This draft is split for me. On the one hand they took Gonzalez at 17 who was a universal top 7 player, and Keion White at 46 who was a top 30-35 player on most boards including mine. I get the Mapu pick and I like the player but is he a better than Tucker Kraft?
Day 3 was a mixed bag. I get the kicker and punter picks and figured they were coming. Andrews has OG/OC versatility but most saw him as a round 7 prospect. I love Sidy Sow and think he has starter upside but it was really hard to find his tape. When I can only get 1-2 games of an OL I tend to grade them conservatively. Thankfully a friend has given me 5 games now so I can really deep dive this weekend. Mafi is another guy I thought of as a later day 3 pick. All three of these guys make sense as they are all tough maulers. Also, by day 3, the consensus board is not really relevant anymore. While the board is good at predicting the top 25-30 picks it gets less accurate as the draft goes on and by the fourth round it's almost irrelevant. So while I think Mafi and Andrews were reaches it's not clear the CBB can say that for sure. I usually analyze a pick if I can see why they fit. I can see how each of these guys fit fairly clearly.
Boutte and Douglas make sense as Z's or slots and Douglas has some return experience as well as can be used as a gadget guy. Neither guy is a roster lock but both guys certainly have a shot to make it. Going into this year Boutte was thought of as a round 1-2 kind of prospect before the bottom fell out.
To me when you come away with a top 7 guy and a top 34 guy when your picks are 17 and 46 that's a decent draft. round 3-7 might not be perfect but the odds of you hitting on those picks is also smaller and the consensus doesn't really matter once you get later in the draft. I think I would give them an A-/B+ now that I have had a full weekend to think it over. A- seems right given how heavily I weigh the first two rounds and how well I think they did there.
There is the obvious question of what happened with OT and TE but I think it is fairly self-explanatory. As I wrote in my superlatives I didn't think any of the top OTs were slam dunks for them but the three I felt were the best fits: Skoronski, PJJ, and Wright, were all off the board when they picked. Brod Jones would have been one of the least developed OL they have taken that highly and given they traded with the Steelers who wanted him and knew if the Steelers didn't take him the Jets probably would it is safe to say he was off their board. Harrison was another guy they could have taken but he was taken 27th by the Jaguars and not the same level of prospect as Christian Gonzalez.
Day two saw 2 OTs go: Tyler Steen at 65 and Wanya Morris at 92. Only 19 OTs were taken, the lowest amount since the 2017 draft. It wasn't a good OT class. They plan on trying Sow at OT. When they picked they could have either taken a huge risk huge reward OT with Brod Jones or the best consensus shutdown corner on the board. At 46 they could have reached for Tyler Steen or gone with a top 30-34 player. The value didn't match the board for where they picked for OT and the class itself was one of the worst I have seen in years.
Tight end is another one where none of the guys at 46 were as high of quality prospects as White. The only guy I think they could have taken instead of Mapu was Tucker Kraft but we're talking pick 76. Groh said it himself: the tight ends went fast and furious and they liked a few guys but they were all gone by the times they picked. You weren't going to solve all of their holes in one draft anyway.
Same goes for WR. No one at 76 was going to tip the scales anyway. This was not a good WR class. You could argue for a WR or TE there but end of the day they had Mapu higher on their board. Getting Boutte and Douglas where they did isn't too far off from the guys who went early 4th.
A few things on this.
- While I have mentioned that I thought the move for the Pats was one of the top 3 OTs (and they would have had to have moved up to grab Skoronski, but after Johnson went so early the phones had to be on fire), I don't understand the skepticism on Jones. Admittedly, 19 starts is low, but that Georgia line has been bananas and:
a) He is 311 pounds with very low body fat. That frame has more room
b) He is insanely fast and athletic. Generally that bodes well for elite tackles who meet the weight minimum.
c) His form mistakes seem immensely addressable. His footwork looks pretty darned good it is his hands and upper body where the mistakes lie and those are usually easier to fix.
d) He submitted very good games against great defenses.
- I don't think that the Pats interior line has distinguished itself to the point where drafting some of the Gs and "OTs who will probably go to G" didn't make sense. Cody Mauch, Steen, etc. all seemed to be good picks in the second round who could make a difference. The mid/late round selections of interior linemen was also a bit quirky on that front, although I thought Mafi would go earlier. I think Sow stinks and Mafi is good, but let's see.
- You had written that you thought that there were good WRs after the 3rd round. Now you seem to be backing off of that. Were Boutte and Douglas those guys? With the caveat that skill players taken after round 2 are a dice roll, that was another thing that struck me as really weird about the kicker at round 4 selection. There seemed to be some guys who had high ceilings at WR when they picked the kicker.