Originally posted by 49er-from-Yavin-IV:
Great insight as usual, Marvin.
With the draft coming up, do you have any thoughts on the 49er's FO, specifically in regards to talent evaluation?
I can't dispute that in the past eight years (noting some FO turnover) they have been great at bringing in talent, but I can't help but wonder about some of their evaluations. No team is going to be perfect, but it sure seems like some of their competitors get a helluva lot right where the 49ers don't. In some instances it is a matter of draft positioning, but in others the 49ers have totally whiffed on bad players while passing on good players who get snatched up and turn out to be great for other teams. Yes, this happens all the time, but I think it shows that, as with any other aspect of an organization, the 49ers need to evaluate their player evaluation skills. I see the 49ers have serviceable players in the secondary, but when I see Seattle's secondary dominating opponents with two 5th round picks, its like what the hell are our (the 49ers) scouts seeing out there. They've done enough to merit the benefit of the doubt, but more draft years like 2012 and the 49ers will be heading back to mediocrity. I would like to see the 49ers FO be improved at the ability to identify the tangible and intangible skills of players who fall through the cracks to the later rounds, but end up meriting a higher draft position. Yeah, some folks will say well no s*** Sherlock we'd all like for the FO to be perfect at drafting, but it pisses me off to see our closest rival walking away with the Lombardi trophy when we failed after being so close three years in a row. So close, it seems like just a matter of talent in some areas of the team. We are extremely talented, and most teams would love to be in the 49er's position, but that doesn't mean the 49ers FO can't be better at bringing more in.
The 49ers talent evaluators are just fine. I have no problems with them. Moreover they know how to work the draft to move around, obtain more picks, and just give themself more maneuverability than any other team. Walsh and Belichick did the same thing.
You are looking at one case in particular with Chancellor and Sherman...but that is really the exception, not the rule. Seattle didn't expect those guys to be that good. Sure they thought they had potential, but if they thought they were going to be that good there is no way in hell they'd have waited till the 5th round to select them.
Seattle has done very, very well for themselves in the later rounds of the draft. They are far from perfect though. They don't hit on all of those pics. They got a bunch of them and picked a number of players. When you take a bunch of guys your chances of getting lucky and hitting on a couple goes way up.
Sound familiar? The 49ers had 11 picks last year and hold 12 selections THIS year.
I'm sorry, but I am not going to doubt the personnel department that drafted Anthony Davis, Mike Iupati, Navorro Bowman, Aldon Smith, Colin Kaepernick, Bruce Miller, and Eric Reid...and those are just the starters. Culliver and Kilgore may very well become starters this year. If they do, that would be NINE players selected in the last 4 years that are starting...and we could even add Vance McDonald to the list. Thats almost half the starters on the team.
Baalke and co. are just fine thank you.
[ Edited by Marvin49 on Feb 3, 2014 at 12:29 PM ]