Originally posted by NYniner85:
I said those picks late day 3 don't matter as much with reaching…if you take a guy like Jones in the 5th vs having 6th rd grade on him the difference isn't as meaningful. No one is expected them to be big time contributors that late in the draft.
why didn't SF take Kittle in the 3rd when they had a 3rd re grade on him?? Because they knew they could get him later.
whats famine is how poorly they've drafted on day 2…a spot where they've been loaded with picks and they've tossed a bunch of those picks in the trash. Reaching all over the place for kickers, WRs, RBs, TEs etc. the proof is in the pudding…you can move goalposts and deflect all ya want. Doesn't matter.
Those late round wins are evidence they are good at scouting and picking players for their system. That contrasted with their day 2 failures is itself interesting. Why are they so good late and so bad early? Yeah they take players that are lower on the consensus board often there ... but what is their thought process to get there? We don't know at all ... we tend to blame Kyle ... but really we have very little idea why they keep doing it.
To clarify, much like Walsh and Montana, they didn't KNOW Kittle would be there in the 5th, they HOPED he'd be there in the 5th, and they ended up getting that one right. But we can't assume that is how it's going to play out even half the time.
One thing they do sometimes that I appreciate is they value having a lot of picks just like the Ravens. The more picks the more likely you win on more picks.
We know that some positions have more misses in early rounds (success at those positions are in the 50% range in the first and drop to 15% range in the 3rd) and some have more hits (near 80% in the first to 50% in the third). One way to get more "wins" would be just to never draft those high risk positions early (WR is the worst, OL is the best). That would, in aggregate make those drafts look better in the long run, but it also doesn't necessarily result in a winning team or happy fans :)
