This thread takes the award for worst in the history of the Red Board.It reminds of that quote from JFK."I mean, how do you know who your daddy is? Because your mama told you so?"None of you would know a single thing about any of these players or know how to rank them unless the "Professionals" told you so. What makes Teddy Bridgwater a 1st Round Value and Aaron Murray a 5th round pick? Both had sterling careers and Murray was dominant in the SEC - the best conference in the country. He has a solid arm and has leadership skills. He's won games for Georgia that the Bulldogs had no business winning. But the "professionals" say he's 4th round at best and that was before be blew out his acl late in the season...and none of you have Aaron Murray on your first round pick wish lists. Now, can we learn a lot by watching a ton of college football and taking an interest in who we like? Sure. But these guys go through hours and hours of coache's game tape, go through interviews with the players - investigate their off-the-field lives, talk to old girlfriends and high school coaches to try to see what makes the dude tick. By the end of it, they know every single little minute detail about a guy. Not to mention they actually coach/scout the game. And they still get it wrong. Yet you guys think by watching ESPN all day you know what you're doing?
I sort of agree with JOT here - one reason for the "board mutiny" on Freeman was that most people on the board knew relatively little about Freeman and most of that was likely shaped by SR's pre-draft article that was negative on Freeman. Some people are true draft junkies who have watched film on many of these guys, but most have probably have a very strong understanding of maybe 25-50 players, and that's probably generous. The other issue is that there is a level of artificiality about our "successful" picks - it assumes that a player we wanted who went on to excel at a different team would have similar success in another environment. We just have to watch how often FA go bad to know that that's not truly the case. That said, there's an element of dart throwing to drafting and developing talent that people seem to understand but ignore when it suits them.
This thread takes the award for worst in the history of the Red Board.It reminds of that quote from JFK."I mean, how do you know who your daddy is? Because your mama told you so?"None of you would know a single thing about any of these players or know how to rank them unless the "Professionals" told you so. What makes Teddy Bridgwater a 1st Round Value and Aaron Murray a 5th round pick? Both had sterling careers and Murray was dominant in the SEC - the best conference in the country. He has a solid arm and has leadership skills. He's won games for Georgia that the Bulldogs had no business winning. But the "professionals" say he's 4th round at best and that was before be blew out his acl late in the season...and none of you have Aaron Murray on your first round pick wish lists. Now, can we learn a lot by watching a ton of college football and taking an interest in who we like? Sure. But these guys go through hours and hours of coache's game tape, go through interviews with the players - investigate their off-the-field lives, talk to old girlfriends and high school coaches to try to see what makes the dude tick. By the end of it, they know every single little minute detail about a guy. Not to mention they actually coach/scout the game. And they still get it wrong. Yet you guys think by watching ESPN all day you know what you're doing?
I agree that who we are looking at as prospects is generated in large part by the professionals. Definitely so at some positions. I think a lot of this post is arguing with yourself. Obviously professionals should be better at making these picks then football fans. Most clearly are. Some are shockingly bad though when you go back and look at it. The point I'm trying to drive home is the Bucs would have been no worse by going with a consensus of it's more then casual fans over the last 5 years. Quite possible we COULD have done better. Also, if you look over this board you see a lot of fans develop contrary opinions to the rankings of these prospects then what the professionals are turning out. People get their favorites mostly from what they see (which is surely controlled in whatever respect by the media). Arron Murray isn't highly regarded on this board because the draft experts tell us he's a 4th. If anything a lot are luke warm probably because of overexposure. Because we see so much Georgia, we've seen all the little flaws in his game (or bad stretches) that we don't see as much of with the smaller school quarterbacks.
I think many scouts are lazy and they all just share info and many don't put in the work themselves. The majority of the other scouts say a guy is no good, then many scouts will just say ok....he is no good. Too many sheep just following the herd, afraid to stand out and disagree with everyone else. That's how the "sure things" turn into huge busts and nobody can figure out how everyone missed it. Also, sometimes it is impossible for scouts to step away and look at things from the outside. They are so completely encompassed in the world of scouting that it is hard for them to just ignore all the white noise and form their own opinions. With fans, we don't really give sh!t because our job doesn't depend on it. We don't get fired for taking a stand against the majority and being wrong. We tend to just look, and be honest with what we see. When you keep it simple and just watch a guy play football, it really isn't that hard to tell if he is good or not. I think that is the difference.
Well, I can confidently say I know more than Booger does. He is considered a professional, right?
Well what do you consider a professional. I wasn't considering Kiper and McShay and their ilks pros. While they are paid for evaluate talent they aren't paid by the people who consume talent. if the criteria for laymen is just idiots watching TV then Booker is right other than a narrow band of players on your team or in your conference we all probably have a very narrow knowledge of what those guys can do and likely lack enough perspective to compare across conferences and teams.
The thing you have to consider is that there are 32 teams, 22 starters per team, and the good players can play for 10-15 years. There are 120 Division I teams with 22 starters of their own. That means college football has produced roughly 30,000 players who are of the basic age group that could be playing in the NFL right now. The NFL only has 1,700 roster spots. Only about 900 of the players actually play and would be recognizable by fans of other teams. Each draft class has about 300 players. It's just too competitive to think 300 players each year can replace more than a fraction of the group of 900 players that has been collected over the previous 10-15 years. Most draft class produce like 12-13 legit players from the 1st round and it gets worse from there until you're only getting 2-3 from the later rounds. You can say scouts don't know what they're doing but the reality is it's really hard to find more than a couple really good players out of thousands and thousands of candidates.
The thing you have to consider is that there are 32 teams, 22 starters per team, and the good players can play for 10-15 years. There are 120 Division I teams with 22 starters of their own. That means college football has produced roughly 30,000 players who are of the basic age group that could be playing in the NFL right now. The NFL only has 1,700 roster spots. Only about 900 of the players actually play and would be recognizable by fans of other teams. Each draft class has about 300 players. It's just too competitive to think 300 players each year can replace more than a fraction of the group of 900 players that has been collected over the previous 10-15 years. Most draft class produce like 12-13 legit players from the 1st round and it gets worse from there until you're only getting 2-3 from the later rounds. You can say scouts don't know what they're doing but the reality is it's really hard to find more than a couple really good players out of thousands and thousands of candidates.
Well-stated. I saw a re-draft from 2008 recently and started bitching about only to be surprised when I looked farther down the draft board and realized that in fact it wasn't insane to make Gosder Cherilus a top 25 pick.
I was angry when we drafted Freeman. I did some research and got luke-warm on the pick. After the 2011 season, I was high on him and looking forward to his further development. I really thought we had found our franchise guy.I wanted Claiborne or Richardson in 2012. I was okay with the Barron pick, but I wasn't super excited or anything. I hated the Doug Martin pick and feared he was going to bust (he's now my favorite offensive player).I was disappointed in the GMAC pick. I thought he would be serviceable, but that Suh was far and away a better player. Guess who my favorite Defensive player is?I'm apparently pretty terrible at talent evaluation, but I call it like I see it and I can admit when I was wrong.
I was angry when we drafted Freeman. I did some research and got luke-warm on the pick. After the 2011 season, I was high on him and looking forward to his further development. I really thought we had found our franchise guy.I wanted Claiborne or Richardson in 2012. I was okay with the Barron pick, but I wasn't super excited or anything. I hated the Doug Martin pick and feared he was going to bust (he's now my favorite offensive player).I was disappointed in the GMAC pick. I thought he would be serviceable, but that Suh was far and away a better player. Guess who my favorite Defensive player is?I'm apparently pretty terrible at talent evaluation, but I call it like I see it and I can admit when I was wrong.
So who do you hate this year? We should get that guy
Lol. Agreed! Who do you hate?!
This thread is 100% failed. You can't put all "professional talent evaluators in the same category and you can't put all non experts in the same category. Some scouts are terrible. Some GMS are terrible. The only advantage a professional scout has is that they have access to more information. The layman only sees the on field side where a scout gets to find out if he was late or no show for almost every practice, if he eats nothing but cheeseburger and berates his teammates, is hated in the locker room or if he is a great teammate and always on time and spends his spare time at the orphanage kitchen volunteering. Other than that it is just opinions. I guarantee you if we kept track a lot of us would have done much better than Dominik. I know for a fact that my 2010 draft would have been amazing and I would have gotten Foles in 2011. Dominik could not hold my jock strap when it comes to drafting. And his free agent record was awful.
If they start offering an "ALL 22" NFL Replay type deal for college football.....the professional scout will have very little advantage over us armchair scouts. It's not like it is an incredibly hard job, but they do have a considerable advantage due to the film they watch vs the film us fans get to see.
If they start offering an "ALL 22" NFL Replay type deal for college football.....the professional scout will have very little advantage over us armchair scouts. It's not like it is an incredibly hard job, but they do have a considerable advantage due to the film they watch vs the film us fans get to see.
actually, their bigger advantage lies in access to the player and the people around the player, something fans will never have, at least not on the level of a professional scout. This is because it's the mental side of things (i.e., intelligence, characters, work ethic etc) as much as the physical side that dictates success in the NFL amongst potential draft picks. Anyone can say that a person who is "x" feet tall and y" pounds" and runs various tests with scores of "a.b,c and d" should be a good player at position "z." The next level is film (i.e., what someone does in a game), but the really important infromation is what the person is like as a person. Some guys can't handle going from the star to JAG. Some guys look good on film, but were actually benefitting from the scheme or another player. Some guys are smart guys, some are idiots. Some guys played their whole college career knowing they would be pros, some thought playing DI ball was their ceiling and then got a chance to play pros. Those are all very important factors or else anyone with a computer would be a scout. The real challenge for a professional scout is deciding which guy between 5 or 10 very similar "x,y and a, b, c" guys is the best choice. That decision often comes down to intangibles like character, intellect etc., which are things you learn more about through face-to-face interaction with various people and not as much by looking at film.
I think you might have hit on our greatest advantage Vin. They know all the dirt. We know (well, in some cases at least) the stuff that hits the media. They pick on character. Or more precisely they exclude certain prospects all together. So guys fall into the late rounds or into UDFA. Going after those character "fallers" in every draft would prove to be an excellent drafting strategy after the 3rd round imo.
