Originally posted by MadDog49er:
Forming an opinion after the NIners draft is not an objective way to grade a player, since you already have a bias to root for the guy, and see the best in a player, because you desperately want them to succeed.
This is a trap that some fall into. Nobody on the board is bemoaning the fact that we didn't select Stephen Hill, Mohamed Sanu, Rueben Randle, Brian Quick. But, we know how the game is played, If one of these guys were selected, and not Jenkins, nobody would be saddened that we didn't take Jenkins. If you are curious how much support there was on the board for Jenkins before the draft, happy hunting. There was more interest in players like Tommy Streeter. In other words, some fans will defend to the death a Niners' selection, regardless of the selection. That is not an honest evaluation. I provide an honest evaluation that does not waver on whether the team selects a player or not.
Doubt my previous statements? Please review the thread last year after the draft on which QB drafted would be most successful. It was CK in a landslide. Fans are fans, I get it. However, to criticize someone's assessment of players in the draft and defend management, hardly knowing anything about a player going into the draft is shoddy.
I have been following Jenkins and watching him for years. That is not the "exact same way" as someone who scrambles for a draft guide after the pick to figure out who we got.
So by your reasoning, ANY grade given after the draft must contain some bias. That would obviously include your own.
Please note that I have not given any grades, either to your "mock" selections, to the Niners selections, or to their draft as a whole.
Apparently your grades are based on the "anti-fan" theory that any pick made by the Niners must not be very good, since some fans will favor the pick just because it was a Niner pick. You say, in essence: "All fans must be wrong to support any Niner pick, so no Niner pick is any good."
Your admitted anti-Baalke bias distorts your view of the Niner draft just as surely as any fan's enthusiastic support for the team may color their view of the Niner picks. And that's true irrespective of whether one learns more about players before the draft, or after.
You post that you've been following Jenkins and watching him for years, undoubtedly because he played at Illinois and you live in Ohio--Big Ten territory. I live in California, and frequently watched LeMichael James play throughout his career at Oregon. So I may not have known as much about Jenkins as I did about LMJ, prior to the draft. But that doesn't mean I haven't done any research about them, both.
I also get to see every Niner game, either live or on local TV. How many Niner games have you been to in the past, say three years? Those games are not broadcast locally in Ohio. So you're stuck with highlights on ESPN, local newspaper reports, or watching games once in awhile down at some restaurant or bar. Based on that, one could argue that you're not paying close enough attention to the Niners to really have a full understanding of the changes in the team over the past year or so, and because of that, you really aren't very well prepared to evaluate their draft strategy or their picks. When's the last time you went to a Niner game, or training camp session?
That kind of conjecture cuts both ways.
I don't claim to be an draft expert, nor did I compare your "mock" to the Niner's draft in order to evaluate or defend either of them. I simply wanted to use the comparison as a means to better understand what the Niners were trying to accomplish in this years draft. It was a very helpful exercise, for me, in that regard.
Sorry if you were upset because your selections did not get sufficient praise. Wasn't my intent to offend, just to compare. Your own grades and written evaluations of each of the Niners' selections were a consideration in the comparisons made. It was easy, for example, to show that Trent Robinson was a better pick for the team in the 5th round partially because you gave him high marks. On the other hand, your pick for that round, RB Vick Ballard, would be competing for time behind not just Gore, but behind Hunter, Jacobs, Dixon, and Cartwright. I don't need to know how Ballard scored on the Wonderlic, or what he had for breakfast, or what his major was in college, to see that he'd have his work cut out for him just to make the team.
You state: "I provide an honest evaluation that does not waver [sic] on whether the team selects a player or not." Being honest about the draft does not mean you have to downgrade every single Niner selection, sometimes in spite of your own evaluation. An example: Fleming: "A good football player. Athletic, quick and productive." Your own words, and you make him sound like an above average pick for a fifth rounder. Yet you give his selection a "D" grade. You had to stretch the facts and "speculate" (imagine) that he's only 6'1" and taken as an ILB, in order to argue that he's not a good fit for the team. That doesn't sound like an honest evaluation, based on your own words.
Obviously, honest, fair and impartial draft evaluations are a good thing. Your claim that you are providing those is somewhat belied by your own words, however. Too many criticisms based on speculation, unsupported hypotheticals, meritless claims.
It raises an interesting question: Which is worse, a fan who supports his team and roots for each and every draft selection to be successful, or a draft "expert" who ignores his own stated evaluations in order to criticize a team's draft? The former may be a fanatic; the latter is being unfair.
