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Posted

Ansah, Reid, Long, Hopkins, Trufant, Rhodes and Frederick have been good players. There were a LOT of total misses though. That is what is interesting to me. There have been some solid players too (Ogletree, Fisher, Vaccaro) but the amount of guys that are TERRIBLE is astounding.

Posted (edited)

It's an art, not a science.

 

I only speculate that scouts fall in love with athletes first, football players second. Their elite athleticism compensates for their lack of hard and soft football skills at the college level. An over-reliance on "metrics" can blind you to the lack of necessary skills that they need to be successful at the professional level.

 

The Bills especially have been enamored with athletes that are terrible football players. (J.P. Losman, James Hardy, Aaron Maybin, E.J. Manuel, Marques Goodwin and C.J. Spiller come to mind.)

Edited by dpberr
Posted

wish skurksi would have looked a little deeper than "just" the Bills. How many teams have any draft picks hanging around the NFL - what a mess that year was. But of course it's TBN so why do research?

Posted

It's an art, not a science.

 

I only speculate that scouts fall in love with athletes first, football players second. Their elite athleticism compensates for their lack of hard and soft football skills at the college level. An over-reliance on "metrics" can blind you to the lack of necessary skills that they need to be successful at the professional level.

 

The Bills especially have been enamored with athletes that are terrible football players. (J.P. Losman, James Hardy, Aaron Maybin, E.J. Manuel, Marques Goodwin and C.J. Spiller come to mind.)

Hold up here- terrible football players is wrong. Most if not all these guys were bonafide stars in high school and collegiate football.

 

The real matter at hand is much more fundamental. It is that the process of projecting professional football success based upon a non pro football body of work isn't close to flawless and can be at times 'terrible'

Posted

All the talent evaluators in the world can't make a bad player good. It was just a bad class.

I'm with you. I remember going into that draft they were calling it a "meat and potatoes" class. If that isn't inspiring I don't know what will be! It was a bad class. I always take offense when people say that "everyone always says next year's class will be better." Some years are better than others. Put the 1st round in 2011 next to the 1st round in 2013 and tell me which is better?

 

By most accounts this is a pretty good class. It lacks the top end QB talent but has great depth at DB, RB, TE and DL. There are guys in this class that within a few years will be some of the best players in the league at their position.

Posted (edited)

I'm with you. I remember going into that draft they were calling it a "meat and potatoes" class. If that isn't inspiring I don't know what will be! It was a bad class. I always take offense when people say that "everyone always says next year's class will be better." Some years are better than others. Put the 1st round in 2011 next to the 1st round in 2013 and tell me which is better?

 

By most accounts this is a pretty good class. It lacks the top end QB talent but has great depth at DB, RB, TE and DL. There are guys in this class that within a few years will be some of the best players in the league at their position.

Which is most drafts. And which does not mean that no QBs from this one will end up good.

 

The EJ pick had such a low opportunity cost from 2013. It may have been the best draft to flush a first rounder down the toilet in 6 years. Scary how bad it ended up.

Edited by FireChan
Posted

Which is most drafts. And which does not mean that no QBs from this one will end up good.

 

The EJ pick had such a low opportunity cost from 2013. It may have been the best draft to flush a first rounder down the toilet in 6 years. Scary how bad it ended up.

Agreed
Posted

It's one of the reasons why I'm less bothered about making a trade for someone, with a pick, as quite often, the proven guy, will stick for longer than whoever you might have picked.

 

A partial example of this, would be when we picked Lynch with our 1st rounder. Prior to the draft, there was supposedly a lot of interest in Michael Turner, who iirc, we could have had for our 2nd rounder. We baulked, yet the Falcons didn't, and he proved to be a roaring success.

 

Now while I seriously doubt that the Bills at that time were about to become contenders on the strength of getting Turner, and whoever they might have used the 1st round pick on, they almost certainly could have been a better team by doing it.

 

Some years, you are probably better off losing a lower pick or two, for guys who you know can do the job you want of them. It would help, if you had plenty of picks to play with regularly, mind you. ;(

Posted

Which is most drafts. And which does not mean that no QBs from this one will end up good.

 

The EJ pick had such a low opportunity cost from 2013. It may have been the best draft to flush a first rounder down the toilet in 6 years. Scary how bad it ended up.

 

In hindsight I guess it was ok to in that regard. Unfortunately for the kid all the expectations of the world just got dumped on him with that #1 pick.

It's one of the reasons why I'm less bothered about making a trade for someone, with a pick, as quite often, the proven guy, will stick for longer than whoever you might have picked.

 

Some years, you are probably better off losing a lower pick or two, for guys who you know can do the job you want of them. It would help, if you had plenty of picks to play with regularly, mind you. ;(

 

Yeah it does make sense though selling that to the fans and media is going to be a difficult job.

I'm going to guess that's why Pats always trade down and get as many picks as they can to maximize their chances of landing a decent player given the crapshoot the draft is.

Posted (edited)

Looks like most EVERYONE whiffed on that draft year. Seems like only the lower end of the 1st round did well. Who's the best pick of that draft? My vote's for Houston's Deandre Hopkins.

 

http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/130490/busts-suspensions-and-few-stars-revisiting-wild-first-round-of-2013-nfl-draft

 

 

 

 

Yeah, turns out to have been a very bad class relative to most.

 

Still some good talent, though, with Sheldon Richardson, Lotulelei, Kawann Short, LeVeon Bell, Warmack, Kelce, Warford, Tyrann Mathieu if he'd stayed healthy ...

Edited by Thurman#1
Posted

This looks like a DW excuses thread.

Except Buddy Nix was the GM in 2013. We all know Doug had a big hand in EJ.... we don't know who was responsible for the rest. It is guesswork.

Posted

wish skurksi would have looked a little deeper than "just" the Bills. How many teams have any draft picks hanging around the NFL - what a mess that year was. But of course it's TBN so why do research?

absolutely hit the nail on the head. TBN has no journalists, just some guys writing blogs from the basement, Haven't broken a piece of news from One bills drive in years.

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