Dibs

I understand what you are saying.....and agree with it(except for the QB aspect). You however were using this concept to blanket proclaim that "premium positions" have no relevance etc......which is clearly not true. In this situation I'd think saying that Warmack is such a rare talent that he surpasses any "premium position" considerations.......rather than saying that the aspect of "premium positions" has no relevance to anyone currently employed in personnel departments around the league.

To me he is extraordinarily similar to Ted Ginn Jr. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ1vdXz4Sm0 Ginn selected at #9 2007 by Dolphins. Gone by 2010.

It's likely wrong at this stage but it appears to be 2 year/4mil. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/tennessee-titans/george-wilson/ Not much above Vet minimums really.

Two words.

I think you are polarizing the concepts here. "Premium position" is definitely a factor on draft day.....and with roster building. Though you are likely correct....for most situations one wouldn't chose a 6.0 graded player over an 8.0 graded one(aside from perhaps QB), one would most likely chose a 7.0 graded DE over a 7.5 graded OG. Would one chose a 6.5 graded K over a 6.0 graded anything? OG traditionally is a position that is under-valued in the 1st round. I have noticed that this has been changing in recent years....but they are still being selected lower than most other positions. Personally I would be selecting them higher than they are graded, simply based upon the great success rate of turning 1st round drafted OGs into solid+ starters in the NFL.....but that's just me.

Here is my worst draft day nightmare: We trade down from the 8th pick. The Jets pick up a QB with the 9th pick who becomes an instant pro-bowler and future HOFer. or We pass on a QB with the 8th pick. The Jets pick up a QB with the 9th pick who becomes an instant pro-bowler and future HOFer. We are the Bills.....it's a virtual guarantee that this will happen.

As I can't personally comment on his abilities(having missed most of the 2011 season).....I have to assume that if he is not re-signed after an ACL injury that he perhaps is not as good as you are thinking. Combined with his being undrafted etc....as well as playing on the Bills who had zero WRs outside of SJ.......at this point I'm putting my trust with the new coaches etc. If he isn't re-signed.....and then is picked up by another team and becomes a solid starter......you have my permission to vent your spleen to great volume & repetition.

Looks to me like you are taking the wrong view of Dead money. Dead money....is dead. It has been spent and does not directly factor into decisions on cutting a player. It is useful only in that it is used to calculate the cap saving(or cost) of cutting a player. It is the cap saving(or cost) that factors into the decision making process, not the Dead money. For example.....if "Player A" was a bad player.....had 10mil in Dead money.....but if cut would save 6mil of cap room.....no team is going to consider the 10mil Dead money as being too high & chose to not cut him because of it. They will cut him to not only save 6mil in cap space.....but also free up a roster spot to hopefully replace with a non-bad player. BTW......Anderson has 6mil in dead money......he would cost us an additional 1.5mil of cap room if cut.

Because their contracts have not expired yet. The choice to cut somebody off the roster......and the choice to re-sign somebody onto the roster are two totally different animals.

If Fitz is cut he will make $0.00mil. "Re-structure or be cut" is a pretty good incentive to re-structure IMO.

Thanks EA.....but I actually did break them into positions. Have another look. You will see bracketed numbers under each section. These show (C, OG, OT) actual drafting numbers and then (C%, OG%, OT%), which shows their percent success rates. I have thought about this a lot recently.....mainly due to seeing(when doing these studies) a lot of starter calibre LB & OL young players change teams after their rookie contracts expire....and then maintain being solid players for their new teams. As I didn't go into each teams full financial and roster situations for each example, I have to make some educated guesses as to why this occurs frequently. I imagine it mainly comes down to cap management and future cap management. Teams that have a lot of money already invested at the OL position(for example) might be unwilling to invest even more money at that position. Teams that have other players heading into FA that they foresee they will need to pay top dollar to keep will need to let players go in year 1 in order to be able to sign the more prized player in year 2 etc. In regards to the Bills....I can see that we would be very unwilling to pay more money for the DL. Our DL is already taking up a very large percent of our cap space. The OL however is costing us a relatively small amount of our cap. The logic would follow that if we don't chose to spend some good veteran priced money on our OL now(when we can clearly afford it).....when do we decide to spend some money there? Or will the philosophy be that the OL is so unimportant that the barest minimum of money should be allocated to it each year? I believe that we will be legitimately trying to sign Levitre. We have Wood hitting FA next year & I would expect him to be re-signed as well. This would bring the overall OL cost up to a reasonable amount. A few years after that.....assuming Glenn shows himself to be worth keeping....we will have to make the tougher decision of over-paying our OL....or cutting(re-structuring) Levite/Wood. The situation at the moment is a no-brainer IMO. Spend some money on the OL(Levitre)....maintain OL consistency.....save at least an initial draft pick(likely a few over the next few years)....and build the team rather than trying to re-build the team.

This part is incorrect. He would still have a 7M cap hit in 2014. Cutting him in June, or keeping him on the roster for the entire 2013 season and then cutting him will have the same effect on the 2014 cap. Cutting him in June is the middle ground proposition.... Cutting him now: 2013: 10m cap hit 2014: No cost. TOTAL: 10m cap hit Cutting him in June: 2013: 6.2m cap hit, 3.2m cash cost 2014: 7m cap hit TOTAL: 13.2m cap hit, 3.2m cash cost Cutting him after 2013 season: 2013: 10.45m cap hit, 7.45m cash cost 2014: 7m cap hit TOTAL: 17.45m cap hit, 7.45m cash cost

....with about a 36% chance in the 2nd & 13% chance in the 3rd.....I wouldn't be counting on finding his replacement straight away. http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/155887-drafting-success-ol/

"Crazy" was a bit strong lol. You're not wrong though. I've been meaning to do a full league comparrison of 1st round DB selections. I'm expecting we'll be league leaders!

I understand & agree with your base concept. Supply/demand obviously effects the draft....particularly that of the QB position. After the combine, and as we get closer to the draft we will see player gradings from many sites. I confidently expect that there will be several QBs who are graded higher than the 2nd(3rd/4th etc) round QBs from previous years. I hope I'm correct in my assumptions at this point, as we need to start rolling some dice on legit QB prospects ASAP IMO.

lol....I appreciate the thought. (As it happens....for reasons I won't disclose here, I am awake for 18-20 hours a day unable to go out. Football & TSW are great time fillers for me.)

What? I've been away a few years due to excess work loads......did crayonz get booted???? I loved his threads & posts!

My comment wasn't strictly aimed at your post.....there were a bunch of others in the preceding hour(all threads) that had me thinking it. It applied (and still applies) to you, as you said "there is no reason to cut him", directly after a bunch of posts had shown legitimate reasons for doing so. You didn't address those reasons nor even acknowledge their existence.

The facts are bad enough without the need for crazy exaggerations. Last 25 years: 7 1st round cornerbacks. 1990 Williams BUST 1993 Smith HIT 1994 Burris BUST/HIT? 1999 Winfield HIT 2001 Clements HIT 2008 MdKelvin BUST 2012 Gilmore ???

Hi all, This is the 4th in a series of threads where I will be breaking down past drafts by individual position. QBs here: http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/155235-drafting-success-qb/?do=findComment&comment=2712778 LBs here: http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/155307-drafting-success-lb/?do=findComment&comment=2714704 WRs here: http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/155410-drafting-success-wr/?do=findComment&comment=2718875 I do this for my own curiosity….and hope you find it of interest as well. Every year, fans & media talk about the draft in relation to plugging holes of weakness on a team. The assumption tends to be that any player drafted in the 1st(particularly high picks), 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th round will solve the problems of that team at the given position. I will be endeavouring to ascertain the likelihood of teams actually achieving this for each position. I will be using strict unbiased criteria to avoid personal opinion affecting the results. The criteria I am setting for a player to be considered to “plug a hole” of need is: (Starter) Having played as a starter for the drafting team(12+ starts) for 5+ seasons. I am also determining Stars: 4+ Pro Bowls for the drafting team. For fun I normally list the probowlers, but for the sake of readability I am not listing them for the OL positions. I will be breaking the draft up into rounds 1, 2, 3, 4/5, 6/7, as well as breaking the 1st round into 5 sections. #1, #2-#4, #5-#10, #11-#20 & #21-#32. Round 2 will consist of players from #33 to end of round 2. The data pool will be selected from 20 years of drafts from 1986 – 2005. This ensures all draftees have a full 8 years of NFL experience to achieve my benchmarks. (Rounded to the nearest percent) Due to the interchangeable nature of the OL, I have done a breakdown for the overall OL as well as each individual area denoted underneath each section in brackets, (C, OG, OT)....and again in percentage terms. Offensive Line Round 1 101 players selected (7, 18, 76) 14 Stars 14% (1 in 7.2) (0, 5, 9) (0%, 28%, 12%) 38 Starters 38% (1 in 2.7) (1, 8, 29) (14%, 44%, 38%) R1 Pick 1 1 player selected (0, 0, 1) 1 Stars 100% (1 in 1) 1 Starters 100% (1 in 1) R1 Picks 2-4 8 players selected (0, 0, 8) 3 Stars 38% (1 in 2.7) 6 Starters 75% (1 in 1.3) R1 Picks 5-10 19 players selected (0, 2, 17) 4 Stars 21% (1 in 4.8) (0, 0, 4) (0%, 0%, 24%) 11 Starters 58% (1 in 1.7) (0, 0, 11) (0%, 0%, 65%) R1 Picks 11-20 34 players selected (3, 6, 25) 2 Stars 6% (1 in 17) (0, 2, 0) (0%, 33%, 0%) 11 Starters 32% (1 in 3.1) (1, 3, 7) (33%, 50%, 28%) R1 Picks 21-32 39 players selected (4, 10, 25) 4 Stars 10% (1 in 9.8) (0, 3, 1) (0%, 30%, 4%) 9 Starters 23% (1 in 4.3) (0, 5, 4) (0%, 50%, 16%) Round 2(from pick #33) 82 players selected (19, 25, 38) 5 Stars 6% (1 in 16.4) (1, 3, 1) (5%, 12%, 3%) 27 Starters 33% (1 in 3) (8, 9, 10) (42%, 36%, 26%) Round 3 109 players selected (20, 45, 44) 3 Stars 3% (1 in 36.3) (1, 1, 1) (5%, 2%, 2%) 14 Starters 13% (1 in 7.8) (4, 6, 4) (20%, 13%, 9%) Rounds 4/5 213 players selected (39, 80, 94) 0 Stars 19 Starters 9% (1 in 11.2) (5, 6, 8) (13%, 8%, 9%) Rounds 6/7 236 players selected (45, 83, 108) 2 Stars 1% (1 in 118) (1, 0, 1) (2%, 0%, 1%) 12 Starters 5% (1 in 19.7) (3, 6, 3) (7%, 7%, 3%) Notes & Observations: Not surprisingly there were far more OTs taken in the 1st round than there were OGs or Cs. Though overall the 1st round success for OLmen was extremely high, for some reason 1st round Cs did not fare so well. They did however have an extraordinary 2nd round Starter success rate of 42% as well as a 20% 3rd round Starter success rate that is roughly double that of most positions I have studied to date. Talent evaluation of the OT position seems to be extremely good. Of Top 10 selections, 18 of 26 became Starters(69%) with 8 of those becoming Stars(31%). It is apparent that if a team wishes to draft a Star OT, they would need to do so inside the Top 10 as the drop off after that is dramatic. 11-32 = 2%, R2 = 3%, R3 = 2%. There is also a generally high Starter success rate in the later rounds for the entire OL. In accordance to the values in the standard Trade Value Chart, it would make sense for teams looking for Starter OGs to ignore rounds 3-5 graded players and stock up on them in rounds 6/7. For their OTs, ignore round 3 and select them in rounds 4/5. Similar to the LB position, there were a noticeable number of OLmen who were regular starters that changed teams after their rookie contracts expired and continued as starters for their new teams. This included starting calibre OTs.

My 7.55M earlier was slightly off(memory problems).....his cap hit 2014 will be $10.55M.....and 7M if cut. Link here for 2014 Bills cap numbers. http://nyjetscap.com/Bills/bills2014.php

lol....I was just thinking the exact same thing.

I know the exact opposite. If Fitz is not restructured, it makes no sense to not cut him. If we keep him we hit with a 10.45M cap number. Most know by now that we will have a 10M cap hit even if we cut him.....but if we keep him we will be in a very similar situation next year. In 2014 he will count 10.55M against the cap.....and 7.55M even if cut. I understand the concept that he likely will better than anybody else we can find......but the drop-off between Fitz and whomever replaces him(Jackson, rookie) would not be great....in other words, who cares if we win 4 instead of 6 games. Keeping him isn't anywhere close to being worth 2 years of cap crap for the team

I agree with your assessment, though things are not equal and supply/demand is always a factor. QBs who are graded lower go higher etc....but yeah, basically if there isn't a legitimate 1st round graded QB(or high 2nd round) you go with a different position. My initial comment was directed at the OP's statement of.... "We can pick up a QB to develop in the later rounds like Nassib, Bray. I don't think there will be a huge run on QB's this year in the early rounds, if they had learned anything at all from last year there will be some good prospects left in the later rounds !!"

The health point further argues against the concept that one can find a star QB via FA......which is what I was meaning. By relatively healthy I meant that though his injury raised questions, it did not in the end affect his abilities nor his perceived worth as the Saints paid him as one of the highest paid QBs at that time(10M/year ave). Money could have been a factor with the Dolphin's decisions as their trade with the Vikings(2nd round pick) allowed them a comfortable 2M for Culpepper in 2006 rising to 5.5M & 6M in subsequent years.