Thread: Building through the draft a myth

Originally Posted by NodakPaul

To be fair, I think it took McKinney getting cut for him to see the light and start being productive again. I don't think that any staff could have had success with him prior to that.

Don't forget besides being unemployed, he owed over $4million to Pro Player Funding for the high interest loan he took during the lockout, which came due in full when he missed a payment on after the Vikings cut him. That's a hell of a chunk of incentive to keep your next paying job if you get one.

Kind of hard to pay that back on a Walmart salary.

Some people believe we first started rebuilding this team in 2011. We've been rebuilding this team since 2006 when we went a different direction on offense when Childress took over. When Frasier took over we kept the same WCO offense & the same Tampa 2/Zone defense so to say we started rebuilding after Frazier took over IMO doesn't hold weight.

Spielman has overseen every draft & player transaction since May of 2006 so to say we started rebuilding only after he was officially titled GM IMO is a stretch as well.

The fact that we recently let go or didn't resign several aging veteran players & had to replace them with younger talent doesn't mean we are rebuilding, it means we failed to address our aging players via the draft or failed to draft suitable replacements over the last 7 years.

Originally Posted by singersp

Some people believe we first started rebuilding this team in 2011. We've been rebuilding this team since 2006 when we went a different direction on offense when Childress took over. When Frasier took over we kept the same WCO offense & the same Tampa 2/Zone defense so to say we started rebuilding after Frazier took over IMO doesn't hold weight.

Spielman has overseen every draft & player transaction since May of 2006 so to say we started rebuilding only after he was officially titled GM IMO is a stretch as well.

The fact that we recently let go or didn't resign several aging veteran players & had to replace them with younger talent doesn't mean we are rebuilding, it means we failed to address our aging players via the draft or failed to draft suitable replacements over the last 7 years.

great point

KEY NOTE: I had a real nice spreadsheet that combined data from the following url for the last 4 teams standing but the site wouldn't let me post it because it was to big.......

Building through the draft a myth

Its an interesting study to look at not only the last 4 teams standing, but all of the teams that had success this year. Most of their corps players came from the draft and were resigned. FA did have a role when it came to areas that a staff continually missed on or when they lost a guy they had drafted, developed to be a starter to a team with more money.

Unlike my good friend Kevon. I believe that the best teams, who are consistently in the running every year, are the ones that maintain some sort of consistency at the HC position and the GM position.

This allows you to continually adjust your roster via the draft to make sure you not only have a good young 3 -5 year starter on the roster at most starting position, but have someone 1-3 years waiting in the weeds, watching and learning.

When, and only when, you lose that starter and don't have depth do you reach out to the FA market and add someone.

So, to recap for Steve and Ibleed who will get something wrong in this,......it isn't the teams that have balance, its the teams that have consistency in their leadership.

Originally Posted by NodakPaul

To be fair, I think it took McKinney getting cut for him to see the light and start being productive again. I don't think that any staff could have had success with him prior to that.

McKinney also had to take a pay cut to stay with the Ravens this year and lost his starting job to Oher at LT earlier in the season

Left tackle Bryant McKinnie, whose offseason problems with playing shape and a late arrival to training camp, didn't make his first start of the season until the wild-card playoff game against Indianapolis.

LINK

Originally Posted by vikinggreg

McKinney also had to take a pay cut to stay with the Ravens this year and lost his starting job to Oher at LT earlier in the season

LINK

I don't think he lost his starting job to Oher as it was never his to lose. Oher started all 16 games at LT while McKinnie rode the pine.

Originally Posted by Purple Floyd

I have plenty of historical consciousness. If you read my last line I clearly stated that the difference is that their front office and coaches knew how to get him to respond and fall in line while ours didn't and decided to cut him outright instead of figuring out how to make him happy or at least productive like the Ravens staff did.

And it only took them 18 weeks to do it.

He never even started a game until postseason.

Originally Posted by singersp

Originally Posted by Purple Floyd

I have plenty of historical consciousness. If you read my last line I clearly stated that the difference is that their front office and coaches knew how to get him to respond and fall in line while ours didn't and decided to cut him outright instead of figuring out how to make him happy or at least productive like the Ravens staff did.

And it only took them 18 weeks to do it.

He never even started a game until postseason.

But they got him to respond. Birk was on kfan this week and talked about how the coaches benched him and told them he wasn't playing until he got in better shape. He said Mac worked very hard at conditioning and is now the " thinnest" he has ever seen him. Then they told him he wasn't practicing hard enough and he wasn't going to play unless he practiced harder. When he got the call he was in shape and had put in his time in practice and now he played at a high level in the playoffs.

Had this staff been able to do that we wouldn't have needed to use that pick on his replacement.

Originally Posted by singersp

Some people believe we first started rebuilding this team in 2011. We've been rebuilding this team since 2006 when we went a different direction on offense when Childress took over. When Frasier took over we kept the same WCO offense & the same Tampa 2/Zone defense so to say we started rebuilding after Frazier took over IMO doesn't hold weight.

Spielman has overseen every draft & player transaction since May of 2006 so to say we started rebuilding only after he was officially titled GM IMO is a stretch as well.

The fact that we recently let go or didn't resign several aging veteran players & had to replace them with younger talent doesn't mean we are rebuilding, it means we failed to address our aging players via the draft or failed to draft suitable replacements over the last 7 years.

Oversimplification don't ya think? While he has overseen the drafts there was a clustermuck as to who got to choose the player, remember the TOA. Spielman finally is the perosn who is in charge and NOW should be held accountable for the players that are drafted from here on out. 2006 - 2011 is all muddled and I say we push restart, some of the people responsible for our players are gone now.

Let's see what he can do from 2012 and on. So far so good, another draft like last yaer and we will be considered contenders. Very smart moves from last year were moving up to get Smith, great player, very instinctive, reminds me a little of Joey Browner. Great pick with Walsh, Robinson was a good pick but LaVonte David was sitting there, I think that would have been a better pick for us. I liked the Cole pick also, I really want to see him this preseason, I hope there is an open competition for the LBs positions.

Originally Posted by tarkenton10

Oversimplification don't ya think? While he has overseen the drafts there was a clustermuck as to who got to choose the player, remember the TOA. Spielman finally is the perosn who is in charge and NOW should be held accountable for the players that are drafted from here on out. 2006 - 2011 is all muddled and I say we push restart, some of the people responsible for our players are gone now.

Let's see what he can do from 2012 and on. So far so good, another draft like last yaer and we will be considered contenders. Very smart moves from last year were moving up to get Smith, great player, very instinctive, reminds me a little of Joey Browner. Great pick with Walsh, Robinson was a good pick but LaVonte David was sitting there, I think that would have been a better pick for us. I liked the Cole pick also, I really want to see him this preseason, I hope there is an open competition for the LBs positions.

I just don't think the actual player that was picked with the Chiller here was that big of a contention. I think that Rick and the Chiller both agreed for the most part on what type of player the Chiller wanted.

The scouts were then tasked to go find those players, they were racked and stacked for the coaches and possibly that racking and stacking was adjusted just before the draft but I think the whole staff had an agreement on that effort.

The difference we saw last year might just be the slight difference that our new HC articulates in a better manner what type of player he wants to look at. It could also have been that the last draft had the right mix of guys that we needed and the ones they liked the best were still on the board. Perhaps during the Chiller years their number one guy in each round, or possibly even the number two guy as well was gone and they settled on the number 3 guy.

As you said, lets see what happens in 2012, but I'm not concerned. I think that Spielman (and both staffs) have done a good job at getting talent out of the draft. The other wild card to be considered is maybe the other staff just couldn't coach the talent enough to get them to play at the next level and Leslies staff did.