You don't draft a guard in the 1st ... or do you?

[MrEpsYtown]

4 hours ago, SoTier said:

 

That's simply untrue.  In 20 drafts between 2000 and 2019,  5 guards were taken in the top 10 and 1 was drafted to be an OT.  2 were Pro Bowl and All Pro caliber.  In 20 drafts between 2000 and 2019, 11 guards were taken between #21-#32.  5 were Pro Bowlers and 2 were All Pros.    The bottom of the first round frequently does yield stud guards. 

 

Guards taken in the first round since 2000:

• 2001 - 17 - Steve Hutchinson -  7 PBs, 5 All Pros
• 2002 - 20 - Kendall Simmons
• 2004 - 19 - Vernon Carey - started 107 games for Miami between 2004 and 2011
• 2005 - 32 - Logan Mankins - 7 PBs, 1 All Pro
• 2006 - 23 - Davin Joseph - 2 PBs
• 2007 - 29 - Ben Grubbs - 2 PBs
• 2008 - 15 - Branden Albert - converted to LT, made 2 PBs at LT
• 2010 - 17 - Mike Iupati - 4 PBs, 1 All Pro
• 2011 - 15 - Mike Pouncey - 4 PBs
• 2011 - 23 - Danny Watkins
• 2012 - 24 - Dave DeCastro - 6 PBs, 2 All Pros
• 2012 - 27 - Kevin Zeitler - started 151 games between 2012 and 2021
• 2013 -  7 - Jonathan Cooper
• 2013 - 10 - Chance Warmack
• 2013 - 20 - Kyle Long - 3 PBs
• 2015 -  5  - Brandon Scherff - 5 PBs, 1 All Pro
• 2015  - 9  - Ereck Flowers - converted to OT and then went back to G
• 2015 - 28 - Laken Tomlinson - 1 PB
• 2016 - 28 - Joshua Garnett
• 2016 - 31 - Germain Ifedi
• 2018 -  6 - Quenton Nelson - 4 PBs, 3 All Pros
• 2018 - 23 - Isaiah Wynn, starter in NE
• 2019 - 14 - Chris Lindstrom, starter in ATL

Furthermore, where a particular player was drafted becomes irrelevant after he's played in the NFL for a few years.   If your #25 guard or your #55 guard or your UDFA guard turns out to be a stud, he'll command stud guard money.  If you choose to pay him or not is your choice, but keeping DTs and LBs off your elite QB might be worth something.

 

And my point is that there are two guys on that list whose teams won a Super Bowl, Kendall Simmons with the Steelers and Chance Warmack as a backup with Philly. The impact just isn’t there. A lot of those teams would love to have those picks back.

 

And I am not arguing that a lot of those aren’t all pros, but those picks are better spent elsewhere imo.

Edited March 31, 2022 by MrEpsYtown

[BADOLBILZ]

14 minutes ago, MrEpsYtown said:

And my point is that there are two guys on that list whose teams won a Super Bowl, Kendall Simmons with the Steelers and Chance Warmack as a backup with Philly. The impact just isn’t there. A lot of those teams would love to have those picks back.

 

And I am not arguing that a lot of those aren’t all pros, but those picks are better spent elsewhere imo.

 

 

Your line of thinking is lost on some people...........they don't understand that an all-pro guard has less organizational impact than a simply "good" player at many other positions...........and FAR less impact than an all pro at a key position.

 

Those early picks are your lottery tickets.........some people would rather have a higher chance of winning $5 back than taking greater risk but with a chance to hit the jackpot.  

 

That's a losing proposition in the NFL but there will always be those people who in that moment would have taken low risk stud Quenton Nelson over the ultra high risk Josh Allen if that were the choice...........and those people would also be wondering why new stadium negotiations aren't going so well. 

 

 

[Bill from NYC]

In 2008, my friend @RRich told me that Brandon Albert coming out of UVA would be an all time great guard. I believed him and was 100% sold and was SO hoping that the Bills would draft him. Of course, we did not. Instead we took CB Leotis McKelvin at #11. OT Ryan Clady went next at 12, Albert went at #15. McKelvin took several years to be decent. Albert (who played guard his entire college career) turned out to be a fine LEFT TACKLE in the NFL. 

 

My point? I believe that drafting a first round guard is not a good move in almost every case. But, if a GM  really does believe that there is a Larry Allen type HOF guard out there, drafting him in round 1 would be a wise move, especially on a team (like the 2008 Bills mind you) that has a critical shortage of good blockers.

 

As always, JMO.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Bill from NYC

[Ethan in Cleveland]

On 3/31/2022 at 2:43 PM, MrEpsYtown said:

And my point is that there are two guys on that list whose teams won a Super Bowl, Kendall Simmons with the Steelers and Chance Warmack as a backup with Philly. The impact just isn’t there. A lot of those teams would love to have those picks back.

 

And I am not arguing that a lot of those aren’t all pros, but those picks are better spent elsewhere imo.

Oh c'mon.  You can't use that argument.  Using your logic then taking a 6th round QB often yields multiple SB winners.  

There are so many things that need to happen to win a SB.  Nobody would ever want their pick back if it yielded a ProBowl level player.  Your argument would seem to suggest if they just choose a different position that they would be equally likely to be a ProBowl level player.  The stats suggest otherwise.

[SCBills]

On 3/29/2022 at 5:09 PM, GreggTX said:

I don't know the field, but you draft the best OL and if your 3rd best OT is still 1 of your top 5, slide him inside. If there is a G there whose talent is on par with other players at that spot, go ahead. I'm wondering if we wouldn't have been better off taking an OT in the 2nd round last year. I like Basham, but he isn't likely to help us any time soon. We say G's don't affect the game much even our weakness there hurt us considerably last year. We say we approach the draft with needs, but when you have to pay several huge salaries, you're going to have them. Right now CB and RG are huge holes and I would add that RT is also. I know Brown filled in admirably and I hope that some day he'll be a starting caliber RT, but he's clearly got a very long way to go to reach that level. We will pay a steep price if we don't address these needs in the top 2 rounds. I'd like to see us trade down and garner 2 top 40 picks to address both positions. This is a bigger than usual draft for Beane. He needs to nail it on days 1 and 2.

RG and RT are not huge holes.  
 

Ryan Bates and Spencer Brown are pencilled in as starters there.  Could they be upgraded, sure, but the OL played well down this stretch with those two in the lineup.  
 

We saw what a huge hole looks like in Bills/Chiefs Playoffs 2020… when Chris Jones was devouring Feliciano. 
 

The Bills Offense did whatever it wanted to the Chris Jones led DL in Bills/Chiefs Playoffs 2021. 

[blacklabel]

I don't think they value OG highly enough to take one in the first. Guards in general usually don't go in the first very often unless they're Zach Martin or Quinten Nelson. And I don't think there are any prospects in this year's draft anywhere near that level. 

 

Third round is probably where they try to grab one. They're gonna look for players that can make an early impact in the first two rounds. 

 

I'm also all in with them wheeling and dealing and leaving the draft with something like 4-5 guys taken in the top 125 players as opposed to 7-8 prospects taken across the board. Players picked in rounds 5-7 likely have a tough time making this team. So ya, move around, make some splashes, grab some good players. 

[MrEpsYtown]

14 minutes ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Oh c'mon.  You can't use that argument.  Using your logic then taking a 6th round QB often yields multiple SB winners.  

There are so many things that need to happen to win a SB.  Nobody would ever want their pick back if it yielded a ProBowl level player.  Your argument would seem to suggest if they just choose a different position that they would be equally likely to be a ProBowl level player.  The stats suggest otherwise.

Nah man, my argument is that if they picked a different player at a more dynamic position they have a better chance at a super bowl victory. IMO what yields super bowl victories is dynamic players at high impact positions. 1 QB in the last 20 years is a tiny sample and a complete anomaly. Every first round guard for the last 20 years and only 1 gets a super bowl as a starter? Now that’s a pattern. 

[MrEpsYtown]

Like our teams looks good on paper, but if we don’t add a corner better than Jackson we ain’t winning the super bowl. Maybe we draft a guard and it helps Josh put up more points. But we don’t get a corner, we likely won’t win. 

[SCBills]

5 minutes ago, ScottLaw said:

Thank you underestimate just how good Allen was in that game…. Despite Williams and Brown having plenty of moments where they were completely blown up… Josh just did was he does and found a way… regardless of the offensive line breakdowns in front of him.

Williams is gone and Brown will be in his 2nd year as a guy who was raw coming into the NFL.  
 

Calling Bates at RG and Brown at RT “huge holes” is not accurate.  
 

We should absolutely draft some OL.. I’m not opposed to taking a Tackle at 25 if someone is there we love, but I’m not stressing out if our starting five coming September is Dawkins-Saffold-Morse-Bates-Brown, with an entire camp/preseason under Kromer. 

[3rdand12]

2 hours ago, Bill from NYC said:

In 2008, my friend @RRich told me that Brandon Albert coming out of UVA would be an all time great guard. I believed him and was 100% sold and was SO hoping that the Bills would draft him. Of course, we did not. Instead we took CB Leotis McKelvin at #11. OT Ryan Clady went next at 12, Albert went at #15. McKelvin took several years to be decent. Albert (who played guard his entire college career) turned out to be a fine LEFT TACKLE in the NFL. 

 

My point? I believe that drafting a first round guard is not a good move in almost every case. But, if a GM  really does believe that there is a Larry Allen type HOF guard out there, drafting him in round 1 would be a wise move, especially on a team (like the 2008 Bills mind you) that has a critical shortage of good blockers.

 

As always, JMO.

 May i ?
  I am the one out in the fields apparently. again perhaps 

Top notch guards, and guards who can move to center are Extremely valuable !
 Just underrated , as they are just as key to well oiled O line.
Pro bowl ??
 No glory for the Guardians

Protect Josh.

Draft in the 1st if the player is a solid long term. I would not hate it   

1 hour ago, MrEpsYtown said:

Like our teams looks good on paper, but if we don’t add a corner better than Jackson we ain’t winning the super bowl. Maybe we draft a guard and it helps Josh put up more points. But we don’t get a corner, we likely won’t win. 

both can be had,
to soon to worry 

[Thurman#1]

On 4/1/2022 at 6:43 AM, MrEpsYtown said:

And my point is that there are two guys on that list whose teams won a Super Bowl, Kendall Simmons with the Steelers and Chance Warmack as a backup with Philly. The impact just isn’t there. A lot of those teams would love to have those picks back.

 

And I am not arguing that a lot of those aren’t all pros, but those picks are better spent elsewhere imo.

 

 

Your stat shows the opposite.

 

If out of 13 times it happened in ten years, two teams won Super Bowls, that's really really good. That's far above expectations. Only eight teams have won Super Bowls in that time.

 

But the whole idea of examining that bit of data is ridiculous, most especially because the sample size is too small to have any significance. You can't take one draft choice and pretend that's the reason a team won or didn't win the Super Bowl. In the last ten years, maybe - possibly - ten players drafted made a significant difference in teams winning a Super Bowl. Most of them QBs or pass rushers. Maybe 10 guys. Your idea here is ridiculous.

 

What you want to look at is this ...

 

1)  How many guards drafted in the first were good players? And the answer to that is that an awful lot of them were. Probably because it's an easier position to evaluate for college success in the pros among highly talented guys. 

 

2) How many smart teams have made this move? And again, the answer is that a pretty fair number of the teams that did it were smart. It's a smart move ... depending on the situation, of course. If there's a better more impactful guy there, you ought to grab him instead. If there isn't, it's often smart to pick a guard if he's BPA at a position of need.

 

And guard is a position of need for this team.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

19 hours ago, MrEpsYtown said:

Nah man, my argument is that if they picked a different player at a more dynamic position they have a better chance at a super bowl victory. IMO what yields super bowl victories is dynamic players at high impact positions. 1 QB in the last 20 years is a tiny sample and a complete anomaly. Every first round guard for the last 20 years and only 1 gets a super bowl as a starter? Now that’s a pattern. 

 

 

Dynamic players at high impact positions don't win Super Bowls. That's one factor, of course. There are many others.

 

It's far more complicated than just this cliche above.

 

A ton of other things are as important or more so, such as having a great QB, such as your franchise QB staying uninjured, having a roster that is consistently solid across the board, having players that fit the system, having a good system, continuity, a good strength and conditioning staff, good play callers, depth, and it goes on and on.

 

If you have terrific skill position guys and a weak center and a decent guard whose backup is poor and that guard gets injured, your season is likely going to have great problems regardless of all those good guys at dynamic positions. Even when only roster is considered, it's far more complicated than just getting guys at the positions you're calling dynamic.

 

Arguably our most impactful player outside of Allen last year was Bates. When he came in the improvement was palpable. Imagine if we'd had someone much better at guard right from the beginning. Which is why IOL is a need for the Bills on nearly every list you see.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

On 3/29/2022 at 3:54 AM, Gugny said:

 

You asked about drafting a guard in the first round.  My comment had literally everything to do with drafting an OL in the first round and you are calling it irrelevant.  I don't think that word means what you think it means.

 

 

Um, no I called it irrelevant because it was irrelevant.

 

Having literally everything to do with drafting an OL in the first round doesn't mean it's therefore relevant. You could say, "The OLs drafted in the first round have all had last names starting in consonants." True or not, that would have been all about drafting OLs in the first, and completely irrelevant.

 

You said, "My wording was lazy.  I just don't think taking the 3rd, 4th or 5th best OL that early is smart. "

 

Irrelevant. Whether your OL is the 1st, 3rd, 4th or 5th best OL has zero importance. All that matters is whether or not he's good enough to be picked as BPA where their pick is.

 

The folks who've already been picked are irrelevant to your decision when it's your pick. Only the unpicked prospects matter.

 

If the Bills have a guard evaluated with a grade of 8.1, and no other player above 8.0 is left on their board, it would be completely irrelevant whether before the draft the Bills had that guard as the best OL or the 5th best. If they'd had five OLs ahead of him, with grades of 8.2 to 8.5, and those five are gone, they're as irrelevant as any of the other players who'd already been taken. Completely so. It only matters who's BPA on the board at a position of need.

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Thurman#1

[Thurman#1]

19 hours ago, SCBills said:

RG and RT are not huge holes.  
 

Ryan Bates and Spencer Brown are pencilled in as starters there.  Could they be upgraded, sure, but the OL played well down this stretch with those two in the lineup.  
 

We saw what a huge hole looks like in Bills/Chiefs Playoffs 2020… when Chris Jones was devouring Feliciano. 
 

The Bills Offense did whatever it wanted to the Chris Jones led DL in Bills/Chiefs Playoffs 2021. 

 

 

I do hear you, but I totally disagree.

 

Bates is serviceable, as we saw. But as we also saw last year, you can't count on guys playing at the same level the next year. Feliciano had been pretty good in 2020. He regressed quite a bit last year. So did Daryl Williams, who'd been really good at tackle in 2020, but wasn't the next year.

 

If our top five do play without regression, we've got a pretty solid line. How often does that happen, that all five guys play without regression and without missing a game? And how good is our #6? 

 

If one guy goes out, we suddenly see guys moving all around, a lack of continuity and a major drop where the #6 fits in. The way we saw it happen last year.

 

Outside CB2 our lineup looks really good everywhere as long as there is no regression and no injuries. But that's not the way to bet. IMO they have a real need for either a guard/tackle flexible guy or a center/guard flexible guy. Or maybe both.

 

Saffold is on a one-year contract and Morse is aging.

 

IMO at least one of those is a top three need.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Thurman#1

[MrEpsYtown]

1 hour ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Dynamic players at high impact positions don't win Super Bowls. That's one factor, of course. There are many others.

 

It's far more complicated than just this cliche above.

 

A ton of other things are as important or more so, such as having a great QB, such as your franchise QB staying uninjured, having a roster that is consistently solid across the board, having players that fit the system, having a good system, continuity, a good strength and conditioning staff, good play callers, depth, and it goes on and on.

 

If you have terrific skill position guys and a weak center and a decent guard whose backup is poor and that guard gets injured, your season is likely going to have great problems regardless of all those good guys at dynamic positions. Even when only roster is considered, it's far more complicated than just getting guys at the positions you're calling dynamic.

 

Arguably our most impactful player outside of Allen last year was Bates. When he came in the improvement was palpable. Imagine if we'd had someone much better at guard right from the beginning. Which is why IOL is a need for the Bills on nearly every list you see.

 

 

 

But Thurm, it was a list of 20 years of first round guards all of whom except for 2 (1 as a starter and 1 as a backup) who have not won a Super Bowl. It isn't cliche, it's a fact. Look at all the super bowl winner the last 20 years and many of those lines are put together in the mid rounds. 

 

Whether Bates came in or not, I don't think anything in our fate changed last year if say Boettger stays healthy. And btw, Bates and Boettger were both UDFAs. Don't draft these guys in the first round. You can get them everywhere.  Now if we had a corner who wasn't slower than my grandmother whose dead, well then, our fate may have been different. Perhaps if we had higher level talent to fill in for Tre'davious White as well. That changes our fate. A guard does not.   

1 hour ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Your stat shows the opposite.

 

If out of 13 times it happened in ten years, two teams won Super Bowls, that's really really good. That's far above expectations. Only eight teams have won Super Bowls in that time.

 

But the whole idea of examining that bit of data is ridiculous, most especially because the sample size is too small to have any significance. You can't take one draft choice and pretend that's the reason a team won or didn't win the Super Bowl. In the last ten years, maybe - possibly - ten players drafted made a significant difference in teams winning a Super Bowl. Most of them QBs or pass rushers. Maybe 10 guys. Your idea here is ridiculous.

 

What you want to look at is this ...

 

1)  How many guards drafted in the first were good players? And the answer to that is that an awful lot of them were. Probably because it's an easier position to evaluate for college success in the pros among highly talented guys. 

 

2) How many smart teams have made this move? And again, the answer is that a pretty fair number of the teams that did it were smart. It's a smart move ... depending on the situation, of course. If there's a better more impactful guy there, you ought to grab him instead. If there isn't, it's often smart to pick a guard if he's BPA at a position of need.

 

And guard is a position of need for this team.

 

 

 

You want to win a super bowl or draft a solid guard? That's the choice in my mind. Winning is how you measure success. 

[ndirish1978]

On 3/28/2022 at 11:52 AM, Thurman#1 said:

I've seen this several times lately, stated as a certainty.

 

And it's at best questionable.

 

In the old days, when we were drafting around 10th year after year, I used to say that we shouldn't draft a guard there unless we were getting a Hutchinson or a Zack Martin. But drafting 25th, you don't need to be getting a Quentin Nelson.

 

 

IMO there is one major factor you're missing here. That's the first round ability to keep someone on a 5th year option. From a cap perspective you want to use that tool on a premium skill position where you can keep what would be a more expensive player for less and for longer. With prices going through the roof for WRs and CBs, you benefit from that 5th year option, especially for non top-10 picks. Here is an primer from https://frontofficenfl.com/2017/03/27/nfl-rookie-contracts-explained-fifth-year-option/

Quote

 

The option for top-ten picks is set at an amount equal to the salary of the Transition Tender (set in Article 10, Section 4 of the CBA) for the player’s fourth contract year. This salary is calculated, to put it simply, by finding the average of the top ten highest Prior Year Salaries for players at the same position. Positions are defined by where a player spent the most plays during the previous season (Sec. 7, (a), 31), unless you ask Jimmy Graham.

For players selected between 11th and 32nd in the draft, the same calculation is used to compute their salaries. The difference lies in what is averaged; rather than the top ten, the 3rd-25th highest Prior Year Salaries for the player’s position will be used.

 

 

I'd rather use that 5th year option on a CB, DE or WR rather than a G because I think it results in a better deal for the team in regards to money allocated towards a position. 

[Warriorspikes51]

No.  Bates starts at LG. Saffold at RG.  Boettger is solid depth.  
 

a few options. Trade Ford + late pick for another G. Sign Trai Turner/another depth UFA

[Thurman#1]

1 hour ago, MrEpsYtown said:

 

But Thurm, it was a list of 20 years of first round guards all of whom except for 2 (1 as a starter and 1 as a backup) who have not won a Super Bowl. It isn't cliche, it's a fact. Look at all the super bowl winner the last 20 years and many of those lines are put together in the mid rounds. 

 

Whether Bates came in or not, I don't think anything in our fate changed last year if say Boettger stays healthy. And btw, Bates and Boettger were both UDFAs. Don't draft these guys in the first round. You can get them everywhere.  Now if we had a corner who wasn't slower than my grandmother whose dead, well then, our fate may have been different. Perhaps if we had higher level talent to fill in for Tre'davious White as well. That changes our fate. A guard does not.   

 

 

 

 

Picking one guy, one draft pick, with the possible exception of your QB (only if he's elite) and pretending that has more than a small impact on whether you win a Super Bowl is ridiculous. The question is whether he was a good pick. And if you're wondering whether a tactic is smart, you look at whether smart teams use it. From this list, it's clear they do.

 

Correlating draft picks like Mahomes and Brady to Super Bowl wins makes sense. There are very few people who you can say that about. Was Megatron a bad draft pick because he didn't win a Super Bowl? J.J. Watt? Earl Campbell? Dan Fouts? Tony Gonzalez? Bruce Smith? Jim Kelly? Thurman Thomas? Dan Marino?

 

Super Bowl wins are SIMPLY NOT single guy achievements. About 99.5% of guys who win Super Bowls do so because they were drafted by the right team. It's not the other way around. Pretending it is makes zero sense.

 

You judge a draft pick by how well he played. The large majority of that list were damn good picks. They succeeded at significantly higher rates than most first-rounders.

 

It's been said, intelligently, that win-loss record is not a QB stat. That's correct. It's a team stat. There's a reason why the actual name of that stat is "Team Record in Games Started by this QB (Regular Season)." It's not a QB stat. It's also not a WR stat. Or a CB stat. Or an OG stat. It's a team stat.

 

Much less so is Super Bowl wins an individual stat. Again, a team stat.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Thurman#1

[CookieG]

On 3/31/2022 at 4:43 PM, MrEpsYtown said:

And my point is that there are two guys on that list whose teams won a Super Bowl, Kendall Simmons with the Steelers and Chance Warmack as a backup with Philly. The impact just isn’t there. A lot of those teams would love to have those picks back.

 

And I am not arguing that a lot of those aren’t all pros, but those picks are better spent elsewhere imo.

I'm sure you realize that the same standard can be applied to other positions as well, especially when the limiting factor is "winning the Superbowl.

 

For example, I went back and looked at the DB's taken in the 1st round since 2012.  There were probably 60 taken. That is both corners and safeties.

 

https://www.drafthistory.com/index.php/positions/db

 

I could only find 2 who won a SB, and neither with the team that drafted them (Ramsey this past year and Gilmore with the Pats.). There might be 1 or 2 more on that long, long list. 

 

But using that logic...db isn't a very impactful position.

 

 

 

[MrEpsYtown]

2 minutes ago, CookieG said:

I'm sure you realize that the same standard can be applied to other positions as well, especially when the limiting factor is "winning the Superbowl.

 

For example, I went back and looked at the DB's taken in the 1st round since 2012.  There were probably 60 taken. That is both corners and safeties.

 

https://www.drafthistory.com/index.php/positions/db

 

I could only find 2 who won a SB, and neither with the team that drafted them (Ramsey this past year and Gilmore with the Pats.). There might be 1 or 2 more on that long, long list. 

 

But using that logic...db isn't a very impactful position.

 

 

 

Yeah my next step in this story was to look at other positions to see which ones led to the most Chips. Thanks for doing that.