Thanks for posting the links. I will read those articles. In terms of JD, has it occurred to you that rather than being overconfident, he was simply desperate to protect Zach's blindside, and after he was unable to sign Thuney, in his scout's and his estimation AVT was the only OG in the draft that he though could do that well enough from day one?
What's done is done. No changing history. If the goal is to say it was to say it was a terrible move, I'll play. Bad move. You guys were right!
You make a really good point on taking quantity and then having a decent chance of one of the player being better than the higher rated player taken. However, there are several factors to consider in this particular instance. One: if you look at this specific guard class, there were A LOT of injury prone players. The guys taken top of second (Dickerson and Jenkins) both injury prone. Even in the third round, our pick was used for a guard that was injured too, then got injured again. Jenkins missed entire year. Dickerson remarkably held up for 14 games this year, but that is a huge risk, because he had already 4 season ending injuries in his career: two broken ankles and 2 ACLs. When you compare AVT to this entire group, he stands out significantly where he is the most talented guy, who also happens to be injury adverse. Another thing to consider: while I see no problem using CBs and Safetys as a turnstile, is this something we want to do for OL? Especially if there is a guy who is considered blue chip, ready to play with no injury history, unlike big chunk of the prospects under him. While in general you are correct, an occasional exception can be made in a situation where you have a blue chip guy on OL with many other lower prospects injury prone. Finally, think of it like this: if you had the power to somehow turn back the clock and stop that trade from happening, would you do it? Keep in mind, we came out with AVT, who made PFF all rookie team, Echols, and Pinnock, who are solid rotational pieces. There are also quite a few mine fields around, like Jenkins, Wyatt, etc, who are picked right around (or with) our picks. Even Dickerson, who had a good season, still has VAST injury history. Now we have a solid durable guy with a lot of potential, no injury concerns, where there is some continuity for OLine. Plus two rotational young guys, who actually played decent and can improve. Would you really pull the trigger to stop this trade from happening knowing what you know now?
I'm sure that was his thinking, but it was foolish if so. A good OL is more about eliminating glaring weaknesses than having studs at some spots and horrible players at others. At one point this season Wilson was on pace to break David Carr's sacks taken in a year record. That was largely due to how bad GVR was. Whatever Douglas was thinking it didn't work. My stance on the AVT trade has always been that given how bad GVR was, we were better off staying put at 23 and taking two OL with the third round picks we traded away. It is statistically likely that at least one of those third round picks would've been a better player than GVR, which would've meant a better OL for us (even with our LG pick possibly being a guy slightly worse than AVT). It would've also had the added benefit of meaning we could ignore RG in FA and the draft this year. Now we can't because Douglas tried to fill one hole instead of two on a line with many holes.
I'd absolutely go back in time and undo it if I could. Our OL was horrible for about half of this season which had a notably negative impact on Wilson. He was getting lit up and it clearly affected his comfort in the pocket and footwork. Whatever Douglas was thinking it didn't work.
I "Liked" your post not because I agree with your conclusion, but I appreciate the articles and the thoughtful POV you gave, even if I don't fully agree. While I'm not a mathematician or statistician, I've done a lot of reading and research on this topic over the past few years. The draft IS such a complex and confounding topic, and really no one has figured out how to consistently "win" at it, despite a lot of expertise and money used towards that end. That said, I disagree that the draft is luck. Or, if it is luck, it's the type of "luck" Branch Rickey had: "Luck is the residue of design". I think this Rickeyism actually comes closest to defining draft success over time: There are clearly teams that have long streaks of "luck" and seem to be really good at drafting. That's certainly not the result of random chance. I think that with successful organizations there are two keys that make them successful in drafting: 1. They employ a "blueprint" of what their team identity is built on, and they acquire players who fit that blueprint, even if they're not the BPA when they pick. 2. This may seem blindingly obvious, but I haven't heard anyone talk about it: when you draft players and put them on a team that's already successful, their chances of becoming successful are far greater than players who wind up on unsuccessful teams. IOW: Success begets success. This is why teams like the Patriots for example seem to be good at drafting, but they actually miss quite a lot, however, the talent overall is enough to offset those misses and elevate the play of drafted players. Contrasted to the Jets whose overall talent level has been so bad that it drags down drafted players and so they wind up with more draft failures. As to Douglas, I'm convinced that he believes in the "blueprint" methodology, and building the team with players that fit that model. Using this approach minimizes the need to "win" every draft. But you need to first have a base level of very good talent. That's why he traded up to get AVT: he wants to have great OL/DL players. He already had gotten Becton (whom we have to question in hindsight, but going back to last April if you're JD you assume you have your LT for the next decade). Becton may still work out, and if he does, Douglas will have settled the blind side for years, and contributed to his "base level of talent". Here's another thing I've learned about drafting players: 2 (or more) mediocre or even slightly above average players don't hold the same or greater value than one great player. So trading back to acquire more picks isn't guaranteed to put you ahead because those later picks won't have the same level of talent available to choose from. That doesn't mean that you can't find players in the 2nd round or later who turn out better than 1st rounders, but the odds are that you won't, or won't very often. Similarly, using more lower-value picks to acquire a higher value pick can often yield that one great player for the cost of two average ones. This is what the AVT situation is. You can argue that AVT is not great, but even if that's true, would the G Douglas would've taken later be great or even average? The odds are that that player would've been average at best and that's not good enough to say that you've filled that position for the foreseeable future. Sorry for the longwinded response but drafting is a complex subject and there's no easy way to talk about it.
Fair enough, but I think OLine would be even worse. AVT would be gone probably for Jenkins, and 3d round guards sucked. So we end up with someone worse than AVT for 16 games at LG and GVR is still there. Now we have a solid OL piece for years to come. Also, I can see a scenario where Echols or PInnock develop enough to be a starter or at least a solid back-up, who can spot start. I actually thing JD avoided a disaster with this trade, and would absolutely not undo it, but we will have to agree to disagree on that one.
I think that's the argument here really. If you look in retrospect, there are a lot of injury prone Gs who ended up injured and also poor producers right around this area of early second and then 3d round, including the guy taken with our very pick in the 3d round. Even the guy who actually did well, Dickerson, still I feel is injury risk. Other guys sucked a lot more or didn't even play. I would much rather have AVT and not worry about LG position for years to come than undo this and risk ending up with multiple injured guys or guys who are on GVRs level, which is what it was around second/3d round. Plus I really like Echols and Pinnock, whom we eventually got from the Vikings 4th rounder on the trade back. Echols has great natural ability and needs to fix a few dumb rookie mistakes this offseason, and I think he can challenge for starting spot. Pinnock as a safety also looks like he can be a player, did really well when switched to that position, though sample size is limited and I do want to get a veteran good FA safety, like Reid from Texans. With 23d and two 3d rounders we came up with a really nice package of players. https://thejetpress.com/posts/jason-pinnock-future-ny-jets-safety
You have absolutely no reason to apologize for the length of this article. I wish I could like it more than once. IMO it is brilliant and spot on! I couldn't possibly agree more.
I don't think I have the links anymore, but a couple of years ago I posted some data that showed that the success rate dropped significantly from round 1 on down through all the rounds. What I don't recall is if I had found anything that spoke to the drop off as you went lower in any given round. Of course there are exceptions, where a Brady pops up out of a later round, and even more common exceptions where players taken at the end of a round turn out better than some taken earlier in that round, but I think the majority of the time, the deeper you drop, the less success you have. But that's just my opinion, I don't have any stats or studies that support that or refute it. It seems to me though that somebody should've done something in this regard. If anyone knows of one I'd love to see it. How all the above relates to the AVT situation, and/or trading back or trading up, is regarding my point that often trading back isn't a good strategy because while you wind up with more picks, those lower picks aren't effectively as good as the pick you gave up. Yes, I admit there are exceptions, but I'd like to see data that proves or disproves this.
Here's an article that lays out what I've been trying to say in the last couple of posts. Even though it was written in 2012, I think it's still valid: https://bleacherreport.com/articles...rategy-why-trading-up-is-the-new-trading-down It basically refutes the wide held belief that more picks are always better, and in fact it goes even further to say that it's much better to trade up to get one great player rather than spend 5 or 6 lower picks acquiring "average" players because invariably "average" players bust at a much higher rate than highly rated ones. ***************************** There are many variations on former Dallas Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson's Trade Value Chart, but they all reveal something important: draft picks get exponentially more valuable the closer you get to the top. Per the TVC linked above* this link no longer works so here's the link to it from Pro Football Reference:https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index91c0.html?page_id=6682 , the No. 1 overall draft pick has a value of 3,000. The first pick of the third round has a value of 265. Think about that for a moment: if you offered an NFL team either their top-graded prospect from the entire draft class, or take their favorite 11 players left on the third day, they should take the top prospect. ... Would the Carolina Panthers rather have Cam Newton or eleven Terrell McClains? Newton, or every other player they drafted in 2011? The Panthers would take Newton every time. Newton is a game-changer, a difference-maker, a franchise player. A "smart" trade down could still have netted the Panthers a quarterback. But by giving up Newton for a Jake Locker or a Colin Kaepernick, the Panthers would have passed up the player that saved their team. This is the risk fans don't see: the opportunity cost of passing on a game-changing player. Stocking the roster with second- and third-rounders sounds like a great way to build a team. The reality is, those players are "busts" even more frequently than top picks, and their quality is rarely as high. This is why higher picks have more value: you can "fill holes" with second-, third- and fourth-round picks—but if the players can't do what the team needs them to do, that hole hasn't been filled. ********************************** These are the main points from the article that support my contention that trading back isn't really as smart as many believe, and also that trading up can be the smartest thing to do. I'm still going to look for more raw statistics that can show this, but I think this article supports my stance pretty well.
The bold is the key here imo. I agree with Borat that no one was saying that AVT played at an All Pro level this past season. He has work to do. I think that JD would probably agree with you that trading up for AVT was not the most optimal thing to do given all our holes, but in this situaton he had no other choice. He had to do something to fix at least one hole on the OL and protect Zach's blindside. He knew that based on the scouts and his evaluation of the other OGs, that chances were that none of them other than AVT would be good at all their rookie season. I'm certain that if JD had thought that one of the other OGs was close to being as good as AVT and would solve the LG spot for the next 10 years, he wouldn't have traded up. As a GM, you can't keep trying to fix the same hole. You need to find a solution the first or at worst 2nd time. He knew there were a lot of other holes to address and depth to upgrade. I think he probably struggled with the decision for a bit because he'd rather trade down than up, for the reasons you have suggested, but he realized that in this situation the only reasonable/sensible thing to do was bite the bullet and trade up and take care of the LG spot once and for all for the next 10 years. That was not foolish, imo it was a wise decision and absolutely the right thing to do at that time. While there is room for doubt and concern with Becton, there's not with AVT. At worst, he's going to be an above average solid LG for the next 10 years barring a calamitous injury, and I think he has a chance to become a perennial All Pro. The Jets have too few of those types of players, and as ColoradoContrails so wisely and aptly stated, players like him make the others players around him better. I would add that he's a core player to build around. In terms of competition on the OL for starting spots, imo we're several years away from that. IMO it's totally unrealistic to expect that within the first year or two of a total rebuild. In that situation as the GM, you're scrambling for several years trying to fill all the holes with at least competent/average players until you can start upgrading depth and bringing in competition. I think that's exactly what JD did with the OL when he was hired. The OL was the worst in the NFL. He didn't have a ton of cap space with which to work and only 8 draft picks. He had to bring in some stop-gap type veteran OL who were cheap that he thought could possibly hold the fort for a 1-3 years to give him time to start filling the roster with his draft picks. GVR hasn't worked out at all, but he appeared to be a player on the rise with Carolina. He had been a long-term backup, gotten an opportunity to start, played pretty well, and continued to improve. He was fairly mobile and was thought to be a good scheme fit for our new blocking scheme. As it turns out, he wasn't. Maybe he had already reached his ceiling. Still, he was never thought to be the long-term answer, just a stop gap until he could draft a better player. Clark getting injured both seasons didn't help matters. I'm certain that JD thought that Clark could probably beat out GVR for the starting RG job, but he hasn't had the opportunity to develop because he's been injured. I'm equally certain that JD will replace GVR this offseason. I believe that due to all the holes we have, he may not be able to draft the OG he wants, so he will sign a FA who will be an upgrade over the released GVR. Then if an OG he likes falls to the Jets, JD will add him and that player will compete with the FA for the starting RG job.
That's true in general, but OL holds their value into later rounds at a higher rate than almost every other position. Especially interior OL which is what we're discussing here.
That may true in general, but in this particular case - last year's draft - I don't think that's true. I think the other available Guards were either nowhere near as good as AVT, or had high risk factors, resulting in JD deciding that if he didn't get AVT then he probably wasn't going to get a Guard he could have any degree of confidence would succeed (that is, become a starter in his first year and play multiple seasons as a starter). I would also ask you: How is "value" determined? Why would OL hold their value into later rounds? Why are they different than other positions?
To this I would add, "How valuable can an OL be who was taken in the 3rd or 4th round who is mediocre or sucks? Value is important, but I can easily see where a GM who is solely focused on value won't wind up with a very good football team.
I feel the media and fans are hammering Mims more than anyone. I think one of Zach's longest completions last year was to Mims. Hopefully, he does make an impact for this team.
Shoutout to this young man playing like a top 5 RG, then balling out playing LT today. Worth those picks
