glazeduck

It's 99.9% marketing and hype. Mel Kiper's schtick for the past 15 years has always been about driving attention to the actual draft coverage -- I'm convinced that it's no coincidence that weekly he'd highlight a few "sleepers slipping into the first round" (who would ultimately end up getting drafted in the 4th or 5th) to keep interest throughout the whole broadcast. More recently it's all about clicks, eyeballs, social media interactions, etc. but all the same premise -- who cares about being right until the day before/day-of when you can drive discussion for the months leading up to it (and simply erase any blatantly/purposely wrong takes with a more accurate report right before the actual event!)?

Yeah the baseball thing isn't working out great for Pat Mahomes either... 🙄

Agreed. For me its TDN and everyone else is a ways behind.

No arguments here. Like I said he wouldn't be my pick, more ore less just see the thought process of leveraging our ability to coach DBs up... Also just thought it'd be an interesting discussion (which it has been)... 15 days can't go by soon enough! LOL

Very much not. He's a penetrator, and under 3bills, if I remember right. Maybe right around it? 1Ts need some more junk in their trunk. Now if someone gave us a sweetheart offer for Oliver.........🤔 This is all 100% right, but it also doesn't account for our championship window, which is arguably now. 6 good, cheap players, would be great -- if they all made the team. But nobody will care if they're solid starters 3 or 4 years from now if we end up with 1 great player and they help us in a Super Bowl. Again, it's all a balance... Like you said, trust the GM.

This has absolutely nothing to do with your post, but I had the honor of working with Scott for a couple years. I can honestly say he's one of the best people I've ever met. I hate the Pats with every fiber of my being (and told him so many times) but will always have a soft spot in my heart for that man, he's truly a genuinely good person. Always depends on how the draft is playing out, but I will not be at all surprised if Beane trades up in this draft. I've made the case numerous times in my Kyle Pitts fever dream posts, but this year, more than most years, I think late-round picks will pan out to be much more equivalent in terms of success to earlier-mid rd. picks... If Beane could swing something like using a 3 and getting back a 5 or 6 to get the guy he really wanted, I think that'd be a really shrewd move (and I think Beane is that kind of shrewd, second/third-level thinker).

It's a balance. Beane has talked a lot about how important it is to get his guy. While he's not batting 1.000 moving up, I'm a huge believer in building strong opinions on players and sticking to them... Obviously depends on the situation, but if you're 3 picks away from your spot and there's a lot of "meh" out there and 2 guys that you feel strongly about, it's absolutely worth a small investment to get the guy you like. A prospect (that you like) in the hand is worth two (meh) prospects in the bush, if you will...

Trade down is definitely the best and most likely approach at this spot. That said, I put myself in a "what would I want them to do if they HAD to pick here" headspace and went with Etienne. Don't love it, don't hate it. See him making an impact but also would prefer DE or CB here... It's close between Ossai and Etienne for me, I go back and forth on them... I think the tiebeaker for me is that there's some intriguing options a little later at EDGE, and I'm not really sold on many of the RBs after the big 3 and Sermon...

Barf, my lap, from these options.......

Thanks, I lurk and read almost every day. Just harder to be really tuned in to the day-to-day stuff on the other side of the country, so I'm generally less informed and opinionated than I am this time of year

LOVE the "take off the jersey" players like that... Put a guy with those in a 'Bama uniform and even as a backup he's a 2nd or 3rd round pick. A lot to like about Elerson Smith!

Yep, this is what just about worst case scenario for us looks like

As a player, I have him as a mid/late 2nd round grade. I think what needs to be considered though is: 1. Our staff seems to be VERY good at identifying undervalued secondary talent 2. They also seem to be pretty solid at developing that talent 3. Meli is an absurdly different athlete 4. Per the tweet I posted, there appears to be a pretty dang good hit rate for big-bodied plus athletes at CB recently. None of that means he'll be a success. It's also probably not the pick that I would make, but if its where the staff chose to go, I could understand it. You're taking a phenomenal athlete and hoping you can mold him into a phenomenal football player -- something they've shown a solid propensity for doing. And again, you have close to, if not a full season of "onramp" for him to develop into the player you're hoping he can become before you really NEED him to perform. Whatever you think of Obi, he was without question an incredibly impressive athlete as well. Add to that, the fact that the Raiders (who drafted Obi) have almost nothing to show for the drafts between 2015-2018, in fact it's almost a 100% bust rate, which to me, speaks as much, if not more to the organizational culture and inability to develop talent, than it does the specific players that are (or in this case, are not) developing.

I posted yesterday that I thought he'd probably be the next CB taken after Farley and Newsome... I don't have him on my board that high, but I do believe that Buffalo has the luxury of being able to take a guy they can develop through the season with the logic that we're probably looking at a 10 or 11 win season even if we're not drafting immediate difference makers... If those guys can be difference makers by the time the playoffs roll around, it's a risk well worth taking. Meli is raw, but in super rare company when it comes to body type and movement. Not a lot of misses on that list...

I think (from the list of players likely to be there) Teven Jenkins and AVT would be the only ones that would be worth considering, and only if you think you can drop them into one of the guard spots as a day-1 starter. Ford has potential as a guard, but we haven't really seen *it* from him there, yet. So if you're getting a guy who can play OT or OG and an improvement over the other guy who can (sort of) play OT and OG, next to the guy who can play OG and OC, I think you're building depth and flexibility really across the whole line with a minimal number of assets. All that said, definitely think there are bigger needs to address.

Barring the obvious names at the very top, the only cb that would represent good value at 30 is Newsome. Melifonwu, purely from a “package” standpoint would probably be the guy after that (still pretty raw though). Molden is a nickel guy, pretty much exclusively, and with limited upside. Samuel would be *okay* value in the 3rd but even then he’d be underwhelming to me. To me, neither offer much, are very exciting prospects or feel like especially good fits for us. There’s a big grouping of cbs in the mid-2nd to mid/late 3rd that would be looking at: Meli, Campbell, Adebo, Trill Williams, Kelvin Joseph, Stokes, Aaron Robinson, St. Juste, Marco Wilson, Shaun Wade, Mukuamu... If we end up drafting a cb, my guess is it’s in this range and very likely one of those guys.

God I hope we don't reach on him. Super limited ceiling to me... I'd be mildly interested if he fell to our 3rd rd. pick but other than that? Hard to imagine there won't be better players on the board...

With the 13th pick, the Los Angeles Chargers select Rashawn Slater, LT, Northwestern. The Vikings @H2o on the clock Took about 3 miliseconds to make this pick -- this is a run, don't walk to the podium kind of no-brainer pick. It's all about protecting QB1. While it'd be fun to reunite Penei Sewell with Herbert, Slater is a great consolation prize and the Chargers expect him to be a stalwart, protecting Justin's backside for the next decade.

I'm not even sure I'd be excited to sign him as a UDFA....

Let's calm down on this... I haven't seen anybody say they think he'd fall to 10. At its most extreme all I've ever seen (and said) is along the lines of "it's potentially possible" or "not outside the realm of possibility". None of that is overstated -- you've got 5 QBs, a franchise LT (possibly 2) and a WR who are without question going in the top 10. In addition to that, each of the teams picking 6-10 -- Denver, Detroit, Carolina, Miami, and Dallas -- either a) have numerous needs, b) intrenched/young/pass-catching TEs, c) shown a disinterest in throwing to the TE in general, or d) some combination of those. 3 (arguably 4, but I'll digress on that one) of them need QBs to boot. The point being, it's not hard to rationalize how the draft order might be setup for Pitts to slide a bit. Now, the draft is never rational, especially when it comes to unicorn players like Pitts, so yes, it's very unlikely that he'd fall to 10. And all of the above does not account for a team like Philly or LAC trading up for him. But can I see, maybe a 1% chance that teams opt to fill needs instead of take luxury pick like Pitts? Pretty easily, yes.

Beane, himself, MIGHT have a burner acct. that he’s on occasionally, but absolutely, without question, there are lower level staffers that monitor player accounts.

Would be pretty tempted to try and move back a couple picks with Oweh and Ossai on the board, but if it breaks that way I’d be very okay with “reaching” a little oh Ossai. All we need out of a DE pick this season is a guy who can develop long-term but go hunt in passing situations. That’s ossai to a tee!

Been here forever, usually only pop up to post around the draft.

I’ll say Tyler Shelvin. Not because he’s not talented, I just think 1T is highly replaceable and almost impossible to differentiate yourself in. A 3rd on Shelvin feels like a waste when you can get a similar player in the 5th or 6th with a guy like Jones, Tonga or Slaton

Bump?