Who Had Better Draft Classes from 2008-2011 Mia, GB, or Pit???

[jrobitaille23]

Laughable OP. Teams like the Steelers and Packers are usually very low in the rounds mostly in mid to late 20s yet they have found difference makers in pretty much every round. Miami has no skill players to speak of and a bunch of mediocre talent that is only starting because they have nobody else. The Steelers would take Long, Dansby, and Davis over their starters. That's it!!! Why you people try to justify Ireland's buffoonery is beyond me. He clearly just doesn't get it. Only Jeff would draft a center at #13. Only he would sign awful ex Cowboys but the one decent one (Laurent Robinson) he can't get....over Jax!!! Unless you have a franchise QB you have nothing and he has failed in that regard. Sadly, he will probably reach for Tannehill at #8 when he is no more than a round 3 talent. Ross will eventually fire him. I think the only reason he won't is because it's too late to enter draft without him, but I say he should before he does even more damage.

 

[WesternNYDolfan]

6 players were on the roster in 2008 from the 53 that are on the 2011 squad...that's not a good start, that a complete overhaul and it took 4 years. Their GM knew what he was doing, he traded Roy William for a bunch of picks like a good GM should...we got two 3rd rounders for Brandon Marshall and while Marshall has his off field issues his productivity is 3 times that of Roy Williams. You're the one being illogical and irrational.

Did they win the Super Bowl dummy? Their "complete overhaul" isn't done yet

 

[WesternNYDolfan]

Laughable OP. Teams like the Steelers and Packers are usually very low in the rounds mostly in mid to late 20s yet they have found difference makers in pretty much every round. Miami has no skill players to speak of and a bunch of mediocre talent that is only starting because they have nobody else. The Steelers would take Long, Dansby, and Davis over their starters. That's it!!! Why you people try to justify Ireland's buffoonery is beyond me. He clearly just doesn't get it. Only Jeff would draft a center at #13. Only he would sign awful ex Cowboys but the one decent one (Laurent Robinson) he can't get....over Jax!!! Unless you have a franchise QB you have nothing and he has failed in that regard. Sadly, he will probably reach for Tannehill at #8 when he is no more than a round 3 talent. Ross will eventually fire him. I think the only reason he won't is because it's too late to enter draft without him, but I say he should before he does even more damage.

Shows how much you know pining for Laurent Robinson, a life time practice squad player who shined in an offense where defenses keyed on everyone else (D Murray, Witten, Dez, Miles Austin) Very easy to find open space.


My point was to show that we are drafting on par with good drafting teams. People act like NFL talent is college. Many of our starters are on par if not better than starters on both Pitt and GB biggest problem is they have a star QB. This is what we need most to turn things around

 

[NYinBostonFin]

Shows how much you know pining for Laurent Robinson, a life time practice squad player who shined in an offense where defenses keyed on everyone else (D Murray, Witten, Dez, Miles Austin) Very easy to find open space.


My point was to show that we are drafting on par with good drafting teams. People act like NFL talent is college. Many of our starters are on par if not better than starters on both Pitt and GB biggest problem is they have a star QB. This is what we need most to turn things around

I think their WR cores are a lot better too. In fact, I'd say their #3 Wr is better than our #1.

But whatever....draft 3 starting WRs...no problem

 

[WesternNYDolfan]

I think their WR cores are a lot better too. In fact, I'd say their #3 Wr is better than our #1.

But whatever....draft 3 starting WRs...no problem

Robinson is getting 5 years 32 million! that is way too much money for Robinson, he is a good number 2 at best.

Here's a great write up on why L. Robinson was a HUGE waste of money:

When teams overpay to acquire marginal talent in free agency and the decision takes some criticism, that team's fans usually respond with a fair-but-flawed argument: "We sucked at that position last year and we desperately need to improve there, so if we overpaid, that's life." It's what plenty of Redskins fans said Tuesday afternoon about Pierre Garcon, and it's what plenty of Jaguars fans said Wednesday about Laurent Robinson. So let's explain why that mode of thinking is troublesome, and how teams can use that desperation to their advantage as opposed to forcing themselves into bad decisions.
First, as you might suspect, most teams don't spend a significant amount of money to acquire a new free agent at a given position unless they were specifically subpar last season in that area. You might get the occasional exception, but the Bills aren't targeting Mario Williams because they have a dominant pass rush, and nobody with a franchise quarterback is going after Peyton Manning. The only situation in which it really makes sense to acquire a veteran player in the hyperinflated world of free agency is when you're desperate. So that argument seems superfluous.
The bigger problem is the idea that upgrading at that position, or in that facet of the game, requires a team to throw money at acquiring a talented player, even if it means that the team overspends in the process. Teams approach the problem of having below-average output at a position by saying, "We need to upgrade to something better here, even if it costs us too much." Instead, they should approach it from the equally compelling, alternative viewpoint of, "We're already so bad here that we can't be much worse next season, so upgrading to a superior player is incredibly easy!" Rather than seeing the free-agent pool as being full of players who would provide superior production to the guys on your roster, bad organizations insist on picking one player from that pool and spending more money than they should to obtain an upgrade they can get from just about anyone.
Jacksonville's signing of Robinson to a five-year, $32.5 million deal on Wednesday is a perfect example of this sort of dysfunctional thinking. It's important to take a look back at Robinson's career to put the logic related to signing him into its proper context and understand why this is a foolish move. Before the lockout, Robinson had basically been a middling receiver for the Falcons and Rams, while struggling to stay healthy; nothing about his performance record suggested that he was about to have a breakout season, which is why the Rams chose not to re-sign him heading into the lockout. After he sat on the sidelines for a week, San Diego nabbed him on a one-year deal for close to the veteran's minimum, $685,000, but he failed to make the roster and the Chargers cut him on September 3. Again, he returned to the waiver wire and sat there for days without any nibbles. A wideout-needy team like the Jaguars could have brought him in for a tryout, but they weren't interested enough to do so. Four days later, he signed with the Cowboys, who released him after a week. Again, the Jags could have trusted their eyes and brought him in. They chose not to. Dallas brought him back onto the roster a week later when Miles Austin injured his hamstring, and Robinson responded with 11 receiving touchdowns in 14 games.
Now, the Jaguars had heard of Laurent Robinson before he had his big season with the Cowboys. They had a scouting report on him coming out of college, played a game against him in 2007, and probably had a pro scout watch some tape to assign Robinson a grade before free agency. They had multiple chances to sign Robinson for essentially nothing and decided against it. How can a player whose skills were not worth the minimum salary to a team in September somehow be worth $14 million in guaranteed money to that same team in March?
Because the Jaguars got fooled by Robinson's 2011 season, that's why. They saw a player who is yet to complete a single healthy season put up excellent numbers as a second or third wideout within a great offense and mistook it for skills that they somehow didn't notice six months earlier. The Jaguars talked themselves into thinking that Robinson is a burgeoning talent with huge upside, capable of dominating teams in the red zone and downfield for long touchdowns, and they fell for that simplest of statistical quirks: the small-sample-size fluke.
Robinson had 54 catches for 858 yards last year. Those aren't incredible numbers — roughly similar to the production of Jerricho Cotchery (57-821) or Terrell Owens (55-829) in 2009, and neither of those guys got big-money deals in free agency.
The big difference between Robinson and his peers is that 11 of his 54 catches resulted in touchdowns. That's a touchdown rate of 20.3 percent. It's totally unsustainable. Since 1990, there have been 20 other wideouts who caught 30 passes in each of two consecutive seasons and had a touchdown rate of 20 percent or greater in year one. Not even one of them improved their touchdown rate in the second year. During their second seasons, those guys caught touchdowns on 10.1 percent of their receptions. Robinson's touchdown rate is going to plummet next year, and it's not going to be because he's playing poorly. It will be because the Jaguars were expecting him to repeat something that isn't repeatable.
Teams make mistakes like this all the time, but the Jaguars were fooled by the same statistical quirk less than 12 months ago! Back then, general manager Gene Smith felt a desperate need to lock up a talented young target for his quarterback of the future and signed Marcedes Lewis to a mammoth contract extension while giving him $18 million in guaranteed money. Lewis was coming off a 58-catch, 10-touchdown season that, we noted at the time, was totally unsustainable. Lewis had scored either one or two touchdowns in every single season of his career up to that point, but the Jaguars paid him like a red zone threat after just a single season of production there. The bumbling tight end responded with a number of key drops in the end zone during a miserable 2011, as he failed to catch even a single touchdown pass. Lewis's touchdown rate did not regress toward the mean. It regressed all the way past it to zero.
If that were the only problem facing the Robinson contract, it would be an ill-advised decision. If you throw in the fact that Robinson qualifies as one of the Free Agents You Meet in Hell and has an incredibly checkered injury history, it's unbelievable. Instead of paying Robinson millions of dollars based on one fluke season in a great offense, the Jags should have saved their money and gone into the market to try and find the next Laurent Robinson. Maybe that's somebody like Donnie Avery or Chaz Schilens, players with brief spurts of performance who have seen their games stifled by injury. There's every chance those guys will be as good in 2012 as Laurent Robinson will be, and they're almost guaranteed to be better than Chastin West or Taylor Price. Even more importantly, they would save the team $10 million that could have gone to someone like Mario Williams or Vincent Jackson, the sorts of excellent players who you can't find for free on the waiver wire.
Why do teams refuse to approach the holes on their roster this way? The biggest reason is their incredible aversion to risk. There's a chance that Avery and Schilens won't play great or get injured. If so, the organization will look bad in the media and it will seem like they didn't make a serious investment to try and improve on their weak points. It's easier to just throw $14 million at the problem and silence that argument in advance, even if the money finds a player who is no more likely to actually solve the problem. As we noted in Grantland noted last week, NFL teams are afraid of the dark. They're so afraid, in fact, that they're willing to light money on fire to avoid it.

 

[FinsBR]

To be fair, some of our starters would not start on a Super Bowl contending team like Pittsburgh and Green Bay. And I'm sure they both have players on the bench who would start here.

^
This

AND

He failed to land a franchise quarterback, that's the bottom line. It doesn't matter how many OL he drafted that are starting for us, if you are not scoring TDs...

 

[jrobitaille23]

Laurent Robinson signing

We all know teams like Jax need to spend a little more to attract free agents. It's just the nature of the business for smaller market teams. You know, Victor Cruz was once a practice squad player. It took Hines Ward a couple of years to crack the starting lineup and put up numbers. Brandon Lloyd, Jordy Nelson, Welker...the list is long with receivers who toiled on practice squads and as fourth WR until they got the opportunity to start and shine. Robinson has great hands, makes the big catch, very athletic and great character who persevered with hard work. For a young team like Jax and Miami these are the types of players you want to build with. It could take awhile for Gates to develop but he has the tools. Hartline talent wise is at best a bench player. Moore may be someone who comes out of nowhere like Robinson who knows? Best bet would be to trade back in round 1 or even out of round 1. Take Weeden and load up on as much talent with added picks as possible. Or better yet...just go with DeCastro to make the left side of your line one of the best and go WR, ILB, RT in subsequent rounds. But Ireland will screw it up somehow, he always does.

 

[WesternNYDolfan]

We all know teams like Jax need to spend a little more to attract free agents. It's just the nature of the business for smaller market teams. You know, Victor Cruz was once a practice squad player. It took Hines Ward a couple of years to crack the starting lineup and put up numbers. Brandon Lloyd, Jordy Nelson, Welker...the list is long with receivers who toiled on practice squads and as fourth WR until they got the opportunity to start and shine. Robinson has great hands, makes the big catch, very athletic and great character who persevered with hard work. For a young team like Jax and Miami these are the types of players you want to build with. It could take awhile for Gates to develop but he has the tools. Hartline talent wise is at best a bench player. Moore may be someone who comes out of nowhere like Robinson who knows? Best bet would be to trade back in round 1 or even out of round 1. Take Weeden and load up on as much talent with added picks as possible. Or better yet...just go with DeCastro to make the left side of your line one of the best and go WR, ILB, RT in subsequent rounds. But Ireland will screw it up somehow, he always does.

Did you even read my full post?

 

[phinfan40353]

Can we please factor in Wins and Losses during that time. A GM is not solely judged on his drafting. If the only players made available to the coaches are the ones he picks, then he only has to draft players that are better at mediocre positions to supplant them on the roster. However, if he is not drafting key individuals that translate into wins in the schemes his staff is teaching, he is a failure.

Not too mention, if his staff is having problems teaching the players he is acquiring then either his staff is subpar or, again, he is subpar.

I appreciate your time spent on bringing one very detailed aspect to the conversation, but it does have many sides. And unfortunately, he has not been held accountable in key areas that lead to an effective review of his overall ability and skill as a GM.

It's time he was accountable for the Wins and Losses. I get tired of GMs hiding behind coaches and players.

 

[Pinkboy]

Those teams are good to begin with, so making those teams is alot harder to do.

The Dolphins are hot garbage so anyone they can find to plug in will do.

Case in point - most of Miami's draftees that made miami's team couldn't start on those other rosters. The crappy Brian freakin Hartline is our #2 WR for christ sakes. He'd be nowhere and cut from those teams, as one of many examples. The Dolphins are full of holes, always. While those other teams don't have near as many holes, hence why its easier to make miami's club. It's not rocket science,

the amount of homers here who overestimate the talent on this team is hilarious. All we heard from the blind homers during the manning sweepstakes is how much more talented miami is compared to denver, and why would manning want to go there instead of here.

Really, are you that stupid ? The Broncos did something with Tim freakin Tebow at the helm that the Dolphins havent done in over a decade. WIN A PLAYOFF GAME.

Homers love to rave about this defense, but its a mediocre average defense at best. They only look decent against crap offenses and 3rd string caliber QB's, pumping their stats and ranking. Look it up. Hell, even the horrible Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow shredded this defense when they turned it up a notch in the 4th qtr. They went through this defense like a hot knife through butter. Against top QB's this defense routinely gets shredded, the type of QB's you'd see in the playoffs would embarrass this defense with any gameplanning. If you have any confidence that this defense can stop playoff caliber QB's in the AFC in an important playoff game, you're beyond delusional. It would be like week 1 when Brady set passing records on monday night against this miami defense (time to gameplan). Or when even a mediocre ROOKIE QB like Flacco torched the Dolphins defense in the playoffs, at home in 08.

And this defense can't even create turnovers. A defense is never a very good one if it cant create turnovers. Very good defenses always create turnovers and game changing plays consistently and miami's D just doesnt do that. So this is a mediocre average defense AT best.

That's the defense. Don't even get me started on the crap offense.

The overrating of the talent on this team from blind homers like the OP is pure comedy. This is a miami team that lost to the Jake Delhomme and Colt McCoy Cleveland Browns in consecutive years. Let that sink in

This is NOT a talented team in the least sense. It's a team filled with a bunch of pluggers and a couple bright spots, but even the worst teams in this league have that. This is simply NOT a talented TEAM. Not in the NFL. The Dolphins are a very poorly constructed team, and with alot of flaws. And what's most pathetic is they don't even have any salary cap space with all this garbage on the roster

 

[Kyndig]

Hang on a minute. Let me ask you a a couple of questions to put things in perspective:

1. Is it easier to land a starting job on our team or on the steelers and packers?

2. Would any of our starters who were drafted during that time period start on those other teams other than Long and possibly Pouncey?

3. How many superstars has Ireland drafted? There were some impressive names on that list for the packers

Both of those teams won superbowls recently so it would be much harder to land a starting role on those teams, not to mention draft position

Ireland/parcels drafts have been safe, low risk, and mediocre

 

[jrobitaille23]

yeah, where you called his signing dysfunction and desperate? I completely disagree as I find him to be very good and a good piece to build with for Gabbert.

 

[Dmarino110]

just a thought, but isnt it hard to replace good established players? Greenbay has been drafting well for a long time, LONGER than 4 years. so naturally its going to be harder for their recent draft picks to overcome older established players...

on the other side of the coin, Miami has been drafting like S#!T for 10+ years. That and the fact that new regimes want to implement their own players and picks and it is much easier to become a starter through the draft.

 

[phinfoot]

Interesting to say the least!!! but Ireland needs more personnel skills with regards to his approach to interviewing and handling players, he seems to be failing in that dept ...

Agreed

 

[WesternNYDolfan]

Hang on a minute. Let me ask you a a couple of questions to put things in perspective:

1. Is it easier to land a starting job on our team or on the steelers and packers?
Our team but its not as big of a talent gap as many of you would like to say. We are very talented, which is what had many speculating that Manning may choose us.

2. Would any of our starters who were drafted during that time period start on those other teams other than Long and possibly Pouncey?Long, Pouncy, Vontae, Odrick, D Thomas would at least be a number 2 on many teams, Hartline would be a 2 or 3 on many teams, Clay might pan out, Merling

3. How many superstars has Ireland drafted? There were some impressive names on that list for the packers
​Jake Long, Pouncy will be one, and Vontae's on his way

Both of those teams won superbowls recently so it would be much harder to land a starting role on those teams, not to mention draft position

Ireland/parcels drafts have been safe, low risk, and mediocre

not really