Going Commando

Too much focus on need in here when it comes to this draft. Too much of a sentiment that we have to draft an OT, reaches or wasteful trade ups be damned. That is the Ron Rivera mentality and approach to the draft. The draft is not for filling short term needs. That's the worst way to use the tool, and it isn't even any good at doing it. We need to stop thinking about building a football team as if the task is completing a puzzle and you are done when you fill in all of the pieces. Instead, team building is like making a tower, and the teams with the tallest towers win. But everyone gets the exact same number of blocks to build with, and has the exact same budget to pay for them, so the teams that find the biggest blocks are the ones that win. The draft is a requisition process where teams get total long term control over the blocks they choose, and thus the best way to use the draft is to always hunt for the biggest possible blocks you can get at your turn. It does not matter if the block is a left tackle or a tight end or whatever. What matters is that it is big. The Chiefs and the Patriots built dynasty sized towers without any big blocks at tackle. The only position that provides meaningfully bigger blocks than any other is QB. Right now, the only big block we have on our roster is Jonathan Allen. If we're going to compete with the tallest and best built teams, we have to use this draft to find two or three more Jon Allen sized blocks. We can get one with the QB we pick at 2. Then the rest of our picks need to be about taking as many big swings as we can, because that's the only way we're going to find a gem or two outside of the early first round. Stop thinking about which OT you can shoehorn in to our Day 2 picks and start searching for genuine value. Who has a plausible path to becoming an annual pro bowler? Who has All Pro upside? If the biggest blocks we can find is T'Vondre Sweat or Payton Wilson, we should pick them.

Is D Robinson still available in this scenario? I think I would target either him or Ladd. I wouldn't be opposed to trading down at all. I like T'Vondre Sweat and Jonah Elliss and Bralen Trice in the 50s. I also like Kiran Amegadjie and Patrick Paul and Kingsley Suamataia and Blake Fisher in this range too.

I like Wilson the best of the boom-bust third round WRs. He has had bursts where he is the super high volume workhorse in the passing game. Tez does too, but the drops and inconsistent competitiveness are pretty worrisome to me. IMO Mitchell and Coleman are too frequently just spectators in their offense. I think those guys will be disappointments at the next level.

What is the ceiling on Fashanu? To me that determines whether he is worth trading up for. If it's good starter who is the OT equivalent of Daron or Terry, AKA a Brian O'Neill, Laremy Tunsil, or Eric Fisher, then that's not worth trading up for IMO. Someone who might make two or even three probowls and have a high water mark of ~11 AV and PFF grades in the upper 70s with maybe an 80 season during his prime. But if his ceiling is much higher, like a Tyron Smith or Tristan Wirfs, where the high watermark is 13-15 AV seasons and potential All Pro selections, then that is obviously worth both our seconds. Zierlein compares him to Cam Robinson, and if that's who he becomes, that's not even worth 36. So hopefully that isn't an accurate look at his ceiling. My team building theory is that, to create a true contender, you need about three or four genuinely special players who are dominant and capable of being named to All Pro teams as your core, and bonus points if one of them is a QB. These are guys who are worth market setting second and third contracts and define the identity of your team. Examples are what the Chiefs have in Mahomes/Jones/Kelce and Thuney/Hill, what the Rams had in Stafford/Donald/Kupp, what the Eagles had in Cox/Johnson/Kelce, what the 9ers have in Trent/Warner/Bosa/McCaffrey/Deebo/Kittle, what the Ravens have had by turns with Jackson/Yanda/Stanley/Humphrey, or last year with Jackson/Roquan/Madubuike. Then once you have that core, you need about ten other starters who are legitimately good, of the level of players like Terry, Cosmi, and Daron. This is your supporting cast, and it needs to be full of genuine quality. But when these guys are your very best players and biggest contracts, then it means you aren't good enough to match up with the real contenders. When I look at our roster, the only guy with the talent and upside to be a foundation level player is Allen. Maybe Cosmi takes another huge step forward next season and gets there, but I doubt it. So who are the players that we can get in this draft that are good bets to reach that level, and get us to having three elite players with All Pro upside on the roster? Drake Maye for one. After him, the only bets I'd take are trade ups for Brock Bowers or Jared Verse. IMO they are safe bets to become All Pro caliber players, but I'm skeptical that they drop far enough to be in trade up range. After them, I could see one of the big four corners reaching that level, but I'm not sure which one is the best bet to do it who will also drop into trade up range. The top three WRs are all good bets, but none of them will drop IMO. Would we be willing to make that bet on Brian Thomas? Unless someone uber special drops, or we have a really great feeling about Brian Thomas or one of the corners, then we should just stay put with our seconds and try and find gems.

A couple of those names look made up to me. Brock Bowers? There's no way something that cliche belongs to a real person.

Mariota is a professional back up QB who is humble and steady. He can win as a spot starter, and he'll model good habits and be a useful resource to a rookie. He's been through it as a former high draft pick himself. He's also not going to generate a QB controversy by being a viable alternative as a long term starter. That's pretty much what you're looking for in the vet back up QB role.

True. But if you want people to do their best work, you need to get genuine buy-in. You need people to feel inspired to work and have a lot of personal stake in the product, and be willing to make sacrifices. It'd be dangerous to have a lot of colleagues on the staff (or in the ownership circle) who think you've made a big mistake and start making business decisions instead of making it work. A lack of organization-wide consensus on the QB prospects we've drafted here is one of the biggest reasons they all failed IMO. At a minimum, everyone important here needs to be married to the same plan at QB, and ideally, they would all believe in it.

Yes it is. But Washington has been where dreams have gone to die for 30 years, so I'm not taking anything for granted. Everything about the way this offseason has progressed since we finished with the #2 pick has been going according to the dream scenario for me. We get the star GM candidate, we bring in a vet coaching staff, we trade Howell and clear the deck, we bring in a bunch of reliable vets, we fix the center position long term, we don't spend any dumb money in free agency chasing big names, we don't waste any draft capital. Everything we've done as a team so far makes sense to me, and is pretty much how I would have done it myself if I'd been given the power. But my lack of confidence in this franchise has me afraid of the rug pull on draft day. That's why I'm still in wait and see mode.

I'm sure that he did extensively scout Maye while he was in San Francisco, because traveling to schools and scouting star college players was the primary role of his job. Maye was a known top five pick coming into this season, and he's a quarterback. You do the work on players like this, even if your team won't realistically be in range to draft them. I also think there is strong chance that he does love Maye. I love Maye and think he's a super blue chip prospect, and if I can see it, then it's not surprising that an expert like Peters would see it. But the decision to pick Maye at 2 isn't as simple as just taking the job and handing the card in on draft day for Peters. He has to build a plan for Maye and then build consensus for him among the key members of the organization. You have to sell ownership on him. You have to get the coaching staff 100% on board. But since he hired the coaching staff, you'd think part of that process was finding people that share his point of view on the game and are willing to buy in to his plans.

If this is true, and Peters does love Maye specifically, then it would explain to me why he took the job here with five seconds of consideration.

I think the roster is still fairly weak, but the overall situation is not bad. The jury is out on our front office and coaching staff, but I really like the early returns. My gut take is that they are good. I think Harris, Myers and company put a good leadership team together, and that Peters could be a potential star executive. And I think Peters chose a good partner in Quinn, and that Quinn put a strong coaching staff together for next season. That's at least half the battle of developing a rookie QB. We'll see what happens, and I'm not going to lie, it'll shake my faith if they pick Daniels over Maye, but I have so much more confidence that this FO and coaching staff configuration can work than I've ever had before with this team. As for the roster, it's a work in progress. I think Peters did a good job finding high quality stop gaps like Wagner, Ertz, Mariota, Ekeler and our new edge rotation. But we're light on foundation players and Jon Allen is the only true high upside stud left on our roster. Hopefully that will change via drafting Drake Maye at #2, but we'll see. But one thing that is encouraging is we have a handful of legitimately good players that can fill in the gaps between the great ones and be key parts of a contending team: Daron, Terry, Tress, BRob, Cosmi, Luvu, and Biadasz. Maybe Juice and Jamin too. And the books is not written on Forbes, Quan, or Jahan yet. Those guys can get to the level of being good starters for a contender too. If you've got ~12 good starters supporting three or four great ones, one of which is a QB, then you've probably got an honest contender.

Yeah I had been hoping for either him or Tyrone Tracy at that spot, and got lucky that one was still available. Tykee was an All American early in his career, then transferred to Georgia and had some injuries and fell out of the line up until this past year. Kind of got lost in the rotation of Starks, Bullard, and Chris Smith in 22. Then last year he's back to the player he was at WVU and led Georgia's defense in tackles, TFLs, and interceptions. He was the alpha on a good defense. I liked him for Jacksonville in a similar role to the "star" position Georgia runs. Basically an overhang defender and box safety. They brought in Darnell Savage but he's not that good and they don't have much behind him.

I think it would be a big unforced error to do that. When you want a franchise QB, you pick one guy and you commit to developing him and making it work. When you have two QB prospects, you have zero. Can you think of a single example of a franchise QB who was drafted by his team with a hedge pick in the same class? To cut to the chase, Andrew Luck is the only time a franchise QB was drafted in a 2 QB class in the seven round era, and Chandler Harnish was Mr Irrelevant and cut a month into his first season. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to get a franchise QB, we need to follow the same formula that almost every franchise who successfully develops a QB from high draft pick to star player follows. Pick one prospect, marry your front office and coaching staff to him, and then focus on developing him to the best of your ability. Trying to do things differently at QB is what this franchise has always done, and it's why we always fail. Adam Peters doesn't seem incompetent to me, I don't think he'd make such a basic mistake as trying to take two QBs in the same draft. If he was foolish enough to saddle himself with a potential QB controversy in year one by sitting the fence with two prospects, he wouldn't have traded Sam Howell.

I was talking about being precocious in college. In that respect, Terry wasn't, and Bryce Young was. Bryce Young was absolutely peer to Stroud in college. They both sat their first years in college and then were dominant in their first years as starters in 2021. Both played on stacked college rosters, but Stroud's receivers were vastly better than Young's in 2022. Hence the dropoff in production in '22 from Young that didn't occur for Stroud. People are searching for answers to explain the vastly different NFL career trajectories between Stroud and Young, despite there being so little separation between them as prospects. They are the same age, both grew up in the same Southern California elite young QB circuit where they've been tutored in quarterbacking by the finest teachers in the sport since they were little kids. They both went to blue blood college programs and were almost immediately dominant players. They were the first pioneers of the NIL system and were the first big earners in the sport. Then they get to the NFL and completely diverge in progression. Other than height, what really separates them? The answer is their NFL destinations. There won't be a more definitive case to prove that franchise QBs are made as much as found as this one. Bryce Young ended up in a dysfunctional franchise with toxic ownership, a quicksand front office and coaching staff, and no surrounding talent, and struggled to play even minimally competent offense. CJ Stroud ended up in a secure situation with outstanding leadership and coaching and surprisingly solid surrounding talent and a really good defense, and he hit the ground running and immediately secure his place as a franchise QB. I'm curious to see what happens with Young next year, because I think Carolina has actually made a good faith effort at salvaging his development. They hired a QB guru head coach who is seemingly married to him. They spent a fortune on upgrading the interior of their OL and brought in Diontae Johnson to give Young at least one fairly reliable target. And they tried to upgrade their defense, and should at least be pretty decent at stopping the run now. I wouldn't call that a good situation, but it's much better than last year's disaster on paper. If Young shows serious strides, then that'd actually be an encouraging example of how to fix a terrible QB development cradle on the fly.

I think Jayden's running ability will be a source of occasional big play generation for him on drives that would otherwise be a failure (and I think the same is true for Maye), but I don't think it can be the kind of crutch for him that it is for someone like Justin Fields. I just don't think Jayden has the body or awareness/vision to run like that in the NFL. IMO Jayden needs a air-tight cradle in which to develop. He is going to need good pass protection to make plays, and he's definitely going to need stud receivers winning on the outside like he had at LSU. He's never played well with mediocrity on the outside, much less unreliable crap guys like Maye. He's going to need a stud or two that wins early and makes his reads easy for him. One take I am confident in is that Jayden will never be CJ Stroud and that his path to success in the NFL will necessarily be different. He is like the opposite of Stroud as a pocket passer. Stroud was super precocious (like Maye), is all urgency and quick trigger and just flies through his reads. Jayden has zero urgency in him as a player, and his instinct is to string everything out as long as possible to avoid the mistake. He is ultra cautious and unaggressive as a passer, and then he flips to the other side of the spectrum when he takes off and runs. It's not a great combo.

I want to know why people think that Jayden Daniels is the better option to play in year one than Drake Maye, despite the fact he needed four previous years of starting experience and a stacked offense to be as good as Drake Maye was in his first year as a starter on a crappy mid-major? But even setting that aside, it's right there in the film. Maye is instinctive, and already super advanced at managing pressure and throwing guys open and creating from behind the line of scrimmage for a college prospect. Daniels had an eternity in the pocket to make plays last year, and even still, he wasn't good at making decisions on schedule and too often either pulled it and ran or took a sack. The kid is going to struggle really hard to manage pressure for us next year, and he's not going to be making the kinds of plays through the air that he did last year--presumably what we'd be drafting him for. We all know what would happen. His confidence would wane and he'd become a 1-2 run QB and start taking a bunch of damage, basically the same progression that Justin Fields went through. Only Jayden does not have Fields's strength.

Yeah. Sitting Daniels would be more about trying to build high level protection up for him to give him a better chance of success. He needs it more than any of the other top prospects. But there is only so much that can be done on that front in year one.

He had an 8 RAS, that's not too bad. I wasn't impressed with him in my very first look at him, but I'll watch more. The only thing I do know for certain is I don't like Adonai Mitchell at all, and Worthy is kind of overrated, but clearly way better than Mitchell. Kelvin Banks Jr is also a super blue chipper and would have a chance to be OT1 in this year's class if he'd come out early. So would Will Campbell from LSU btw. My gut take was that I wouldn't draft any of the Texas skill players this year. Brooks was the only one I instantly liked, and I just wouldn't want to spend a day 2 pick on an injured RB. It wouldn't be the worst use of a pick in terms of lottery ticket upside, but I don't want another potential Bryce Love situation.

We're not going to sit the QB we draft at #2, and Drake Maye is way better prepared to deal with the dysfunctional offense and crappy protection we're going to have next year than Jayden "I need four seconds in a clean pocket to make a decision" Daniels.

153 - Jacksonville selects Tykee Smith, DB, Georgia @e16bball and the Rams are up next.

This is the poster who thinks Sam Howell was better than the likes of Burrow/Lawrence/Herbert. Takes like that make our community look bad. Just for the benefit of the record and anyone from outside who may wander into this thread, absolutely nobody agrees that Allen isn't an elite QB. He's completely dominant and a top three player in the league, period. There is only one team in the league that wouldn't rather have Allen than their current QB, and only two more lying to themselves that they wouldn't either.

I wouldn't. I'd think we were passing over the next Josh Allen for the next Justin Fields. It'd be an indefensible mistake and take the wind out of the sails of the rebuild for me. But I would hope to be wrong.

Oh boy. You don't get to make QB takes any more.

We have to be no matter what. You can't count on rookies starting every game for you even when they are high picks. Draft picks aren't good options for filling immediate roster holes.

I thought JT said that Jayden was a counselor at one of the camps that JT ran. He seemed to know Jayden fairly well.