glazeduck

I'm all for trusting the FO and the process. I guess I'm not clear on what your point is... You said you didn't want to win a SB if it meant falling to obscurity shortly thereafter, so I assumed you'd rather they just try to remain competitive for the foreseeable future? The reality is that no team is every going to nail 100% of their picks and develop each of them perfectly, this isn't Madden. 31 teams "fail" every year. All I'm saying is that at some point, if we want to win a championship, we're probably going to have to make a big swing. This isn't it, but it's the right thinking.

You're entitled to your opinion, and as I've already stated in this thread, while the premise is solid, it's simply untenable. That said, the history of professional sports is littered with small market teams that had dynastic aspirations and fell short. We played in 4 straight super bowls, meaning we were one of the 2 best teams for four consecutive years, and yet the only talking points from those years are our losses in the SB or the winners. It's great to want to be a dynasty, it's another thing to achieve it (as my favorite saying goes: "wish in one hand, 💩 in the other, see which fills up first".) All I'm really saying is that AT SOME POINT, history shows that teams on the brink (especially without the benefit of a larger market/glitz & glam/opportunistic tax benefits) who take a big swing are rewarded more often than teams who just consistently try to remain competitive for an extended period of time. This seems especially true in this era of massive QB contracts -- people talk about how our window is huge because Josh is only 24, but that's not the whole picture. Our window closes some when he signs a massive extension, because of the limitations that puts on the rest of the roster. We'll likely remain relevant and competitive, but our BEST window is these next 2 years while Josh is on his rookie deal. Nobody remembers teams for just being good, they remember them for winning a championship. Hoping when the time and opportunity is right, Beane's not afraid to take that big swing...

They were also 30m away from winning the Super Bowl and it took a historic collapse to keep that from happening. Given our history, I think most Bills fans would take a SB win and then falling to the point ATL is now, if given the option...

Sometimes, I think this is right on. In this case, I think the media is talking about Wilson to the NYJ because they haven't really hid their intentions there. The whole world knows Lawrence is going #1 and JAX isn't moving out of that spot. Assuming NYJ and Wilson is accurate, there's no real reason to try to move around the draft board if they've decided he's their guy, so also no real reason to throw smoke or hide your intentions. We'll find out soon, but I think Wilson at #2 is a lock at this point (and is a laughably bad choice)

Forgot Baron Browning. He's intriguing...

Lesser opponents who had almost zero chance to scout/prepare/scheme. That's what's being lost in all of this -- this wasn't JUST Wilson and a bunch of older players beating up on younger, lower-talent guys, it was Wilson and a bunch of older players beating up on younger, lower-talent guys who had almost no chance to do hardly any preparation for them. It was the perfect setup for Wilson to shine, and yes, he did just that. But he won't have that benefit in the NFL. Compare that to Fields, who had as much, if not more, success over multiple years, against more talented competition, in settings where the more talented defense had a chance to scheme and prep for those offenses, in bigger games; is a better athlete..... The only "answer" I can come up with is that Wilson is the shiny new toy and Fields' performance has become boring and expected...

I'll be more than a little surprised if he's still there at our 3.

The brace might be affecting him a little, in terms of planting/driving, etc. but he's never going to be a plus athlete -- with or without it -- so I don't think it's too big of a deal. In my evals, I try to incorporate what I know/can find out about the program for context, and the Stanford program and the P12 as a whole have been a complete dumpster fire during his tenure as a starter, so that certainly muddies things for me. Definitely hits some big-time throws and he has enough arm talent to be a pro (though I don't think that's necessarily a + attribute for him), and you can see some good processing from him too -- but like you said, a lot of bad too. In a league that was behind the rest of CFB (so playing more simplified defenses) I would've hoped to see a lot more highs from a guy who's an NFL starter.

In order of crushiness... Nico Collins Joseph Ossai Kelvin Joseph Wyatt Davis Devine Diablo Dwayne Eskridge Paulson Adebo

This is my list too. I'd have Fields and Lance a touch higher (pts. wise) and Wilson a touch lower. I have Mond at 6. And I think he and Jones are back-of-league starters/Mills is a backup, but maybe a higher end backup...

The Epilepsy thing is certainly weird, but it didn't stop him from becoming the #1b prospect in high school and an elite athlete and QB at the highest highs of CFB. I think you could even argue (and why his agent isn't, is beyond me) that the fact that he was managing something like Epilepsy WHILE excelling means he has the maturity to be the face of your franchise, but I digress... Wilson made some great throws, and Lance has just drool-inducing potential. I get both of those. But Fields has literally done everything asked of him since high school. He happened to be born in the same year as one of the highest rated prospects ever, and he's kept on his heels the whole way. Why a guy who hasn't done it yet, and another who did it in incredibly bizarre circumstances has jumped him is both beyond me and also makes me think that he's very much being taken for granted at this point.

Key word there being "can". In this case, the answers are "yes". Fields is going to end up being the steal of this draft, even if he goes 4 overall (where I happen to think he'll go). That he's being passed over by Mac Jones and Wilson is absolutely absurd to me...

This means 2 things to me, neither of which have anything to do with Lamar Jackson or Justin Fields... The media has run out of legitimate talking points to discuss pre-draft. The media (or at least NFLN) is convinced the 49ers are now taking Mac Jones.

Like Gunner said, there’s maybe a few subpackages that he’d be fine there, but we’re in trouble if he’s out future 1T. I’m not a huge believer of Oliver so I wouldn’t hate the pick, but I don’t think it happens with a significant 1T intention in mind (or, at all).

I've suggested something somewhat similar, but going up to 4 is too much. We have too many reasonable-sized needs and simply can't afford to ignore them completely like this. At one point it was at least debatable that he could slide near or into the teens -- at which point I agree, if you can get a couple late picks back, putting 1, 2 and 3 together would've been worth it because there's a halfway decent chance that those late picks would have similar outcomes as the 2 and 3, but it's just not feasible to get all the way up to 4 and fill the holes we have at edge, CB, OL, etc.

At 30 it's 100% speculative. I'm just pointing out that no GM goes into a draft with ONLY helping out the offense in mind. That's not his job. This isn't video games or fantasy football. The goal is to win games, whether the score be 3-2 or 100-0, Beane's job is giving the staff the right players to win more games.

Super weird, for sure, but its his way of not answering the question. By taking it to the extreme and making it about "any player" he's avoiding answering the question altogether. Which, of course, is a way of answering the question...

His #1 goal is help THE FRANCHISE.

I'll say they trade up for Phillips

Terrific add to the conversation, thanks for chiming in.

WHOLE lot of agree to disagree here. "There is NO WAY they’re giving a rookie RB on the smaller side 18-22 touches per game in Daboll’s offense" -- why? Devin Singletary, a significantly SMALLER player with worse draft capital than Etienne averaged 15 touches in his rookie year and it's worth pointing out that he only started 2/3 of those games. A 1st round round RB isn't going to be worth 3 more touches a game? Agree to disagree. "in Daboll's offense" -- a lot of people on this board talk about this like we've been the greatest show on turf for the last decade. In Brian Daboll's career as an OC, last year was the ONLY year his offenses threw the ball more than 52% of the time. Daboll's shown an ability to adjust and adapt based on his weapons, so adding a talented RB to bring more balance to the offense doesn't exactly seem like a deathknell to that player's statistics. "It just isn’t going to happen, not in 2021 and even afterwards, not unless they tweak the offense and trade Motor or Moss." Aside from your opinion, what is this based on? Motor and Moss have been meh at best, and the entire point of drafting a RB in the later rounds is that they're expendable if they don't perform or if you find a better alternative. That would be this situation to a tee. Again, I'm not pushing Etienne, I'm saying IF they front office took him in the first, they wouldn't be letting a couple of very middling backs affect his path to success. "He’s not a “bell cow” back" Define "bell cow back" He's as big or bigger than Kamara, Ekeler, Motor (lol), Kenyon Drake, Christian McCaffrey, Cam Akers, D'Andre Swift, Miles Sanders, JK Dobbins.... "and he doesn’t pass block." Fine, let him run routes and catch passes, because he's VERY good at doing that. There are bell cow backs who don't pass block every passing play. "Are you taking the ball out of Allen’s hands to feed Etiene?" In the running game? ABSOLUTELY. You want our franchise QB taking hits in the open field? I don't. Your entire argument seems to be built around this imagined size issue and the notion that 2 underperforming 3rd round picks stand in the way of unleashing a unique weapon like Etienne.

Agreed -- busy work day over here and didn't want to get into the finer details, but the gist, I think, is that he would be a weird fit, given our roster.

Lol yep. Great value, but I can't see it happening.

He's not a 1T. Barring a scheme adjustment, he'd be a replacement for Oliver, which... not exactly an ideal use of assets.

What is that percentage based off of? If you're drafting a RB in the first round, he's starting over your 2 failed former-3rd-round picks. If you're drafting Etienne at 30, he's getting 18-22 touches a game, and a guy with his skillset, in this offense is going to be putting up solid, if not very good numbers with that many touches. I'm not saying Etienne has to be the pick, but you're using faulty logic to reach your conclusion.