Why not always trade up in the draft?

[vegas492]

23 minutes ago, Norm said:

I'm not disagreeing with either of you, you're on point, but isn't he saying

"If you don't suck enough to get premium picks, then trade what else you have to get them."

That's obviously a flawed argument but he's not arguing that we had equal draft capital. He's saying sell off your later picks for those higher ones. It's a different argument, yeah?

Was that the argument before or after I read something about queens...on a packer thread?

[mikemike778]

18 hours ago, Brit Pack said:

Go with me on this, based on a true story. SO this evening I was playing chess with my son. It made me recall that American Football is often described as chess with athletes. As the game I played with my son unfolded I had the upper hand, I had taken all of his minor pieces and some of his major pieces too but he still had his queen. I made a silly mistake and lost mine. Suddenly the game turned and bit my bit my advantage was eroded till finally I was checked mated and lost. 

The moral of the story is pawns in the right position can be powerful but are largely replaceable and do not seriously affect the outcome of a game. The minor pieces, the bishops and knights are akin to good players and they can win you games. However, a queen is dominant and even if you face many good pieces a queen can take over a game.

In this analogy a queen is a game changer player, you have to account for them at all times as an opponent. Having one or multiple ones on your team makes other pieces or players better. If you have to account for Devante Adams Lazzard is a little more open.

When I look at the Packers we have 4 possibly 6 'queens' on our offence: Rodgers (an ageing queen..), Devante, Bakh, Aaron Jones, possibly  Bulaga and Jenkins could grow into one. On defence we have Kenny, Z'Smith, P Smith, Jaire and if he takes it up a notch Amos. That is 8 in total with 3 a notch below,. These players have to be accounted for and can seriously affect the outcome of the game. What if we had 13 such players? That's what makes you a dominant team.

When we had an electric offence in 2011 so many 'queens' Rodgers in his prime, Jordy, Jennings, Bulaga, Wells, Lang, Sitton and Finley These 8 guys were the queens. Driver, Cobb and James Jones were not queens but good pieces too. Then the defence you had Woodson, Tramon, Raji, Matthews and Sam Shields. That is 13 complete studs. If we can retain Bulaga and get a couple more piece we are very close to being dominant once again.

Look at the Niners, how many 'queens' they got on defence Bosa, Armstead, Sherman, Buckner, Dee Ford, Jimmy Ward and Fred Warner. On offence they got Kittle, Debo is emerging as is Mostert, Juszczyk, an ageing Joe Staley, and debateably Jimmy G.  

Get the 'queens' and the rest of the team takes care of itself. Do whatever it takes to get them in and of course the whole point of this thread is player acquisition through free agency or the draft is an inaccurate science, so go and get the best you can in the draft by trading up as much as you can and go and bag a queen...

With that I leave you. 

 

Not disagreeing with your we need more 'queens' concept. At all.

But ...  

"When we had an electric offence in 2011 so many 'queens' Rodgers in his prime, Jordy, Jennings, Bulaga, Wells, Lang, Sitton and Finley These 8 guys were the queens."

Of these 8 players, Bulaga and Rodgers were the only players drafted in the first round.  The other six were all drafted later so would have been sacrificed by your trade up strategy. You would have traded all these picks probably for maybe a couple of first rounders that may or may not have worked.

Additionally, a lot of the 'queens' in the current team were expensive players on expensive contracts. If you don't have the mid round picks, its harder to keep control of your cap and harder to pay for expensive free agents. Trade away all those mid round  picks and you may not be able to afford the Smiths. 

There's a lot of ways to good players. Trade ups should be considered but you have to be very careful before going down that route. Its got to be for a specific player. Trading up to 10 doesn't in itself get you anything.  Trading up to 10 to get you a player you desperately want far more than the players likely to be available at your pick is another matter. If you truly believe in a player and believe he should have been long gone then you owe it yourself to have a go (because if you were right and he becomes an all-pro and you didn't make the move then you will be kicking yourself forever).  But going into the draft actively looking to trade up where possible would be a mistake.

[Brit Pack]

12 minutes ago, mikemike778 said:

 

Not disagreeing with your we need more 'queens' concept. At all.

But ...  

"When we had an electric offence in 2011 so many 'queens' Rodgers in his prime, Jordy, Jennings, Bulaga, Wells, Lang, Sitton and Finley These 8 guys were the queens."

Of these 8 players, Bulaga and Rodgers were the only players drafted in the first round.  The other six were all drafted later so would have been sacrificed by your trade up strategy. You would have traded all these picks probably for maybe a couple of first rounders that may or may not have worked.

Additionally, a lot of the 'queens' in the current team were expensive players on expensive contracts. If you don't have the mid round picks, its harder to keep control of your cap and harder to pay for expensive free agents. Trade away all those mid round  picks and you may not be able to afford the Smiths. 

There's a lot of ways to good players. Trade ups should be considered but you have to be very careful before going down that route. Its got to be for a specific player. Trading up to 10 doesn't in itself get you anything.  Trading up to 10 to get you a player you desperately want far more than the players likely to be available at your pick is another matter. If you truly believe in a player and believe he should have been long gone then you owe it yourself to have a go (because if you were right and he becomes an all-pro and you didn't make the move then you will be kicking yourself forever).  But going into the draft actively looking to trade up where possible would be a mistake.

The point though is how many misses do you have to get though to get those hits, how much wasted draft capital to get those few gooduns? Remember I'm not saying there is no draft success in later rounds just harder to get hold off,. As I have said before, you present one side of the argument when you say we would have missed out on Jordy etc but we can't say and we don't know what player we would have got instead. In the same way we don't lament the loss of three picks we had traded up for Clay Matthews.

2004: Joey Thomas 3rd, Donnell Washington, BJ Sander - the year we got Wells in the 7th
3 replaceables

2005 (The GOAT get year): Collins in the 2nd, Terrence Murphy (got injured) 2nd, Marvel Underwood  and Brady Poppinga in the 4th
1 stud, 3 replaceables

2006: We got Jennings in the 2nd but also kind of whiffed on Daryn College in the 2nd, Abdul Hodge in the 3rd, Jason Spitz in the 3rd, Corey Rodgers in the 4th and Will Blackmon
1 great, 5 replaceables 

2007 (the Harrell year): We whiffed the whole way through: Brandon Jackson in the 2nd, James Jones in the 3rd was decent, then we had Rouse and Barbre in the 4th
1 Good, 3 replacables

2008 (an outlier year): Jordy in the 2nd, Finley in the 3rd and Sitton in the 4th where great. Brohm bombed and Pat Lee (due to injury) both 2nd rounders,  and Jeremy Thompson in the 4th
3 great, 3 duds

2009 (the year we did what I liked and gave up our mid round picks to get Clay): Lang in the 4th
1 great

2010: Mike Neal in the 2nd Burnett in the 3rd
Okay players, in my mind replaceable

2011: Cobb in the 2nd, Alex Green in the 3rd and Davon House in the 4th
1 good, 2 replaceables

So to get that great 2011 offence and the 8 players that I listed there it took 9 drafts. As you said 2 are 1st rounders, so not in my formula so to speak, that leaves 6 players drafted between 2nd and 4th rounds. One was drafted in the 7th. So it took over 9 drafts, 29 picks to get us those 5 studs!!! The question is if we had packaged up those 29 picks would we have got something better than just those 5 players? I believe so

[spilltray]

This I pretty simply poor statistical probability. The amount your odds increase training off don't offset the picks you are giving up.

[mikemike778]

On 12/02/2020 at 7:59 PM, Brit Pack said:

The point though is how many misses do you have to get though to get those hits, how much wasted draft capital to get those few gooduns? Remember I'm not saying there is no draft success in later rounds just harder to get hold off,. As I have said before, you present one side of the argument when you say we would have missed out on Jordy etc but we can't say and we don't know what player we would have got instead. In the same way we don't lament the loss of three picks we had traded up for Clay Matthews.

So to get that great 2011 offence and the 8 players that I listed there it took 9 drafts. As you said 2 are 1st rounders, so not in my formula so to speak, that leaves 6 players drafted between 2nd and 4th rounds. One was drafted in the 7th. So it took over 9 drafts, 29 picks to get us those 5 studs!!! The question is if we had packaged up those 29 picks would we have got something better than just those 5 players? I believe so

 

You can look at it another way -  between 2013 and 2015 we drafted Datone Jones, Clinton Dix, Randall. If we say the average draft position was 26 (being lazy) ,  according to the draft value chart that is equal to about 2100 points.  A 4th round pick in the middle of the round is worth about 70 points.

If we had 30 4th round picks, I'm pretty confident we would get someone better than Datone, Dix or Randall.

There's no magic answer. You just have to get it right with the picks you use. Your right, we don't lament the loss of the picks for Clay. But if he was part of the 50% busts then we would. Like I said if there is one player you really want then go get but don't go actively trying to trade up without a specific target.