theinstrumental

Whatever everyone else thinks, the FO seems to like Erving and Elflein. The contracts make that obvious. I don't think that they're in an o-line or bust thought process right now. And the secondary last year was just about as bad as the offensive line, we just masked it by dropping eight guys all the time. I see a trade back to the middle of the second round where they can grab whoever's left in this tier and accumulate some picks. When you need help basically everywhere, that's the smart move.

Rhule wanted to trade back last year. Fitterer wants to trade down every year. I don't think they want to play the team-building game of having two QBs that they're trying to develop and evaluate at once. We're trading back within the top half of the first round for more picks this year.

I think this is an interesting question as it relates to Scott Fitterer's habit of trading back: what is everybody's view of the Jimmy Johnson trade value chart? It's widely reported that plenty of NFL teams still use it, but it's around 30 years old. More recent attempts to value draft picks, such as the Thaler-Massey study and the Chase Stuart chart have mostly found that Jimmy Johnson's chart overvalues the picks at the top of the first round. If the Panthers trade down, will you primarily use the Johnson chart as your measure of whether or not we "won" that trade?

I hope you're right. I'd still say that the most likely outcome is that the secondary needs a major infusion of talent across multiple positions before we can maximize the young talent on the defensive line.

Melvin is going to be on his fourth team in four years, and this will be Bouye's third team in as many years. If they weren't helpful enough to stay on any of those teams, why do we think that they'll help that much here?

This is just a compensation question--if we move back to 15, the extra picks that we get from the other team have to make up for the fact that we're moving back to 15 instead of, say, 10. Fitterer's on record with the opinion that there are about 15-18 guys in a given draft that are at a different level than everybody else. I trust him to stay within the tier he wants while maximizing the value of our pick.

For sure. But those expectations were set so low because of a real lack of talent on the roster. Last year's draft class is helping, but we could still use help at every level. We're still in a position where one guy's not going to be able to live up to his potential because there are too many weaknesses elsewhere. For instance, Derrick Brown played at or above what I thought his pass-rushing ceiling was going to be last year. But we had to drop eight guys in coverage so often that even when he beat his guy, there were too many blockers who could help on him. That's not getting fixed until we find at least a couple more solid coverage guys.

We had the eighth pick last year and Chinn was at least as good as Brown. Probably better. And neither was good enough to elevate the defense from dreadful to good. This roster needs a lot of talent. Nobody at 8 is going to be good enough to move the needle on their own. Assuming that the QBs, Pitts, and Sewell are gone, trading down is the best option.

Darrisaw and a second > Slater, let's get this done. Bonus points if we push back the compensation to next year and pick up a future first.

I'd love it if a team that's all-in on right now--Green Bay, maybe--wanted to move up to grab "their guy" and flipped us a future first+ for it. Even with Brown, Chinn, and YGM looking like solid contributors, the roster's got holes that this year's draft won't be able to fill.

That's by far the biggest risk of any position player at the top of this draft, though. It just doesn't happen often at that position. I hope we don't take that gamble needlessly when there are other needs.

“The flopping is worse now that there are a billion HD cameras and replay review and the players know that we can see everything from every angle” OK. https://grantland.com/the-triangle/flopping-in-the-nba-a-history-of-nonviolence/

Cutting a productive interior defensive lineman so that we can spend several times as much on less productive interior offensive linemen, gotta love it.

Much as I hate to say it, with as many holes as this roster still has, I don't think the goal is to contend next year either. You can probably replace as many linemen as you want; the lack of continuity isn't going to torpedo next year's championship run.

Please, we're finally putting together a team full of guys who make good decisions with the ball, don't add the dude with the worst shot selection of any big man ever.

It’s almost like that was a period where college and NFL offenses have never been more different and the NFL as a whole did a poor job of projecting, developing, and building around young quarterbacks. It’s almost exactly like that.

This isn’t crazy. Points to him being pretty good as a deep coverage player, bang average in the slot, and absolutely awful in the box. Given that most free safety coverage reps aren’t on the normal viewing angle, I can’t say whether they’re wrong or right about the deep coverage stuff. But they sure are right about him near the line.

LaMelo's going to win this--Wiseman got benched as Melo got pushed into the starting lineup, and Edwards is getting totally ignored on one of the saddest teams in basketball. LaMelo just went through his national media hype cycle, so even if Ant or Wiseman starts to get some attention later in the year, Melo's numbers are just going to be too great to overcome.

If it plays out at all like the NBA then good ownership is about to be rewarded even more than it has in the past. If that’s the case then we picked the perfect time to upgrade from Richardson to Tepper.

The good news is that Slater's also very highly-regarded, so it looks like we'll have a shot at a franchise LT if we want one. I wanted one of the tackles last year and still think it's a good idea.

Man, this board loves linebackers. Kelce and Wirfs.

Gase kept Tannehill from being great, I'd love to see if he was holding Darnold back, too.

We didn’t even have a GM when we met with him, not surprised he didn’t end up here. I doubt taking a flier on a QB3 was at the top of Fitterer’s list when he got started

I do think that it helps that the ceiling for basically any recent trade is three firsts. It makes it that much harder for the Texans to ask for five. Washington basically treated RG3 like he was going to be what Watson is now, so the anchoring effect to keeping it around 3 picks is that much stronger. I’m sure it’ll eclipse the RG3 deal, but not by as much as Watson’s probably worth.