Going Commando

We always hear that we can't judge a draft class until three years out, but a class full of contemporaneously perceived reaches usually doesn't get better looking over time. Almost all of the reaches from the Rivera era have been generally disappointing players. The two who were seen as value picks (Cosmi and Howell) massively outplayed their draft position. The rest of the Day 1 and 2 guys who were taken around their natural range (St Juste, Gibson, Robinson) have been fine. I'm not really judging their day 3 work at all, except in their favor with Howell/Curl, because finding anyone after like the top ~130 who significantly hits is pulling a winning lottery ticket. I think we'll see that pattern continue to play out with our new regime's drafts, because I think that's how it works for everyone except for the very most shrewd FOs like the Rams. Jayden Daniels is obviously going to define the success or failure of our class, even if he's the only player from the entire group who works out. But looking beyond him at the 2024 class, Newton was an obvious value pick and will probably be the defining player of the class after Jayden Daniels. Sainristil and Sinnott were taken about where they should have gone and will probably be solid long term starters. Coleman and McCaffrey were pretty substantial reaches and will probably not work out. If this bears out, then getting three starting caliber players (including a guy with Pro Bowl upside) from five picks 36-100 is good enough to hold serve. But it doesn't necessarily mean we're getting better since we had to trade three starters to get the ammo for those picks, and one of them was a Pro-Bowler. Back to Mathis and Dotson, one of the reasons we reached on them is because of another huge issue that this franchise has had: getting our best players to second contracts. This is a process that is automatic for most teams, and the good ones tend to get extensions done a year early because they are good at long term planning and seeing those plans through. But this franchise is cheap, has always had a dumb grass is greener mentality about outside FAs, regularly picks fights with it's best players, is super reactionary instead of ever building with long term vision, and tries to use contract years to send messages and motivate players who obviously don't need that **** to play hard. We absolutely reached on Dotson and Mathis in part because we were afraid of not being able to get extension with Terry and Daron done, and I would bet anything they were picked to use as leverage in extension negotiations. Ron got three important contract extensions done in his entire tenure here. Three. And that's a far better record than what Bruce Allen accomplished before him. Hopefully those days are over. And hopefully we can get obviously necessary extensions done a year early now, AKA Cosmi needs a new deal.

He's passed on the depth chart by a rotation of Allen/Payne/Newton. He'll still play if he's healthy, but he's looking at maybe 300 snaps a season at most unless somebody in front of him gets hurt. That's not a lot of opportunity to make an impact. And TBH, he might get passed by Ridgeway too. He needs to make the most of whatever snaps he can get this year because his NFL career depends on it. He needs to have a Tim Settle-style impact where you can tell this dude can play despite limited action.

Coleman's doesn't have the pass pro chops to hang at tackle in the NFL. TCU tried to cover up his limitations in NFL style pass pro reps (where he is one on one with a decent edge and has to vertical set) as much as they could, but when they faced obvious passing downs where there was a four man rush and no chance to double, he struggled. The Big 12 CG in 2022 is a pretty clear demonstration of this, particularly when he had to face Felix Uzomah (who is a very mid NFL edge prospect). They spent the first half covering up Coleman with doubles and using RPOs to slow the rush, and K St obliged by mostly playing 8 man coverages on passing downs. Then all Hell started breaking loose for Coleman in the second half when K St started sending 4+ and they had to play catch up and got into a bunch of second and third and longs. Here are some gifs demonstrating his issues: Third and seven where he's on an island against Uzomah. K St runs a blitz that leaves Coleman without help in pass pro for one of the first times in the game. Uzomah smokes him with a speed rush and turns a super flat corner on him without even getting NFL caliber lean on the rush. Coleman's set is terrible, his hand placement is terrible (tries to catch him late and Uzomah doesn't even have to rip through him), his pads are super high, and his feet get super heavy and die at the point of contact. Second and seven, TCU runs an RPO with a combo block for Coleman, and one step drop for the slant. This is what I mean by TCU protecting him as much as possible. But notice the way he still loses this rep: wide hands and high pads leave him leaning and super easy to shuck when rushers counter back inside. He is so weak against inside counters that he's just not going to be able hang in pass pro at tackle. TCU did everything they could to cover him up on this play, the run fake worked perfectly and got the linebackers and safeties playing up, and the play still got sped up and broken up. Another third and 10 where Coleman has to play on an island against a speed rush, and a bad set with bad hands leads to a hold. The edge got a super slow jump off the snap too. First and 20, down by 11 in the fourth, obvious passing situation and K St blitzes. Another terrible set and punch (high pads and hand placement, that was an uncalled hands to the face) causes him to lose to another basic inside counter. Play gets sped up and Duggan took another huge hit. Another third and long where Coleman has to play on an island against a speed rush and he just loses immediately. I don't know how else to say it, but his pass pro sets are not NFL caliber for playing on the outside, and his hands are god awful. He's also really stiff, and does not have the lateral speed to play on an island without oversetting like Hell and getting smoked back inside by counters. Just as a bonus gif, I wanted to show how his balance issues and heavy feet into contact can cause problems with block sustain in the run game. In general, he is way better in the run game than the pass game. But he's more competent than dominant as a run blocker. Cooper Beebe is what a dominant run blocker looks like. Beebe is who we should have picked at 67. Playing Coleman at tackle this year is setting him up for failure. His best shot at holding his own for us is at LG.

We'll see what happens in camp. If they end up playing him at tackle because they don't have anyone else, that would be a real disservice to him. I'm convinced tackle is not the right fit for him in the NFL. I think he is absolutely a guard, and I don't actually think he's got position flexibility to play tackle in the NFL. The athleticism and length and history of playing the position in college don't change the fact that this guy will get absolutely destroyed by the kind of counter rushers that play on the edge in the NFL.

He's 100% a guard. They're either going to play him at guard, or they're going to run him out of the NFL. Unless they sign a cap cut with real starting experience, Lucas is going to end up winning the starting job at LT. I think they'll probably start Coleman at LG, and it'll be sink or swim for him there. I don't know what we're going to do if Lucas or Wylie go down. Moving Coleman outside will be detrimental to his development. They're going to have to move Cosmi outside and hope that Daniels or Stromberg can start.

I hate that he went to the Cowboys. Wish it could have been anywhere else. The Cowboys get these guys and max out their talent. I'm worried about DeJean too. I thought the trade down was a good idea in real time, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. Part of me feels like staying at 40 and picking him ourselves is a better outcome than what we ended up with. And if you change the picks in the third round to Beebe at 67 and Corum or Haynes or Zinter at 78, then I like that class better than our real one.

It would have been wrong to reach on OLs in the second round, but that wasn't the situation we faced. IMO Suamataia and Beebe were BPAs and value picks over Sainristil and Sinnott. And if you don't like them, three other tackles went in the second after our picks aside from Suamataia and you could have made a BPA case for each of them in the 50s. But personally, I had Suamataia as a huge value pick in the 50s, and if he and Dawand Jones were out starting OTs, with Cosmi, Biadasz, and Beebe in the interior, we're looking at such a different future for the offense. That's the OL I would have built with zero benefit of hindsight, and if I can figure that out from my couch, our FO should be able to blow that out of the water. If anything, I had Sainristil and Sinnott as mild reaches in the second, although I think I could have been too low on Sainristil and that he could be another Terry McLaurin. To my credit, I was the first one here to spot Sainristil and start gassing him up in the thread. I've always liked him, I just think the draftnik community got too high on him and didn't accurately bake his size limitations into his draft value. And we did reach on Coleman. At that pick, Beebe should have been a no brainer. And if you don't like Beebe, then Zinter, Amegadjie, Wallace, Adams, McCormick, Van Pran, and Haynes would have been better options too. TBH, I think Coleman was a fifth or sixth round caliber pick. I don't think his film is any good, and IMO both Braeden Daniels and Ricky Stromberg had better film than him.

I was banned during the draft last year, I never gave a take on it in real time. I thought Forbes was a Jahan Dotson style reach of an early second round talent getting picked mid first, not as bad as Jamin was, but would have had several OL ahead of him even in that weak class, particularly Anton Harrison and Dawand Jones. I liked Quan Martin and Braeden Daniels, although I think he reached on Daniels by a round. I picked Daniels in the ES mock and got him in the fifth, at what I felt was fair value. I hated the Stromberg pick, and I would have picked Olu Oluwatimi over KJ Henry. On the whole, I felt like Ron at least tried to address the OL issues, the problem is he picked the wrong players. The even bigger problem I didn't see coming was the collapse of the defense and the quiet quitting of the entire organization. I don't feel like Peters actually tried to fix the OL at all. But I do feel like he brought in a vastly better and more motivated coaching staff, and probably did genuinely fix the defense. I really shouldn't be seeing parallels between this off-season and last off-season though, and I shouldn't be using Rivera's work as a bar for Peters to clear. Peters had this off-season absolutely teed up for him to hit a grandslam, and I think he crushed it with the defense and flubbed it with the offense. That's my perspective even when I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on his QB selection. Of all the offensive coaches he hired and players he signed and drafted, the only two moves I really liked and would have done too if I were in charge were hiring Anthony Lynn and signing Biadasz. It feels to me like we basically had a defense heavy FA where we got a bunch of nice short term pieces, drafted two studs on D, and hired a bunch of great coaches for that side of the ball, but got swindled on almost all of the decisions we made on offense. I hope I'm dead wrong. I hope Peters isn't as green as he comes off to me. I hope Jayden is a superstar, Kingsbury isn't a con man mercenary, and that Coleman, McCaffrey, and Sinnott were all hidden value picks and not reaches. I'm not nearly as alarmed right now as I was during the first off-season of Ron's tenure, but I don't have the confidence in the work this regime has done that I was hoping for.

I'm concerned that Peters inherited the mindset of drafting OL for that offense, based on the work that he did on the OL here this off-season. Coleman in the early third feels like an Aaron Banks type reach, except that Aaron Banks was actually coming off an All American season. I also don't think Kliff is the schemer and play caller that Shanny Jr is, and even with a QB who is a super decisive player running a highly deceptive offense with the best collection of weapons in the league and an absolutely elite defense, SF hasn't been able to win it all. They keep getting to a point in the postseason where they run into a wall of getting dominated at the LoS. They've also had a lot of QB injuries. KC had a very momentary dip in their OL quality and got destroyed by the Bucs as a result. It cost them at least one SB ring. Then they went out and built the best IOL in the NFL and have been cruising ever since. We need to address our problem in a similar fashion. At this point, I am very concerned that Jayden is headed for a Bryce Young type rookie season.

I had three picks where an OL was the clear BPA for us, and could have even made the case for more. I think Peters flat out misevaluated the OL class. That has been a big issue in San Francisco's front office, and I'm very concerned that it has followed Peters to DC. The OL coach they hired is another problem. He's coming from a job where he coached one of the worst OLs in the entire league, and it wasn't a situation where he had crap to work with. He had OL prospects with a ton more upside than what we have here. They also had money to burn in FA and went ultra conservative on the OL, basically replacing Leno with Biadasz and bringing in another career backup IOL and calling it a day. I understand you can't force people to sign here, but we can overpay to deal with an obvious problem like Carolina did. I didn't panic after free agency because I thought Biadasz was just the start and that they'd absolutely be able to come out of the draft with another starter and some high quality prospects for the pipeline. Instead it feels like we struck out looking. The big looming problem downstream of the OL is that they hitched their wagon to a QB with a tiny frame who runs a ton and needs a ton of time in clean pockets to play his game. I don't understand what's not computing for them about the OL, and how they think this is going to work. If Ron were the guy in charge of such an obviously bad and incoherent plan for the offense, he'd be getting destroyed for the work that Peters just did on the offense. Ron got torched for this issue last off-season, and he didn't have five top 100 picks in a loaded OL draft class to deal with the problem. Instead Peters is getting back slaps from everyone? The only pick where he didn't reach IMO was Johnny Newton.

I don't like trashing players in their welcome thread, so I'm taking the discussion here: I've been watching Brandon Coleman and his film is awful. I understand that he played through an injury last year, but he was total garbage in the '22 Big 12 championship too. Kind of tread water in the first half, but the flood gates broke in the second and he just got his ass kicked rep after rep and got Max Duggan beaten to a fare thee well. Beaten outside and inside, with power and speed. Issues with hand placement, issues with grip and sustain, issues with his set depth, and really big issues with stiff legs and balance. He tries to bench guys and use his length but he leans so far out over his feet that his balance is really weak and he's just easy to shuck. For someone who is legit fast, it is shockingly easy to run around him and take a tight angle on the turn. I see hints of the recovery speed when he adjusts to stunts properly, and when he pulls, but I think his feet are pretty heavy and slow most of the time. I think Coleman was Peters's worst pick. I think he definitely needs to kick inside to guard because NFL level counter rushers are going to destroy him, but I don't know that I see a bright future for him at guard either. He's not really a standout run blocker, and I would still worry about him in pass pro at guard against more powerful rushers. Frankly, it feels like a tremendous failure from Peters to come out of that absolutely loaded OL draft class with only Brandon Coleman, particularly given the fact we had five Day 2 picks. It looks like we're going to head into camp with very speculative options to start at LT and LG, and realistically none of them are starting caliber. This OL is still going to be a major problem, and Jayden Daniels is going to have to run a **** ton to cope with how bad his pass protection is going to be. His big strength as a passer is the vertical passing game, and we're not going to have time to run it with this line.

The best defenses don't play any of their IDLs more than 60-65% of their snaps. I don't think we've ever really appreciated how crazy and detrimental it was that we played Daron 900+ snaps some years, and that he sits at over 800 snaps on average. And Allen hasn't been that far off from that, which is worse because we know he has chronic shoulder issues. Aaron Donald was basically the only IDL in the NFL that can handle that workload and remain effective, and he retired super young for a GOAT tier DT. The best defenses have their top IDLs play 600 to low 700 snaps per season, and that needs to be the pitch count for Allen and Payne. That means there will easily be 500+ snaps available for Newton if he is healthy and earns the IDL3 job. And that's assuming we don't play any of them at edge or run 3 IDL packages. Great defenses almost all play a four man rotation at IDL, with three players getting 400-700 snaps. We have been ruining Allen and Payne by playing them too much ever since Ioannidis went down in 2020. If we get 500 snaps from Newton next year, and 200+ from either Ridgeway or Mathis, then that'd put Allen and Payne at upper 600s or very low 700s at most, and I promise you will see a drastic improvement in the performance of both the DL and the defense as a whole. ~670 is the sweet spot for them, and if we can hit that from a full season, then the best years of their careers are ahead.

I'm not sure that is true. I'm looking at the snap counts of the best linebackers in the NFL and Jamin's snap count last season would have been the same as Fred Warner's average season. He played 57 per game, which puts him at 970 for the year if he didn't get hurt and go on IR. I don't think there is anything wrong with rotating linebackers off the field and limiting their snap counts. Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoah made the Probowl last season as the best linebacker on the best defense while only playing 47 snaps per game.

Good coaches adapt scheme to player, and I don't think they're going to leave Forbes in island single coverages in press. If they wanted to play a lot of that, they wouldn't have drafted Sainristil either. Sainristil is a pretty similar player to Forbes in skill set. That suggests to me that guys like Forbes are in the plans. Forbes has some trouble getting off run blocks, but he's actually a hard hitter. He got thrown out of the Seahawks game last season for hitting Tyler Lockett too hard. It was a bang bang play that ended up being helmet to helmet because Lockett fell as he tried to complete the catch and his head unexpectedly dropped, but it showed that Forbes is physical at the catch point. His first real highlight play was also blowing up a screen or swing pass in the first preseason game, which is a trait that pops from his college cut ups. He closes hard when he reads these flat throws fast. Davis is the only traditional press man DB they added to the roster this off-season. I think they're going to play most of the secondary in off coverages, press and reroute the few big match ups to slow down timing, and try and generate a lot of turnovers off of zone match and zone, and I think those will be paired really well with creative pressure schemes. We've finally got the linebackers to diversify our coverages and pressures, and still play the run well even if we get super aggressive with our IDLs.

Well, for the purposes of this, let's assume the Eagles still make the trade up for someone else.

2 - Drake Maye 36 - Cooper DeJean 50 - Cooper Beebe 53 - Kingsley Suamataia 67 - Blake Corum 100 - Troy Franklin 139 - Sedrick Van Pran Granger 161 - Johnny Wilson 222 - Myles Cole That's rigidly going off my board without considering overloading on positions. I might have picked Austin Booker over SVPG at 139 because of already having Biadasz and the better position value of Edge. But if I stay true to my board, SVPG was the BPA here for me.

I had Sainristil and Sinnott as negligible reaches on my overall slotting. Where I think there could be some regret is that I had Beebe and Suamataia a fair bit higher than them on my board, and if they hit, then Sainristil and Sinnott need to hit bigger to feel like great value. Sainristil was pretty risky. I think there is an outcome where he quickly and significantly outplays his draft slot like Terry McClaurin did. And I think there is an equally likely outcome where he doesn't really work out because of his size. IMO Sinnott has a high floor and will probably end up being a good starter, and if he busts, it'll probably be due to injury. I think Coleman was a pretty sizable reach at 67, and that's the Day 2 pick I don't have a ton of confidence in. I think we all see McCaffrey as a reach, but his film, his Senior Bowl week, and his pedigree are good enough to look at him as having the potential to justify his draft range. As for Day 3, Magee is the guy I'm not sold on. I know our FO has a reputation for excelling at drafting LBers, I just couldn't find enough cut ups to form a strong take on him, and what I did see was not very impressive. In the end, who is really going to care if he doesn't hit though. This class is 100% going to be defined by Jayden Daniels. If he hits, then we'll be competitive at the highest level of the NFL. If he busts, then we'll be going through turmoil again in a few seasons.

Seeing the way Deion and Shedeur Sanders behave on social media, I'm so glad we're not in the market for a 2025 QB.

Five picks in the top 67 should net 4-5 starters. We had to trade three starters to get this ammo.

There aren't many stud tackles period, but there are many more on the list of the current best tackles in the NFL with 33" arms than 36" arms. It's overrated as a determinant of success. Penei Sewell was the top graded OT in the NFL according to PFF, and he has 33 1/4" arms. Braden Smith was the sixth highest graded OT, and his arm length is 32 1/4". Bernhard Raimann was the eighth highest graded OT and his was 32 7/8. Taylor Decker was ninth, and his arm length is 33 3/4. Rob Havenstein has the same arm length and he was 14th in the NFL. Zach Thom was 15th and his arm length is 33 1/4". Slater was 17th and has already been discussed, but his arms are 33" flat. Kaleb McGary's arms are 32 7/8 and he was tied for 20th. That's eight of the top 20 OTs in the league last season with less than 34" arms. Arm length isn't going to hold Cosmi back from playing tackle. He got moved inside because we lost Scherff and signed Wylie. He played RT as a rookie and was good. He only struggled at RT in year two because he played most of the season hurt and got moved back and forth on a line that had to constantly shuffle personnel due to injury. Good linemen are good linemen, and he has spent more of his career at tackle than guard. If we didn't have Wylie, he'd probably be playing tackle still. And if Wylie gets hurt, there is a good chance he'll have to kick back outside to tackle unless Coleman is ready to play as a rookie.

There's not a good, objective way to grade our classes. Just going on numerical value minus reach scores doesn't work, because a reach at the end of the draft shouldn't matter in comparison to reaches at the beginning. Should there be some consideration about accurately drafting compared to our teams' real draft class? What if we are accurate with our picks in that regard, but our team makes bad picks? We have at least three objectives here, and they can contradict each other: 1 - to pick good players 2 - to pick the players that our teams realistically would 3 - to pick players after they are actually drafted in the real draft So in assessing my own class, Jarrian Jones at 96 feels like my best pick because that's what actually happened on draft day. But that also means a +0 value, and it's also not going to be an impressive pick in the ultimate consideration of the class if he ends up being a scrub. Then let's say you pick a player 50 picks early in the second round, and it looks like you committed a -50 reach and that it was one of your worst picks. But that player ends up being an All Pro, and in reality, you've outpicked both the NFL and your real team. Finally, let's say that I picked Michael Penix as the Jacksonville Jaguars this year, and he ends up being a star IRL. That pick would have been a value pick where I chose a star QB, so it seems like it should be considered a home run. Except that Michael Penix is a completely unrealistic pick for Jacksonville, and the reality is he would probably be the third stringer there. So how do we assess that?

Building an NFL team is like building a tower, not a house. The competition isn't over who can build the most complete house, it's over who can build the tallest tower. The players are all building blocks of the same shape and basic function, but where they differ is in size. The best players are the biggest blocks. If every team is restricted to building with 53 blocks, then the ones who get the most big blocks are the ones that will win. Need-drafting stems from looking at the problem of building a team with constricted resources wrong. It's misunderstanding the true competition in the sport, and the end result is a team that doesn't have enough talent to compete.

Probably. I get the logic to try and work around your first round pick, but the obvious solution is to play Guyton at RT, Smith at LT, and bench Steele because he sucks.

He makes plays against man coverage too. I think he kind of has a reputation for being a zone beater, but his man grades are better than his zone. He's got good strength and toughness and he's a no frills route runner who efficiently creates separation early in the concept.

I hope we're lucky too. I wanted Maye and still wish we had picked him, but I'm very glad that we picked Jayden instead of McCarthy #2. It's a super negative hypothetical for me that I don't want to unnecessarily ponder. We got a QB that has legit big play capability, and I don't have to worry about a scenario where that wouldn't have been the case. I think franchise QBs are more made than found, and that's why I'm still optimistic about this build. Guys like Jalen Hurts, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, even Patrick Mahomes were all made into franchise QBs by the situations they got drafted into. None had the kind of can't-miss pre-cast greatness of a Lawrence, Luck, or Burrow where they were almost immune to situational instability (although the Bengals found a gem in Zac Taylor). They got forged by their teams. Excellent stability, excellent coaching, excellent culture, excellent supporting talent, and a sincere commitment to their development--all of that was necessary for them to be successful, and all of them would have been busts if they had they ended up in a place like DC during the time they came into the league. Our hope is that the conditions here for developing a franchise QB are right this time. Harris, Peters, and Quinn are all on the same timeline of the build, all on the same page about Jayden, and Peters and Quinn are 100% married to him. They're going to do everything they can to make sure he works out. If he doesn't, then it'll probably be due to injuries that are beyond our control at this point. Health provided, I think it's going to work too. They made building a championship caliber defense a huge priority, and I think they are going to pull it off. An elite defense is a big part of a QB development cradle, because it gives them the ability to make mistakes and go through growing pains. Most prospects are not like a Matt Stafford or Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck, where they can come in and be almost immediately competitive while running an expansive passing game and carrying the burden of their team's competitiveness on their shoulders. Most QBs need a training wheels offense and the opportunity to get the ball back when drives stall or the ball gets turned over. And all QBs suffer in development from playing uncompetitive football. Being able to still compete at the highest level of the sport while running a limited passing offense is how guys like Roethlisberger, Brady, and Wilson got the very, very long runway to grow into future HoFers. We still have a lot of work to do, but I think the foundation of our defense is outstanding.