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Trade down and nab another 2nd

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Is that why Maxwell is possibly on the chopping block and the coaching staff wanted to move Alonso from MLB . . . b/c the trade was "marvelous". :err:


Kiko is not a great player but he is good. He's just a much better fit at weakside than middle in our defense. Maxwell is overpaid as **** but he's certainly an above average starting corner, and as of right now we have no other players on our roster who fit that description. I love Howard's upside but he needs to prove himself still.
Bottomline is that our defense has more holes than Swiss cheese right now and this upcoming draft happens to be deep with linebackers and edge rushers. If we miss out on both Cunningham and Davis by trading into the 30s I'd be a little upset, but there will be a good defensive prospect available at a position of need, and we have 4 (by my count) major, major holes on our D right now. We need a plethora of picks.
 
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MLB, Strongside LB, FS and DE are all huge holes and we could use another DT as well. Is anyone really in love with Jordan Phillips?
 
Phillips will make one splash play and then be invisible for long stretches. He's way too inconsistent to count on as a starter.

He's a big waste of talent for a man of his size and agility, and how's Denzel Perryman doing these days? Serious question, I really don't know... Couldn't we have had him with that pick if we didn't trade down in round 2?
 
My position on this has evolved over the decades. I thought trading down in the first round was smart. Now I believe it's wise to allow special players to fall to you, without fixation on any specific position or area. The forced moves come when you are desperate to fortify one area.

You can't pay too much for a true franchise quarterback. Otherwise the price to trade up in the first round is rarely worth it. Naturally we got a bargain when Dion Jordan was involved. That price tag alone should have been a hint at what we were getting ourselves into.

Occasionally a middle round pick like rounds 3-5 will click big. Those connects are greeted with plenty of hoopla. Year after year. Remember that guy. What a steal. It's like the posters on college recruiting forums who try to pretend a 3 star is not much different than 4 or 5. More often than not those middle rounds contain forgettable junk. When I was a young guy I remember being excited about our third round picks, wanting to believe they were really first round talents that other teams foolishly overlooked. We're geniuses with Shula atop the franchise so we figured it out...suckers.

Fortunately I wised up in Las Vegas, where reality tends to impact your bottom line, and you learn to apply the fundamentals elsewhere. There's simply too much burden to be great in the middle rounds. Maybe one or two general managers at a given point in time have that skill. They get the publicity. As soon as the publicity attaches they often have lost the midas touch, and somebody else quietly owns it. Equally brief. Notice last year our top two picks were a special player who fell to us, and then a talented guy in the second round. Then it was plenty of mush. We still have hopes for some of that mush. It's likely mush.

In those top 40 picks or so you don't have to be ultra sharp. Normal is sufficient. I want our favored team to stop screwing around with so many subjective decisions year after year and merely apply a big picture philosophy that has a far greater chance to succeed than all the scattergun methods we've rationalized. Isolate one free agent and get him. Keep the first round picks and use middle round resources to trade up in the second round within the Top 40, if you aren't already there. Every season try to make as many choices in that Top 40 as possible, without surrendering future picks or valuable resources on the roster. Don't pretend Top 45 is sufficient in a given year. Remember, we're trying to reduce decisions, not change where to make them.

Sleep through those middle rounds. Take some stabs in the late rounds. You need fillers, after all.

Then sit back and see what happens. Great players...imagine that.

Great post, Awsi! I think the exceptions enjoy such a brief reign of excellence, because, for it to work, you need two things: 1) a board that's significantly different from the group 2) a board that is at least as good as the group.

With regard to mid and late-round gems, Seattle has cooled off. Much of this is the league copying aspects of their draft formula (especially for CB's). If Richard Sherman entered the draft in 2015-2017, despite not being a great player at Stanford, his length and 3-cone wouldn't let him fall to the 3rd - let alone the 5th. James Bradberry is a good example of a player going earlier than he would have pre-Legion of Boom, and he had a strong rookie season, with room to develop into an elite CB. The media is still behind - as are some teams. Rasul Douglas is currently rated as a 3rd RD pick, but, even in this deep draft, don't expect a player with his length, NFL body, and ball skills to fall that far.

New England still has less obvious and transferable criteria, but they're not as good in this area as Seattle was at its zenith. Still, they landed T. Flowers in the 4th. That's more of a league-wide mistake than special criteria, but credit to them for grabbing him.

I've noticed that teams that draft significantly better than league average on D tend to struggle to draft quality OL and vice versa. Seattle, Minnesota, and Denver are the obvious examples.

Miami's FO isn't clever enough to outsmart the league, and I agree that they're best served landing as many top-40 picks as possible. I'm guessing you'll see DE at 22 and a trade up for a LB, but it could just as easily work the other way, and you can't rule out players like J. Peppers (not that he should be available).
 
Great post, Awsi! I think the exceptions enjoy such a brief reign of excellence, because, for it to work, you need two things: 1) a board that's significantly different from the group 2) a board that is at least as good as the group.

With regard to mid and late-round gems, Seattle has cooled off. Much of this is the league copying aspects of their draft formula (especially for CB's). If Richard Sherman entered the draft in 2015-2017, despite not being a great player at Stanford, his length and 3-cone wouldn't let him fall to the 3rd - let alone the 5th. James Bradberry is a good example of a player going earlier than he would have pre-Legion of Boom, and he had a strong rookie season, with room to develop into an elite CB. The media is still behind - as are some teams. Rasul Douglas is currently rated as a 3rd RD pick, but, even in this deep draft, don't expect a player with his length, NFL body, and ball skills to fall that far.

New England still has less obvious and transferable criteria, but they're not as good in this area as Seattle was at its zenith. Still, they landed T. Flowers in the 4th. That's more of a league-wide mistake than special criteria, but credit to them for grabbing him.

I've noticed that teams that draft significantly better than league average on D tend to struggle to draft quality OL and vice versa. Seattle, Minnesota, and Denver are the obvious examples.

Miami's FO isn't clever enough to outsmart the league, and I agree that they're best served landing as many top-40 picks as possible. I'm guessing you'll see DE at 22 and a trade up for a LB, but it could just as easily work the other way, and you can't rule out players like J. Peppers (not that he should be available).

If we were to draft Peppers, where do you think he plays in our D? I know he's small for it, but having that kind of speed and athletic ability at weakside lb would be intriguing. Him and Kiko would make for an excellent duo against the pass in the nickel... Problem being, we would actually have to find a way to stop the run on 1st down and force the opposition into obvious passing situations.
 
I'm almost always in favor of trading down but I would surely wait until our pick rolls around to do it. Unless the offer is just to great. Problem is, like other's have mentioned, at 22 your too late into the first round to be able to grab another second rounder. I'd rather see us trade down a few spots and stay in the first round and pick up an additional third rounder. It would be easier to make a move with our two third rounder's to move up into the early third round to select someone who might be lingering around after round 2 is over. Desmond King and Pat Elfein come to mind there.

Again though, I wouldn't make a move until we are on the clock.
 
If we were to draft Peppers, where do you think he plays in our D? I know he's small for it, but having that kind of speed and athletic ability at weakside lb would be intriguing. Him and Kiko would make for an excellent duo against the pass in the nickel... Problem being, we would actually have to find a way to stop the run on 1st down and force the opposition into obvious passing situations.

Some quality points on Peppers by excellent posters in this thread:

http://www.finheaven.com/showthread.php?375609-Slimm-s-2017-Safeties-(Underclassman)

Peppers would play a role similar to Tyran Mathieu. You'd want to put him in positions to take advantage of his burst and physicality, and you'd use him as someone who can match up with TE's or WR's in man coverage. His read/react in deep zones could use work, but he's a demon in the box and an outstanding match-up piece.

If you're in base, I could see him playing WLB. Ideally, the MLB would be a player more similar to Hightower or Timmons than Alonso, but he'd be an upgrade over the 2016 WLB's.
 
Some quality points on Peppers by excellent posters in this thread:

http://www.finheaven.com/showthread.php?375609-Slimm-s-2017-Safeties-(Underclassman)

Peppers would play a role similar to Tyran Mathieu. You'd want to put him in positions to take advantage of his burst and physicality, and you'd use him as someone who can match up with TE's or WR's in man coverage. His read/react in deep zones could use work, but he's a demon in the box and an outstanding match-up piece.

If you're in base, I could see him playing WLB. Ideally, the MLB would be a player more similar to Hightower or Timmons than Alonso, but he'd be an upgrade over the 2016 WLB's.

I was thinking OLB like Deone Buchanon in Arizona. Similiar size. But of course I bow to better talent evaluators
 
I was thinking OLB like Deone Buchanon in Arizona. Similiar size. But of course I bow to better talent evaluators

If you can keep him clean, I think he's physical enough to mix it up with TE's and RB's, so it could work. I'd feel better with a hammer like Timmons in the middle, but that'd leave Alonso as the odd man out (not asking him to play SLB).

If Miami drafts him, they may be content to start him in 5+ DB packages. As other posters have noted, that's well over half the time. Peppers wouldn't be my first choice, because I love this safety group, and he's not an easy fit in Miami, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at that kind of talent.
 
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