Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Murphy
Revolving door OC's didn't help. In today's NFL, imo, if you're going to take a QB high you MUST get him signed right away and be stable at HC & OC for his first few years. There was some complaining about how much the Falcs paid Ryan. Christ, what difference does a couple mil make at that point they were in? Same deal with Stafford. LOL JaMarcus. Bustoing out w/a high QB can set you back years. Better off just drafting the best lineman rather than reaching or playing hardball with a QB.
ESPN did an article awhile ago rehashing that draft class. It wasn't a great one. Rodgers prolly doesn't do a whole lot better in the Nolan era than Smith did, tho ldo if we had a mulligan we'd take him, or Merriman.
My hazy memory is that no one was under any illusions either was anything close to Peyton, or was all that excited leading up to the draft. Hopefully optimistic sure, but how could things have gotten any worse?
To add a more basic level to your thesis, one could say that a team needs at least a basic semblance of offense before throwing a #1 pick out there.
The Niners somehow reached the conclusion that Rattay was not the future, but really, how could they know. Rattay was thrown behind a porous line with extremely limited talent around him. Under the circumstances, Rattay looked pretty decent. In hindsight, Rattay was very productive.
The Niners then took the same threadbare offense and put Smith behind it, and he did quite poorly. This was not a surprise to much of the fanbase, many of whom figured the Niners stood a very good chance of just ruining a young quarterback. Until Gore started to come around, Smith had primitive offensive tools around him and the (lack of) results were easy to project. When the incessant weekly beating turned into actual injuries, Nolan then turned on him. Really, if you wanted to write a script for ruining a guy, the Niners followed it pretty closely. Thankfully the had the sense not to start Smith this year, but even leaving him in the conversation to draw fan base ire was a mistake.
So, yes, the rotating OCs didn't help, but it was nowhere near as much of a contributing factor to Smith falling flat as much as the basic lack of any offensive talent around him. There were some decent offensive minds around Smith among those OCs, but not much in the way of help on the playing field.
All this makes me much more sympathetic to going the free agent route for QB selection. The value seems better. The Niners in 2005 were not a franchise QB away from being a force. They took a really bad gamble on Smith and then mismanaged his development at every step.