So I've been kicking around the idea that the 6th and 7th round is pointless

[Happy Panther]

I don't care to watch the 6 orth 7th rounds but these picks are important. Teams are defined by their depth as much as they are by their stars. The guy you draft in the 7th might be a STs guy and our 3rd LB. 

[iamhubby1]

I don't care to watch the 6 orth 7th rounds but these picks are important. Teams are defined by their depth as much as they are by their stars. The guy you draft in the 7th might be a STs guy and our 3rd LB.

Yupperz. Bad teams need these picks. You need depth, and future starters from these guys. Not all late round picks are total failures.

Well, let's just get rid of the last two rounds cuz, you know, some people don't want to watch it. Give me a break.

Crappy teams would lose out on talent. It may not be the brightest talent, but it may make a difference on your roster. Otherwise, every player would want to go to the Cowboys, NE, or one of the better teams.

You draft in the later rounds to fill in your depth, and hope to hit it big once in a while.

Hey, I got an idea. Let's use the interwebz to draft players. Fans can vote, GMs can tabulate then make the picks. I mean, who cares about those last two rounds anyway? Just teams that still have hopes that a player they like will still be there.

Thread was goofy. Hope I added to it.

[frash.exe]

I don't care to watch the 6 orth 7th rounds but these picks are important. Teams are defined by their depth as much as they are by their stars. The guy you draft in the 7th might be a STs guy and our 3rd LB.

This is pretty much how the draft breaks down in general for any GM

Round 1: instant impact player/starter

Round 2/3: instant solid contributors you can expect to have a good chance of starting eventually

Round 4/5: "Niche" players with unique skill sets that need development (and may have played in a small school where they dominated) but nevertheless have a measure of potential that could work out

Round 6/7: throw poo at the wall and hope to god it sticks somehow

[smash_n_dash]

Why did i just waste 5 minutes of my life reading this poo

[frash.exe]

Why did i just waste 5 minutes of my life reading this poo

Maybe it's because you're illiterate so you don't get anything out of scanning your eyeballs back and forth

Still I can't find one person to argue hard facts against this. There's been nothing but conjecture and misinformed opinion presented by people who hate this idea

[smash_n_dash]

Illiterate would suggest I wouldn't be able to form a thought and type it on a computer.

 

Regardless of your impulse to attack anything that isnt in agreement with you, I'll add to the topic.  How about you decide to turn off the TV tomorrow when round 5 has concluded, thus getting the result you want; You don't have to see the picks of round 6 or 7.

 

To further add to the topic: I slightly agree with you.  Specifically with the idea that picking a player in round 6 or 7 that is going to be a starter at some point is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.  But, why not add the 5th round to that too?  Why do you get to choose the cut off at round 5? What if one year has so much college talent that there really should be a need for a 6th round.  What if one year there is so little talent that a 5th round is almost pointless?

 

I think what other posters have said is quite valid, which is, why fix something thats not really an issue?

[frash.exe]

Because "why fix what ain't broken" is the most overused, overrated argument against any kind of progressive thinking you can ever think of. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the mother of gross oversights and the murderer of innovation. Simply by principle (that is, "there's nothing observably wrong so let's not ponder a minute about dotting our Is or trying to improve upon such") fosters disaster.

People who reject that philosophy are the people who've invented smartphones and tablets which you currently use to your advantage. They're the ones who thought 56k was slow as poo and developed broadband internet. If you are a proponent of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crew, you're probably just a guy who has never had a creative thought pop up in his head in his entire life.

As for why I thought the fifth round should be spared, I think the fifth round still offers a justifiable talent pool for players who have skill sets or measurables but may not have brought it all together to be a well oiled machine of a prospect. Scouting has become so evolved and much more accurate at this point that barely any good players actually slip through the cracks anymore.

[B.BERSIN]

Someone obviously don't know who Tom Brady is.

[frash.exe]

Someone obviously don't know who Tom Brady is.

Oh sweet this is like the fifth time someone mentioned Brady even after I'd addressed it pages ago. So we need GMs to go through the motions of pretending to know what's crap and what's not in the late rounds forever because that one year Tom Brady was drafted?

Kurt Warner was an undrafted free agent who worked at a grocery store at a certain point before a coach in the league gave him a second chance. Doesn't mean we should bring more rounds back so the next Kurt Warner doesn't have to play in arena league before getting a shot. Exceptions don't make the rules unless obviously you are an idiot.

[smash_n_dash]

You can't compare improvements in technology, science or industry, all of which affect the whole world, to the NFL.

Fine, to you, the draft has issues, just like nothing else in the league is perfect. You suggest that all the players that normally get drafted in the 6th or 7th are now UDFAs. That just means that richer teams or teams with recent success are more likely to sift through the ashes and have a stronger chance to pick up the Tom Bradys and other clearly talented players. NFL teams would still spend just as much time doing this than the 6th or 7th rounds in the draft. The end result: a lot less players would be in the NFL, you get to see less Cinderella stories, and the draft is shorter, yay.

Sent from my iPhone.

[Carl Spackler]

As in, there is no incentive to waste time going through this dog and pony show process beyond 5 rounds. Like a player that fell out of the draft? Just pursue them after the draft. The talent curve has flatlined by the time the 6th and 7th round gets here, the only thing the announcers are doing by then is recapping the first three rounds and how good the patriots are at trading into the 2nd and getting some asshole OG from Nebrahoma State. Yes, you could argue that we picked Greg Hardy in the 6th but at the same time you can just schedule a contract signing post draft. And hypothetically if there was an 8th round in an alternate universe somewhere Vontaze Burfict would've been picked there. In 1993 several players that ended up being good were drafted in the 8th round and that's the last time they cut it down. Today the 7th round return is nowhere near that. Teams used to build through the draft (in a literal sense, not in the "wanting to sign free agents is a dirty sin against god" sense) a lot more back then. In 1993, 6 pro bowlers were drafted in the 7th. That's twice as many as the 6th and 7th rounds combined from the 2010 draft.

I know the draft is a ratings grab and people are going to watch it until the end no matter what, so more rounds basically = more money for ESPN and the NFL Network, but I lost interest in following it past the fourth round years ago, and in a practical sense, there's no purpose for GMs to be doing this because it's clear that there's no discerning what's actually good in the crap pile at least past the fifth round and they might as well be picking names out of a hat by then.

 

In '87, Huey released this...Fore, their most accomplished album...

[Icege]

Hall of famers were also drafted in the later rounds they also eventually got rid of

We're all going to die someday, so why bother living today?