How bad did losing our 2nd round pick hurt us?

If we had our 2nd, would we have taken someone else with our first who maybe added better value?

Was it a mistatke to give it up for Sheldon Richardson in the final year of his contract knowing our cap situation and what $$ he would be asking for in a new contract?

It's hard for me to evaluate this draft because some things, like giving up our 2nd for Richardson, seem so crazy and these are the same guys calling the shots on our draft. The truth is none of us will really know how we did until 2-3 years from now.l If we had wond the Super Bowl and Richardson became a key, then it's all different.

I think giving up our 2nd round really changed how we worked this draft. If our late picks turn out as well as our 2012 draft picks, then it won't matter...but then again it's been 6 years since we did well with our late picks.

Richardson was 100% a mistake in hindsight because it was a move to win last year and we didn't. I didn't like it at the time because it felt like going too all in on a year that was already sabotaged by bad luck. However, if we had won the Superbowl last year then zero people would have cared that I didn't like the move earlier in the season, myself included.

In order to know definitively that it was the wrong move you would have to replay last season a thousand times, figure out how many of them we won in due to Richardson, and then decide whether that added win % was worth giving up a small piece of our future for.

I think Richardson seeing Avril and Bennett gone and Sherman in S.F and the talk of Earl being traded soured things a bit, he wants to win and did not want to be in another rebuild project, Rams are looking like the upswing is there and on the cusp. Had we not had the bad luck with injuries and looked formidable he may have resigned.