Small theory about our 1st and 3rd picks vis a vis USC

[Chaos]

4 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

 

You can call the school and ask for a disc (or whatever video format) for a particularly player's plays in any or all games.  They'll happily send them if you're a media member.  

 

FWIW I'd have been just as happy with Mayer.  

 

Both are good, and they will be comped against each other in the future. I think Kindcaid's more WR similarities makes him a better fit for the Bills than Mayer though.  

[Milanos Milano]

2 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Both are good, and they will be comped against each other in the future. I think Kindcaid's more WR similarities makes him a better fit for the Bills than Mayer though.  

I do not know why people keep saying this. They both have similar yardage and TDs numbers. The major difference is Mayer can block really well. They both run a 4.7 , so it’s not like he can’t get down the field as good as Kincaid. 

[PBF81]

13 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

Mayer and Kincaid are both good players and predicted to become starters, but they very different players in their scouting reports.  Trying to boil it down to who had more 5 reception games is silly.  That's not how pro scouting works.

 

It's telling that Mayer went 10 picks later than Kincaid.  It says that the rest of the league isn't impressed by his superior number of 5 catch games.

 

Pro scouting typically mimics one another.  That's why you rarely if ever hear one or more lone voices out there going against the flow.  

 

Consider, to properly evaluate a player, you have to spend a few hours going over video and then looking at other info.  Say 4 hours of video, that's even customized for that player's plays, then a few hours looking over info from other sources as well.  

 

There's what, 400-ish players in the Draft, right.  That's months of work even if you did only 100 players.  A team could break it down by person on their staff and only choose the players that they think they're interested in, right.  But you also have to hope that everyone doing the evaluating knew what to look for as well.  Simply because  people get paid to do something, doesn't mean that they're truly "experts" or actually know what they're doing, contrary to passing snide comments here or elsewhere.  Consider, does Belichick know what he's doing as GM?  Clearly not.  How about Whaley, was he an expert?  How about Jerry Jones, Matt Millen, or Vinny Cerrato?  Are they experts?   You get the point.  Same for coaching BTW.  

 

To me, it makes more sense to get copies of the games that players played that were the toughest, featured the most talent that will be going on to the NFL, and big games.  

 

I'll PM you my analysis of Kincaid.  You won't like it, but I'll send it to you to see what I'm talking about.  And no, I did not use video for him.  

 

 

[Beck Water]

10 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

You can call the school and ask for a disc (or whatever video format) for a particularly player's plays in any or all games.  They'll happily send them if you're a media member.  

 

FWIW I'd have been just as happy with Mayer. 

 

I would not have been just as happy with Mayer.

 

I saw a big unfilled need on the Bills as a slot receiver - a skilled route runner able to find the gaps in zone coverage and get open as an outlet.  Beasley, before the draft, had a point that if he joined the Bills he would have been the best slot receiver as far as demonstrated ability (at that time)

 

I thought the lack of a slot Josh trusted in that regard allowed teams to clamp down on Diggs and Davis

 

I would have liked a 1st round WR, but given we couldn't make a reasonable trade-up into the territory that would let us draft a guy we had a 1st round grade on (Addison, reportedly), the reports on Kincaid and what Beane says about how they'll use him makes him seem as though he can potentially fill that need.

 

The reports on Mayer don't seem as though he can potentially fill that need without a good bit of development time.

 

[PBF81]

12 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Both are good, and they will be comped against each other in the future. I think Kindcaid's more WR similarities makes him a better fit for the Bills than Mayer though.  

 

I know you do.  Do you mind my asking however, what do you base that on, beside the script draft profiles, which are all essentially the same?   Or is that it?  

 

 

6 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

I would not have been just as happy with Mayer.

 

I saw a big unfilled need on the Bills as a slot receiver - a skilled route runner able to find the gaps in zone coverage and get open as an outlet.  Beasley, before the draft, had a point that if he joined the Bills he would have been the best slot receiver as far as demonstrated ability (at that time)

 

I thought the lack of a slot Josh trusted in that regard allowed teams to clamp down on Diggs and Davis

 

I would have liked a 1st round WR, but given we couldn't make a reasonable trade-up into the territory that would let us draft a guy we had a 1st round grade on (Addison, reportedly), the reports on Kincaid and what Beane says about how they'll use him makes him seem as though he can potentially fill that need.

 

The reports on Mayer don't seem as though he can potentially fill that need without a good bit of development time.

 

 

We'll see.  Allow me to ask, what are your expectations for Kincaid this fall?  

 

 

[Milanos Milano]

7 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

 

I know you do.  Do you mind my asking however, what do you base that on, beside the script draft profiles, which are all essentially the same?   Or is that it?  

 

 

Fun fact looking at the Mayer vs Kincaid things. Mayer often time had a higher % of the rec pie vs the rest of the WRs on their team than Kincaid,  AND with ND running the ball more often. 

That tells me Mayer would have had even better results vs Kincaid had his OC game planned differently. Mayer was often featured more often, because he was clearly the best receiving threat on the team, whereas Kincaid wasn’t featured as much despite being touted as the better WR option. 

Mind you, they both run a 4.7 

Edited April 30, 2023 by IronMaidenBills

[Beck Water]

19 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

 

Pro scouting typically mimics one another.  That's why you rarely if ever hear one or more lone voices out there going against the flow.  

 

Consider, to properly evaluate a player, you have to spend a few hours going over video and then looking at other info.  Say 4 hours of video, that's even customized for that player's plays, then a few hours looking over info from other sources as well.  

 

There's what, 400-ish players in the Draft, right.  That's months of work even if you did only 100 players.  A team could break it down by person on their staff and only choose the players that they think they're interested in, right.  But you also have to hope that everyone doing the evaluating knew what to look for as well.  Simply because  people get paid to do something, doesn't mean that they're truly "experts" or actually know what they're doing, contrary to passing snide comments here or elsewhere.  Consider, does Belichick know what he's doing as GM?  Clearly not.  How about Whaley, was he an expert?  How about Jerry Jones, Matt Millen, or Vinny Cerrato?  Are they experts?   You get the point.  Same for coaching BTW.  

 

To me, it makes more sense to get copies of the games that players played that were the toughest, featured the most talent that will be going on to the NFL, and big games.  

 

I'll PM you my analysis of Kincaid.  You won't like it, but I'll send it to you to see what I'm talking about.  And no, I did not use video for him.  

 

 

 

To your second sentence - I don't think we hear pro scouting voices at all.  They keep their work confidential.

 

What we can see, is that different teams clearly diverge in their talent evaluation.  I think that's evidence that, at least in the first rounds, teams are NOT mimicing one another.

 

For initial evaluations, 27 teams use the BLESTO or National scouting services, so the scouting reports they receive are literally the same.  And they may not get too far beyond this for players in the later rounds.

 

Beane has a staff of 18 and in addition, they may hire football-knowledgeable people (former college players and coaches) to prepare initial scouting evaluations.  (We have a couple guys who have done that, on this board)  They start in early fall going to games and evaluating tape.  So yeah, they do literally put months of work in.  It's up to Beane and (I think) Malik Boyd to make sure they hire and train their scouts to evaluate players the same way. 

 

By the way, IMO Whaley was a pretty good talent evaluator.  Where he failed as a GM was 1) not being savvy about the salary cap/business end 2) having a revolving door of coaches for whom he had to acquire very different players with very different skill sets, forcing him to draft for need.

 

Trivia point: Belichick's father literally "wrote the book" on scouting football players.  I'm not gonna go into my opinion of him as GM, way off topic

 

I don't mind looking at your analysis of Kincaid, but to weight it, would you mind sharing your credentials and experience?  Because if you're asking me to weight you above Lance Zierlein and Greg Cosell I need something to work with - not saying Zierlein is infalliable, but when I go back to his scouting reports after a player has been in the league 2-3 years I find myself nodding.

 

13 minutes ago, PBF81 said:

We'll see.  Allow me to ask, what are your expectations for Kincaid this fall? 

 

I went into that in the "Analyzinig 10 years of first round TE production thread.  Scroll down, at the bottom.

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by Beck Water

[PBF81]

2 minutes ago, IronMaidenBills said:

Fun fact looking at the Mayer vs Kincaid things. Mayer often time had a higher % of the rec pie vs the rest of the WRs on their team than Kincaid,  AND with ND running the ball more often. 

That tells me Mayer would have had even better results vs Kincaid had his OC game planned differently. Mayer was often featured more often, because he was clearly the best receiving threat on the team, whereas Kincaid wasn’t featured as much despite being touted as the better WR option. 

 

I don't mind Kincaid, to me it seemed to be more of luxury pick however and I never would have traded up for for it, especially not at the cost of a 4th.  I have no idea what Beane was thinking.  In total after all of his trades we moved up those two spots but down 160 elsewhere total.  It was bizarre.  

 

Again, we're now six drafts into Beane's team.  We'll see how things turn out this fall.  But again, if it's on the short end, the tough questions need to start being answered.  If we win the Super Bowl, then great, everyone's happy.  LOL  

 

 

[Milanos Milano]

Dawson Knox also ran a 4.59 at the combine, so eventhough his stats were marginal in college and he played a way different role for his team, the potential was obviously there. So I know stats don’t tell the whole story, but Knox is a bit of a misnomer because of his teams poor utilization of his talents. 

[PBF81]

3 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

To your second sentence - I don't think we hear pro scouting voices at all.  They keep their work confidential.

 

I saw your thread, I thought it was good.  I reacted favorably to it.  

 

As to the above, I was referring to the stuff that gets put out in the media, and by people that posters here have cited as "draft experts."  

 

To your point however, we don't know what teams come up with, but I'm sure that many disagree with the publicly put forth experts.  We'll simply never know.  

 

I was referring to what most fans say about players, obviously they're picking 99% of it up from them, and they generally all agree with one another, at least to one extent or another.  I mean it's ridiculous to think that anyone posting here did hundreds of hours of research on a whole bunch of players just for kicks and giggles.  They're getting their info from somewhere however.  

 

 

2 minutes ago, IronMaidenBills said:

Dawson Knox also ran a 4.59 at the combine, so eventhough his stats were marginal in college and he played a way different role for his team, the potential was obviously there. So I know stats don’t tell the whole story, but Knox is a bit of a misnomer because of his teams poor utilization of his talents. 

 

And there's a reason why Kincaid didn't attend the combine, and it's not all because of his back.  

[Milanos Milano]

Kelce ran a 4.6   , Gronkowski ran a 4.7   . Kelce is 6’5 250lbs and Gronkowski was 6’6” 265lbs.   Just for some context. 

Dawson Knox 6’4” 254lbs. 

 

 

Kincaid 4.7   6’4” 240lbs 

Mayer  4.7   6’4” 265lbs 

Edited April 30, 2023 by IronMaidenBills

[LABILLBACKER]

2 hours ago, gonzo1105 said:

Dorian Williams deserved to be a 3rd round pick. The asinine people comparing him to Bernard didnt and don’t know what they’re talking about. Williams is very much in the mold of a Shaq Thompson. I def didn’t think that last year with Bernard 

Williams projects to be substantially better than Bernard/Spector. It will depend on if Sean allows him to blitz enough to show off his strength.  Tremaine always struggled to find the proper blitz seams. As far as coverage goes we'll have to see?

[78thealltimegreat]

I can see this at the time Addison was looking like the best slot receiver in the Draft prospect and  scouts where zeroing in on receiver help. 
Kincaid just was a man among boys out there. 
All I can say is thank God he didn’t perform at his pro day or NFL combine or with how goofy they are. He’d be a Lion at 12 instead of Gibbs as Hockensons replacement now. 

[Milanos Milano]

4 minutes ago, 78thealltimegreat said:

I can see this at the time Addison was looking like the best slot receiver in the Draft prospect and  scouts where zeroing in on receiver help. 
Kincaid just was a man among boys out there. 
All I can say is thank God he didn’t perform at his pro day or NFL combine or with how goofy they are. He’d be a Lion at 12 instead of Gibbs as Hockensons replacement now. 

LOL it’s good he didn’t perform at the NFL combine or he’d be lucky to go in the first round. He likely would have struggled against the sled and bench press. 

Right now scouts are basically living off the USC game, which is way to emotional. 

At this point Kincaid is strictly a 4.7 big slot receiver which I dunno how well that is going to translate against NFL talent. Kincaid struggled against Florida to get separation. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by IronMaidenBills

[78thealltimegreat]

2 minutes ago, IronMaidenBills said:

LOL it’s good he didn’t perform at the NFL combine or he’d be lucky to go in the first round. He likely would have struggled against the sled and bench press. 

Right now scouts are basically living off the USC game, which is way to emotional. 

No one wanted your guy in the first round. If Buffalo didn’t take him either Dallas or Cincy was going to take Kincaid and God help the AFC if Joe Burrow would have been throwing to this guy he made Hayden Hurst look like an all pro against the Bills 

Edited April 30, 2023 by 78thealltimegreat

[Milanos Milano]

3 minutes ago, 78thealltimegreat said:

No one wanted your guy in the first round. If Buffalo didn’t take him either Dallas or Cincy was going to take Kincaid and God help the AFC if Joe Burrow would have been throwing to this guy he made Hayden Hurst look like an all pro against the Bills 

Hayden Hurst runs a 4.68 , is 6’4” 250lbs. Selected 1st round 25th overall. Put up 600 yards in the SEC, which is better than doing it in the Pac12. There really isn’t much of a difference between Hurst and Kincaid. 

[Alphadawg7]

1 hour ago, Beck Water said:

 

I'm confused here - are you talking about Kiko Alonso, drafted in 2013, and the Dion you mention is Dion Jordan?

 

Yeah, they said when they were studying Dion who went 3rd overall if I recall, they couldn't keep their eyes off Kiko and that is how he shot up their board

[JGMcD2]

1 hour ago, IronMaidenBills said:

When I scout, I want to see consistency, I want to see how well they do against top ranked teams and SEC schools. I want to see how they do against players that are getting drafted or projected to get drafted in the coming years. I also want to see the % of targets they are commanding per game and how talented their QB/WR/RBs are relative to their respective peers. Obviously watching how one separates is important, if they are getting consistently open, but are having low targets, that’s a QB problem. Honestly it would be really nice if someone developed an algorithm to determine how much exact space they were generating per route ran vs opponent strength. 

I would have to go back and watch the entirety of the game, I didn’t particularly watch that game. I’m not a real scout that gets paid, I can’t dedicate every single second of my time to doing major analytical projects. Although I feel I would pretty good at it if I was awarded an opportunity for such time dedication. 

And then simultaneously you’re in other threads advocating for the WR from Princeton, who played football powerhouses like Cornell over Justin Shorter who played in the SEC.

 

Which one is it? 
 

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by JGMcD2

[78thealltimegreat]

21 minutes ago, IronMaidenBills said:

Hayden Hurst runs a 4.68 , is 6’4” 250lbs. Selected 1st round 25th overall. Put up 600 yards in the SEC, which is better than doing it in the Pac12. There really isn’t much of a difference between Hurst and Kincaid. 

 He dropped two passes in two years at Utah that’s otherworldly. 

[Milanos Milano]

5 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

And then simultaneously you’re in other threads advocating for the WR from Princeton, who played football powerhouses like Cornell over Justin Shorter who played in the SEC.

 

Which one is it? 
 

 

It’s a combination of pure talent evaluation and production. Iosivas was separating on film more than Shorter was. Shorter also was playing with an all pro QB selected in the 1st round, and still couldn’t separate enough for his all pro QB to find him. That’s extremely concerning.