Let's revisit and grade 2017 draft

[DrDawkinstein]

1 minute ago, dave mcbride said:

Josh Allen makes the 2018 draft an A+ regardless of what happens to the rest of the draftees. He's the most important pick since Kelly.

 

I knew YOU wouldnt let that Whaley statement stand very long.

[Mango]

This is a fair take. Most of the head scratching will be whether or not people grade Tre vs. Mahomes or Mahomes vs. the class as a whole. 

My only disagreement in your grading, and it is super minor, is Peterman. The dude was a dud, don't get me wrong, but I look at most picks outside of the 4th as "meh". If you find value, great. If you don't it's the 5th, 6th, 7th round. Those picks don't work out all the time. Tough to hold it against the FO. Sure, there is always a guy there that turned out to be a stud, but it's not wild that a guy drafted in the 5th 6th, 7th don't make it through camp. If it weren't for actually naming him the starter he could still be our QB3 (what a wild thought). 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Mango

[Rico]

1 hour ago, DrDawkinstein said:

Gonna stir the pot here: Is there another A-graded draft in the last 3 years? Or does Whaley have the only one?

Awesome. I never saw anyone grade the XFL drafts though.

[Da webster guy]

1 hour ago, Freddie's Dead said:

B to B+.  I wanted Mahomes, but I was OK with the Bills trade down, except when I learned the compensation.  We needed to get 1 or 2 more picks out of KC to make that deal worthwhile.  The Zay Pick was also disastrous, with the move up.  White, Dawkins, and Milano were home runs.

 

Cinci turned the KC offer down, stayed put and drafted WR bust John Ross right in front of our pick.    We traded back and essentially got an all-pro CB and a pick we dealt to get a qb that had more MVP votes than Mahomes last year.  Great moves.

[appoo]

My belief is that you need to wait till players are able to be in their first extension to grade a draft, so that would be the 2017 draft. My grades, weighted to their round:

 

1. Tre White - 4

2. Zay Jones - 1.5

2. Dion Dawkins - 4

5. Matt Milano - 4

5. Nathan Peterman - 1.5

6. Tanner Vallejo - 3

 

Average: 3.0

 

 

 

 

[Ya Digg?]

There’s already a 2017 draft grade thread started

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

So you're giving T Vallego whom I barely remember a 3 and T White a 4.  No idea what the highest score you gave was, but overall the numbers you gave doesn't seem to reflect their contributions and level of their play.

[H2o]

 

[Mr. WEO]

12 minutes ago, Ya Digg? said:

There’s already a 2017 draft grade thread started

 

So it's time for a third....is that what you're saying?

 

Nice!!

[Augie]

3 hours ago, DrDawkinstein said:

Big successful hits on 3 of 6 picks, and at key NFL positions? That's a solid A.

 

Agreed, we got some important building blocks, including CB1 and LT, both critical positions. If not for Zay Jones I’d go to an A+. 

[transplantbillsfan]

We got 3 guys who are part of our central corps out of that draft in White, Dawkins and Milano.  One of those guys is an All-Pro and multiple time pro-bowler.  The other 2 guys I believe are borderline pro-bowlers. 

 

Plus... whatever the "Mahomes factor" is, the simple fact is that if Mahomes came into Buffalo, he likely would have had to play in year 1 with a pretty underwhelming offensive roster and OC.  Mahomes benefitted greatly from sitting behind Alex Smith on an established playoff team with an already very good offensive roster.

 

If Josh Allen didn't work out, this is a different conversation.  But he did and that's the draft that helped us to get Allen.  

 

How could that not be viewed as a great draft?

[GunnerBill]

It is the best draft of my Bills fandom. I can't remember another draft where we re-signed three players from one class and White and Dawkins are two of our best four players. 

 

But then there is the Mahomes shadow hanging over it and it will be judged through that prism at least until Josh wins us a Lombardi.

1 hour ago, Da webster guy said:

 

Cinci turned the KC offer down, stayed put and drafted WR bust John Ross right in front of our pick.    We traded back and essentially got an all-pro CB and a pick we dealt to get a qb that had more MVP votes than Mahomes last year.  Great moves.

 

Cincy made a huge draft day error? Now where have I heard that before...

[Augie]

3 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

It is the best draft of my Bills fandom. I can't remember another draft where we re-signed three players from one class and White and Dawkins are two of our best four players. 

 

But then there is the Mahomes shadow hanging over it and it will be judged through that prism at least until Josh wins us a Lombardi.

 

Cincy made a huge draft day error? Now where have I heard that before...

 

Hmmmm. Let me think.....EVERY draft day? 

 

It must really SUCK to be a Bengals fan, one of the few, anyway. I’ve been to a few games there. It’s almost as bad as Jacksonville in terms of having a real fan base. I can’t blame them. 

[78thealltimegreat]

3 hours ago, No_Matter_What said:

So there are a couple of threads right now discussing grades of the 2021 draft. Even though most of us grade it for fun, we also realize that it doesn’t make much sense to grade any draft immediately. What makes sense is the grade draft after a couple of years.

 

I think the first time when it’s really worth it is after 4 years. After that time we usually have a large enough sample size for each player, and we also know if players were extended by the original team or are long gone.

 

From the Buffalo perspective, the 2017 draft is also special, since it is the first draft under the new regime. I know that Brandon Beane wasn’t here during the draft, but McDermott was. So I guess this is a great time to revisit the 2017 draft and evaluate how it all started.

 

I am no expert so I mostly want smarter guys to comment on it, but I give my view just to start the discussion.

 

Bills Draft

 

Mahomes factor. When judging the 2017 draft from the Bills perspective it is impossible not to deal with this Mahomes thing first 😀 Yes we could’ve draft him and yes Chiefs did so in our original spot. I guess that for many people whatever we did after that won’t matter much and will always consider it as a failure. I don’t think that is the case, since a) it was really hard to predict Mahomes’ success and above all b) from reasons discussed to death in my view McDermott wasn’t ready to take any QB immediately so it simply wasn’t an option. Therefore, not taking Mahomes doesn’t factor in my grades.

 

Let’s move to actual grading:

 

Round 1 pick 27: CB Tredavious White. Grade A+. Hard to give this pick another grade. Not only he is top 10 pick at worst in any redo, but there is maybe one player drafted behind him (T.J.Watt) who could be considered in his place. 1xAll Pro, 2xPro Bowl, extended after 3 years to massive extension.

 

Round 2 pick 37: WR Zay Jones. Grade D. Oh well. Not only we drafted below average to bust player so high, but we traded up to do so and gave up late 3rd round pick. It also doesn’t help his case that much better WRs went after him – Curtis Samuel, JuJu-Smith Schuster and Cooper Kupp. He had one solid season in 2018 when we didn’t have an actual NFL receiver on the roster (652y/7TDs), and was then traded next season to Raiders. I don’t think it’s an F since we got some production from him and Beane was able to trade him for 5th round pick this year, where we drafted Tommy Doyle. If Doyle pans out, it will be Zay’s biggest contribution to this team.

 

Round 2 pick 63: OT Dion Dawkins. Grade A. I have a hard time to give this pick anything less than A. We traded up for him giving up two 5th round selections, but I guess it is fully worth it when you get above average franchise LT at the end of 2nd round. He took over LT position five games into his rookie season and then started all 59 following games. Resigned to a large extension this offseason.

 

Round 5 pick 163: LB Matt Milano. Grade A+. I know there are discussions about Milano on this board, but getting someone like him in 5th round among all those names I’ve never heard of is amazing. No matter how we view him, he just signed quite a massive extension and he is an integral part of this team’s success and future. When doing this I found that we gained that pick from New England in exchange for their signing of RFA RB Mike Gillislie, which makes me smile.

 

Round 5 pick 171: QB Nathan Peterman. Grade D. I really don’t know what to say. He was a disaster here, but somehow he is still in the league. It can be anything between C and F imo.

 

Round 6 pick 195: LB Tanner Vallejo. Grade C. I have no idea how to grade picks like this. He played here his rookie season, then left. He didn’t pan out, but you generally don’t expect that from 6th round picks. What’s interesting is that he is still in the league and just had his best season with the Cardinals and resigned there for 2y/4m.

 

Overall Bills grade: A

I was considering A+ actually. If you get All Pro CB, franchise LT and one more top player from the same draft without mortgaging future, I don’t think it can be grade any worse than A. I keep it this way, since A+ should be probably reserved for draft when we don’t completely waste couple of 2nd day picks.

 

Even though the idea is to discuss primarily the Bills draft, I think we can have a look at other teams as well. My random thoughts:

 

AFC East teams blew this one big time.

 

Jets drafted safeties Adams and Maye, but after them it was a disaster. Adams was not a bad player, but I don’t think you draft him so high even when you know how good he will be, and less so without knowing that. His biggest contribution was how the Jets robbed the Seahawks when trading him. I don’t think Dolphins has drafted an impact player. DE Harris busted, LB McMillan left after two seasons, and others are journeymen at best. Patriots didn’t draft until late third and didn’t draft anybody relevant.

 

Best draft had without doubt Saints - Lattimore, Ramczyk, Marcus Williams, Kamara, Anzalone, Hendrickson. They get an A+ since it is really sick.

 

Teams with good draft include Steelers (T.J. Watt, Smith-Schuster), Chiefs (Mahomes, Hunt), Texans (Watson, Cunningham), Browns (Garrett, Njoku, Ogunjobi) and Bucs (Chris Goodwin, O.J.Howard).

 

The 49ers had a fun draft since they completely whiffed early (Thomas, Foster) but then grabbed Kittle in the 5th round.

 

3 WRs went in top 10 and while two of them are good NFL players (Corey Davis, Mike William), they were certainly overdrafted. Ross is a complete bust in my book.

 

What are your grades/thoughts?

 

Link to the draft:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_NFL_Draft

 

 

 

Great analysis it’s always fascinating to see instant draft reaction as opposed to what these players actually did a few years later but man there where some major busts in that class

[78thealltimegreat]

52 minutes ago, appoo said:

My belief is that you need to wait till players are able to be in their first extension to grade a draft, so that would be the 2017 draft. My grades, weighted to their round:

 

1. Tre White - 4

2. Zay Jones - 1.5

2. Dion Dawkins - 4

5. Matt Milano - 4

5. Nathan Peterman - 1.5

6. Tanner Vallejo - 3

 

Average: 3.0

 

 

 

 

Another thread was already started but can’t argue with three cornerstone starters out of the class you pull that every draft they’ll put you in the hall of fame 

[GunnerBill]

Just now, Augie said:

 

Hmmmm. Let me think.....EVERY draft day? 

 

It must really SUCK to be a Bengals fan, one of the few, anyway. I’ve been to a few games there. It’s almost as bad as Jacksonville in terms of having a real fan base. I can’t blame them. 

 

I have said it a lot but in years to come the narrative on Marvin Lewis will change from the man who went 0-7 in the playoffs to the man who got the Bengals to the playoff seven times. Their last 14 non Marvin Lewis seasons they have won fewer than 6 games TEN times.

[transplantbillsfan]

MERGE!!!!

 

[Aussie Joe]

Great draft ...

 

The fact that 3 guys are on their second contracts all at important positions says it all...

[CA OC Bills Fan]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I have said it a lot but in years to come the narrative on Marvin Lewis will change from the man who went 0-7 in the playoffs to the man who got the Bengals to the playoff seven times. Their last 14 non Marvin Lewis seasons they have won fewer than 6 games TEN times.

Completely agree. The instances of firing a coach who consistently gets his team to the playoffs but "can't win the big one" seems to work this way (at least the examples I can think of). Think of every time Marty Shottenheimer was fired; Cleveland, KC, San Diego. For the most part the team went downhill as soon as he left.

[GunnerBill]

Just now, CA OC Bills Fan said:

Completely agree. The instances of firing a coach who consistently gets his team to the playoffs but "can't win the big one" seems to work this way (at least the examples I can think of). Think of every time Marty Shottenheimer was fired; Cleveland, KC, San Diego. For the most part the team went downhill as soon as he left.

 

With Cincy it is just utterly dysfunctional. Marv isn't perfect but he isn't clueless either which puts him above everyone else who was and still is in that organisation.