49ers Select Dante Pettis, WR, Washington#44 Overall

[Uncle_Rico]

Fair enough. But I disagree that the run on WR hadn't started yet. Sutton was the first one to go off the board at 40. That one was probably the most predictable and always seen as the first domino to fall. 

It went

40 - Sutton

44 - Pettis

47 - Kirk

51 - Miller

60 - Washington

61 - Chark

I'd call that a run, Sutton being the one to set it off. One of the reasons I don't mind the trade up is we guaged the market perfectly. We saw Sutton go, anticipated a run, and paid a price we were comfortable with so as not to lose our guy. At least two teams ahead of us were in the WR market and at least two immediately behind us were. 

[y2lamanaki]

4 hours ago, Chrissooner49er said:

I do want him to make Aldrick Robinson expendable.

I think this will be more up to Bourne and James. Garcon, Goodwin, Taylor, and Pettis are roster locks. I see no reason why Bourne won't stick around, but I have to stop short of calling him a lock. I think this is an offense where keeping six on the 53 is a requirement (especially since they will include our primary return guys). So Bourne/James need to make Robinson expendable, and more so James. 

[Ronnie's Pinky]

If this kickoffs-as-punts rules change becomes a thing, Pettis could become even more valuable on special teams.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23385442/proposal-trying-make-nfl-kickoffs-more-punt-play

[big9erfan]

On 5/1/2018 at 2:14 PM, J-ALL-DAY said:

I disagree that value doesn't matter. There is a good chance he would have been available at #59, but Shanahan just doesn't want to risk it with "his guys." Lets see how Williams/Beathard/Pettis pan out, because that was ALL Shanahan. The Beathard trade was so freaking bad, and then he just had to trade up for Williams as well. 

Now, maybe Pettis would have been gone by #59 so we had no choice but to go up and get him. If that isn't the case, we just gave up a fairly valuable #74 pick for no reason. 

100% on board with this statement. If you take a guy at a spot that is a round higher than he is likely to go and he turns out well that means you picked well, it doesn't mean you used your draft effectively. If you could have had him a round later and you're a good picker than you could have also had another really good guy at the spot where you overdrafted the first guy.

[big9erfan]

On 5/1/2018 at 2:51 PM, J-ALL-DAY said:

And what was the reason for the trade up? Was anyone going to draft him before our next pick? Again, we will see how it works out, but three times we have traded up to get his guy. Good chance all three could have been had by staying put. 

I'll cut them some slack as they try to transform the hot mess Baalke left them with into a contender. But over the course of several drafts you can't keep trading up to get aspecific guys. There are lots of good players in the draft. SOmetimes you have to raisk that the guy you want the most will fall to you and adjust your plan if he doesn't.

[Uncle_Rico]

5 minutes ago, big9erfan said:

I'll cut them some slack as they try to transform the hot mess Baalke left them with into a contender. But over the course of several drafts you can't keep trading up to get aspecific guys. There are lots of good players in the draft. SOmetimes you have to raisk that the guy you want the most will fall to you and adjust your plan if he doesn't.

You mean exactly what they did with Solomon Thomas last year?

[big9erfan]

On 5/2/2018 at 8:15 AM, Uncle_Rico said:

Just out of curiosity, what is thinking like this based on? Not singling you out just curious why people are confident in things like this. Is it mostly based on mock drafts?

There is such a thing as collective wisdom. If you rule out the mocks that are done by pure "talkng heads" and look at the ones done by former football GMs, scouts, talent evaluators, and even the ones done by long time experts with good connections to current teams and how they are viewing guys, you can get an idea of where a guy is generally rated. Of course it only takes one team to have a different opinion for a guy to go higher, but I don't buy the suggestion made by a lot of people that mocks are worthless and we can't have any way of knowing what teams really think. We don't know what any one team thinks, but I think we can get an overall idea of how a guy is generally considered. If all of those kinds of guys (not the ones with just a pen or computer keyboard) think a guy is a top of the 3rd kind of guy then he is likely to be a top of the third type of guy. If a team takes him higher than that ehy are likely not getting a great value (even if he turns out to be a great player); if they get him lower than that they are likely getting a good value.

If a team passes on a guy it is never confident he will be there for a later piick. So what a team has to do is consider the chance he will be there, plus the chance that a guy just as good will be there and balance that against the guaranteed loss of some chance of drafting a successful player because you give up one or more picks to move up.  At some point the cost of moving up exceeds the risk of waiting.

[big9erfan]

6 minutes ago, Uncle_Rico said:

You mean exactly what they did with Solomon Thomas last year?

Exactly. But in that case they were pretty close to 100% certain they weren't going to lose their guy. A better example was NE wanting a CB this year and trading back at 51 when they could have had their choice of several guys. They also had pick 63 so I'm guessing they were hoping a run on CBs wouldn't start. But it did and two were taken in the low 50s. NE kind of lost that bet and ended up having to trade back up to 56 to get one of the remaining good CB propsects. But over the course of several drafts they'll win that bet some times and then get more value out of those multiple drafts.

[big9erfan]

Oops - put the original post in the wrong threa.d. deleting it now

[Chrissooner49er]

5'10"? Nope. Try 6' or even a touch taller than that. 

Like I said, I REALLY like this guy. 

[big9erfan]

38 minutes ago, Chrissooner49er said:

5'10"? Nope. Try 6' or even a touch taller than that. 

Like I said, I REALLY like this guy. 

Oops. SOmehow I got into the wrong thread, I meant to put this in the James thread. I liked what I saw of him except for whatt I mentioned. I'll go back and edit the post.

As for Pettis. I've always liked him.  Proably not enough to move up for him, but I think he can be a pretty solid NFL receiver. He might surprise and become really good, but I see his future as more of an solid, or OK kind of guy. 

[Ronnie's Pinky]

1 hour ago, big9erfan said:

There is such a thing as collective wisdom. If you rule out the mocks that are done by pure "talkng heads" and look at the ones done by former football GMs, scouts, talent evaluators, and even the ones done by long time experts with good connections to current teams and how they are viewing guys, you can get an idea of where a guy is generally rated. Of course it only takes one team to have a different opinion for a guy to go higher, but I don't buy the suggestion made by a lot of people that mocks are worthless and we can't have any way of knowing what teams really think. We don't know what any one team thinks, but I think we can get an overall idea of how a guy is generally considered.`

This is proven wrong in so many cases, though. There is always an element of un-knowableness to claims that a pick is a reach because we can't test alternate scenarios in which team z tries to wait on player y, but in the cases that a guy falls for no clear reason...there we can see in plain terms the times the NFL community's valuation differs from that of the "mock draft community".

The closer a given pick is to the top of the draft, the better the amateur mock draft community does in assessing it. By day 2, their projections are worth little. Pettis at #44 was fine. If the FO had taken him before any of the consensus top three (Ridley, Moore and Sutton), I could see the complaint about over-drafting Dante Pettis. They didn't do that, though, and nobody after that top 3 was clearly ranked ahead of him. It was a muddle, so they traded up to get him as the first guy in his tier. Kyle clearly believes in Pettis, and in his ability to outwit the rest of the NFL at the receiver position. We'll see if he continues being right.

[y2lamanaki]

5 hours ago, big9erfan said:

Exactly. But in that case they were pretty close to 100% certain they weren't going to lose their guy.

They were pretty close to 100% certain that they WERE going to lose their guy: 

Quote

While the exact details of how remain open to question, Sports Illustrated‘s Peter King sheds some fascinating light on the trade from inside the room. There was another unnamed team interested in the pick, King reports in MMQB, but while the 49ers team knew the Bears “badly wanted someone,” they thought it was Solomon Thomas:

The Bears agreed. They’d give two third-round picks and a fourth-rounder to move up one spot.

“Man, who do they want?” Lynch said. “Gotta be Solomon, right?”

“Call me crazy,” Marathe said. “But I think it’s Trubisky.”

“Then why’d they go get [free-agent quarterback Mike] Glennon?” Lynch said

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/05/mmqb-mitch-trubisky-chicago-bears-draft-trade-san-francisco-49ers

[big9erfan]

21 hours ago, Ronnie's Pinky said:

This is proven wrong in so many cases, though. There is always an element of un-knowableness to claims that a pick is a reach because we can't test alternate scenarios in which team z tries to wait on player y, but in the cases that a guy falls for no clear reason...there we can see in plain terms the times the NFL community's valuation differs from that of the "mock draft community".

The closer a given pick is to the top of the draft, the better the amateur mock draft community does in assessing it. By day 2, their projections are worth little. Pettis at #44 was fine. If the FO had taken him before any of the consensus top three (Ridley, Moore and Sutton), I could see the complaint about over-drafting Dante Pettis. They didn't do that, though, and nobody after that top 3 was clearly ranked ahead of him. It was a muddle, so they traded up to get him as the first guy in his tier. Kyle clearly believes in Pettis, and in his ability to outwit the rest of the NFL at the receiver position. We'll see if he continues being right.

You're absolutely right about the "unknowableness" of any team's ranking of guys.But I'm saying they can, and often do,  have a decent idea what the consensus is.  In fact they use that with every pick they make. Knowing how other teams assess a guy and rank him is an important part of the draft. Teams have to know, or have an educated guess, as to whether a guy they want will be there next time their pick rolls around, or whether there will be other good guys from that position group there. In that sense teams are always trying to evaluate a guys "value" relative to where he is likely to go. Some teams are bigger risk takers in terms of rolling the dice and hoping "their guy" will fall to their spot. Some are less risk averse and just want to get their guy. My point is that this latter group of teams are indeed getting the guys they want; they just are not getting good value for their pick when they make they make those kinds of picks. 

I should clarify that by "worth" or "value" in this context I mean in terms of how much draft capital it's likely to cost to get him (sort of like spending money on a FA). Drafting is highly flawed so all the teams can pass on a guy repeatedly who turns out great. In that case he turns out to have been worth more than the pick that was used on him. And some guys that any/every team would take guy turn out to be flops. In that case they turn out not to have been worth the pick that was spent on them. I'm not talking about this kind of hindsight "worth". I'm talking about the kind of "value" that you can use to help you guide your drafting. If the consensus is that a guy is "worth" about an upper 3rd pick that doesn't mean he is guaranteed to be a decent player, or mean he won't be either a star or a flop. Whether the pick is a good one of not won't be determined for a few years. But whether you get a guy like that above or below the consensus of what he's worth defines for me whether you got a good value or not. To me spending draft capital is exactly the same as spending cap money. You can't afford to pay whatever it costs to get a guy no matter how much you like him. You have to EFFECTIVELY manage BOTH your cap budget and your draft budget.

This may still not make sense for one player because people tend to think about that one paticular guy. But if a team consistently teakes a lot of guys in a draft, and over the course of several drafts, ahead of the consensus of where those guys are worth then over time they are likely to end up with a weaker team because over the course of many such "bets" they are making they will likely lose more of them than they win.

[big9erfan]

OH, and FWIW Pettis is not a guy I think was over-drafted, or only marginally so. I think most people thought him worth about a mid-2nd. I just don't like the concept of  moving up to have your choice from amoung a few guys that are generally rated about the same. This is the Garnett scenario all over again. We likely could have had Garnett had we waited. We'd actually have been lucky if some team beat us to him because Whitehair is better. It's quite possible Pettis will turn out better than the other 2nd round WRs. But just like with Garnett there's a chance he could have fallen to us. Or, maybe we'd turn out to be lucky if it was Kirk or Miller fell to us or we took Chark or Washington and that guy turns out better.  When we move up we are concluding that the chance that any one of those guys will be better than Pettis is worrse than the chance that pick 74  (that's what we gave up) will turn into someone good. Plus we're giving up the chance for a real  "homerun" if both 59 and 74 turn out to be good NFL players. I just don't like those odds.