed, but the guy also played very well. I'll agree with guys like Mayock though, this isn't the draft to take a QB top 10. It's been discussed in other threads, but there are several blue chip talents (Davis, Williams, Adams, Hooker, Lattimore, Foster) who could really help us out moving forward. I'd be fine with any one of Trub / Watson / Kizer / Mahomes in round 2 though.

I'd argue the Browns were incredibly moronic for blowing their team up as well. Taking Manziel over Carr or Bridgewater in the 2014 draft was an all time screw up for them, but their 2014 team was competitive and look at what they've done since 2014: they allowed 2/5ths of a very solid offensive line to walk out of the door for nothing. Sure, Mack was gone regardless of what they did, but they lost Schwartz for nothing over what amounted to hurt feelings. They flat out cut Gabriel. Sheard, Gipson, Ward, Skrine, Benjamin all got away for nothing in their primes. Their plan to replace those guys were washed up guys like Dansby, Whitner and Bowe. Sure, they have a lot of draft picks, but given what they've done with their talent level it's very hard to tell if the guys they drafted last year can actually play or if the expansion level talent around them just made below average NFL players look competent. Trading down in the draft is nothing new for them, this new regime isn't reinventing the wheel, they are just doing the same things that resulted in trades like Julio Jones for Phil Taylor. This isn't the NBA. You can't race to the bottom, get a "franchise QB" and expect them to carry you through whatever. More often than not those guys are going to fail because of the sub par talent around them. Look at QBs like Brady, Wilson, Rodgers, Roethlisberger now Dak. Are they simply "cut from a different cloth"? or were they put in positions with talent around them that allowed them to mature into the players they've become? Almost every QB drafted has the physical gifts to succeed in the league. It's not an accident that well run teams have franchise QBs and poorly run teams have treadmills at the position. Luck has no running game, an awful offensive line and no defense and still you'll find people who "aren't sold on him". If you create an environment that allows a QB to succeed, the chances of finding one who does increase dramatically.

When someone brushes off a player like Watson as simply an "athletic" QB it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly they haven't watched him play much and are judging a book by it's cover. He was 3rd in passing yards in college football last year. The same lazy criticisms were thrown at Jameis. You won't get a bigger winner than Watson in this class. I've covered it sufficiently. There are things to not like in his tape. But simply comparing him to Tyrod or saying he primarily looks to make plays with his legs makes it pretty clear someone hasn't watched him play. Comparing him to Jameis or Manziel off the field makes it painfully obvious someone knows very little about what's been said by those who know him.

I'd say Ross Cockrell getting released then immediately becoming one of the Steelers top DBs might be a more damning move then missing on McCarron.

Everything is relative to the price it takes to acquire him. I wouldn't give up a 1st or 2nd, probably not even a 3rd, but in my ideal world we flip Tyrod to Cleveland for a 3rd or 4th, then use that pick and a conditional 2018 pick based upon team performance / Romo's games played to acquire him or we sign him as a FA. Under those scenarios it's a no brainer to roll the dice on him as we aren't going to acquire someone else who possesses his upside.

Thank you. There's legitimate reasons to knock him like I mentioned before, he's got some sloppy footwork at times and tries to force some balls, especially when Clemson clearly had teams "out talented". But the guy came up huge in huge moments his entire career and anyone who came in contact with him raved about him. The original post I responded to was a coded way of saying "a young black man makes me uncomfortable, he doesn't look like Tom Brady", it's not getting political to call people out on lazy BS.

He's gotten rave reviews about his intangibles but you don't like one emoji and suddenly he's got the baggage of Jameis or Manziel.

I don't mean to pick on you, but the coded language with black QBs (ie "athletic") is incredibly tiring. We get it, people want a 6'5" white QB with a laser rocket arm and a 4.7 GPA who won 4 championships in a "professional" scheme in college. Watson has a tendency to get lazy on his footwork and make some unadvised throws, but everyone around him raves about his intangibles, he can make plays with his legs, but there's a huge difference between how he plays the game and how Vince Young or Michael Vick played it in college. Watson has come up huge against the best defenses he could see at the college level (Alabama twice and OSU), outside of some of his sloppiness, there's plenty of reason to like him as a prospect.

Dallas would be my choice as well. They can ride Zeke behind that oline for 5-8 years (Smith / Martin / Frederick are all 25-26), plus Dak & Zeke's cheap deals should allow them to build up the defensive side of the ball.