Given the Hawks relative lack of success in the first round

. . . which position would you like to see them draft in the first round and which position would you like to see them draft later on (for example, in the 5th round where they tend to hit them out of the part)?

For this scenario I'll play along. DL in the first cause I think we only need depth there and a bust wouldn't hurt that bad. In the 5th I'd love to hit on a big athletic WR who could become a rezone threat and jump ball winner for RW.

5 1st round picks gave us Harvin, Okung,Thomas,Carpenter and Irvin.Thats pretty successful.
OL,WR early OLB and OL later,

It's too small a sample size to say they have had a lack of success with First Rounders.

-Thomas is a future Hall of Famer.
-Okung is one of the best LTs in the league when he is healthy.
-Irvin hasn't proven his worth, yet, but he did have nine sacks and 19 QB hits as a rookie, and he did start 14 games at SLB last season. With two years left on his rookie contract, his status is still TBD.
-Carpenter has been a bust, at least in part due to knee injuries. But he did start 26 games. That's worth something, right?

90% of teams would take these results with four draft picks because being a First Rounder is no guarantee of success. Every year, about half of all First Rounders fail to meet or exceed expectations. They knocked one pick out of the park, nailed a second, and the last two picks at least became starters, albeit disappointing starters.

I hope they take the player available who is most likely to succeed in their system.

Best tackle available, offensive or defensive. If a top tier talent falls at tackle the Hawks need to pounce if they value that player.

Seafan":2u4bmoke said:

Best tackle available, offensive or defensive. If a top tier talent falls at tackle the Hawks need to pounce if they value that player.

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Well it's held true that whenever we pick the "who's that" guy it's not been great. However when we pick the guy we all know and usually want we do well. All I'll say is I hope we don't get cute again with a shocker of a first round pick although I feel a trade down is very possible.

To claim we are less successful where we pick, we'd have to establish a baseline. What is average for the position we pick at.

Honestly, the success rates for players in the 16 to 32 range is pretty poor. I'd say the issue isn't with our success, but rather your expectation and your possibly intentional dismissal of how late first round picks should be expected to perform.

There is a huge subset of fans who mistakenly expect all first round picks to be equal in talent. When in fact it's absurdly easy to establish that it is not so. If you're aping the silly notion that we bust on picks because of Carpenter -- then you need to at least prove that we busted on him by passing on a better talent in that range. I'd defy you to make that because that draft pretty much sucked.

Either way, I dismiss the premise of this thread until we can agree on what was missed.

Now -- if you want to bring up Irvin -- ok I can get down with that. I thought it was a crappy pick at the time and I'm pretty confident that the pick is going to be viewed as a near Curry type waste down the line. Even looking at the two as it stands today -- Curry at least started for 2 seasons for us. Irvin is a situational backup and going forward he's a non impact situational backup in a very modest defensive role right now. He isn't as good as Curry was as it stands today.

For the 12th overall selection (the original pick we held) -- he has not provided the value expected from that draft stock by any measure. We passed on a player likely to garner multiple pro bowl appearances at the 3 tech position (Fletcher Cox) in order to get Irvin. And had we drafted Cox, we'd not have had to spend one of the 6-7 8+ million dollar contracts on Bennett because we wouldn't have needed him to begin with. Essentially, passing on Cox cost us Tate directly. And we'd have likely been in a position to advance farther in 2012 postseason because we wouldn't have had zero interior pass rush to doom us in ATL.

Not taking Cox was a massive miss. And Irvin is pretty much a guy we won't be exercising our 5th year option on as he isn't worth that value of contract. Especially since he'll be 30 years of age when it comes time to make that choice.

Offensive tackle. If we don't upgrade we may get Russell Wilson killed.
In our division we face defenses near equal to our own. How would you
like to face our defense with the current offensive line ?

Fifth round is where we make medicine at corner back.