e16bball

The biggest problem with this offseason is the same thing that’s always been the biggest problem with this franchise: a lack of a truly coherent plan. They just “do things,” and you never really see how it all holds together as part of a long-term plan. They knew from apparently pretty early in the offseason that Jayden was their guy. Okay, cool. It isn’t what I would have done, but you can work with it. Taking your franchise QB is a seminal decision, the most important one Peters has ever made in his career and certainly the most important one DQ will ever make here. That’s your centerpiece personnel move, and you have to build the rest of your plan moving forward around that guy. But almost nothing they did this offseason appears to line up with Jayden’s particular skillset/needs. The one thing I will credit them for is signing Biadasz right out of the gate — interior pressure is a killer for Jayden, so having a terrible center would have been a big problem for him. That’s true of every QB, probably, but it’s a major issue for our guy. I guess you could lump Allegretti into this, as well, but I’m pretty hesitant to credit them for signing a 3rd-tier option at a position that had a lot of FA talent available. Perhaps he surprises. Otherwise, what did they do? They go get two TEs and a pass-catching RB. We’ve all watched every play of Jayden’s college career at this point — how often do you ever see him throwing to TEs or RBs? A bit more to the RBs at ASU, at least, when he had Eno Benjamin and Rachaad White. Virtually nothing at LSU, and he had a very talented TE in Mason Taylor who just fell into anonymity last year. Until the bowl game, when he went 7/88 with Nussmeier, that is. Jayden loves to throw to WRs, especially on the perimeter, guys who separate easily and can win vertically. We go out and get him…a college QB turned mid-major receiver who will probably need some time and even long-term seems to read more “big slot” than “perimeter operator.” We’re just hoping/praying that Dotson’s terrible sophomore year was a Bieniemy-induced fever dreams — and we’re one injury to 17 away from having the worst WR room in the league. Jayden loves to have time and comfort in the pocket. The luxury of time allows him to really engage that vaunted CPU of a brain, and it also tends to result in the back end of the defense breaking down and giving him lanes to really engage those vaunted legs of his. As noted, we grabbed a quality starting center, but we completely whiffed on the OT position. Out goes Leno from last year’s terrible OL, and in comes…absolutely no one. It’s hard to count Coleman, because he’s probably unplayable right now. Major project. It feels like borderline malpractice that the best case scenario on the roster at the moment is Lucas/Wylie as the starters — and if one or both of them go down, you can choose from various practice squad fodder. They go out and grab 6-8 defensive FAs, and then they use their top two picks after Jayden on even more defense. Pretty much every one of those moves is defensible (or legitimately good) in a vacuum. But there’s probably some irony in the reality that while we won in that vacuum, things still suck for our rookie QB. In short, it’s mind-numbing to me that they planned to take this kid all along, but they made no special efforts to ensure that they’d be giving him a structure in which he can succeed. You’re trying to build a long-term franchise QB for a franchise that has not had one in my entire lifetime (c. 1985)! How is that not at the heart of everything you do?

This is the guy who announced at the combine that he doesn't "believe in outer space." And then promptly proceeded to destroy the testing until he pulled up lame in the 40.

I'm not, but mostly because I've watched Joe Milton play. He might give Maye some trouble in a "who can throw it through the uprights from furthest away" competition, though.

I’m not watching any longer, but if no one on the draft broadcasts made a Harold Carmichael reference when the Eagles took Johnny Wilson just now, they’re all fired.

This is a very reasoned take. From the little I’ve been able to watch so far, his major flaw is that he doesn’t manage space well. Which is a huge flaw for a post safety, probably a fatal one. He gets sucked up by playaction and crossers, and they throw it behind him. He gets sucked into the middle field and they’re bouncing runs outside on him. He’s coming in red-hot downhill and runs past the play. If you minimize the amount of space he has to be accountable for, maybe you can limit the mistakes.

Thanks, that was a pretty lucky pull by me, I’d only first even heard of him like two days earlier 😂 Detroit makes perfect sense for him, though. They love size and physicality. Can see them using him as an eligible 3rd OT, just a gargantuan heat-seeking missile aimed at some pesky WILL linebacker or box safety.

Just watched the first quarter of the National Championship game with an eye on Hampton. It’s an absolute bloodbath for our man 😂 The traits they like are easy to see. Explosive mover, high (almost frenetic) energy, doesn’t give you much room to breathe. But dear God, that was one undisciplined safety. He was like a kid who ate too much candy at lunch and just couldn’t sit still in his chair. Let’s watch more, hoping he settles down.

Magee and Hampton both give off strong “kickoffs are back” vibes. Which reminds me that it might be cool if we had anyone on the entire roster who could return kicks/punts.

The Rams GM in the ES Mock did nail that Corum pick. Kudos to that guy.

This is the fear. The two CBs, Jerzhan Newton, JPJ…a lot of talent, but taking some OT because you have to? That’s just poor strategy.

Patriots have to get in position behind us so they can take the guy we should have. Get a new schtick, one trick ponies.

That's the tough question. I would hate having to move both 2nds -- especially because I'd love to do the same two-step that @Going Commando just referenced above, by moving back from 40 to the mid-50s to pick up additional capital. I think there will be tons of value at our (myriad) positions of need at that late-2nd stage. If we could do something like 36/67/139 for, say, pick 19 to take Mims (or other preferred/available OT) -- and then go back from 40 for something like 57/89 from TB? To me, that's the best way to position ourselves on the board. At that point, you upgrade from Paul/Suamataia to Fautanu/Mims, and your only pick deficit is a 5th. Yes, you'll have lost draft position in both the 2nd and the 3rd -- but I don't expect to like the board much better at 40 than I will in the late 50s. Losing both 2nds might just be too steep unless you absolutely love one of the OTs. Which I don't, really. I really like 6 of them, though.

I totally agree with these guys. And have been saying this for a good while now: after the top 6 OTs (Alt, Fashanu, Fuaga, Latham, Fautanu, Mims...choose your order), there's a really steep drop-off. Which is why I'd like them to be aggressive in trying to move up. At a valuable pick like 36 or 40, I think that instead of trying to talk yourself into a favorite out of the next tier of "developmental" guys, you're better off just waiting to pick from whatever is left in that heap later on. Take a better player at a different position if you're insistent on sticking at those picks. The one wild card for me is Jordan Morgan. I like him better as a guard, but if you like him at OT, he's sort of a one-man tier all to himself in the late 1st-early 2nd area. Because he's not a developmental guy with traits but a lot of bummer tape like the rest of these dudes.

I think the real dividing line between the two sides of this Daniels/Maye debate is in how you weigh 2023 versus prior years. I see a lot of scouting comments (and metrics) that are focused entirely on 2023. Where the most recent data points seem to be overwhelmingly the most important ones. Traditionally, this gets cast aside by "well, that's who he is now" or "so you're saying it's a bad thing that he improved?" From this perspective, Daniels is far and away the better selection, as he was staggeringly good for the last 10 games of his college career. Maye, on the other hand, had 2-3 pretty dicey games to end his career. But where things become tricky for me is that I believe the following statement is undeniably true: If you watched the first 85-90% of Maye's career (his first 25 games) and you watched the first 80-85% of Daniels's career (his first 45 games), there is absolutely no chance that you would have rated Daniels the better player. Considering the overall picture of their respective college careers, it's a very narrow sliver in which Daniels actually exceeds Maye. I have some concern that the draft community as a whole is putting a ton of stock in the last things we've seen -- and forgetting a lot of what came before. Just as one example, this article was previously posted, and it cites serious concerns about Maye and his comparatively poor accuracy. But the stats they're looking at in putting together the big multi-colored graph about completions and on-target rate by distance is based solely on "final college season." But what happens when you take into account "career" rather than just "2023"? All of a sudden, Maye is the career leader among the draft QBs in completion percentage over expectation -- and Jayden finds himself bringing up the rear. So does that go out the window because Jayden was exceptional in his final year? That's the question that I think is dividing everyone more than anything else.

Nabers was a 1st rounder before 2023 in many places, including about 1/3 of the way-too-early mock drafts I just scoured. Brugler had him 19th overall last May, for example. Thomas wasn’t, that’s true. I saw a lot of familiar names in those spring/summer 2023 mocks. Williams was usually #1. Maye was almost always top 5. Penix was usually there in the top 20, and McCarthy was in a lot of them in the same range. Nix occasionally showed up at the end of the 1st of a couple.