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Why Drafting for "Overall Value" Is More Important than Drafting "Our Guys"


big9erfan

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I appear to be the only one here who thinks it is always a mistake to get too fixated on one guy to the extent that you stop thinking about alternatives that might yield more value. Also that the focus in a draft should be on overall value not particular guys that feel you just have to have. So I'm going to offer up an alternate draft that will attempt to show how you can get more value out of a draft than be simply taking "your guy" when he's there. Mo rethan one person has asked if we should have done anything else with pick 9.  Well here is what we could have done. I'm not going to pick different guys than we did, just show what we couild have turned 9 into. You all can decide whether you rather have what we got or what we could have got. . (Y2 - this is the inverse of your "never give up a lot of picks to move up" philosophy). This will be long because I want to explain my reasoning and the trades involved. But for those that don't want to wade through a long post you can just look at the picks that are bolded below and i'll put this summary up front.

Summary: In this draft I acquired every pick we actually took except for McGlinchey.  Instead of McGlinchey I ended up with Isaiah Wynn (or we likley could have had Miller if you prefer him to Wynn), doubled up on OTs by taking Crosby, also got Harold Landry, and acquired a future 3rd from the Lions. So now you can all decide if you'd rather have McGLicnhey or Wynn(or MIller), Landry, Crosby and a future 3rd? if McGlinchey, then OK. But personally I greatly prefer that batch of other assets  In all of this I'm picking exactly the same guys we took, but I've managed to get higher picks in some cases so  it's even possible that in addition to that haul of guy I just named above we coudl here and there have taken a guy from our board that we had rated higher than the guy we actually took,. I don't know who thos guys are so can't put them in here.  But just note that there even more we could have done than what I've shown.

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I'm going to be wheeling and dealing here. But that's what a good, value-oriented GM should be doing. I'm going to be scrupulous though in only projecting trades that actually took place or trades that are very, very similar to ones that did take place for picks that were actually traded. There are no fantasy or BS trade here.  Each trade either actually took place or is veery, very similar to one that did take place. The only additional trade I'm going to project is the obvious one that starts it all - we're going to trade pick 9. As I will explain I believe i've envisoned a trade that I believe absolutely would have happened if suggested.  I believe that in fact we could have gotten more than I'm putting into this trade which would further improve the output of this draft.  But I don't  want you all to stop reading because it starts with a trade of pick 9 that you don't think is realistic.. 

Oh wait, one thing. Contrary to popular wisdom the trade value chart appears to be alive and well.  When I looked into the value on either end of a whole bunch of trades they came out remarkably equal in trade value points. So whenever I'm making a trade here that is different from the one actually made I'm going to be sure to make it a more gnerous trade than the one actually made. There will be absolutely no fudging of the trade values I'm putting in here.

Pick 9 - 49ers trade pick 9 to the Raiders for pick 10 and 110. The Raiders obviously coveted McGlinchey badly. They moved down when they couldn't land him. And then they were so desperate for a tackle that they took Miller long before he was projected in any mock I saw, or where he was rated in any Big Board I saw. In other words they really overpaid to get him. I think there is a good chance they wouild have overpaid, perhaps even more, to get McGLinchey. So I think we might have talked them into pick 87. At the very least I'd give a high probability to them giving us 87 and we give them back 143 just so they still have a pick. So I'm taking the most conservative view of this that I think is reasonable and only putting in pick 110.  That trade down is one I would have jumped at.

Pick 10 - 49ers trade pick 10 to the Cardinals for picks 15, 79, and 152. This is the actual trade that happened. So it's real.

Pick 15 - 49ers trade pick 15 to to the Ravens for pick 22 and 65. This also is almost the actual trade that happened. The real trade was for pick 16 instead of this draft's pick 15. So this is better than the real trade and would definitely have happened.. In fact 15 is 50 points better than 16 which is the equivalent of a low 4th. I doubt they have thrown in another pick but they might well have considered maybe swapping their 4th for our 5th or 6th. Like the trade for pick 9 I'm taking a really conservative view here.

Pick 22 - Isaiah Wynn.  Personally I had Wynn rated, even as a tackle, only slightly behind McGlinchey. I think the confirmation that Wynn can play OT and is worth a pick not too far behind Mcglinchey is the fact that NE took him at 23. If he's good enough for the best FO in the league he's good enough for me! On the off chance he doesn't turn into a great NFL tackle I thiink he has a really good chance to be a pro bowl level G, and we can use Guards too. So with two places for him to succeed, in fact three since I hear he's been practicing some at center, I like this pick as much as Mcglinchey even up. But, it's not going to be even up before I'm done. I'll have an additional note about taking Wynn insteaad of McGlinchey when I talk about a later pick.. Note if you don't like the Wynn pick here it's highly likely that Kolton Miller would still be there sicne Oakland will now be taking McGlinchey.

Pick 41 - The 49ers trade picks 59 and 79 for Raidersor pick 41. The actual trade here was pick 57 and 89. 59 is two picks lower than 57 but the added 10 spots in the third more than makes up for that. In  fact I've added 30 points in the trade value chart and virtually no non-QB trade offered an extra 30 point on one side of the trade. So this one is 100% realistic.  In fact those extras 30 points are worth a low 5th, but once again I'm going to take the conservative approach here

Pick 41 - Harold Landry. That's right. We're caching in some of that extra value we got by trading down. We get ourselves a really good OT and land Harold Landry! But we're not done.

Pick 43 - The 49ers trade picks 70 and 74 to the Patriots for pick 43. This one is not as close to the one actually made. In that one the Pats got 51 and 117.  But again I'm offering up more trade value points than the actual trade. It's with the Pats so I'm pretty certain they would much prefer the two high 3rds, and they'll figure out how to get more out of them than out of 51 and 117. So again I think this trade is completely realistic. In my Are You Smrter mock I might not make it, but I wanted to here so that I can keep picking the guys we actually took.

Pick 43 - Dante Pettis. Again, probably not a guy I'll take in my mock. But I'm sticking with the guys we actually took.

Pick 65 - Fred Warner. This is the pick we added when we went from 15 to 22. Again, I think there are better ways to go in this overall draft. But here I've just put the guy we took at 70

Pick 87 - OK, I didn't trade for this pick. I just wanted to note again that I think it highly likely we could have gotten this from Oakland either instead of them giving us 110, or with us returning 143. So as good as this draft is going to look on paper I honestly believe it shoud look a little better if I project us having 87 instead of 110. FWIW Arden Key went at 87 and Oren Burks at 88. So we there's a good chance we could have had both Landry and one of them. FWIW we could also have taken Geron Christian at 65 to double up on good OT prospects and taken Burks here instead of Warner, or maybe Warner would have lasted this long.

Pick 95 - Tavarious Moore. Again just picking who we took

Pick 110 - 2019 Lions future 3rd This is the pick we got when dropping from 9 to 10.  This is a trade that actually took place, sort of. The one that happened was for pick 114 so I'm sure they would have done it for pick 110. So now by taking Wynn instead of McGLinchey I've added Landry and a 2019 3rd rounder. As an aside, since this is an added pick and we don't know how management would have used it I'd like to point out that another possibility is to use it on some other position we took lower.  For instance my least favoreite pick was for Street. So we could have taken Da'Shawn Hand here. Anyway Ill just leave it as a future 3rd. In my draft I'm quite likely to take Hand here and Hurst at 128. I'm infinitely more excited about that duo than an injured Street

Pick 128 - Kentavious Street  As I already said I'd prefer Hand and Husrt.  But just sticking with who we took here.

Pick 143 - DJ Reed. Our pick

Pick 152 - Tyler Crosby This is eesentially another "free pick" obtained when we traded away pick 10. So what I'm going to do here is double up on OTs to help offset having to "settle for" Wynn  instead of McGlinchey.  I have Wynn and McGlinchey rate so close that I think the added chance of Crosby being good offsets the difference. Plus, there's one more "hidden value" which is every bit a part of my thinking here. There's a chance that both Wynn and Crosby will become good NFL players in which case I'll move Wynn to G, where I think he can be a pro bowler. So we have this chance for a homerun that almost makes this worth doing even without Landy or that future 3rd. As already noted I could have used 65 on Christian who I think is better than Crosbyt and then juggled the rest of the draft.

All later picks - exactly as happened.

 

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G' bless ya Big, for real.. but ooooooh my... 

It's good for discussion maybe, I dunno. Maybe it gets to beating a dead horse? I dunno that either. What I do think I know over the years is.. where my value is.. for a particular player.. is not often the same as where my team's value is. That, and coaches always do and will fall for a player that they REALLY don't want to see go to another team.

You can argue and lament over it all day.. but they get the job to decide.. and the fans can't do jack about it. I say this as a fan that didn't love the SF draft much. I'm just gonna kick back and hope they made better decisions than I think they did. Anything more is just exhausting and pointless. 

:) 

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I'm kind of in the middle of this. Could they have traded down and taken Derwin James, who they apparently loved? Definitely. But they felt that McGlinchey was just too good to pass up. He was someone that they felt they were much better with than without. Was the trade up for Pettis considered a reach? Possibly, but how do we know that there wasn't buzz that some other teams wanted to take Pettis before our 2nd round pick? Shanahan knows who he wants and needs to make his offense run, I trust his judgment for that over what draft experts say is a good pick.

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With the first sequence the big thing is that you get your opinion in it that Wynn is in the same group as McGlinchey was. The problem with this way of thinking in my eyes is that you never now what the 49ers board looked like exactly and what other teams boards looked like. One trade can really chance the whole draft for another team without knowing the effect. What if McGlinchey was the only elite guy on our board with a gap behind that. What if Pettis was the only remaining first rounder on our board and so to their board it is worth it to move up. 

 

On paper looking back at the draft it is easy to go back and see what could have happened but who says the Raiders actually wanted to trade up to 9. Who says the Cardinals where willing to trade with us or vice versa. I understand the way you are thinking about it an respect you for having that opinion but i just don't think it works the way it looks like it works on paper. I know you said the difference between players gets smaller and smaller in the later rounds but i also think there comes a time where you have one prospect left in an earlier tier. 

 

You like to compare it to the Patriots who are known to usually have one of the smallest boards in the league. This makes them more likely to trade down because it will happen more that their evaluation is lower than the pick they are add so they trade down. 

 

In the end the draft isn't a scientific or straightforward thing because you have 32 team all having a different ranking of the same prospects and all wanting to maximize their value and grabbing the best possible players for them. This means there ain't a certain style that 100% of the time will be successful. The thing with the Patriots is that they are really flexble. One part because they have Brady and the other because they have Belichick. 

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So you are saying that the Raiders should do precisely what we shouldn't do??? If what you are saying is true then nobody would ever move up as the only reason to do so is to get "your guy"!!?

Anyway, as with all the picks, we will see who is right in 3 years time when y2l brings back the "Are you Smarter than a GM" thread.

And for what it's worth I would have picked Wynn at 9. Definitely a case of improving the IOL in the short term and a long term answer at LT (who cares if he's "short") and a 10 year mainstay.

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For those arguing that Wynn isn't that much lower in talent than McGlinchey or McG isn't that big an upgrade over Brown....

A Shanahan coached team was in a similar spot in 2010.  Russell Okung was considered a better prospect as far as overall talent goes but Trent Williams was the better fit for the system.  The better fit beat the better overall prospect.

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1 hour ago, DirtyJersey9er said:

Also they have a track record for finding talent.  Far better than any of us.

If you look at some of the draft crushes all of us have had or who we would have picked at the 9ers picks any of us would have been fired in 3 years as GM.

Or less...

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6 hours ago, DirtyJersey9er said:

For those arguing that Wynn isn't that much lower in talent than McGlinchey or McG isn't that big an upgrade over Brown....

A Shanahan coached team was in a similar spot in 2010.  Russell Okung was considered a better prospect as far as overall talent goes but Trent Williams was the better fit for the system.  The better fit beat the better overall prospect.

 

To be fair Wynn is a perfect fit in our system lol prior to the draft i was targeting him for us but at guard. 

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7 hours ago, DirtyJersey9er said:

Also they have a track record for finding talent.  Far better than any of us.

If you look at some of the draft crushes all of us have had or who we would have picked at the 9ers picks any of us would have been fired in 3 years as GM.

Having draft crushes is not the same as being the guy we would have taken, FWIW. Look at the are you smarter series. There's good picks and bad, but from a pure draft standpoint, I think most people acquit themselves fairly well. Better than some, worse than others

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16 hours ago, Ronnie's Pinky said:

But guards are just not worth that much to Kyle, so there's no reason to draft one high.

I'd be willing to comb through Mike Shanahan drafts to see what to possibly expect since its a good blueprint and that's who taught Kyle what to value.

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2 hours ago, DirtyJersey9er said:

I'd be willing to comb through Mike Shanahan drafts to see what to possibly expect since its a good blueprint and that's who taught Kyle what to value.

I dunno how much Mike's drafts will really give you. The game continues to change, and it feels like Kyle is kinda at the forefront of that. We'd be better off combing through Kyle's own roster moves. Problem is, we don't know exactly how much influence he's had at all of his stops.

To a large extent, though, Kyle's priorities are known to us because he is open about them. We know what he values in a center because he has publicly discussed it. We know he loves receivers who can separate because he has said so. I feel like his relative silence about the guard position, combined with what this team and others he has run offensively have (not) invested in it, tells us plenty about how he values it. Kyle does value certain traits in guards over others, but his scheme puts more pressure on the other line positions, and so requires better athletes at those spots.

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