Draft Talk

[TSE]

Heck yeah me too lol, also put me on the wait list for backup QB jobs, I'll work for minimum wage and I can outplay Daunte Culpepper lol.

[Piston Pete]

TSE, are you secretly the Uncle from Napolian Dynomite?

[TSE]

Quite the opposite, that character longs for living in the past whereas I long for the future. The past represents all the mistakes from which we need to learn from to make a better live for ourselves and future generations. Back in the day I was a legendary Bball star with an incredible shot and win percentage, the strength of my game was using my mind and strategy to make up for my lack of color.

[Piston Pete]

Deep.

Is there anyone here who wants us to trade up for Peterson or Prince?

[TSE]

I wouldn't be opposed to trading up for Peterson, but I think he might go too high and the cost would be too high. Whoever takes Peterson do they need a QB and want to trade Peterson for Stafford? See this is why I wanted to trade Stafford last year because the numbers and the situation was far more strategic to do it before last year started than it is for anytime in the future now, and we might have been more likely to be able to trade Stafford for Peterson straight up last year in advance than we can say tomorrow. And then our pick could be good for lucking out for Cam Newton or something like that. I know you guys love Stafford and all but I would just kill to have Cam Newton and Patrick Peterson(or maybe Cam's teammate Fairley) instead of Stafford and Brandon Harris.

I don't even want to know the cost of draft pick material no matter what number Peterson falls to, I don't want to pay that price with draft material, it's just not going to work out and we still have a couple dozen players on our team that are labeled trade bait. So to me, what I would be doing in advance of the draft is talking to every team in the top 10 about trading Peterson to me while they are on the clock, and the standing offer will be the 13th pick plus each team will give me a menu of players they want from my trade bait list. And virtually everybody on the team could be on that list, maybe guys like any offensive player other than basically Stafford/Best/CJ/Pettigrew, and anybody on defense except Avril/Suh/Delmas. There's a lot of guys that are expendable yet worth something that it's just a matter of how many of those guys will each of those top 10 teams want or need. Whatever the price is the price is, just try and negotiate the best we can on it.

[cochiseuofm]

I disagree we should trade Stafford, just to make that clear. But even if we wanted to, I highly doubt we are getting a top-five pick for him. He is too risky, with his injury history, to give up such a high pick for at this point. There is no doubt he is talented, but I think most teams would rather roll with someone like Cam Newton or Gabbart. Especially if there is a rookie wage scale in the new CBA.

And I've said this a million times before, but I'll say it again, no team is going to trade a valuable asset, like a top-ten pick, for a couple of mediocre players. Put it this way, if you were a team's GM, would you want four average defensive linemen? Or would you want one Suh, a clear superstar who can make his teammates better? Every GM sees a top-ten pick as a chance to get a superstar, they don't usually get traded easily.

I think trading up into the top-ten will probably cost too much, especially into the top-five, to be worth it. And the value of those picks will go up even further if, again, there is a rookie wage scale as the only real downside to them right now is the high signing price.

[Icness]

You get paid to make up mock drafts is what you're telling me Jeff? Where do I sign up?

It's actually a great deal of work, but yeah I'm not going to complain
I'm not doing it this season though.

[TSE]

I disagree we should trade Stafford, just to make that clear. But even if we wanted to, I highly doubt we are getting a top-five pick for him. He is too risky, with his injury history, to give up such a high pick for at this point. There is no doubt he is talented, but I think most teams would rather roll with someone like Cam Newton or Gabbart. Especially if there is a rookie wage scale in the new CBA.

And I've said this a million times before, but I'll say it again, no team is going to trade a valuable asset, like a top-ten pick, for a couple of mediocre players. Put it this way, if you were a team's GM, would you want four average defensive linemen? Or would you want one Suh, a clear superstar who can make his teammates better? Every GM sees a top-ten pick as a chance to get a superstar, they don't usually get traded easily.

I think trading up into the top-ten will probably cost too much, especially into the top-five, to be worth it. And the value of those picks will go up even further if, again, there is a rookie wage scale as the only real downside to them right now is the high signing price.

Well sure, if we can't get a good pick for him, then naturally we wouldn't trade him! And it's far more unlikely we wouldn't get as good of a pick for him trading him now than if we would when it made more sense to make the move. That doesn't automatically mean it still isn't good to trade Stafford, and that doesn't mean that a low first round pick isn't necessarily good enough, it just means that we really could have landed a sweet deal if we would have made a move earlier, and there was serious opportunity to do some amazing things if you would be able to see the big picture between all of our alternatives. Maybe if Icness would have his master plan of analysis worked out and provided to you it would be clearer, but since we don't have that handy you have to use your imagination to figure out just precisely where the end result of differences between two completely different paths will lead. And if you limit your imagination to not consider the full benefits of having made such a trade and you don't see the same products that I do, well then I don't know how else to convince you and I'm not going to bother to try.

I just think if you put the right effort into it that it becomes mind numbingly obvious that we should have traded him. i.e. if you want to make a trade like that, well a ton of these teams in the top 10 would not remotely consider swapping their pick for Stafford today, and all of them surely would have been more open to it before the season started last year when they all expected to have better records and the trade for many reasons I don't want to get into just would have been far more logical and convenient for both teams and sides of the trade.

[cochiseuofm]

I can see big pictures TSE. I don't think yours is good. And honestly, the furthest I've heard your big picture go is we trade Stafford for Peterson, then draft Nick Fairly or Cam Newton with our pick, both who are consensus top-ten picks right now, if not top-five. I'm fine with holding out hope for guys who are projected to go near our pick, but banking on either of those guys being there is not a great plan IMO. And that doesn't even mention that the plan wouldn't work cause no team is going to trade Peterson for Stafford in the first place.

If you want to clearly tell me what your plan is, who you think would want Stafford and why, what they would give in terms of draft pick, who we would target, etc., I'll listen with an open mind. If you want to give me a generic blanket strategy that you would offer him up to every team, then no I don't need any more convincing to disagree.

My opinion is I think Stafford is talented and can still be a very good QB if he stays healthy. I think that because of his health concerns, he wouldn't bring back anything close to his potential value, which means we would be selling him low. And I think selling assets low is, in general, a terrible strategy and a last resort.

[ajaX82]

Trade Stafford and pick Newton? thats gross, Newton is the biggest bust in the draft

And i thought we all agreed to leave the trade Stafford talk for another thread?

[TSE]

I don't know who to trade Stafford for today, it's hardly worth thinking about, what's the point of that? If there is a good trade now, the margins and benefits of the trade are just diluted from what they could have been. It's not as exciting to analyze anymore, if you want to think about it then that's on you, but I've had my fill pretending what our team could be like if we would have made all of these past moves and it's time to move on from that. The whole concept of trying to clearly describe my plan makes no sense, cause my plan is to go back in time 5 years ago and do everything over and to be the unquestioned best team in football in 2011 and by 2012 or so be the greatest sports dynasty in the history of professional sports. Is that clear enough for you? If not, what do you want me to do write a book about the alternate universe of what could have been? I'm gonna need like a 10 thousand dollar deposit from you just to justify the amount of time it would take to try and adequately and clearly answer your question so that you can see the big picture in the way that I see it, which if you saw that then you wouldn't be arguing with me about it now. I don't think you see it at all as you claim, you see the big picture in your mind but without this book of information I could theoretically supply to you which would completely change your outlook once you read it, if it existed.

[cochiseuofm]

LOL TSE. You think I care at all about a plan that involves going back into the past? You think anyone does? I asked for a clear plan for this year, going forward. I don't care what you would have done from 2007 onwards. What already happened is done with, what is the point of rehashing what we didn't do in the past?

[TSE]

LOL TSE. You think I care at all about a plan that involves going back into the past? You think anyone does? I asked for a clear plan for this year, going forward. I don't care what you would have done from 2007 onwards. What already happened is done with, what is the point of rehashing what we didn't do in the past?

Basically cause it disadvantages my point and position. I can't show you a plan today with trading Stafford today that is going to convincingly knock your socks off to the same level that I could have at this same time one year ago. And I'm just sick of every year my entire philosophy of how to manage football getting diluted to a point where each future day that becomes a present day I'm stuck on a thinner and thinner limb. But if you are asking a fresh question such that we forget everything from the past and just start today, well then here's my plan...First, start off by trading away all of the players on this team that are expendable in some way, whether it's a huge salary or old age player, or a prospect that we don't get an efficient bang for the buck. For example, KVB would be one, cause he's long in the tooth and expensive and we have lots of cheap youth of upside that also showed some quality play. Jahvid Best would be one because strategically I think the cost to replace a RB is lower than it is for say a DT. I know I can count on myself to find guys like Legarret Blount such that giving up Best won't hurt me, but I can't just invent or create a Legarrette Blount value DT if I were to trade Suh. So Best would be a logical trade chip since also timewise for long-term health, an RB has the shortest timespan of life and so I like to get all of my holes filled with RB being the last if convenient, so it's better to move him around and fill that spot later, or like last year when a freebie like Blount was there. Now we come to Stafford, is he one of the guys we should trade now? Well maybe, probably, possibly, but for sure, well that's a moot point cause my confidence level in getting the deal I want for him has been shattered from one year ago today. I am 100% positive that I would have been ecstatic with what we would have got for him then, and now I don't know for sure if I can even trade him. The numbers are all screwed up now, as is other factors, so my plan is basically a mish-mash of a million what-if scenarios. To make it simple, forget about me deciding what Stafford is worth cause if I find a player I like and want to trade him for that player, or draft pick, well you can always shoot me down and say that we could never get the other team to do that trade and we would have a moot argument again.

So look at it this way, for purposes of keeping it simple for argument's sake to see how far we could even get in this hypothetical, let's pretend salary and numbers don't count, let's just talk about the personnel preferences. So if you want to know my actual plan today, let's come up with something very specific and let's start by trading Stafford first and not worrying about the value of the combo of KVB plus Corey Williams or Pettigrew or what not, Stafford is our bigger chip let's just see if we can trade him to get this new plan started....

So here's what I want YOU to do, so that we can't have any disputes on trades. Go through all 31 other teams, and act as the GM for that team, tell me the full draft pick value price or the best positional players that you are willing to offer in exchange for him. Don't try and only pick CBs because you think we need a CB, pick ANY position, because you don't know how I plan on completing my global plan, maybe that's to trade him for a convenient CB, or maybe it's to trade for another stud WR, and then I in turn trade CJ away for a different position or what not. It's on me to figure it all out in the end I just need to know all of the best talent players each team has that I can exchange him for, and when you come up with some name suggestions, then I will pick my favorite one. Then we could go through this for all 53 players on the roster, and this year's draft picks and future years etc. etc., and afterwards you would then get to see exactly what my team design would like, but built with the assumptions of the values that you created which may or may not be realistic. If you screw me on the value of our players I will have a less impressive team at the end and vice versa the other way. I'm just saying that if you were to humor me and let me determine exactly what we do with each of our 53 players and our 7 draft picks this year and the next couple years that you would end up seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that I see and you would find a much, much better team than what we actually have or will have by doing things in a logically weak fashion as I believe we tend to do things.

I'm not trying to evade your question of answering what's my plan, but if you were Mr. Ford and I had a meeting in your office and you have no time constraints, well then my answer is going to be a text document of about 300 pages of information and a 12 hour presentation that covers a lot of ground about a lot of stuff and how everything fits into everything else and it gets extremely complicated because to make sure the fullness of my plan and answer are complete, I have to segway into explaining my philosophy of the differences in the way I prefer players to field coffin corner punts and crap like that (Although for practical purposes there could be a 30 page and 2 hour version that demonstrates say 90+% of this but to theoretically cover everything would take a massive amount of time and effort with increasingly diminishing returns by the minute until you approached that 12 hour ceiling and closer to 100% of what I would be trying to get across). WTF does fielding that have to do with trades? Nothing directly, but indirectly it has to come up at some point cause my overall plan isn't to make a few transactions, my plan is to basically change everything about this team's logic in how they operate, from picking players in the draft, to making trades, to then how we manage the players and such and every and all aspects of the game that in some way affect the outcome of whether we win or lose is stuff that I need to touch on to give you the full appreciation of what constitutes "my plan".

"My plan" is everything and anything that I can think of that gives us the best chance to win the most amount of games possible in the long-run. And maybe part of the plan today is to trade Stafford, but by Monday I could be all-in on Stafford. What if we sign Asomugha or don't sign him? That could drastically change the fate of 10 other guys in the medium run and 100 completely different players over the long run, and a million completely different players over the eternal run just by that one signing being different you know? It's not just trade this and trade that. It's a plan to approach football with a whole different attitude and logical thought process foundation as opposed to just making a couple of choices here and there on a couple of players. That's not enough to make a true transition to what I want.

[cochiseuofm]

I was kind of asking you to do the 31 teams thing, I really have no good barometer of what Stafford's trade value is. My guess is we can probably get a host of teams to agree to sending us a future conditional pick based on his health. For this year's draft, I don't really know if we can do better than a early 2nd round pick, if we're even allowed to trade players. I'm not going to look into Stafford for other player trades because this is a draft thread. Maybe Icness can help out on the value part.

Anyways I don't want to trade Stafford in the first place, like I said his value is not good right now and there is still a good amount of potential upside. I'd rather take a risk on him providing nothing than sell him at low value.

[TSE]

Yeah I don't got time for that, I don't care what I even think about what players I could get, cause it's not up to me. If I'm in charge I don't need to ask myself, I'll just pick up the phone and the other teams can tell me what they think better than I can guess at what they think. My brainstorms help me outline things, but I have to keep an adaptation in mind for those times when I'm off on predicting how another team may value Stafford in comparison to their players. But there's definitely no way I would spend much time trying to come up with a list to post on this board only to then have rebuttal arguments about the values of other players, that sounds like a boring discussion to have on here that could go around in circles with the potential for no resolution or agreement. And then to do that with all the other players so we could see ALL of the potential trades? That's a monumental time undertaking. Plus nobody on here wants to talk about a Stafford trade anyhow, we're well past that now.

[Piston Pete]

Seriously, does EVERY thread have to turn into a trade Stafford issue?

It doesn't seem to matter what the thread is suppposed to be about, but threads somehow mysteriously manage to find its way to "trade Stafford."

[TSE]

Well I just spent some time reviewing film of Akeem Ayers. That lasted two minutes before I shut it off. Not saying he can't be a good player or that I wouldn't have a favorable impression of him if I gave him a full professional review, but as an armchair amateur on quick glance my instincts leave me to believe there's no way he's the best LB after Von Miller fwiw. Ditto for Martez Wilson, I spent a little more time on him, but he just doesn't look like good 4-3 MLB material for the NFL.

[Icness]

Well I just spent some time reviewing film of Akeem Ayers. That lasted two minutes before I shut it off. Not saying he can't be a good player or that I wouldn't have a favorable impression of him if I gave him a full professional review, but as an armchair amateur on quick glance my instincts leave me to believe there's no way he's the best LB after Von Miller fwiw. Ditto for Martez Wilson, I spent a little more time on him, but he just doesn't look like good 4-3 MLB material for the NFL.

Ayers is one of those all-or-nothing guys. He makes a lot of great plays but he gives up just as many. Don't know which game you were watching, but in their Cal game he had one drive where he broke up a pass and got a QB hurry/hit that led to a bad throw, also blew up a lead block that let the corner crash in for a big hit and little gain. The next two drives he missed two tackles (Shane Vereen!), ran about 3 yards too deep on an edge blitz, gave up backside contain on a screen that led to a 1st & goal, and mis-timed a leap on an attempt to break up a pass. His whole college career was like that--lots of hits, lots of misses. He was better in 09; IMO the coaches gave him too much freedom last year and he couldn't handle it. Some NFL coaches will be arrogant enough to think they'll be able to straighten Ayers out and make him a consistent force. I hope it's not Gunther Cunningham and Jim Schwartz that think so. He's pretty high on my "el busto" list, but I get the impression he's not going in the top 25 anyways.

I think Wilson can play in the middle but I do like him better as a Sam backer or at ILB in a 3-4. He kinda reminds me of Deandre Levy, has some Bradie James to him too, same build. I prefer him to Ayers if forced to choose at #13. I'd rather have his Illini teammate Corey Liuget even though the Lions have no need for a 3-technique DT. Liuget is going to be this year's Tyson Alualu or Derrick Harvey, a player most people expect to go in the mid-20s at best that winds up in the 8-12 range.

[ajaX82]

The more i head about Ayers, the more he screams Ernie Sims to me. Just your first 2 sentences Ice, "Ayers is one of those all-or-nothing guys. He makes a lot of great plays but he gives up just as many." Sims to a T. No thanks

Unless Amukamara is there, which I do find doubtful, I'm 100% sold on taking one of the three tackles: Solder, Castonzo or Smith. All 3 seem to bring something different to the table. Anyone have anything that would make or break on the above 3?

I lean towards Solder because of his athleticism and pure talent and because (from what I read) his problems are all very coachable

[TSE]

But Solder's main problem for me was the 21 bench press reps, that isn't really coachable, I mean it is to some extent, but 99% of the solution to that problem would be intense crazy work and commitment by the player. I would have a major problem with Solder but I wouldn't have a problem with the other 2 tackles if they were properly reviewed and it was determined that they were worth the pick and with a logical basis for that determination. The way I see it, there's only 4 guys that are looking like possibilities of players I would consider that will be there, and that's the other 2 tackles and DEs Quinn and Kerrigan. Well I guess I would throw Julio Jones in there since I'm not really that certain he will go in the top 12. But those are the only guys I see as contending for being worth that pick that will still be around. It's still 100% a total trade-down solution to me though. What if we trade down to 20 and can still get one of those guys we can get at 13? I'll take that chance, and if none make it there then trade down again to the back of the first round.

My ultimate goal would be to use those trade downs in conjunction with expendable trading assets like KVB and company to wind up with an extra 1st Rd pick in 2012.