KC traded their first and then a first to move up to pick Mahomes - who then sat for a year while the Chiefs won the division. They then traded Smith despite a great season and seeing almost nothing from Mahome in live snaps. If they had followed your path they wouldn’t have a title and future HoF QB.
Your edit is THE POINT. Their roster is currently loaded - not that it couldn't stand for even more improvement (especially at WR), but it's loaded. Except at QB. That's the spot where they could potentially set themselves up for years and years. And they have draft capital to make a play. If EVER there was a time for this franchise to take a home run cut, it's this year with this draft to get the QB they want.
I was coming here to post the exact same thing. You have to be *very* sure that Lance is not a small sample size darling. I think there's a decent chance that he's not even Easton Stick.
If it helps, here's PFF's top 32 prospects that it ever graded. Lots of QBs on this list.
I disagree with this. EVERY QB prospect has a wide range of potential outcomes. Lance's small sample size is absolutely a factor that needs to be taken into account, but even if the Pats think that Lance (or Fields, or, hell Mac Jones) only has like a 66% chance of being a very good to great QB, that could be enough to justify a trade up. Was KC "very sure" that Mahomes would be great? Probably not, but they were confident enough that it justified the cost.
But Lance has 3 inches on Stick, and more importantly, no NFL team talked themselves into taking him early. He was a 5th round pick. It's like saying Fields won't be as good as Cardale Jones.
Yeah, I mean Kaep was 1 of the best 2nd rounders during that entire timeframe & went 36th, so no issue with that if it's on the table & Lance/Fields cost is high.
My general memory of Kaep was that he had an incredible arm but was short on touch and accuracy and was too willing to tuck it after one read. I just think it would be interesting to see how a player like that might have developed in a more stable system that was better able to scheme to his strengths and weaknesses and to better give him strategies to adapt as the league itself adapted to Kaepernick. Not to exempt him from blame, but things really fell apart around Kaep after 2013 - Greg Roman seemed to really lose his way in 2014, then you had the Jim Tomsula disaster, then the Chip Kelly disaster, then it was all over for him in the league for non-football reasons (another story altogether).
Maybe it's just because I'm a frequentist, but
No, you're right. I'd take him at 96, but that's the same thing (or worse), right?
Kaep had a strong arm, but his motion was elongated & he never really seemed to have an amazing feel for the game in ways that didn't feel particularly teachable.
Not saying that your particular analysts are wrong, but there is quality creep ever year as the draft approaches. X is a star, Y is a star, Z is the best prospect ever. Media is selling a product, teams may be talking themselves into players, etc.
I've talked myself into the idea that the Ravens and Patriots are both essentially adopting a smart underdog strategy of not even trying to compete with the top QBs without a top QB by moving towards run based offenses. Fields or Mond, baby!
I don't know. There's always FCS QBs that put up huge numbers and they aren't first round picks. I gotta think NFL folks aren't just looking at his stats.
My concern on Mond is... what does he do well passing? I look at breakdowns and even guys like Newman have somewhere they're pretty good (in Newman's case Play Action)... Mond combines being inaccurate at all levels with really low explosive play rates. He strikes me as a guy who just doesn't have any upside as a thrower.
My love for him is helped by my very limited knowledge of him.
I think there's always stuff you can tell from the film and stuff you have to extrapolate from. For all his fewer attempts, Lance played in a more "pro style" offense than any of the other top QB prospects. So if you're the 49ers and you run a heavily under center, bootleg roll out, play action passing game, you can find more reps of Lance doing that than the other guys. He might have taken more snaps under center in one game than some of these other guys did in the entire college careers.
If that's all you're looking for from a QB why not just stick with Cam & draft another player who can help immediately at 46?
This is almost a decade old but the top rushing teams in the league don't often translate to the most successful. A scatter plot comparing rushing rank to final record versus passing rank should easily prove this.
This is a very good piece, though - like always - I wish the Ringer had better editors. They bury the lede that all the emerging knocks on Fields are tied into old racist tropes - he can't process quickly, he's lazy. The stats, the tape, and the measurables all prove otherwise.
It's not just that though, he went from... "Mac Jones is probably a 2nd rounder" to "does he get past CAR at 8" in about 2 weeks.
Yeah, I know, but that chart has Fields falling from an average of like 2 to 4.5 or something.
How do you think he’d do in this years Pats lineup, with the TE’s, catching backs, and BB at the helm?
What was the big thing about ‘you can’t win if you throw the ball more than x times’...until it became completely pass dominated league? Wasn’t BB part of that vanguard, part due to blurring the pass v run scheming with all the short passes, RB receivers, etc?
the point doesn’t actually get made & discussed until more than halfway through the piece.
Trying to trick the Jets into taking McCorkle at #2? Yeah, that sounds dumb too. If their courting of Mac Jones is a head fake, I can't think of any gamesmanship that has any significant value, given their position.
Great post. So much to talk about. I'd say Lock has been a disappointment. I'd also say Hurts has been ok so far but not pretty good. I wear Pats, Eagles, and Ravens hats. Some of these guys here were seen as massive reaches at the time. Now conventional wisdom isn't always right but Arif Hasan's composite big board has proved that there is something to wisdom of the crowds. So when you take Hackensuck in the 2nd... well... the odds are against you already and bucking convention hurts even more. I'm not saying you can't pick a Vollmer and it not work out because it does but it is a risk.
You might like Desmond Ridder next year if you liked Kaep coming out. Similar skillset. Big Ridder fan here.
That's fair. My greater point was that it's too early to judge whether they were good 2nd round picks or not.
But maybe they are?
(Dak Prescott was a fourth-round pick in 2016, of course; presumably nobody at the time thought he was worth a flyer in Rounds 2 or 3...)I will be rooting for Hurts and not just because I like the Eagles. Class act and model teammate.
True - but at this point it's more about the evals of Newman, Trask, Mond, and Mills. I think all are in the "flashes starter traits" category. More likely a backup. And you or anyone else is fine to disagree with that but at that point I'd rather read your opinion of why one of those guys is worthy of that 2nd round spot. And I think there are arguments to be made for each one minus Trask. I just don't buy them. But, again, really curious and open to reading others takes on them. Honestly that is part of what makes it fun - reading someone elses take, and changing my own mind.But maybe they are?
Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for Ridder.
