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Congrats on the grandkid! It’s official, you are a crusty curmudgeon.
I’m still amazed that you somehow predicted that the Browns would trade down to spot 15 and take a WR. How do you do that? Getting it right 2 years in a row (and with 2 different regimes) is not luck. I think you’ve got an inside source.
Well, I did miss on WHICH receiver they’d take . . . so I’m hardly clairvoyant. As for last year’s mock . . . Danny Shelton was pretty much a consensus pick, and we all pretty much knew that Ray Farmer didn’t value the WR position. We also pretty much knew that Alex Mack was gone with the first flight out of town because that’s what he wanted even before last season started.
Getting back to this year’s draft . . . One of the aspects of analytics is finding ways to increase your chances for success. One of the ways that you do that is to trade down – even if it’s just a little bit – to acquire more picks. The more picks you have, the more chances you have at making successful picks. One thing that Sashi and the Harvard crew have been successful at is properly valuing what they can get in exchange for trading down. As of right now, the Browns have two firsts and two seconds in next year’s draft – although they don’t have a fourth or a seventh. That doesn’t even count the compensatory picks they’ll get for losing Alex Mack, Mitchell Schwartz and Tashaun Gipson to free agency. But I digress. It made too much sense for the Browns to not stand pat at #8 after they announced to the world that they weren’t interested in Carson Wentz. Tennessee needed to fortify their O-line, and I thought they’d be poised to take Notre Dame OT Ronnie Stanley because I thought that Laremy Tunsil would be the first OT taken off the board. As it turned out, Tunsil fell because of (A) the gas mask bong video and (B) his injury history. So I had Cleveland and Tennessee swapping picks with the Titans taking an OT and the Browns taking a WR because of the needs that both teams had in those areas. Tennessee also had the picks to trade up if that indeed was their plan – which is exactly what happened.
Finally . . . in Sashi Brown’s pre-draft presser, I was left with the strong inclination that – not only was another trade down possible – but the framework for such a move was already in the works . . . if not already agreed to in principle.
Am I going mad, or did the word THINK escape your lips? You were not hired for your brains, you hippopotamic landmass!
I LOVE teams that trade down, and I especially love when they don’t use all those extra picks to trade back up 5 spots to pick a guy no one else wants. It shows that unlike previous regimes Sashi and co didn’t panic. They didn’t get emotional. With each pick instead of falling in love with one guy they had a few guys they liked and valued similarly. Anyone who’s good at fantasy football knows the one guy in their league who is in LOVE with a certain player and will draft them 3 rounds early every single season. For once we weren’t that guy.
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