Raiders Defense

[Humble_Beast]

Wish we could sign another LB to push Lee and improve the depth of the LB unit. 

[jimkelly02]

4 hours ago, Humble_Beast said:

Wish we could sign another LB to push Lee and improve the depth of the LB unit. 

With Muse replacing Wilber (most likely) as ST LBer... and Kwiatkowski + Littleton + Lee (?) starting and Morrow as a backup .... theres definitely still a roster spot open.

We still need another DLmen + LBer spot filled on the 53 man roster, IMO.

[Humble_Beast]

12 minutes ago, jimkelly02 said:

With Muse replacing Wilber (most likely) as ST LBer... and Kwiatkowski + Littleton + Lee (?) starting and Morrow as a backup .... theres definitely still a roster spot open.

We still need another DLmen + LBer spot filled on the 53 man roster, IMO.

Give me safety while you are at it 

[jimkelly02]

29 minutes ago, Humble_Beast said:

Give me safety while you are at it 

I think we at least need a safety for camp... might not make roster but could

[NightTrainLane]

8 hours ago, jimkelly02 said:

With Muse replacing Wilber (most likely) as ST LBer... and Kwiatkowski + Littleton + Lee (?) starting and Morrow as a backup .... theres definitely still a roster spot open.

We still need another DLmen + LBer spot filled on the 53 man roster, IMO.

Ray Ray Armstrong, Malcom Smith and Darren Bates are all available...

[Turnobili]

On 5/25/2020 at 1:50 AM, jimkelly02 said:

If that’s the best you can come up with .... a CB with legit injury concerns then your 1) just complaining for the sake of it 2) just think YOUR better at drafting then Mayock 3) using revisionary logic 

Hall is a nice CB prospect but he has valid injury concerns, is a zone CB while we play press man, and we drafted Arnette already and ended up with Amik Robertson (plus drafted Mullen + Johnson and signed Nixon as a UDFA).  
 

I’m truely sorry you didn’t get your dream draft, but overall it was a solid draft.  There’s not much to really complain about unless you just want to complain for the sake of it.

a) i think its lazy to brush off criticism of a pick with "oh you think you'd be a better drafter than mayock?"

no, i dont think i would be. that doesnt mean we cant criticize specific decisions. if everybody just decided "well the GM knows best, who are we to question" then there would be no purpose for message boards. 

you also call it complaining for the sake of complaining, but that ignores my praise for picks that i liked.

b) i understand that there are schematic reasons why some CBs would have been better fits than others. i didnt say we should have taken Bryce Hall over Damon Arnette. i said i would have taken him instead of Tanner Muse at 100, because I dont think Muse has a clear path to starting outside of special teams, which i dont consider valuable enough for a 3rd round pick. i'd rather throw more darts at positions that require volume, most notably CB. 

c) again, the snark of "im sorry you didnt get your dream draft" is unwarranted. we post here not only to talk about how much we love the raiders but also to voice disagreements with some decisions made. we can agree to disagree on whether the draft, overall, was solid. i wasnt a fan of our first round (i like that we went WR-CB, but I don't think we took the right guys at those spots). edwards is the only pick in the 3rd round that i felt made sense. i loved our two 4th round picks. obviously, time will tell when it comes to whether the draft was a success or not, but at this stage, i'm pretty lukewarm on it.

[Turnobili]

On 5/25/2020 at 2:42 AM, jimkelly02 said:

🏆🥇 congrats! You found a technical loophole in @MrOaktown_56’s wordage and exploited it.  While every reasonable person understood what he meant AND the REAL WORLD application, Yes technically a team could have a WR (like Hamler) ranked #1, despite everyone else having him ranked WR 8-12 and then YES that would be a reach.

Let’s look at what he said:

”I still find the concept of "reach" comical. According to whose board? If the pick hits, no one cares where they go in the end.” - @MrOaktown_56

to which you respond:

”So you'd have no issue with Mayock drafting KJ Hamler #12 overall if he was convinced that was the top WR in the class?”

CLEARLY you take what he said to a ridiculous level! He seemed to be referencing Ruggs over Lamb+Jeudy; Arnette over the other CBS (Fulton, Johnson, Diggs, Gladney, Igbinoghene); and Muse over the remaining LBs (AGD, Troy Dye, Dalvion Taylor, etc).

but.... your argument is a team could technically rank Hamler as the top WR in the draft?  Not even Bill O’Brien would do that.  Your argument is ridiculous and meant to be argumentative.  Clearly no team would ever rank Hamler as WR1 and draft him at 12 and yes if they did that it’d obviously be a massive reach.  But that’s not what any reasonable, intelligent person who read @MrOaktown_56’s comments believed them to mean in spirit.

What he was saying was: Ruggs and Arnette are more valuable to our offense and defense then some other teams and thus their value is higher for us.... so their not reaches.  Both players seem to fit our scheme very well and they seem like solid picks.  

As for Tanner Muse.... I don’t LOVE the pick.  I hated it at first but quickly understood it.  Sure it was a little high but he easily could have been gone at the top of the 4th.  Philly took a very similar prospect in Davion Taylor at 103 (3 picks later) and easily could have made it Muse had he been on the board.  

After my initial draft response of “No you should have taken <player X>, I know better then you!”  I understood the pick.  Muse is likely to be a Fantastic STer and can replace Wilber right away.  He’s a project converting to OLB from S but he’s got a great physical attributes to do so and has a high ceiling as a prospect.  It may not be a sexy pick but it’s solid and it was part of a draft plan Mayock had.  Sure, there were a dozen or so players you can say “we should have picked (Player X) over Muse” but most of those players don’t fit the plan.  You can’t look at each pick after the fact and in a vacuum think we should have taken one player not another at pick 100.  The reality is it was a solid draft and Mayock got players he really liked & fit well with our schemes + Mayock had a draft plan and carried it out + we filled the majority of the holes on the roster.

i did take his point to its logical extreme, and i did so for a reason. he said he found the entire concept of "reaches" comical because "if the pick hits, no one cares where they go in the end." i just think that's a catch-all argument that could be used to justify any draft pick at any position (including my purposely extreme example). i mean, really. lets take KJ Hamler (purposely) extreme hypothetical. we take him at #12. what if he turns out to be the best receiver in this group? maybe that meant mayock was a genius... and we can look back and say that the pick hit, so nobody should care that he was drafted #12 overall. 

but part of drafting is also recognizing how the market is valuing players. that is a big part of why teams trade up or trade back. if mayock thought hamler was the best WR in the draft (and he turned out to be), i would still argue that taking him at #12 was wrong because we are still leaving value on the table.

that is a very extreme hypothetical but i was arguing against the value of the Muse pick at 100 because i dont have much reason to believe other teams valued him as a 3rd rounder, nor do i see him as having a clear path to starting. sure, maybe he becomes a home run pick and becomes a pro bowl starting linebacker... i would still defer to the above.

we werent talking about the Ruggs/Arnette picks (i can go into those if you'd like), but specifically about Muse. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Turnobili

[Turnobili]

On 5/24/2020 at 10:32 PM, MrOaktown_56 said:

A lot of that was his 40, which was "false" at 4.56. If he ran the mid 4.4 time that he did, he would have gotten way more buzz.

I had issues with all the corners you listed.

Diggs has awful technique (especially footwork) and is not ready to start, which scouts even echoed (see Bob McGinn's article). Fulton had medical issues, missed a year due to drug problems at LSU, and was grabby at times, as much as I liked him. Johnson feasted on an incredibly weak conference and played poorly in a few big games, including against USC. Gladney who I also liked some was on the smaller end and was pretty grabby at times at TCU.

Arnette played extremely physical last year in press man, had GREAT coverage metrics when thrown at, tackled extremely well with a broken wrist, and at the end of the day is 6 feet tall with a mid 4.4 and ~ 200 pounds. Not to mention he's coming out of an OSU secondary with a LOT of pedigree. He did grab at times, but it wasn't a "staple" in his game like it was at times for say Fulton/Gladney.

In a press man scheme where you NEED to tackle, I can definitely see why they picked arnette. If he didn't play with a broken wrist, I can easily see him turning some of his PBU's into INT's as well.

this is a fair point. if arnette was given a better combine time, he'd have been higher on most boards. we'd be speculating as far as exactly how much higher. with that said, i dont think people on this forum, for instance, even before the combine, were ever truly calling arnette a first round prospect. naturally that's not indicative of how front offices viewed him, but we will never truly know other teams boards

[oakdb36]

4 hours ago, Turnobili said:

i did take his point to its logical extreme, and i did so for a reason. he said he found the entire concept of "reaches" comical because "if the pick hits, no one cares where they go in the end." i just think that's a catch-all argument that could be used to justify any draft pick at any position (including my purposely extreme example). i mean, really. lets take KJ Hamler (purposely) extreme hypothetical. we take him at #12. what if he turns out to be the best receiver in this group? maybe that meant mayock was a genius... and we can look back and say that the pick hit, so nobody should care that he was drafted #12 overall. 

but part of drafting is also recognizing how the market is valuing players. that is a big part of why teams trade up or trade back. if mayock thought hamler was the best WR in the draft (and he turned out to be), i would still argue that taking him at #12 was wrong because we are still leaving value on the table.

that is a very extreme hypothetical but i was arguing against the value of the Muse pick at 100 because i dont have much reason to believe other teams valued him as a 3rd rounder, nor do i see him as having a clear path to starting. sure, maybe he becomes a home run pick and becomes a pro bowl starting linebacker... i would still defer to the above.

we werent talking about the Ruggs/Arnette picks (i can go into those if you'd like), but specifically about Muse. 

If you think a player is the best at his position and it turns out to be true, there's very little reason to believe you were the only one thinking it. If you think he's the best, that's where he'll end up on your board. If you don't trust your own board because public boards in the media disagree with it, you probaby shouldn't be in position to make those decisions for a pro team. If you end up being right about the player, no one will blame you for not getting the right value, it'll just mean the perceived value was off. And the same media guys will put the guy you drafted at his correct position when they publish their redraft 3 years from now.

[Darbsk]

On 24/05/2020 at 10:58 PM, Turnobili said:

I think this is a lot of revisionist history. Nobody here besides BayRaider ever talked up Arnette pre draft. 

Go and find posts on this sub ranking Arnette above Diggs/Johnson/Gladney. I’ll eat crow gladly  

Of course i didn’t use Jefferson. My point is you can’t write off any pick as a reach just because “reach according to whose board???”

Arnette was getting virtually no discussion as a first round pick, as opposed to Diggs, Fulton, Johnson, Gladney... which is why Jefferson wouldn’t be a great analogy  

 

 

Not to be pendantic or anything there were a few if us had him in a similar area as Johnson, Terrell, Fulton but just behind those guys. I think BayRaider was similar. My concerns were his long speed (since allayed) short reach for a press corner and trend for getting grabby. To be fair to you I didn't have him as a 1st round CB (I thought they were all late first to 2nd value) and thought he might drop due to those concerns, I thought he may be a better slot so I was probably way off on that 😀. 

I dont think there was a general consensus on the CB order with everyone having a slightly different order. I didn't rate Diggs due to bad fit, had Gladney and Noah I in the next tier with guys like Dantzler. I thought there were a couple other posters similar too......but I may have recalled incorrectly!

[Rolni]

Most NFL Draft talking head started to talk about how the CB position could be a surprise, since the second tier is super close and will come down to team preferences...they tried to save their faces, but ultimately they were right...there were some surprises and Arnette was the first domino in that game...

I absolutely crossed him from "my board" with that reported speed and reach to us, but I guess we were wrong on the speed and they liked his technique and mindset, build up a lot. I can take it and now I wanna see him develope and be good! After the Mullen pick last year I have some faith in MM's eyes when it comes to CB...

[Darbsk]

On 25/05/2020 at 7:06 AM, jimkelly02 said:

The BS 40 time totally scewed Arnette’s evaluation.  There’s a massive difference from 4.45 to 4.56 when it comes to press corners, like Arnette.  He had been a late round 1st round prospect for 3 years but when that BS 40 came out it pushed him down the CB rankings.  After Okudah, Henderson, and Terrell the 2nd tier of CBs (Arnette, Fulton, Gladney, Diggs, Johnson, Igbinoghene) had no clear order, they were all very similarly ranked and varied by team (Based on scheme and preferences).  If you factor Arnette’s correct speed into the evaluation he moves up into the 1st tier of CBS rather easily.  There’s really not much to dislike about as a prospect.  I was livid with the pick initially because I assumed he’d have to play slot CB in the NFL (or outside in a zone scheme) but now knowing he’s got solid 4.45ish speed there’s zero problems taking him in the first round.  Sure it was a tab bit early at 19, but the compensation to trade down was garbage.... like 4th and 5th round picks.... theres no way Arnette slipped past 30-32.  Sure it’d have been nice IN THEORY to add some extra picks but I totally understand Mayock’s discussion:  he had teams offering his garbage to move down and only one CB (Arnette) that really was worth a first round pick to us and they rightfully really liked his fit into our scheme.... don’t get cute and end up missing out on him over a 4th and 5th round pick... just take him even if it’s a little high.

I totally understand the argument here, and Im not in total disagreement but the one glaring thing I would say is that the 'rubbish' last year was in fact Maxx Crosby and the year before that Maurice Hurst or even Foster Moreau. Now, of course every 4th or 5th round pick isnt going to be such a success but to act like its nothing is just incorrect. There is reasonable justification for either stance IMO.

[Darbsk]

9 hours ago, Turnobili said:

a) i think its lazy to brush off criticism of a pick with "oh you think you'd be a better drafter than mayock?"

no, i dont think i would be. that doesnt mean we cant criticize specific decisions. if everybody just decided "well the GM knows best, who are we to question" then there would be no purpose for message boards. 

Absolutely. I hate the logic or lack thereof in this line of thinking. There are a dozen posters here who could have drafted better than the 2012 to 2016 Browns zero doubt in my mind. I think half the forum could gave drafted better than twighlight Al Davis too and I say that as a huge Davis fan.

Mayock is still in his honeymoon period and IMO hasn't had the sustained success yet to be immune to criticism. 

[jimkelly02]

On 5/26/2020 at 7:02 AM, NightTrainLane said:

Ray Ray Armstrong, Malcom Smith and Darren Bates are all available...

There’s better out there than that lol.... Nigel bradham slipped a bit but he’s still light years ahead of ray ray.... no offense meant (seriously) but I never expected a raider fan to call for ray ray to get a 2nd run with the team.

[jimkelly02]

2 hours ago, Darbsk said:

I totally understand the argument here, and Im not in total disagreement but the one glaring thing I would say is that the 'rubbish' last year was in fact Maxx Crosby and the year before that Maurice Hurst or even Foster Moreau. Now, of course every 4th or 5th round pick isnt going to be such a success but to act like its nothing is just incorrect. There is reasonable justification for either stance IMO.

Yeah im bit disregarding a 4th and/or 5th round pick we could have added.  They can be valuable.  
but if you value Arnette as a tier 1 CB and don’t love any of the 2nd tier guys I understand why Mayock didn’t F around and try to get cute and chance losing out on him.  Not to mention we could (and did) add a 4th by trading Back from one of the 3 3rds we had. The “value” in the trade down was also around 50 cents on the dollar.  It’s not that I’m advocating adding a 4th round pick isn’t important... that’d not true at all.  I personally want to squeeze every pick I can out of any possible trade down.  What I said was I understand why Mayock chose not to.  He even said he considered it and decided not to.  He didn’t want to get caught getting cute and push his luck.  What’s more important: guaranteeing you land your 1st round CB in Arnette (after already losing out on Terrell) or adding a 4th?  Personally I’d love to get both but Mayock didn’t want to take the risk and I understand that.  There was a lot of volatility in the CB rankings snd Someone easily could have taken Arnette before us.... leaving us reaching for a CB we didn’t love.  If you get away with it then it’s a small win, if you lose out then it’s a big loss.  Being that the CB spot was such a big need for us and Mayock (and I once I found out Arnette’s real speed) I’d much rather just land the starter He (and I) in round 1 and then trade  back later in the draft to get some more picks if we want.

my old boss use to say “Don’t F up a wet dream” and that’s what your doing if you trade back and lose out on Arnette and only get penny’s on the dollar in the trade down.  Sometimes it’s best not to be greedy and take the conservative route.

with the picks we had later in the draft we could have traded back enough to get as many 4th/5th round prospects as we wanted.  It’s not like Mayock sacrificed his draft plan by not trading back.

but of course I’d have loved an extra (“free” 4th and 5th).... that’s like a free sample at the store .... it’s house money... you can get some good talent and it feels even better because it was “free”.  There’s a good 10 players I’d love to have added with the trade down picks.

 

btw when I said “garbage” I wasn’t referring to who we could Gabe drafted with the picks in a trade down.... I was referring to the”value” that was out there  for trading down.... teams weren’t offering us 2nd and 3rds to move down... outside of a move with GB that works have netted a 3rd.  Whatever Mayock could have gotten in a trade down was gonna get him ridiculed as the new Reggie, if he took it.  
we could have moved From 12 to 14 for a 4th and 6th.  SF prolly taken Ruggs then though.  Is it worth settling for your second favorite WR and totally changing your game plan for a 4+6? As much as I wanted Lamb, heck no!  You do your evaluations and make a plan and stick to it unless the compensation changes your draft outlook.  A few mid round to late picks doesn’t move the needle.

its easy to say “I’d have traded down and added Player X and Z plus still got Ruggs and Arnette” but Mayocks the one responsible for everything and I respect his conservative approach.

Edited May 27, 2020 by jimkelly02