The problem I have with that is it shouldn't have taken that long. They fell in love with being different and looking smart. I have read things about losing a front office guy that was extremely good at evaluating talent, have read stuff about Pete being too far removed from college coaching and didn't know the players as well anymore, but I don't know it is either. Every man has an ego, and their egos had been stroked so hard after picks like Bobbie and Russ and KJ and Sherman and others? They continued to believe they had to do that. Ifedi was a fucking reach, Irvin was a reach but we were told he was the next great LB they would discover, a long ass list of shitty CBs that they were going to make magic happen with, Eskridge was the next Ty Lockett but most all of us feared he was the next fucking Paul Richardson, LJ Collier had an amazing Senior Bowl and would be our next great edge (Jesus this one was stupid), Penny was the second most elusive runner in college behind Saquon, but he did it against far less talent than than the others and McDowell was a top 10 talent with attitude issues Pete could fix. Non of those were BPA.Cascade Kid wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:35 am
This was a statement from about a month ago, not three years ago. He's current philosophy is to draft best available and not strictly targeting need. So your examples are really the reason he has taken a step back to really evaluate his draft approach.
"I think I talked about it before, the lessons you learn along the way," Schneider remarked. "I'm Catholic, so I beat myself up a little bit. The mistakes I've made, and why. Comparing players and purely drafting for need."
Saying, "oh, we learned our lesson after LJ"? Frustrates me even more. They haven't, because I truly believe they next time they think they have the chance to look smarter than everyone else? They'll reach for a guy they want even though it's too early. I imagine the fact that they were the talk of the NFL pre Super Bowl, how every draft was graded poorly and then panned out? Was intoxicating and highly addicting. As great as that was, I liked last year. No reaches, no what the fuck moments, just good players at a good value where they were selected. They didn't trade back numerous times to load up on Mike Tyson and Tedric fucking Thompsen, they didn't draft some tiny fast receiver or a former Safety to play DE/LB or a huge Guard to play Tackle. They took players worthy of that draft position, and didn't move past guys worthy to load up on Meh talent later.
In a nut shell? They did what they hadn't done in some time. Hard to be super critical lately, because besides Eskridge, I can't think of a ton of guys lately I didn't like or at least understand why we took them. But, it sure as fuck shouldn't have taken the colossal failure of LJ Collier, a guy most in here called a failure the day he was drafted, to make them realize drafting for need is fucking stupid.