injured player strategy

Originally posted by Butter:

Great post! The Niners have limited roster spots. Instead of stashing them for "redshirt year, just trade upnans draft quality over quantity.

Stashing guys for redshirt year allows you to carry more talent on the roster then when active players come up for free agency or their play declines the redshirt guys can come in and the team won't miss a beat.

It's a gamble but it's a great way to collect talent and keeping them secure on your roster without making them available on waivers.

Originally posted by MC9BEAT:

I understand the logic behind using a 5th-7th rd pick on an injured player and gambling. The risk is low , especially on a deep team like the 49ers where it is not easy for late picks to even make the team.

The real question is should we be gambling picks in the 1st 4 rounds.

in the last 2 years we have gamebled on:

Tank Carradine - early 2nd rd pick

Thomas - 3rd rd pick

Lattimore - 4th rd pick

Tank we have not seen mid 2nd yr
Thomas we won't see till next year
Lattimore quit and was a completely wasted pick

So far not so good. That's 2 players we could have had on the roster last year and this year and another we could have had this season.

It's all risk/reward. The reward had to be significant enough to offset having to wait a year to see them play and taking the risk as well that they may not return to form.

Ask any GM and they will tell you that it's common practice to value a pick next year as 1 round later than a pick this year. Trading a 4th rd pick this year has the same value as a 3rd rd pick next season. The waiting for a season should then equall 1 rd in value by itself. Then you need to add more value for the risk that the player does not return to form. I tend to believe that a player should have gone at least 2 rounds sooner if they were healthy to be drafted with a serious injury. The exception being the 1st rd where values can change greatly within the round.

What's done is done so now all we can do is pray that Tank and Thomas pan out. I do think we should stop gambling early picks for awhile.

Thomas was the final pick of the 3rd and a pick that cannot be traded (comp pick), whereas Lattimore (also a comp pick) was one of the final picks of the 4th.

And while that could be 2 more players on the roster it is also 2 fewer contributors from our current roster. Those rookies may not be ready to play from day 1 and you are cutting 2 guys off the 53 who can play and contribute now.

It is risk vs reward, and with the draft there is always some risk involved. If these guys pan out Baalke looks like a genius, if they do not then we get threads like this. It is also easy to talk about guys like Bryant and Ellington now, but in a few years there will be a longer list of guys who were drafted in those same rounds who did not pan out.