[CBFF] CT - Bears ignored nee... blah blah blah

[Jim Ferolie]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Shannon" <tshanno at gmail.com>
>>
What really bothers me, and where he really hit them
> hardest, was in these statements:
>
> ----
> In assessing the Bears' draft as a whole, it was the most curious and 
> least
> effective draft in the league. No team misaligned their draft board 
> more...
>
> (cut)
>
> Jerry Angelo is well respected among his peers around the league,
> including myself, but he must look hard at the guy setting up his
> draft board, Greg Gabriel. His lack of football background is really
> starting to show. Having someone with a strong football coaching
> background, who can access a player's talent and value in the draft is
> essential.
> ---------
>
> This is a direct attack on the Bears ability to stack a draft board.  It
> goes way beyond, "They didn't fill their needs" and "They reached on their
> first two picks."  This is, "They don't know how to assess high end, first
> and second round talent.  They don't know what they're doing."  That's
> bothersome.  I'm not sure I believe it but it is bothersome.
>
> Tom S.

Yes, that was definitely strong criticism. I believe that it stems from JA's 
insistence that he would go BAA, which, of course, means you take whomever 
is at the top of the draft board, regardless of position.

In actuality, I do not believe they did this at all. I believe they instead 
had a group of players whom they considered to be the best value picks at 
their position and a group of positions they weighed equally in terms of 
impact to the Bears: TE, KR/PR/DB, DT, DE, LB. Then, they chose players 
based on which one stands out the most from his peers. In other words, if 
there are four DTs 95 percent as good as the best one available, skip it for 
a round. If there are 12 TEs with the worst of the bunch are 90 percent as 
good as the top choice there, skip them for three rounds and pick one up 
later.

The truly odd part is that they had the same position twice at the top. I 
don't know how I feel about this, except that you can never have too many 
good CBs and the return game was incredibly disappointing last year after 
Azumah made it so exciting the year before.

In any case, it's an excellent third-round-or-later draft strategy, and I 
believe the Bears are very, very good at executing it. I think Landry 
believes this strategy should not be employed at all on the first day, which 
may be true. But again, I still think we're talking big picture, which is 
not necessarily his area of expertise.

I believe that what it ends you up with is a team full of depth, with good 
special teams but fewer stars. Some people might suggest this leads you to 
having good teams year in and year out but never a great one. On the other 
hand, it makes free-agent acquisitions much easier and more effective 
because you are improving a position rather than plugging a hole and you 
have much more salary cap room because you always have plenty of cheap 
talent. It allows you to re-sign most of your players but let the 
money-grabbers go without ruining the team. Having that kind of depth did 
not work out for the Kansas City Chiefs in the early 1990s, but it has 
worked wonders for the New England Patriots and finally paid off for the 
Pittsburgh Steelers after years of frustration.

This strategy could also be seen as a way to avoid making those 
career-changing, costly high picks, which could be either cowardice or 
wisdom.