First things first. I didn't want to trade our 2nd round pick(#48)cause I felt we could have Rosen for our 3rd round pick(#78) and I guess our FO felt the same way because we didn't trade that 48 selection. We moved back to 62 and got an extra 2nd round pick in 2020. So that made me feel better about the trade. Now lets just say that we told Arizona we'd only trade our 78 picks for him plus that 5th rounder in 2020 and Arizona said no. That leaves two choices. Make the trade and give up that 62nd pick or keep the pick and draft a player at 62. Now I'm going to post a list of the players that were selected from 62 which is the pick we traded away and 77 which is one spot ahead of our 3rd round pick at 78.
I'm doing this to give everyone a chance to look at who we could have drafted if we had not traded for Rosen and after looking at the list, I'm happy we made the trade. There are some good players on that list but the impact a QB like Rosen could have for us imo is greater than what any of those players could have. 5 WR and 3 RB's were taken and I highly doubt we'd have drafted those two positions that high. Also two TE's and one DT that we were not drafting. There's two guys there that I like (Allen and Winovich but again, we're talking about talent wise the best QB we've had since Dan left. Here's the list
62-Andy Isabella-WR
63-Juan Thornhill-S
64-DK Metcalf-WR
64-Zach Allen-DE
66-Diontae Johnson-WR
67-Jalen Hurd-WR
68-Jachai Polite-DE
69-Josh Oliver-TE
70-Darrell Henderson-RB
71-Dremont Jones-DT
72-Germaine Pratt-LB
73-David Montgomery-RB
74-Devin Singletary-RB
75-Jace Sternberger-TE
76-Terry Mclaurin-WR
77-Chace Winovich-DE
Now I'm sure some of these players will be good NFL players but I don't see one on that list that I want to trade Rosen for at this point. Just my opinion of course. What's yours.
I think to truly test this exercise we need to go from pick 48, as that was our original pick that we traded out of as the first part of the Rosen plan.
The obvious player we missed out on is who NO took with our pick, Erik McCoy, and after that Taylor Rapp was highly rated at a position of need and went at 61. From the list beyond 62 Chase Winovich stands out, but would we have taken him at either 48 or 62, or risked waiting until our third round pick? Possibly at 62.
There are other good players on that list but I don't think we would ever realistically have taken a RB, WR or TE in the second.
When you look at it that way we gave up:
One of McCoy/Rapp/Winovich (or AN Other)
2019 4th
2020 5th
And got:
Josh Rosen
2020 2nd
2019 6th
(take that even further and assuming that the 2020 2nd and whoever we would have taken in the second this year cancel each other out, we got Rosen and a 6th for a 4th and a 5th!)
I was feeling very optimistic about the #48 pick at the start of day two but the run on OL (Ford, Taylor, Risner, Little, Jenkins) and CBs (Murphy, Ya-Sin, Williams) in the first half of the second round meant that by pick 48 a lot of potential starters in areas of need for us had gone. Yes one of McCoy/Rapp/Winovich would have contributed but if we'd been talking about Cody Ford or Byron Murphy instead then the decision to trade out and target Rosen might have been a lot more difficult.
So yeah absolutely agree that trading for Rosen instead of using the pick was the best move, but given the talent that slid out of the first round it could have been a lot harder to give up that pick.