Round 4, Pick 19 #124: Washington Selects John Bates, TE, Boise State

[RSkinGM]

I can't generate much enthusiasm for this pick. Wish I could love it but ..is what it is I guess. Seems like we drafted a T E, just to draft a T E .

[turtle28]

1 hour ago, RSkinGM said:

I can't generate much enthusiasm for this pick. Wish I could love it but ..is what it is I guess. Seems like we drafted a T E, just to draft a T E .

Nah, they saw him at the Senior Bowl like they did a lot of our picks and targeted them in the draft.

[e16bball]

Unfortunately, there’s a ceiling on this pick because he’s slow. I’ve been banging the drum for a long time that if you want upside at the TE position, you have to draft speed. And they chose not to do that, so they get what they get. 

The best TE drafted since 2000 with a 40 time slower than 4.80 is probably either Kyle Rudolph or Marcedes Lewis.* You’ve got a top 5 consisting of those two, Cooley, Randy McMichael, and Zach Miller (Raiders/Seahawks version). That’s the high-end outcome of the 77 such players drafted in that span. 

(* = technically, by far the best player in that span to run slower than 4.80 as a TE prospect wasn’t drafted. And didn’t end up playing TE. And was named Jason Peters)

If you don’t have at least average speed for a TE, you’re typically not going to be able to separate and eat up yards after the catch in the NFL. You’re going to be stuck in the Sprinkle passing tree, and I think that’s where Bates will be. He looks like a very effective in-line blocker, seems like he has reliable hands, does appear to have a sense for sitting down and finding open space. In other words, a decent TE2. I think that’s what we got here, a guy with the name and the game to immediately join the ranks of anonymous but useable backup TEs that seem to shuffle around the league every year. 

[MKnight82]

1 minute ago, e16bball said:

Unfortunately, there’s a ceiling on this pick because he’s slow. I’ve been banging the drum for a long time that if you want upside at the TE position, you have to draft speed. And they chose not to do that, so they get what they get. 

The best TE drafted since 2000 with a 40 time slower than 4.80 is probably either Kyle Rudolph or Marcedes Lewis.* You’ve got a top 5 consisting of those two, Cooley, Randy McMichael, and Zach Miller (Raiders/Seahawks version). That’s the high-end outcome of the 77 such players drafted in that span. 

(* = technically, by far the best player in that span to run slower than 4.80 as a TE prospect wasn’t drafted. And didn’t end up playing TE. And was named Jason Peters)

If you don’t have at least average speed for a TE, you’re typically not going to be able to separate and eat up yards after the catch in the NFL. You’re going to be stuck in the Sprinkle passing tree, and I think that’s where Bates will be. He looks like a very effective in-line blocker, seems like he has reliable hands, does appear to have a sense for sitting down and finding open space. In other words, a decent TE2. I think that’s what we got here, a guy with the name and the game to immediately join the ranks of anonymous but useable backup TEs that seem to shuffle around the league every year. 

That only applies to starters though.  This guy is probably going to be a #2 TE, blocker, special teams guy for us.  If he's that for 4 years and he's solid at it that's not a bad pick.  

This was a pretty bad TE draft btw.  With all of our other needs I think they knew we weren't going to come out of this draft with a TE that could start.  So they got this guy who can plug a lot of other holes.  

[RSkinGM]

I would have like him better in round 5 or 6 but I guess they graded him out in round 4. 

[turtle28]

55 minutes ago, e16bball said:

Unfortunately, there’s a ceiling on this pick because he’s slow. I’ve been banging the drum for a long time that if you want upside at the TE position, you have to draft speed. And they chose not to do that, so they get what they get. 

The best TE drafted since 2000 with a 40 time slower than 4.80 is probably either Kyle Rudolph or Marcedes Lewis.* You’ve got a top 5 consisting of those two, Cooley, Randy McMichael, and Zach Miller (Raiders/Seahawks version). That’s the high-end outcome of the 77 such players drafted in that span. 

(* = technically, by far the best player in that span to run slower than 4.80 as a TE prospect wasn’t drafted. And didn’t end up playing TE. And was named Jason Peters)

If you don’t have at least average speed for a TE, you’re typically not going to be able to separate and eat up yards after the catch in the NFL. You’re going to be stuck in the Sprinkle passing tree, and I think that’s where Bates will be. He looks like a very effective in-line blocker, seems like he has reliable hands, does appear to have a sense for sitting down and finding open space. In other words, a decent TE2. I think that’s what we got here, a guy with the name and the game to immediately join the ranks of anonymous but useable backup TEs that seem to shuffle around the league every year. 

I’m sorry but what?

Heath Miller ran a 4.79 forty & Chris Cooler ran a 4.86 forty time. Heck, Miller was a 1st round pick.
 

Couldn’t he be like them? 

Edited May 6, 2021 by turtle28

[RSkinGM]

1 minute ago, turtle28 said:

I’m sorry but what?

Heath Miller & Chris Cooler ran a 4.87 forty times. Heck, Miller was a 1st round pick.
 

Couldn’t he be like Cooley them? 

I never realized Cooley was that S L O W.. wow, man. He didn't look it .

[turtle28]

1 minute ago, RSkinGM said:

I never realized Cooley was that S L O W.. wow, man. He didn't look it .

They were both slow, you don’t have to be fast to get open especially vs LBs and vs zones, you have to run good routes & you have to position yourself almost like a big guy in basketball and box out defenders and catch the ball with strong hands.

Yeah, Bates isn’t going to stretch the field much but he can still be effective w/o doing that very often. Heck, no one can convince me that in the last 10 years that Jason Witten was still running the 4.65 forty they he ran at his combine, he still got open, moved the chains and caught a lot of TDs in his 30s.

[e16bball]

1 hour ago, turtle28 said:

I’m sorry but what?

Heath Miller & Chris Cooler ran a 4.87 forty times. Heck, Miller was a 1st round pick.
 

Couldn’t he be like Cooley them? 

Yeah, if we want to live in the world of best case scenarios/outlier outcomes. Which is cool, it’s early May, we can do that. But at some point, we should probably take a moment to recognize that slow TEs don’t usually become more than solid backups. 

You’re talking about guys who were drafted 15-20 years ago. The game has gotten substantially faster since then. Zach Thomas ran a 4.85 and will be in the HOF one day, but the idea of an undersized LB running that slow in today’s game is laughable. Ray Lewis was one of the fastest MLBs any of us had ever seen at that time, and he ran almost a 4.60.

Who would you say is the best 4.80+ TE drafted in the last 5 years or so?

Edited May 6, 2021 by e16bball

[e16bball]

2 hours ago, MKnight82 said:

That only applies to starters though.  This guy is probably going to be a #2 TE, blocker, special teams guy for us.  If he's that for 4 years and he's solid at it that's not a bad pick.  

This was a pretty bad TE draft btw.  With all of our other needs I think they knew we weren't going to come out of this draft with a TE that could start.  So they got this guy who can plug a lot of other holes.  

I’m not saying it’s a bad pick. Just saying that, if we were going to put it in baseball terms, there’s swinging for the fences and then there’s choking up on the bat and trying to poke a soft line drive and hoping that it falls in for a single.

This is the latter. These slow, good-blocking TEs can be useful players, and this guy looks like he can be that. But there’s very little chance this guy becomes the heir apparent to Thomas as the long-term starter, so it’s a lot more of a low-ceiling/high-floor pick than we’ve seen in recent 4th rounds here.

[lavar703]

The pick should’ve been a Brevin Jordan. Honestly, this was probably the oddest pick to me outside of St. Juste. 

[turtle28]

 

[turtle28]

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by turtle28