Cardale Jones is a unicorn. From the personality to his play on the field, I haven’t quite seen someone like him coming into the NFL draft “process”. Consistently seeing a comparison to JaMarcus Russell is a bit of a head scratcher too – is it that strong armed black QBs have to be lumped together? Is it an assumption that Cardale and JaMarcus sharing melanin will lead to a similar flame out? I don’t see the cavalcade of Michigan State QBs receiving the same criticism – outside of the “why doesn’t Connor Cook have Kirk Cousins’ grit/leadership” question.
You want #QBWinz? – National Champ. And that was, as a reminder, with him coming off the bench – not pulling the Peyton (sorry PM) of chilling for 6-7 games and then getting the final wave in like Carson Wentz and beating ranked teams unlike Goff. I’m not saying Cardale should be a top ten pick – but if he were taken in the 3rd round, 4th round, that’s a developmental swing worth taking. Picking Hackenberg or Hogan feels to me like a base hit – you just want a QB that’d be functional and a chip to play against Tyrod Taylor’s agent. NEAT!!
If the pick at some point is Hackenberg or Hogan, I don’t mind those players. In fact, I think they have a shot at becoming decent QBs in the NFL. But if you’re going to skip over a Cardale because you have to do more work to develop him – or because the aforementioned QBs have experience in a 1. pro style offense or 2. in the case of Hogan THE offense, it’s a little dangerous. My reasoning is simple – if the goal posts somehow changed on Tyrod Taylor from “we just need a body that won’t turn the ball over” to “we need him to do x y or z to be “THE GUY” ” what’s going to happen with either of those guys next year? I can just imagine the press conferences now:
“Well, Christian’s a work in progress – and we just need him to learn how to limit his mistakes in game”
I’m not looking to hear that – and neither should you. Say no to safe in 2016 – shoot for the moon Bills, and perhaps you will land among the stars in the playoffs at some point this decade.
And here are some of my other draft week random thoughts:
- Wonderlic Leaks – It’s a yearly pet peeve of mine; the last few weeks before the draft, reporters will get leaks on players’ wonderlic scores and put them in the scouting reports or as an aside in their evaluation of said player. Then Florio will signal boost it and now everyone is trying to compare their supposed numbers to a future draft pick. Much like the revelation of injuries, this invasion of privacy for entertainment purposes (at best) and/or some form of gamesmanship in the draft (at worst) is weak sauce.
- 7 1st round picks – That’s how many Rex has had in his time as head coach in the NFL. In that time, he’s picked 1 QB (Sanchez) in a crazy multi-player trade and 6 defenders. SIX! 3 defensive linemen and 3 defensive backs. So if you’re not looking at DB as an option for the first round on Thursday, I’d suggest you adjust accordingly. Sal Capaccio had a great article on WGR on this very subject.
- This is gonna be a thing Innit?
Just going to leave this right here. https://t.co/pRXhbaRaWw
— Tyler Dunne (@TyDunne) April 26, 2016
I get Mario didn’t show enough grit and determination and team and golly gee he just needed to try more – but if we’re gonna be waiting with bated breath to see how many voluntary activities he does with the Dolphins…after just having had the same group of fans lose their minds Sammy Watkins did same…Good luck with that folks. Good. Luck.
- The flip side of a good draft – Seeing this tweet got me thinking about the “curse” of drafting well:
On ESPN last night Polian pointed out that hitting on all your picks is great but you won’t be able to re-sign all after rook deals.
— Deacon Blues (@mork1215) April 26, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSo, if I’m to infer from this, I’d say that hitting on all of your picks and KNOWING said picks have performed well would be a great time to re-up some of those players prior to the final year of their contracts. What’s that? Teams want to milk the players at those cheap rookie deals for as long as they can? Well, then I can’t help ya pard.
That’s all for now – I’ll be back in a few days with a pre-draft 6 rounder, continuing Joe’s annual tradition. Any thoughts who I should pick for the Bills? Throw em my way on twitter – @RDotDeuce.
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