The Consigliere

That take is ludicrous. If he can’t be 100% for the combine and pro day it will only hurt him. People casually assuring us that risking your entire future as a pro for the bowl season is just so rich. Let me point to Jake Butt, Bryce Love, that LB the cowboys took a doubtless others who saw their futures flushed down the toilet for last career game appearances. I hope Corral is fine but nothing is guaranteed as he found out last night. Bad medicals on him and he drops rounds, not slots.

No it wasn’t. You can do the latter though and I understand why.

I don’t really care about the consensus here, I care what the people at rotoviz and rotounderworld think and the analytics community in dynasty generally. I compare the takes, watch a bit and make my views based on consensus w/my own hunches weighing in. precombine consensus had Swift and Taylor dualing for #1. Combine pushed Taylor into #1. Swift, Akers and Dobbins in a 3 way battle for #2 status w/CEH elevated by landing spot. Im not concerned w/ where these guys go in the actual draft as NFL teams are now drafting these guys later based on basically moneyball RB valuations and the rb age cliff. Personally I think the smarter play is to take these guys 30-32 so you can use the 5th year option and avoid the consistently horrible 2nd contact disasters w/the position but if you can get really youn rbs like javonte, or Akers it can still make sense because they will likely perfor, longer on a second contract. Najee’s age is why I viewed that steeler decision as moronic. Dude is 2 years older than Javonte, he’lol have to break the age cliff curse to be worth that selection. As for this years class. I care not a whit about what Michigan State did or did not do, I care about their athleticism, age, production, 3 down skill set. That’s it. Hall, Spiller and charbonnet trump Walker in terms of production, age and 3 down skill set for the most part. Athletic testing is the last data point. I wish, we,ve been habitually taking short cuts and quick fixes and then taking our medicine in bad draft classes (‘94, ‘02, ‘19) or targeting the wrong guy in good and bad classes (‘12 and ‘05).

Feel free to rip me or drag my old moronic takes all you want. I’m fine w/it. It’s a message board to argue one’s pov, if you’re wrong you should own it, nobody is losing employment over a random take on a message board. McQueen can —— on my Reagor love too (had him as the #3 over my #4 Jefferson). I had the ‘18 QB class backwards, I took seriously velocity testing w/Watson etc. My takes are a bit different from what you think, for instance I wanted to consider trading for Darnold for a day 3 pick not the insane overpay Carolina gave (and w/Fields still available!?!?). I had Rosen #2 in ‘18. I still have to evaluate these QBs for dynasty but overall there I’ve skated by thanks to hitting on Mahomes,Kyler And a bunch of dual threat not as good in real life QB’s. Im much better w/RBs and WR’s then QB’s though and even there I had plenty of misses in the ‘20 class at WR (liked Reagor, Mims and Edwards too much, thankfully I put the bulk of my stock in Lamb). As for the ‘22 class, my main issue is the prospects are uniformallyweaker than the ‘20, ‘21 and ‘23 classes. Just like five years ago we’ve settled on prioritizing QB in the wrong offseason. Maybe we get lucky but I’m skeptical.

In fairness to him it’s basically him vs Alabama. Michigan got an even worse beat down vs Georgia and their QB’s had far more surrounding talent to help them.

No, they’re tanking for ‘23. We aren’t relevant to the Cowboys. We’re relevant to teams ranking for Bryce Young. Nothing we do should be concerned w/the Cowboys.

I would not, not in a million years. ‘23 is a great draft, ‘22 isn’t.

It was not and is not hindsight. A team w/o a franchise QB should draft a franchise QB period. This should be obvious. I would have taken Tua or traded down and taken Tua (the latter) and gotten us a borderline bust rather than Herbert but that’s still preferable to the delusion that a franchise edge trumps a franchise QB. You always take the QB swing if you don’t have one, period. The only reason I’m skeptical this year is my concern that none of these guys are close to the prospect guys like Burrow, Tua, Herbert, Lawrence, and Fields we’re (I liked Lance (whose more of a Malik + to me and was okay with Mac, did not rate Wilson) while ‘23 is a vastly superior class so I’d try to gain assets for that class and bottom out in ‘22. Not gonna happen, I know. I think Wilson, Corral and Howell are the most attractive options of this years guys.

We lose nearly all sos tiebreakers. Any win hurts us.

Saw him in person at three games while watching w/two PT’s. Both were very alarmed at his knee/leg and shocked at his draft status.

My big problem w/this take is kind of lazy but it’s based on a clear likely scenario that will lead to even more wrongthink from the fan base, the same sort of wrongthink that justified Chase Young over a QB, and tried to justify the idiocy of not trading up for a QB last year. If we draft a QB early in ‘22, odds are we’ll land another bust. This is a draft far more in common w/‘11, ‘13, ‘14 and ‘19 than ‘17-‘18 (and ‘18 still largely missed!), and ‘20-‘21, and it was why I argued we should go hard at QB in 20 and ‘21 or wait till ‘23. Now we’re gonna repeat the mistakes that lead to us passing on guys in the loaded ‘04, ‘17, ‘20 , ‘21 type classes by likely landing a bust or getting veteraness duct tape and then passing on the position in a class much more likely to deliver a potential savior in ‘23 and worst of all if/when we draft another bust in the spring people will fault the drafting process instead of the redskins/wft process which is the real problem.

No it wasn’t. Taylor ran for 2000 yards 3 consecutive seasons. Walker topped 1000 once. It’s not remotely comparable in any universe. He’s a good rb in this class bu there’s a reason Hall and Spiller are ahead of him. I’d be targeting Charbonnet as he can be had much cheaper than any of them and comes w/a 5 star recruiting resume. Also worth noting that Hall and Spiller are legit 3 down backs that put up strong receiving #’s and Charbonnet finally added that to his game this year. Walkers made no impact as a pass catcher so he’s too much of a play telegrapher. That being said, plenty of guys like Fournette and Derrick Henry added that element as pro’s so it’s not automatically a no especially for a guy who only broke out this year. I love the prospect, ftr, I just see the take as way over the top. Every Top RB in the ‘20 class and ‘21 class and at least 2 in this one had/have better CV’s other than CEH, snd the Taylor comp is sheer lunacy. Taylor’s profile matched well w/LT2, Barkley’s, and Adrian Peterson, and superseded Gurley’s, Zeke’s and Fournettes. I wouldn’t put Walker in the top 25 of the past 15 years whereas Taylor is a top 2-3 guy of this era. Just going by how they were rated in draft years since ‘20 I had Taylor, Swift, Dobbins, Akers, Etienne, Javonte, Harris, Breece and Spiller above him and maybe Charbonnet and CEH. Gibbons I underrated (and some others too). All this being said, in a bad RB class, he’s one of the few legit options, just saying he wouldn’t have made my top 5 in any of the past six classes except ‘19 (even worse class) and this ‘22 class.

For whatever reason Mims is out with them. They should've traded him before the deadline as they clearly aren't planning on using him and he has 2.5 years left on his rookie deal, just move him and get some comp. I think Mims could be something, I'd love to go after him on the cheap (offer like a 6th or something), but there are tons of WR's like that that represent underutilized values (Tyler Johnson in Tampa is another one, Bryan Edwards in Oakland etc).

I don't think the excitement angle matters because generally that kind of vibe doesn't stick if the winning isn't hand and hand w/the excitement. I think if Willis hits, that's what matters. If he's a legit franchise QB, then that's what matters. The fan's only fill the stands consistently for winners. Very few fan bases show up perpetually regardless of results. Even our fan base eventually was basically killed by 25 years of bad ownership (the end of the Cooke era was bad, six straight years of ----- performances, and then Snyder showed us what genuinely bad, cancerous bad ownership could be over the ensuing 22 years). Some fans are gone period (almost like me), others can only be brought back by sustained success. SImple as that. Nothing else will do it. We've had one and done's ('99, '05, '07, '12, '15), and one exciting one and done ('12), but nothing ever stuck because they were all one and done's. I hope Willis falls to us, I'd take it, I don't see a franchise QB with any of these guys other than maybe Willis, and maybe Corral, but I'm better at telling who sucks, then whose actually good. It's just worth noting that in a draft w/QB's like this, it's best to just target the highest ceiling guys who also have impeccable mental make up/work habit reports. If Willis has the latter, I'm in, if he doesn't, the ceiling doesn't matter.

I have no sense for any of them, but I do find one thing interesting, at least as a question: Why does Pickett finally putting it together as he's an overage prospect trump Howell doing it from day 1 as a freshman? Howell was very good to superb as a freshman and as a sophmore, slipped as a junior. His #'s were remarkably consistent other than completion percentage which jumped freshman to sophmore year. Did it from day one. Pickett was utterly anonymous until his final overage season. Why shouldn't Howell be the better prospect? You lose Javonte Williams, Michael Carter, Dyami Brown, and Dazz Newsome? Probably not surprising that your play falls off. They aren't like Alabama where it's 5 stars all day long, just reloading. Not arguing for Howell so much as wondering why Pickett's final breakout season matters more than Howell's consistency when he was younger? Howell's CV just looks better, period, I have no idea in terms of film study and what not, just looking at the CV's.

He needs better examples: Baker transferred from Texas Tech to Oklahoma after his freshman years and immediately started killing it from year 1 at Oklahoma: 129 TD's vs 21 picks across those last 3 years, nearly identical seasons other than YPA which jumped 2 yards for his final 2 years an accuracy which jumped into the 70's his final two years. Mac Jones is a bit closer as he just had a 140 throws and about 4 or 5 starts as a sophmore, but like Mayfield, he was great too, as a sophmore in the limited action. So I don't know, Pickett sounds more like Burrow to me, except he's not doing it with megatalent like Burrow was (2 of the best 3 or 4 WR prospects of the past decade were on that LSU team).

if it wasn't for Burrow doing something similar in '19, I'd be completely ignoring him as a 1st round prospect. Overage prospects killing it against kids 3 years younger is nearly ALWAYS a red flag with a player these days. The best go into the draft early, if you're a senior, it's usually (not always) a bad sign, especially if you were irrelevant the majority of your previous years. It is super relevant with WR's, and to a lesser extent with other positions. With QB's, I don't really know, if a guy is killing it immediately it's a good sign, it's more, why was this guy mediocre every single season until he was a senior? Usually it's not a good sign, at all, that you couldn't do squat until your final year, but there are contrary examples.

Depends on the class. In '05 when the Niners idiotically took Smith at 1.01, I told my dad (a niners fan) and friends (I'm from the bay) that they should just trade up for Rodgers, because Smith was a low floor low ceiling prospect, and Rodgers was a high floor guy. Nobody ever does that, they didn't, and I'm sure they wish they did, just like I'm sure all of us wish Gibbs hadn't developed a laser focus on Campbell above all else in that draft (and a mediocre corner prospect who needed lasik). It's a waste of assets, to be fair, but when it comes to QB, the tactic that seems to work best is taking a QB fairly often in the round 2-4 zone even if you have one, if you love a guys upside. Periodically you hit, and have a huge asset you can trade for goodies, and a great backup for injury. Some teams like the Packers have done that repeatedly over the years and reaped some nice draft comp for it. The big issue is in my experience, looking back, when the league itself is down on a draft class, they are right. There are sometimes hidden gems in the class, but generally the classes where the league is blase about the talent end up being bad classes, and the classes they tend to like, are usually at least solid. Bad ones they called bad ahead of time and were right: 2002 2003 2005 2008 2009 2010 2013 2014 2015 and 2016 after the top 2 2019 Only one I can think of where they were kinda off was 2000 which gave up Drew Brees and Tom Brady outside the top 29 or thereabouts, and also featured Vick. At the time it was viewed as Vick, and not much else if memory serves. 1999 was perceived by me and plenty others as the best since '83 but it went over like a fart in church: 1: Couch-Bust 2: D. McNabb-Hit 3: Akili Smith-Bust 4. Culpepper-Hit 5. Cade McNown-Bust And in fairness, my value pick, Culpepper basically had a short career, was good like '99-'05 or something like that, and then flamed out, so only 1 out of 5 built a long term career. I had those guys rated: 1.Culpepper 2. Couch 3. McNabb 4. Smith Undraftable-McNown (saw him live against my alma mater (Cal) and he was horrific. Really, really weak arm. It was obvious he didn't have the arm, the bears took him anyway. Anyway, to me, I trust the generalized consensus the year before the draft, I'm gun shy about fast risers I never heard of in their final overage draft year, and only target drafts for QB when it's a good class: so for me, part of the problem with the redskins if they've repeatedly gone after QB's in crappy draft classes: '94, '02, '05, '19. The only year they went after QB where it was actually good was '12. Our biggest issue is we focused on DL instead of a QB solution when we knew we didn't have a long term QB in '17 and '18 (Cousins was going to leave, Alex Smith was a stupid stop gap decision (as heroic as he was in taking us to the playoffs and sabotaging our chance to get Fields or Mac Jones in '21) and again in '20. Now it's a bad class so we can overpay for an older option or draft yet another bad class high risk guy and pretend we took the problem seriously. We haven't, we didn't, and now we are paying for it, just as we were before, and just as we will continue to do barring a miracle.

I was just lazy with him. Alabama hasn't had many top end QB prospects until Tua, they're loaded with ridiculous weapons, and lines, so it makes it monstrously difficult to tell who is actually doing the job, and whose riding on coat tails. I also didn't like that he was in 1970's shape (totally irrelevant, but alarming that a guy auditioning for the NFL in this day and age wouldn't be match fit, to borrow soccer nomenclature). At the end of the day I had no opinion on him one way or another. He'd done the business to earn the 1st round grade, but beyond that, I wasn't as sold I was with Fields and Lawrence, and I liked Lance's long term upside bet. Wasn't sold Mac was anything more than basically a QB whose ceiling would be 12-18th good in the league. Clearly he's way better than all of that. I don't speak to the technical details like footwork, mechanics, what not, as you dig into that stuff and usually find a ton of disagreement and contradictions. He just looked solid to me. At this point I don't trust my QB evals anyway beyond generally sniffing out sure busts (I've missed on Rosen and Allen but otherwise have been good).

Seen him in person twice, against Idaho State in September, and New Mexico State in October (bummed I missed the Hawaii game). He's basically a tape scout guy because the #'s are completely a mess due to paucity of talent he's facing on defense, and the team itself throws a ton of bubble screens/short passes that ramp up completion percentages. He definitely has an NFL arm, no question, he's accurate on his deep throws generally. He's a pocket guy only. No Konami Code to his game.

Interesting, this draft probably isn't the draft for it. No top tier guys, though some good 2nd and 3rd tier guys. If we target the position in round 3-5 I wouldn't complain, but I'd prefer they wait for the more offensive oriented '23 class.

It's kind of a stupid take and a stupid premise for an article if it is entirely coming from those angles. I'm here for an article explaining what the hell happened with the reporting on the trade up suggesting it was all about Mac Jones until an eleventh hour switch to Lance. I'd love to know what really happened there. #2: Trey Lance WAS ALWAYS a project. He played for North Dakota State what, 14 or 15 career games. Even Wentz played more than 25 games. He was raw as hell, even produced his one sketchy start in his last one. He was guaranteed a clipboard guy barring a miraculous ability to transition perfectly to the pro's a la Herbert, and Herbert had like 40 starts. Of course he looks sketchy. Garoppolo basically gets this season to audition for a trade or FA signing elsewhere in '22, Lance gets the clipboard and hopefully Lance is ready for some Mahomes-like December start(s) as a rookie, and then takes over in '22. There's no other play here. Never was. So far, what I find extraordinarly interesting: 1.Lawrence looks fine, but not super elite. That's surprising. Although basically the two best offensive weapons are out (Chark and Etienne) 2. Fields shows the perils of a great QB prospect landing with a dumpster fire organization and coaching staff. He's getting Gased. One can only hope that they fire everybody and bring in a great top end OC, QB Coach and HC whose offensive minded next year. 3. Lance is what was expected: incredibly raw. 4. Mac Jones is WAY WAY better than advertised, and it must be said a thousand times over. The Patriots have nothing but garbage at the playmaking positions other than TE. They have no exceptional athletes or weapons at WR or RB, Damien Harris is a good solid between the tackles RB, but he's not super elite, the WR's are yuck as hell (and I say this as a fan of Harry and disappointed he's a bust), they do have two solid though not elite TE's. I guess the OL is solid to good (i think, I don't know). People aren't as insanely impressed as they should be with him. He's doing this with very, very little around him. It's amazing.

I think the board was basically in disagreement on Haskins. I don't think it was 90-10 or 80-20 against or anything, but I also tend to be a lurker other than the draft season and periodically in season since over time my fandom has cooled and I've moved my focus to other sports and dynasty fantasy in football since generally I view WFT as hopeless under Snyder. I will say that I was in the camp that was 1000% behind going for QB. That Haskins simply wasn't good enough to justify passing on QB when you landed a top 2 pick in a draft with 3 legit blue chip QB prospects. We were in a similar position to Arizona the year before that had a top 10-15 caliber QB prospect in house, but the '18 data wasn't great, and could be shaded either way (maybe it was the ----- coach/OC, or maybe it was Rosen, or maybe it was both?), same with Haskins, and Arizona didnt think twice, they just pulled the trigger on Kyler and never looked back. We should've done the same in '20, Tua or Herbert, pull the trigger on one, at worst, you've got a scenario where you've got two bust QB's, but in that situation you know pretty quick and can unload the guys and try again. I think Haskins was basically reasonably okay as a rookie, but catastrophically bad as a 2nd year guy, and I think the guys in house knew that he was a ---- bird from day 1, not serious, and not a first in last out guy. When it comes to QB eval, I still suck at is, no better than random chance (my favs of the last 20 years were Culpepper, Eli, Ben Roth, Rodgers (I'm a Cal Alum, so I was all in on taking him from having seen him produce elite #'s, set a record against USC etc), Leinart, Cam, Locker, Luck, RGIII, Winston, Mahomes, Baker, Darnold, Rosen, Jackson, Kyler, Burrow, Tua, Herbert, Lawrence, Fields, Lance: You can see plenty of hit and miss. I'm much better picking guys I hate than picking the hits in round 1), I was fine with the Haskins pick at the time because he seemed to have a top 20-45 grade, and we needed a QB. But I also didn't have the reports on him being an --- clown. Over the years, I've come around to the point where I no longer believe casual fans have access to the information necessary to evaluate QB's. The best we can do is collect data that suggests good signs, and data that suggests bad signs, but with QB's, it really seems to come down to certain core things: #1 NFL capable arm (If he's Danny Woeful, it won't work, doesn't have to be a rocket, but needs to be able to make them all). #2 Has to be accurate since this is rarely improved very much after college (this is why and how I missed on Josh Allen) #3 Has to have the right mental make up, can be a lot of different styles of leaders, but needs to approach the game studiously, and be a first in last out guy. #4 Has to be eager to learn the game, study the game, and grow with the game. I think we can figure out #1, and #2 generally from our own armchair and computer scoutings. But 3 and 4 are more nebulous, and require interviews with the player, coaches, teammates, etc. We don't have access to that, but over the years there have usually been warning signs about guys that aren't serious enough, aren't leaders, are about themselves etc. My guess is the in house guys with the redskins heard enough negatives about Haskins habits, to drop him because his #'s were ridiculous. Not sure about the tape. I think they knew he had issues but Snyder thought the local guy ---- trumped that. Anyway, it didn't. He sucked, and sucks. Technically I think he has the 1 and 2 to be a good to great pro, it's the changable stuff that he doesn't have: the problem is changing your mental make up and approach to challenges is very difficult as an adult. It's possible, just rare, and challenging. Basically Haskins has to want it, and be humble enough to make it happen. I doubt he does, but he could. Whenever I read this I always wonder, "What the hell happened the other 3 seasons then?"

That big story was exactly why I was screaming bloody murder for us to take a QB (whoops on Tua over Herbert) over Chase Young. It literrally NEVER made sense to take Young over a QB. There was no legit QB on the roster unless you thought Haskins deserved more chances, and certainly after '20, it was even more patently obvious we had to make a move for a long term answer at QB and we eschewed it yet again. I may be wrong about Fields, we'll see, but I think Fields going into the draft as a prospect, was as good or better than any prospect since Luck not named Trevor Lawrence (I have to be fair and say that Mahomes was a super unusual prospect which is why he dropped, and Allen was horrifically inaccurate, which made him a huge risk to me). Fields had everything and was basically a 1B to Lawrence. That we wouldn't pay up to move to 9, or at worst, pay up to move in front of the Pats for Mac Jones is just inexplicable to me. Don't rate him highly? Maybe fire your scouts because they don't know what they're watching? You're taking a LB in the top half of the first round, that's literally salary cap/drafting no no 101. It's beyond frustrating, but as the article alludes to, basically other than a miracle find at QB, we're screwed because the owner is poison.

They had the chance, they didn't do it. Those classes were '17 (Watson, and Mahomes), '18 (Baker, Darnold, Rosen, Allen, Jackson), '20 (Burrow, Tua, Herbert) and '21 (Lawrence, Fields, Lance, Jones). They passed all four years, and only dipped in for the crap year ('19). I have literally every single prospect I've mentioned from those classes rated above anyone from this class. I didn't include Trubisky because I didn't know him as a prospect at all. I also was idiotically changed my mind on Watson after his arm velocity testing score came in as what I equated to Woeful-esque (since then its become clear that the velocity test doesn't really seem to accurately test arm strength) You can be ready to invest and develop a legit franchise QB, but the only time it makes sense to invest blue chip draft capital are in classes with legit non pushed up talent. The past few decades those were classes like '04, '06, '11 (I hated most of the 1st round guys, but liked Newton, Locker, Kap and Dalton), '12, '15, '17, '18, '20, and '21. We've dipped in '12, and in '19, '12 was a good class, but we missed/broke our franchise guy (and landed a just below franchise level talent in Cousins anyway on day 3, a true rarity), and in '19 we reached. '22 is a '19 like class, just with no Kyler's, and more Jones/Haskins type roll of the dice guys. It's not a draft to draft a QB in the top 10. WAY WAY WAY too likely to hit the Blaine Gabbert/Blake Bortles "whammy"" to quote press your luck. This is why I was losing my ---- the past few years as we tried to massage the problem (Alex Smith instead of drafting a guy back in '18) instead of fixing it, and when that failed, reaching, instead of attacking the problem in the right class ('18, '20, '21). If you force the issue, you might get lucky and get a steal, but far more often you've just wated top 30 draft capital on a guy that would've been a day 2 or day 3 prospect in a good class (like '17-'18, '20-'21).