KiwiHawk
New member
I see people are learning from the new brand of "journalists" out there writing click-bait articles. You have to follow a certain formula. First, pick something with a lot of success and take a negative slant on it. Second, carefully cherry-pick your data points to make sure your data matches your premise. Third, do a bit of revision to any anomalous data point that seems to disagree with you.
Why the past 5 drafts? Why not past 4, or 3, or heck take all 8? Got to include that 5th one because that was the "worst" draft. Why was it the worst? Because we had a stacked roster and didn't need the players we drafted. Do you expect anyone to go up to Richard Sherman and say "Sorry man, gotta bench you so that our draft looks better"? And why not take all 8? Probably because you start to run into inconvenient things like drafting two players who were both in discussion for league MVP this year. Guys who make the Pro Bowl regularly. Guys who show up on the All Pro list.
Then you take the good ones and sort of sidestep how good they are in order to make your data look better. For example, it would be against the spirit of the post to say Lockett is a Pro-Bowler and All Pro, so you put in something like "Inury slowed him, now back on track" instead of any mention of his accolades. Frank Clark? Just "good". 22 sacks good, but still just "good". Pocic? I guess starting 11 games and being one of our better OL players is merely a "pass".
Here's the thing: The guys doing the drafting are the guys who have fueled this team to 6 playoff seasons and 9 playoff wins including a Super Bowl. The entire franchise history prior to that had 7 playoff wins. That kind of sustained success doesn't happen with crap personnel selection, and includes drafting depth players who don't get on the field for average-fan appreciation or stats padding. We may not think they are anything more than "meh" but when we have scraped those guys from the bottom of our defensive barrel due to injuries this year, the guys have performed remarkably well.
I don't have an issue with our drafting. We had bad drafts when we had a stacked roster because we could afford to take flyers on non-blue-chip players to see if we could catch any diamonds-in-the rough. I'm OK with that - they had little chance of making the 53 anyway.
Why the past 5 drafts? Why not past 4, or 3, or heck take all 8? Got to include that 5th one because that was the "worst" draft. Why was it the worst? Because we had a stacked roster and didn't need the players we drafted. Do you expect anyone to go up to Richard Sherman and say "Sorry man, gotta bench you so that our draft looks better"? And why not take all 8? Probably because you start to run into inconvenient things like drafting two players who were both in discussion for league MVP this year. Guys who make the Pro Bowl regularly. Guys who show up on the All Pro list.
Then you take the good ones and sort of sidestep how good they are in order to make your data look better. For example, it would be against the spirit of the post to say Lockett is a Pro-Bowler and All Pro, so you put in something like "Inury slowed him, now back on track" instead of any mention of his accolades. Frank Clark? Just "good". 22 sacks good, but still just "good". Pocic? I guess starting 11 games and being one of our better OL players is merely a "pass".
Here's the thing: The guys doing the drafting are the guys who have fueled this team to 6 playoff seasons and 9 playoff wins including a Super Bowl. The entire franchise history prior to that had 7 playoff wins. That kind of sustained success doesn't happen with crap personnel selection, and includes drafting depth players who don't get on the field for average-fan appreciation or stats padding. We may not think they are anything more than "meh" but when we have scraped those guys from the bottom of our defensive barrel due to injuries this year, the guys have performed remarkably well.
I don't have an issue with our drafting. We had bad drafts when we had a stacked roster because we could afford to take flyers on non-blue-chip players to see if we could catch any diamonds-in-the rough. I'm OK with that - they had little chance of making the 53 anyway.