WhoKnows

Film can lie. Greg Little had great stats coming out. It was his combine drills and testing that showed that he didn’t really have the athleticism and balance to make it in the NFL. Trey Smith’s RAS score showed the difference between him and Deonte Brown because both were pre-draft day 2 guys. Our problem is our recent/current GMs/scouts haven’t shown the ability to use all of the data to confirm that a good tape guy can transition to the NFL or a good athlete can transition because he wasn’t used right or in the best scheme. We seem to take one of the pieces of data and run with that and ignore the other pieces. The good, consistent drafting teams seem to know what works well for them and how to find those good players.

Good scouting trumps all. Game tape sometimes has to be taken with the grain of salt that the combine does. Greg Little was in fact a top 15 pick just based on his college play. Remember how few pressures/1 sack given up in his career? There are a lot of players that prospects play against who aren’t good enough to play in the pros. Unfortunately, our scouting and GM have been terrible from 2018 to 2024 and we happen to have a lot of examples where RAS scores don’t guarantee success and game tape doesn’t guarantee success. Look at Deonte Brown. His RAS score was horrible but he had Nick Saban’s seal of approval and was listed at a day 2 pick just on his college play. The RAS score and playing on a loaded line should have been our red flag. We ignored Trey Smith who also was listed as a day 2 pick just on his college play. Both players dropped but Smith performed because KC handled his medical concerns as NFL Teams should with their resources. Our problem was we ignored Brown’s horrific RAS score and ignored the fact that Smith’s great RAS score backed up the game tape. Anyway, our issue isn’t that we go game tape over RAS scores or vice versa. Our issue is that we seemingly can’t put everything together and find good NFL talent.

Until we scout well and actually draft the real BPAs instead of drafting for needs, our drafts will continue to suck. Our best draft since 2017 appears to be 2021 according to the huddle. Not one other fanbase would be satisfied with a top 8 pick that played half of his games in his rookie contract and an OK RB as a “good draft” and no, I’m not mentioning backup level guys. This is Morgan’s last draft unless we can get more than one impact starter.

I agree. I still can’t believe that people actually want to say he never got a chance. This thread basically says 2021 was Fitterer’s only “good” draft and Rhule was in charge (his wife liked Hubbard). Fitterer had control in 2022 and 2023 and look at those. Again, the big posters said Rhule was on the hot seat to start 2022 and that Fitterer owned the draft and personnel. People want to blame it all on Tepper but to anyone that read the draft articles saw how Fitterer described how he and Reich were in agreement before and after the draft process on Young. He also mentioned that he had Young as his top QB the year before when they were looking at the 2022 QBs like Corral. Fitterer was 100% on Young for 2 years and he’s the guy (Morgan agreed with this as well) who turned down the Burns trade. Fitterer was truly awful and his utterly awful decisions can’t be blamed on everyone else. The only thing that makes sense for how bad he was is that Seattle saw an opportunity to cripple our franchise and Fitterer intentionally made all those bad moves.

I wanted Fitterer gone (whole GM/scouting) with Rhule. I was told I was wrong by so many and it set us back another 3-4 years.

Not me, just another reach and waste of a 3rd and 4th (Fitterer special). Then again I wasn’t in charge of a record breaking defense last season so I really shouldn’t comment.

No kidding. God forbid Young regresses or DCs get more tape on him and work on how to stop him. We still need a real influx of talent on this team. We haven’t improved this team in a draft in 7 years and if we reach again at 8, our OL just gets older while we waste yet another draft.

Lol. Make some noise? Dude has 0.5 sacks in his career and he’ll be turning 27 in October. At his pace, he’ll be 40 when he has his 4th NFL sack.

Huh? In what way did I compare them other than using Funchess as an example of pro day numbers improving over combine numbers. Unlike Tet, Funchess did run at the combine so we can see the impact of HFA pro day times. For Funchess it was 4.7 to 4.5 and Tet was unknown to 4.48. 4.5 flat and 4.48 aren’t much different so I’d suspect Tet would have run a 4.6+ at the combine.

Almost like picking the first RB coming off a severe injury in a weak class and realizing we won’t even know what we have until we have 2 cheap years left.

I don’t want to be a downer but when we were like 1 loss away from jumping to the top pick, the draft was looking fun and maybe getting us some picks in a trade down. If we take a safety at 8, ugh, what a punch to the gut that’ll be.

What? I’m living in reality. It’s been shown so many times that pro day numbers magically bring down bad combine results. I didn’t call him Funchess, just using him as an example where he magically got faster at his pro day. It happens all the time in the real world. Sorry man, McMillan isn’t a 4.48 combine guy. If we take him at 8, his speed is in question. One of his weaknesses is top end speed and getting separation deep. That doesn’t equate to 4.48 combine speed so his pro day speed should be viewed with skepticism.

As I posted in another thread, that 4.48 pro day is a 4.6+ combine result. Funchess ran 4.7 at the combine and 4.5 at Michigan’s pro day. Sorry, but when other first round prospects are running and you don’t, it means you know you ain’t running 4.48 at the combine. McMillan isn’t as good a prospect IMHO as last year’s big 3, so he should have run at the combine if he was legitimately that fast. He may do well in the NFL but he’s not 4.48 like the guys who ran that at the combine.

Funchess ran a 4.5 at his pro day after running a 4.7 at the combine. A 4.48 is probably a 4.6x at the combine. If he could actually run a combine 4.48, there is no way he would have skipped it.

You’d think we’d learn a bit when we tell a prospect we’ll draft him at the end of the 1st/early 2nd, the prospect tells everybody that we are picking him and no other team makes an attempt to “steal” that prospect. Normal teams would realize, hmm, maybe we got him because everyone else didn’t think he was worth it.

2018 to present, we have have wearing the suit. Maybe we eventually take it off, but unfortunately we haven’t given the suit to Goodwill yet.

I’m pretty sure I was one of those people although it was because we already had him under contract for 2025. Your suggestion made no sense because he’s either playing for us or retiring/sitting out. He can’t really force our hand because we want him playing with us and we’d get nothing in trade value. I still don’t get the extra money. He got a signing bonus which is why his salary for this year was “only” $6M but his 3 year deal was $8.3M per year. We already took care of him when he was released as an older player. We gave him the chance to be a key cog and to play for 3 years. I remember when Gettleman was fired for not being nice to Olsen and we let Hurney throw extra money to him. We got 79 receptions out of Olsen in 2 years after throwing $15M more to him right after he missed 9 or 10 games at 32. It’s a business and we had no reason to coddle Thielen after we gave him $25M and a great opportunity when no one else would.

Were you completely missing when the Rams offered us 2 1sts and a 2nd for Burns? If we wouldn’t trade him for that, then he better have a signed extension in hand. We flubbed it twice, once for not getting that haul and once for not even having Burns already extended before having to trade him. We waited until after Bosa signed and after the Redskins have Sweat away for peanuts. Rams got Steve Avila (starting G), Jared Verse (nice Burns replacement) and still have their 2025 1st. We could have replaced Burns, had a young starting guard and @ $40M in cap instead of Lewis and had another 1st in a deep DL draft. Those of us who wanted the trade have every right to be smug.

My fault for using them as a competent franchise example. Williams looks completely washed after the knee injury. I’d much rather have Dowdle, still prefer a rookie this year to either.

Good. We needed a nice value signing. It’s still funny how much we overvalue our guys even with winning 2-7 wins a year over 7 years. People mentioned we might lose BC to a starting contract elsewhere. He’s a good backup but clearly no one is giving a 29 year old backup a huge deal. I think he’s thinking his best chance at starting is if Moton retires or is released in the next couple years.

Well, the Cowboys are a bad drafting team as well so they’d be stupid to let Williams stop them from drafting a RB as well. Williams is completely below average at this point. Post injury, he’s been meh at best. I would be even more pissed if we signed him over a rookie.

Exactly, which is why I don’t like this. Dowdle is a JAG. If he wasn’t, the Cowboys would have extended him. They are clearly going RB in the draft. There were several RBs taken last year day 3 that would be suitable complimentary RBs to Hubbard and there will be again this year. Oh well, at least it’s not much but it will be annoying if somehow we skip over this RB class.

What? This is the best RB class in a long time. If we let Dowdle on a 1 year deal stop us from selecting a RB, we really are the worst drafting team out there. We have a lot of day 3 picks and there is no doubt there will be several RBs as BPA for a few of those. Personally, I feel like we are throwing money away. That $6M covers a 4th/5th round RB’s 4 year rookie deal. I’d rather have Hubbard, Brooks and a 2025 rookies as our RB corps. It just seems silly that we’re going to be paying our RBs $17M in 2025 and we won’t have our RB of the future playing at all.

I feel better just because we moved from a paper bag to a plastic one. Getting Derrick Brown back is more exciting than everything we’ve done so far. Heck, if we draft well, it will have more of an impact. It will be interesting to see if the results come to fruition.

You guys are both right. The problem is that when you have a bad drafting GM/scouts, the “hope” is more of a guess than a surprise bust. Was it a surprise when Brooks got hurt again? Was it a surprise that XL didn’t adjust faster than expected and was still raw at his age? Better teams reduce hope so if someone busts, it is a legit surprise. Bad teams (like us) are just guessing and tend to just focus on the positives and ignore the risks that make a bust not surprising. Let’s see if 2025 turns the corner in the draft. I’m still not optimistic because for all intents it seems to be the same team as the last GM.