Can I get a bit meta about the Pre-Draft Industrial Complex (henceforth "PDIC")? Every spring, I get more and more bemused by the amount of ink that is spilled - digitally or otherwise - on the process of allocating rookies to new NFL teams, a process which is almost certainly much, much more down to random chance than scouting skill than most people seem to realize. To give just one example, from the "Pats QB Options" thread:
So...if teams aren't great at picking the best players, what makes the PDIC think it's any good at picking them? And more to the point, really: what makes any fan a) care what any "draft expert" thinks about any player, or b) think he really knows anything about any particular draft prospect, or that he can do any better than the PDIC in his own personal mock drafts? The obvious answer to these questions is that everyone wants to dream big and believe that your team can acquire new talent which will significantly improve your team, and we all want to know a little bit more about who might be available to your team and others around the league. But that brings us back to square one: if nobody knows anything, why does anybody care? Or rather, while I absolutely care about the Falcons making the right decision with pick #4 - trade back? take a QB? take Pitts? take Sewell? - and all of the other picks they'll make thereafter, all of the reading and tape study in the world won't give me any clues in advance as to what the correct decision for them to make actually is. I'll only begin to learn who chose correctly in September, once meaningful games start being played. (And possibly not even then.)
There's certainly no harm in the PDIC and what it does and how any fan might engage with it. (Unless you think people have a moral obligation not to waste their time...but then, we all waste a lot of time on SoSH anyway, so I think we can throw that complaint out the window.) And I do think there are ways in thinking about the draft can be helpful: e.g., trying to identify what a team's biggest strengths and weaknesses are and the extent to which draft picks should be allocated accordingly, or pondering concepts in the abstract like trading up for a franchise QB like the the 49ers have and the cost in draft capital it requires, or trading down to buy more lottery tickets at the expense of a single (projected) high-end talent. But when it comes to individual players...even the most knowledgeable posters here - and there are a few very knowledgeable posters indeed - can only offer guesses which can only be proven right or wrong in the fullness of time. And I do often wonder why I shouldn't just turn my brain off, were it possible to do so, and ignore every single comment and evaluation about every college player until I see them on the field in the NFL. I certainly wonder why I find myself rooting for the Falcons to do X, Y or Z in the draft when I have no idea whether X, Y or Z is better; I only hold pre-draft opinions because someone in the PDIC convince me to hold them, and I could throw darts at options on a dartboard and be right as often as the PDIC is. Right?
All of these players were exhaustively scouted by the teams that drafted them, and all of the teams must have felt confident in the players they were picking. Some of these picks kinda seemed dubious to the consensus at the time - but for every pick on which the consensus was right to be dubious (e.g., Trubisky), there's probably another pick in which it was wrong (e.g., Herbert?). Nobody really knows anything, do they? And to the extent that some teams - e.g., Pittsburgh - seem to have a higher hit rate on their draft picks than others, how much of that is down to superior coaching and molding the players they acquire to become effective professionals rather than picking the right players in the first place? I mean, was Sam Darnold a bust because he wasn't a good prospect, or was he a bust because he got picked by the Jets and had to spend two years under Adam Gase?How many franchise QB's in the last 10 years have been picked in the top 5-top 10 and how many QB's have been busts? I listed all QBs picked in top 10 either traded up for or not.
2011--Cam Newton, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert--1 hit, 2 busts
2012--Andrew Luck, RG3, Ryan Tannehill--1 hit, 1 bust, 1 took a long time to be good
2013--none in the top 10
2014--Blake Bortles--bust
2015--Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota--both busts
2016--Jared Goff, Carson Wentz--I'll give them 2 hits as they've been pretty good in stretches but their original teams traded them.
2017--Mitch Tribusky, Patrick Mahomes--1 home run, 1 bust
2018--Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen--2 hits, 2 busts
2019--Kyler Murray--so far a hit
2020--Joe Burrow, Tua, Herbert--too early to tell long-term on all of them but Herbert has the lead in the clubhouse as being a franchise guy
Hits--8
Busts--9
Average--1(Tannehill)
Too Early to Tell--3
I'd say that Andrew Luck and Patrick Mahomes as the two guys picked in the top 10 in the past 10 years that are true franchise cornerstone QB's. Josh Allen and Kyler Murray are on that track, but I'd need to see more out of them. As you mentioned, teams' evaluations of QB's in recent history have been spotty at best. A lot of the guys available this year you'd have to really rely on the projection of the player on all but really Lawrence. Is that worth gambling multiple future 1st round picks to go up to 4 or 5? I like Fields and Lance, but not at the expense of 2 or 3 first round picks.
So...if teams aren't great at picking the best players, what makes the PDIC think it's any good at picking them? And more to the point, really: what makes any fan a) care what any "draft expert" thinks about any player, or b) think he really knows anything about any particular draft prospect, or that he can do any better than the PDIC in his own personal mock drafts? The obvious answer to these questions is that everyone wants to dream big and believe that your team can acquire new talent which will significantly improve your team, and we all want to know a little bit more about who might be available to your team and others around the league. But that brings us back to square one: if nobody knows anything, why does anybody care? Or rather, while I absolutely care about the Falcons making the right decision with pick #4 - trade back? take a QB? take Pitts? take Sewell? - and all of the other picks they'll make thereafter, all of the reading and tape study in the world won't give me any clues in advance as to what the correct decision for them to make actually is. I'll only begin to learn who chose correctly in September, once meaningful games start being played. (And possibly not even then.)
There's certainly no harm in the PDIC and what it does and how any fan might engage with it. (Unless you think people have a moral obligation not to waste their time...but then, we all waste a lot of time on SoSH anyway, so I think we can throw that complaint out the window.) And I do think there are ways in thinking about the draft can be helpful: e.g., trying to identify what a team's biggest strengths and weaknesses are and the extent to which draft picks should be allocated accordingly, or pondering concepts in the abstract like trading up for a franchise QB like the the 49ers have and the cost in draft capital it requires, or trading down to buy more lottery tickets at the expense of a single (projected) high-end talent. But when it comes to individual players...even the most knowledgeable posters here - and there are a few very knowledgeable posters indeed - can only offer guesses which can only be proven right or wrong in the fullness of time. And I do often wonder why I shouldn't just turn my brain off, were it possible to do so, and ignore every single comment and evaluation about every college player until I see them on the field in the NFL. I certainly wonder why I find myself rooting for the Falcons to do X, Y or Z in the draft when I have no idea whether X, Y or Z is better; I only hold pre-draft opinions because someone in the PDIC convince me to hold them, and I could throw darts at options on a dartboard and be right as often as the PDIC is. Right?