First impressions of Mike Mayock's first draft as GM

[Speedyg]

1 hour ago, BleedTheClock said:

People are sleeping hard on Ferrell. He’s freakin good guys. Definitely worthy of that selection. 

I had the Jags in the forum mock as one of my option because he is a high floor guy. I'm sure he'll be a good player, but I feel Oliver and Allen can be great players.  And while both have higher bust rates than Ferrell, their floors are relatively high too.

I don't think his draft is worthy of the negative critic it's gotten.  won't surprise me if this draft comes out better out of the gate, but probably after 3 years the questions come out again why they passed on allen/oliver

[incognito_man]

As a Raiders fan I would be incredibly disappointed with the first 4 picks considering my team had FOUR top 35 picks.

For that reason, I vote "bad".

[Packerraymond]

Gruden found a perfect compliment as GM to play his outdated style of football. 

An EDGE rusher most teams in the top 15 probably pulled off their 1st round board because he refused to workout, he took at #4, a position where athletic ability and success are probably the strongest correlation.

At #24 he took an unathletic RB who didn't start for his college team. I didn't see a single first round quality out of Jacobs, he was a late 2/early 3 grade for me.

#27 was a box safety who you have to hope projects to at least league average as a deep safety. You love watching Abram play, but any good playcaller is going to try and get guys matched up on him 1-1.

Round 4 I thought they did great, beyond that I didn't like any of their picks. I don't see the Gruden experiment lasting long, he's not living in today's NFL. 

[Forge]

56 minutes ago, SmittyBacall said:

One of my favourite parts of the weekend was watching Mayock talk to the prospects on the phone while they were being picked. I really believe in the culture he's trying to establish in Oakland. He's a genuine good dude. I thought it was a very solid draft. Obviously taking Ferrell that early was a bit of a stunner, but I like him as a prospect.

I love Mayock, man. I'm going to watch the Raiders closely this season. I really hope he does well. He's such an easy guy to root for. 

This is a really important word in this post. I wholeheartedly believe that this was a big factor in a lot of their selections

[PossibleCabbage]

It is very strange to me that the Raiders hammered "culture" and "leadership" as hard as they did at the expense of some other things.  I mean, I am not in the building but this was a team that went 12-4 in 2016 and was a series of unfortunate QB injuries away from a playoff run.  No reason the cupboard should have been this bare to begin with.

[RTTRUTH]

2 minutes ago, PossibleCabbage said:

It is very strange to me that the Raiders hammered "culture" and "leadership" as hard as they did at the expense of some other things.  I mean, I am not in the building but this was a team that went 12-4 in 2016 and was a series of unfortunate QB injuries away from a playoff run.  No reason the cupboard should have been this bare to begin with.

Sure. But since this thread is grading Mayock’s first draft, don’t ding him for the trades he didn’t make. They lost their best player from 2016 and potentially 2nd best player (Cooper) as well before Mayock even interviewed for the job. So he’s kinda starting from scratch, minus having possibly a top 12 QB (debateable), which is a good start.

[PossibleCabbage]

2 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

Sure. But since this thread is grading Mayock’s first draft, don’t ding him for the trades he didn’t make. They lost their best player from 2016 and potentially 2nd best player (Cooper) as well before Mayock even interviewed for the job. So he’s kinda starting from scratch, minus having possibly a top 12 QB (debateable), which is a good start.

But I mean, the QB you had for that run in 2016 is still the QB, and the QB is supposed to have an outsized role in the "leadership" department.  I can see the Abram pick as important for someone who can line guys up and wear the helmet with the radio in it, but they hammered culture at the expense of rarer traits way too hard early.

[BleedTheClock]

1 hour ago, Speedyg said:

I had the Jags in the forum mock as one of my option because he is a high floor guy. I'm sure he'll be a good player, but I feel Oliver and Allen can be great players.  And while both have higher bust rates than Ferrell, their floors are relatively high too.

I don't think his draft is worthy of the negative critic it's gotten.  won't surprise me if this draft comes out better out of the gate, but probably after 3 years the questions come out again why they passed on allen/oliver

I had Oliver was the #1 player in the class, but Ferrell is better than Allen IMO. Ferrell is so advanced as a pass rusher from a technical standpoint that it's hard to imagine him not getting 10-15 sacks per season. I think Allen is obviously a more explosive athlete and has actual 4-3 and 3-4 LB versatility in addition to being a RDE, but Ferrell is ahead of him in both run defense and pass rushing technique. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that Ferrell went this high based on my evaluation. The only thing that surprised me about it was that there was literally no buzz on Ferrell heading up to this point.

[SmittyBacall]

27 minutes ago, Forge said:

This is a really important word in this post. I wholeheartedly believe that this was a big factor in a lot of their selections

Yup. He was really targeting kids with heart who are going to work their butt off. It's worth having that as the foundation to your franchise.

[pnies20]

My only question is, why in the world wouldn’t they trade down from four and get another 1st next year, etc. the leftover pass rushers after boss were all similar. Take one around 10 and get extra draft capital. 

Maybe they tried and no one wanted #4? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Forge]

1 minute ago, pnies20 said:

My only question is, why in the world wouldn’t they trade down from four and get another 1st next year, etc. the leftover pass rushers after boss were all similar. Take one around 10 and get extra draft capital. 

Maybe they tried and no one wanted #4? 🤷🏼‍♂️

Teams aren't always willing to just randomly give up a future first. I think that is asking a lot tbh, especially after the consensus top 2 players, Bosa and QW are gone. I think they were trading down at a discount from 4 if they traded out, and they may have decided a paltry return wasn't worth missing their guy. It's easy for us to just be like, "oh yeah, they should have traded down", but we honestly have no idea what the offers were that came in, or even if there really were any. Obviously there wasn't a lot of movement in the upper half of the draft, and looking at the trade returns, teams moving up were getting a better price 

[PossibleCabbage]

I mean, you could have traded 4 for like 11 and a 6th round pick and still gotten Ferrell.  Question is whether you want the rep of a guy who sells for cheap.

But for whatever reason, trades at the top were way down this year.

[SmittyBacall]

38 minutes ago, Packerraymond said:

Gruden found a perfect compliment as GM to play his outdated style of football. 

And what style of football is that, exactly?

38 minutes ago, Packerraymond said:

An EDGE rusher most teams in the top 15 probably pulled off their 1st round board because he refused to workout, he took at #4, a position where athletic ability and success are probably the strongest correlation.

This is just patently false. He didn't refuse to work out because he didn't want to work out. He injured his toe before his pro day. It left questions mark about his athleticism, but not his character like you're implying. There was no report of it scaring teams off. To think teams would remove him from their board for that is ludicrous. Would it ding his stock for some teams by leaving his draft profile incomplete? Sure. But to have him removed from consideration in the first? I highly doubt it. Especially considering he was the next potential 43 ends were Montez Sweat - with a heart condition diagnosis - and Rashan Gary - an athlete with little production and a shoulder injury. Ferrell checks pretty much every box. His tape is great with his athleticism fully on display, he's productive, he's a high-character guy, and he's very young (21). Calling Ferrell unathletic is ridiculous. He's plenty athletic. Look no further than at what he does on the field.

[SmittyBacall]

12 minutes ago, pnies20 said:

My only question is, why in the world wouldn’t they trade down from four and get another 1st next year, etc. the leftover pass rushers after boss were all similar. Take one around 10 and get extra draft capital. 

Maybe they tried and no one wanted #4? 🤷🏼‍♂️

Simply put, they had Ferrell rated nearly as high as Nick Bosa. They didn't feel the same about the other pass rushers. If they didn't receive an offer from a team within the top 10 - to stay within what they believed to be Ferrell's draft slot range - they felt comfortable taking Ferrell at 4. 

[Packerraymond]

2 minutes ago, SmittyBacall said:

And what style of football is that, exactly?

This is just patently false. He didn't refuse to work out because he didn't want to work out. He injured his toe before his pro day. It left questions mark about his athleticism, but not his character like you're implying. There was no report of it scaring teams off. To think teams would remove him from their board for that is ludicrous. Would it ding his stock for some teams by leaving his draft profile incomplete? Sure. But to have him removed from consideration in the first? I highly doubt it. Especially considering he was the next potential 43 ends were Montez Sweat - with a heart condition diagnosis - and Rashan Gary - an athlete with little production and a shoulder injury. Ferrell checks pretty much every box. His tape is great with his athleticism fully on display, he's productive, he's a high-character guy, and he's very young (21). Calling Ferrell unathletic is ridiculous. He's plenty athletic. Look no further than at what he does on the field.

Come on, toe injury? Sure. That was a strategic move. It's nothing character related and I never implied that, he made a business decision not to work out and it paid off for him, smart man. No one thinks Ferrell would've tested well. At a position like EDGE I think it's fairly safe to reason in 2019 that a team picking top 15 is going to ding a guy down the board that they have no athletic profile on whatsoever. The Raiders are valuing attitude and culture over athletic ability, I think it's an outdated way of selecting football players.