2020 NFL Draft Rounds 2,3 Discussion

[adambr2]

There's nothing in the rules of being a fan that says you have to convince yourself and others that every pick was a good one. If you need proof that some of them actually are as bad as what people thought they were when the name was called, you need look no further back than the 2018 group. Some massive wasting of draft capital there. The shine wore off those guys real quick. I can still hear the people talking themselves into those guys.

 

Who were people 'talking themselves into,' exactly? Josh Jackson, who had been mocked to teams in the mid-first (including the Packers' first round pick)? Maybe Orin Burks? After that, you have a bunch of mid to late-round picks, many of which have shown some promise in some ways, and the others are the typical fliers that sometimes work and often don't.

 

I don't know what the heck happened with Scott midway through last year, but they got two all-pro level players from that draft, and I'm convinced that one of Madison, MVS, or St. Brown will end up being the 3rd 'significant contributor' that you need to call a draft successful.

 

Jaire Alexander was the only great pick from that draft (so far). I don't know who the second all-pro level player that they got from that draft that you're referring to.

[PeaveyFury]

Jaire Alexander was the only great pick from that draft (so far). I don't know who the second all-pro level player that they got from that draft that you're referring to.

 

I don't know what the heck happened with Scott midway through last year

 

Scott was 2nd team All-Pro.

[LouisEly]

I can wrap my head around why they took Love but these last two are just baffling to me to take a complementary running back and H-back TE. It's like they are building their offense completely toward a run heavy offense in an era when passing has never been so important.

If there has been anything that I have learned watching the Badgers the last 25 years, it's that when you run the ball effectively you get three major benefits: 1) you frequently get 3rd and short (<5 yards), which is a lot easier to convert than 3rd and long; 2) you keep your defense off the field and well rested (and it's hard for the other team to score if their offense isn't on the field); and 3) the combination of those two things usually leads to close games that are winnable.

 

Give me Rodgers in a close game in the 4th quarter - he's won a heckuva lot of those, and there's a reason he's earned the nickname "The Boogeyman". And I have no doubt that a major part of the success of Wisconsin recently has been because their defense is well-rested. Lastly, if teams are shifting to 225lb speedy LBs, a 250lb running back suddenly becomes a big advantage.

[adambr2]

Jaire Alexander was the only great pick from that draft (so far). I don't know who the second all-pro level player that they got from that draft that you're referring to.

 

I don't know what the heck happened with Scott midway through last year

 

Scott was 2nd team All-Pro.

 

Ok, but..it's a punter. One that was not very good in 2019.

 

I'm not saying Scott is a bust and won't have a bounceback 2020, but those special teams guys are graded on a little bit different scale than most contributors. To draft any of these guys on day 3...well, you're pretty much expecting to get an immediate starter and contributor.

 

To hang your hat on any of those guys as a great draft pick is a little bit of a reach IMO, is all I'm saying. It's like giving Ted Thompson a big win for drafting Aaron Ripkowski in the 6th round because he was a contributor for several years. It's a fullback.

 

To me, if you have to point to these guys to highlight a draft, it wasn't a great draft.

[LouisEly]

Scott was 2nd team All-Pro.

Where did you see that? Last year it was Brett Kern (1st team) and Tress Way (2nd team). In 2018 it was Dickson and Hekker.

 

I do know that in 2018, Scott led the league in hang time and fewest % of punts returned.

[PeaveyFury]

I'm not saying Scott is a bust and won't have a bounceback 2020, but those special teams guys are graded on a little bit different scale than most contributors. To draft any of these guys on day 3...well, you're pretty much expecting to get an immediate starter and contributor.

 

To hang your hat on any of those guys as a great draft pick is a little bit of a reach IMO, is all I'm saying. It's like giving Ted Thompson a big win for drafting Aaron Ripkowski in the 6th round because he was a contributor for several years. It's a fullback.

 

There's a difference between a 'contributor' like Ripkowski and an all-pro level player, regardless of position. Scott was basically the MVP of the first Bears game last year.

 

Regardless, the point is that I challenge the narrative of people 'convincing themselves' about the 2018 draft. Alexander wasn't on many radars, and he's been great. Everyone was excited about Jackson, because he was a percieved mid-first rounder that fell to our 2nd. The rest? Who convinced themselves anything other than the typical hopeful potential of the 3rd-day guys?

 

Now if he had said the 2015 or 2017 drafts? You bet. But that's again a different regime.

[PeaveyFury]

Scott was 2nd team All-Pro.

Where did you see that? Last year it was Brett Kern (1st team) and Tress Way (2nd team). In 2018 it was Dickson and Hekker.

 

I do know that in 2018, Scott led the league in hang time and fewest % of punts returned.

 

Good call- he was PFF All-Pro, which is oddly on his profile. I didn't realize the distinction until now.

 

But the point remains, he's performed at an all-pro level in the past.

[reillymcshane]

To me, the biggest criticisms of this draft is that we appear to have reached for players in the 2nd and 3rd round - guys who easily could have been there later. And in doing so, we have ignored some areas of need.

 

But as noted, the team may very well have felt those players would be gone the next time we picked - so they pulled the trigger.

 

But you could argue that we are not going best available player and instead focusing heavily on guys who fit a very specific profile. But there is always a balance in the two approaches.

 

Still lots of holes on this team to fill. WR, OL, LB.

[Yount19]

Reading through some of the Twitter craziness on the web.. I see that SPARQ ratings similar to RAS is something GUT's picks are normally rated super high on.. AJ Dillion was the top RB.. Deguara was the 5th TE..

 

https://3sigmaathlete.com/sparq-rankings-2020/running-back/

 

SPARQ-based similarity score applied to physical measureables of NFL draft prospects. The idea behind this is that specific athletic profiles have different rates of success. It’s one step further than SPARQ — instead of the only question being “How athletic are you?”, it asks “What kind of athletic are you?” Of course, SPARQ figures into the calculation. The full list of inputs: height, weight, arm length, forty-yard dash, ten-yard split, short shuttle, 3-cone drill, bench press, vertical jump, and broad jump.

 

Note that the “NFL%” and “z-score” columns refer to the NFL positional averages and not to the draft positional averages. This means that a 0.0 z-score and 50.0 percentile would represent a player who rates as a league-average NFL athlete at the position. The average NFL player is pretty athletic, so this designation is not at all a poor result.

 

Please note that the measureables used to calculate each player’s SPARQ can be found by scrolling to the right of the “NFL%” column. Age is calculated for each player as of September 2020.

[homer]

There's nothing in the rules of being a fan that says you have to convince yourself and others that every pick was a good one. If you need proof that some of them actually are as bad as what people thought they were when the name was called, you need look no further back than the 2018 group. Some massive wasting of draft capital there. The shine wore off those guys real quick. I can still hear the people talking themselves into those guys.

 

I took a quick look at various publications to see what they thought of GB's moves/draft and it was almost universally praised:

 

- USA Today lists Pack as one of their "winners" of the draft

 

- NFL.com gives Pack an "A"

 

- SBnation gives Pack an "A-"

 

- Sporting News gives Pack an "A"

(although it should be mentioned that they thought Pack and Vikings were nuts for passing on the CB from Iowa)

 

- Even salty, bitter Pete Prisco gives the Pack an "A"

 

Lowest grade I found:

- SI gives Pack a B+

 

Also, it seems the Chargers pick of Derwin James was universally lauded even more than the Packers pick. My guess is the Packers had three or four guys they liked at 14 then when the Saints offered that 1st rounder they decided to make that trade and immediately started trying to get back into the mid teens.

 

Everyone everywhere thought the Packers had a good draft in 2018

[adambr2]

I'm not saying Scott is a bust and won't have a bounceback 2020, but those special teams guys are graded on a little bit different scale than most contributors. To draft any of these guys on day 3...well, you're pretty much expecting to get an immediate starter and contributor.

 

To hang your hat on any of those guys as a great draft pick is a little bit of a reach IMO, is all I'm saying. It's like giving Ted Thompson a big win for drafting Aaron Ripkowski in the 6th round because he was a contributor for several years. It's a fullback.

 

There's a difference between a 'contributor' like Ripkowski and an all-pro level player, regardless of position. Scott was basically the MVP of the first Bears game last year.

 

Regardless, the point is that I challenge the narrative of people 'convincing themselves' about the 2018 draft. Alexander wasn't on many radars, and he's been great. Everyone was excited about Jackson, because he was a percieved mid-first rounder that fell to our 2nd. The rest? Who convinced themselves anything other than the typical hopeful potential of the 3rd-day guys?

 

Now if he had said the 2015 or 2017 drafts? You bet. But that's again a different regime.

 

I don't know what Scott being the MVP of one single game has to do with convincing anyone that he was a solid use of a draft pick. I still dont believe you can use a typical special teams player as a real success story of a draft unless that player ends up being Justin Tucker. Scott hasn't really had enough cumulative success or failure to define him either way.

 

I agree with your point on Josh Jackson. I thought he was a great pick and I was iffy on Jaire. But for the most part I liked our 2018 draft. It's true that sometimes draft grades don't pan out as they are originally perceived.

 

My point has been more that Gute doesnt really have the established track record of draft success to where you can point to it in response to the many experts right now that are asking, "What in the world is he doing?!"

 

Thompson had pretty much earned that benefit of the doubt after 5 years or so, even if most of it was because of Rodgers. Gute hasn't really earned that yet. And his career as a GM at this point honestly probably hinges on the career of Jordan Love.

[adambr2]

I would like to see retrospective studies done that look at immediate draft grades, and reevaluate and regrade them 5 years later, and see how much correlation there is between immediate draft grades and how they are perceived years later. Is this commonly done?

[pacopete4]

If Gute hasn’t proved himself, why don’t we give him more than 1.5 drafts to do so? Drafts are hard to look back at within a year. Most take a few years to truly grade. And I get discussing draft picks but I don’t get questioning Gute when there’s nothing to really look at yet to prove one way or another that his drafts are great, good, bad, or ugly.

[PeaveyFury]

My point has been more that Gute doesnt really have the established track record of draft success

 

I think that’s a very fair and good point.

 

It is worth noting, though, that where he has gone off the beaten path in his two previous drafts (Jenkins, Savage, Alexander), he’s hit home runs. Gary could end up in there two when we have more of him to on.

[OldHeidelberg]

I think the Love pick was an organizational thing, the Packers have rode Favre and Rodgers to 2 Super Bowls, 2 stadium upgrades, and 2 stock sales and are a money making machine. I can't say for sure that it would all come crashing down with a decade of losing but I don't think they want to find out. We aren't going all in for Rodgers.

 

I like the RB pick now that I have thought about it more, keep building the running game and defense and keep Rodgers healthy. I don't love the TE pick but not too worried about reaching at the end of the 3rd, it's getting closer to where talent really starts to plateau anyway. I will find a way to love this draft by Monday like I always do.

[homer]

This is kind of how I feel:

 

I know it’s not totally realistic, but Jordan Love, AJ Dillon, and Josiah Deguara in the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th would have been a really solid draft. It just feels like they should have a 1st round pick and instead they don’t have a 4th.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

There's nothing in the rules of being a fan that says you have to convince yourself and others that every pick was a good one. If you need proof that some of them actually are as bad as what people thought they were when the name was called, you need look no further back than the 2018 group. Some massive wasting of draft capital there. The shine wore off those guys real quick. I can still hear the people talking themselves into those guys.

 

I took a quick look at various publications to see what they thought of GB's moves/draft and it was almost universally praised:

 

- USA Today lists Pack as one of their "winners" of the draft

 

- NFL.com gives Pack an "A"

 

- SBnation gives Pack an "A-"

 

- Sporting News gives Pack an "A"

(although it should be mentioned that they thought Pack and Vikings were nuts for passing on the CB from Iowa)

 

- Even salty, bitter Pete Prisco gives the Pack an "A"

 

Lowest grade I found:

- SI gives Pack a B+

 

Also, it seems the Chargers pick of Derwin James was universally lauded even more than the Packers pick. My guess is the Packers had three or four guys they liked at 14 then when the Saints offered that 1st rounder they decided to make that trade and immediately started trying to get back into the mid teens.

 

Everyone everywhere thought the Packers had a good draft in 2018

 

mic

drop

[PeaveyFury]

Yeah, I’d agree with that completely. Add a guy like Queen to the top of that, and all of us would feel much better, I think.

[pacopete4]

The more I have scoured the internet for things about Josiah Deguara, the more I love the pick. He is going to be a fun one to fit into the offense. Like Gutekunst commented on where Josiah Deguara can play at the next level: "Everywhere, quite frankly." And after watching highlights, even one of him blocking Chase Young solo. If you're bored today, here is an article on him.

[MrTPlush]

I also wonder if they'll use more tandem backfields, with Dillon as the 'RB' and Jones being used as a quasi-receiver. That actually makes a lot of sense, and could create some matchup nightmares for defenses.

 

Lafleur has said on multiple occasions this offseason that he wanted another RB. If this draft has proven anything so far, it's that Lafleur is done with trying to incorporate McCarthy's fingerprints into his offense. He's remaking it entirely in the image he wants. He wants size and power and wants to run it down teams' throats. I think this is his way of telling Rodgers "Get with the program, or you can be replaced."

 

Or it is:

 

Rodgers isn’t a 28 year old running QB making miracle throws 20 times a game so we need to stop relying on a passing game as the focal point. Look no further than To Brady. Over the past 5 years they progressively made it more and more about the guys around him. Even with diminished skills these HOF QBs can be just as valuable as the next great thing. A veteran HOF QB has experience and knowledge that can’t be replicated.

 

It’s not a hard concept. Running game, short passing game (TE, Jones, etc.) plus a veteran HOF QB can be a deadly combo. Be creative and not rely on Rodgers to light up the stat line every Sunday. Good reason the Patriots kept winning Super Bowls when Brady was clearly declining from a skills standpoint.

 

This isn’t some clickbait threatening to kick Rodgers out of town plan. Packers know they still have one of the most valuable things in the game under center.

[rwa12]

I would like to see either OSU receiver this round, or the ILB from Purdue