First of all, I really appreciate the way you asked me about my reasoning. As I have said before, I am not an expert, nor am I trying to pretend to be. I could be misguided, but my concerns about taking a DE in round 1 this year come from a few things.
The fiasco of Dion Jordan (pick 3) and Charles Harris (pick 22) has me questioning our ability to evaluate edge rushers properly. I realize that teams miss on players, but I have to admit, those misses hurt, and I believe the impact set our team back for some time. I would hate to have something like that happen again because we have a great opportunity to make a real difference for our team this year. I might be guilty of a framing bias. Perhaps I should treat each draft cycle as a new and independent cycle, but until Grier and our scouting staff do a little bit better with this position group, our misses have made me risk-averse when it comes to taking edge rushers in round one.
As for Zierlein and player evaluations in general, I don't know if they are good or bad. In the past, I have relied on his player evaluations to target guys I like. He seems to be consistent, but I have no idea if he is good or not because, as far as I know, there isn't any data available to grade and evaluate the evaluators. I am also considering that Zierlein casts a wide net with his evaluations and seems to cover most of the players coming into the draft. In contrast, Ledyard's report linked below is more specialized, which carries a little more weight with me.
Finally, something I hadn't considered before but learned about recently is projected playing time concerning draft value. Except for Phillps, Ledyard doesn't think any of the other guys, especially Rousseau, are day one. Admittedly, he's a tough evaluator, and he's not saying they won't eventually be good players or contribute. He thinks it may take some developmental time to get them on the field full time. I would be happy with several of them if we could get them in round 2.
https://www.pewterreport.com/2021-nfl-draft-edge-rankings/