if the niners take son of ed with the #2 overall pick i will find you all and burn your homes

White Reggie Bush!

Mitch Trubisky really gets the people going.

It's Mitchell.

Yeah... I'm on board that this might be a nice way to find a few gems, but you'll obviously miss out on a lot of players if that's your entire methodology. Of course if your only selecting factor is top athletes, you'll be more successful than a random sample, and of course if you pick the best film of those players you'll be more likely to succeed. But it's not comprehensive at all; if your only goal is "to find a handful of athletes to root for," it's fine, I guess. I just don't think it's very comprehensive or a good way to get the bigger picture.

And that's what I was getting at - it's fine to root for players because of 40 times but to then make blanket statements saying xxx is better than yyy and zzz because they have better combine results and to downgrade yyy and zzz is myopic because you haven't properly evaluated them and you're using incomplete information

But speaking of stats - did Reuben Foster's pro day results get released? Can't find them online and I'm just staggered that he seems to be getting mocked so low

Like do we really expect a hood raised middle linebacker tackling machine to be a choir boy? Because he lost his temper with some mute in a hospital we're dropping him down 15 places?

I had this big response wrote out but meh lol. Basically that's not what I do really. I find the best overall athletes then go watch the tape. It's not just 40 times. You're simplifying it to much. I don't bet on below average athletes succeeding in the NFL. It's shouldn't be difficult to understand why it's harder for them.

I was looking back and trying to find the highest rated player I missed on that I was higher than most on. Probably Jordan Matthews. He's not as good as I thought he would be. Can't deny I rated him to high.

Another player would be Ryan Shazier. I think most people would agree it's his health holding him back and not his skill/ability. Maybe some would argue it's his consistency. If he stays healthy I see an all pro season at some point still.




A few prospects I was higher than most on the last couple years

2016 - Corey Coleman, Emmanuel Ogbah


2015 - Vic Beasley, David Johnson

2014 - Ryan Shazier, Aaron Donald

People might laugh about including Aaron Donald but the only reason I take Mack and Clowney in front of him in 2014 was because of positional value. I was screaming for him to be the pick from 1.03 on. Aaron Donald still has the best college tape I think I've ever watched.

Obviously not always right. Just thought I'd share. This year the highest rated prospect nobody is really talking about I'm most confident in is Jordan Willis. I want to say Obi but admittedly he's a little riskier. I don't see him outright busting though. He's at worst a league average SS and best case is shut down corner like the league has never seen before. Most people would disagree on Obi and it's going to take a few years to find out who was right but it will be fun to look back.

waterwolves,
Can you pull your posts regarding bolded out of the archives?

Thanks!

2014 draft day 1 discussion


In response to the Shazier comment

That's not meant to call SUB nailed that post and Shazier has been somewhat of a bust so far. It's really a great post by him and I agreed with a lot of it. I thought Greg Robinson was going to be good. I liked Anthony Barr. Thought he was a safe pick but agreed in large part with the rest of it.

From the 2014 draft talk thread

Oops lol I had Mack rated high I just loved Shazier that much. Vix had a great write up on Mack that year in regards to a game he had where he looked like LT.

I can't take credit for being the only guy high on Aaron Donald though. Nath loved him too and so did Tweedy. I love Nath's stuff. We do butt heads in here but he sets me straight when I get over the top on some guys.

I have some more stuff but it's mostly on defensive players. I don't talk about offensive players much because I'm in a FF league with a bunch of 2+2ers. Didn't like Watkins much because of his jumps but I was wrong there. I did like Evans better than Watkins but I liked Cooks better than both because e he landed. Some wrong and right in there. Watkins is elite just can't get healthy. Evans is maybe the best WR in the league. Cooks is a top 10ish WR so not off to bad there.

Thanks for pulling out the old posts. Anything from 2015?

Evans is a very good WR, best in the league is a stretch IMO. Evans catch rate is poor but he's force fed.

I think I kept very quiet about David Johnson but I did PM rafiki and said DJ was the 3rd best prospect in our rookie draft. I might have sent Nath some PM's about him. After he had that amazing combine and I saw the senior game tape I was in love. BIG and agile. Just a freak and he had elite hands and route running. I didn't agree with the notion that he couldn't run in between the tackles but my thought was even if he can't he's going to catch 50 balls a year. So he didn't need to be a good inside runner to be a starting RB in FF.

I could have swore I wrote something about Beasley but I looked and nothing that I can find.

Two parts to this equation. Evans isn't the problem imo Winston is. Winston just throwing it up and praying for Evans to save him.

offensive players- Corey Davis is going to be a beast. Everything points to him being a Pro Bowler but he's being slept on a bit because of his position

I have 3 offensive players rated at an elite level in this draft. One is Fournette. I can mention him because he's going #1 in our rookie draft no matter what probably. The other 2 are probably 1st rounders but I'd rather not mention them. Fournette is not so terrible catching the ball that he can't play 3rd down and I'm confident he'll improve his pass pro. Big/fast and breaks tackles. He's a better prospect than Zeke imo.

There are a few prospects (maybe 6) at RB/WR/TE I like a lot this year that aren't getting a lot of hype. A couple of them are going to get drafted into good situations. When our draft is over I'll maybe come in here and discuss them more.

Nath looks at a lot more prospects then I do and probably more in depth. I just look at guys I like athletically really. Sometimes I'll watch a prospect that's not a great athlete but it feels like I'm kissing my cousin.

Also being slept on because injuries have kept him out of the typical pre-draft process-- no Combine or Pro Day for him. I am pretty sure he will be good but I am not sure how good. His college production definitely meets the profile you want to see from a non-Power 5 WR though.

Vic Beasley was one of those guys that should've been a fairly easily evaluation. He passed with flying colors on athletic tests (which, while not the be-all end-all, are very important for pass rushers and defensive linemen), and that athleticism translated on film and into real production. Taking Dante Fowler over him was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen a team do. Fowler wasn't better on film, measurables, or production. But he had 3 sacks in a bowl game and that impressed Dave Caldwell (who, it should be mentioned, had top-3 picks in 3 consecutive years and used them on Luke Joeckel, Blake Bortles, and Fowler).

Mockdraftable:
Dante Fowler
Vic Beasley

College stats:
Dante Fowler
Vic Beasley

If you want to learn more about WRs, I think Matt Harmon's Reception Perception series is a great place to start. Great stuff about routes run and how often a WR wins on those routes, as well as success vs. types of coverage and other data as well. (For example: Receivers who only play on one side of the field in college tend to struggle to adjust to the NFL. I might have been more tepid about Kevin White and Dorial Green-Beckham had I known that.)

Chris Godwin should be WR4 imo and my favorite later sleepers from this draft are Josh Reynolds and Isaiah Ford. I think Dede Westbrook has a strong chance to bust and that JuJu Smith-Schuster is likely to be overrated-- not to bust necessarily, but not to be as good as the hype. (Although if he was playing hurt last year and he gets healthy again, there's a chance.) (EDIT AGAIN: Favorite super deep sleepers are Jalen Robinette, DeAngelo Yancey, and Kenny Golladay.)

EDIT: One other thing I've begun to focus on is age / breakout season. Like it sounds simple but most teams don't apply it: A player who is starting/producing at age 18/19 is likely to have more upside and a bigger growth curve than a player who wasn't good enough to start/produce until he was 21/22 or older.

Hence one reason why I'm high on those three guys I mentioned-- Reynolds and Ford had pretty good freshman seasons and kept up / improved production, and while Godwin didn't produce until he was a sophomore, he and Ford are two of the three youngest receivers in this draft. (The other being Smith-Schuster, and his age and sophomore production are why I haven't totally written him off, although his junior year was not nearly as good. It is possible it's a Stefon Diggs injury situation, although with the overall track record of Pac-12 and particularly USC receivers, even highly productive ones, I have my doubts.) And I'm low on Westbrook because he made no impact in CFB until his age-23 season.

Shifting positions, I'm not as worried about Garett Bolles even though he's 25, though, because athleticism is kind of a "you have it or you don't" thing, and he has LT athleticism. It makes me wonder how reliable his film is, but age doesn't improve these measurables, which aren't a perfect stand-in but a pretty good way to approximate whether or not someone has the short-area quickness and footwork to play left tackle. Compare to a guy people raved about a few years ago but I thought was overrated, Greg Robinson. Yeah, he runs a fast 40, but look how much worse those 3-cone and short shuttle times are. My abiding memory of Robinson from the Combine was watching him trip over his own feet during a drill.

whole damn NFL and punditry had fowler over beasley, there were numerous reports that teams were trying to trade up for fowler. Almost every GM in the league would've taken fowler there.

Greg Robinson was so bad in pass protection that Auburn constantly ran roll outs away from him. Think I was the only one who noticed that.

I don't know if I noticed that but we definitely noticed "Hey, this guy never gets asked to drop back into a traditional pass set."

The Fowler love was nuts. I mean he had a pretty good first step but that was like literally all-- I think I saw him successfully turn the corner once in 3 games on film.

Rumor has it the Saints were trying to trade up to acquire Beasley, which makes me sad as of course the only time they can't pull off a trade up is the time it would've worked out great.

At least we got Stephone Anthony, a great example that athleticism isn't everything.

I def had Beasley>Fowler

Fowler's highlights were mostly A gap blitz sacks.
When the job needs you to do X and X isn't even on your highlight reel...

Anthony's failures must've been mental I guess, I thought it was a fine pick at the time. lol me.

Definitely not:

Reception perception is a game changer.

It's what I referenced earlier.