The Draft....

[TriCitySam]

At the time we made the Jamal deal, I felt the uncertainty in the draft due to COVID made it more palatable. Some real interesting comments in Peter King's column about this years draft:

"There’s a first-round pass-rush prospect from the University of Miami named Gregory Rousseau. High school wideout/safety. College history, checkered. Year one: Played a few snaps as a freshman, got hurt, redshirted. Year two: ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year with 15.5 sacks. Year three: Opted out because of COVID concerns. Basically, four months of college game experience. No NFL Scouting Combine to probe him physically and mentally. No in-person visits with teams; Zoom meetings only. Rousseau is 20 years old.

Information sources? Shut off, pretty much, for so many of the prospects. In the fall, NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah wanted to know how much Rousseau weighed; he played his one season at 248, but it was a year later, and Rousseau, after opting out, was totally off the grid. “I DM’d him on Twitter, just trying to get info any way I could,” Jeremiah said. “And he wrote back: 262.”

“More than any year I’ve been doing this,” Jeremiah told me Saturday evening, “this draft’s a mystery. Say you’re watching a kid who played a season against great competition in the SEC this year, and you’re comparing him to a kid who opted out, maybe played nine or 10 games in 2019, and you haven’t seen him play football in over 400 days. It’s crazy.

I looked at five mock drafts over the weekend, and Gregory Rousseau ranged from 11 to 21 on each one. Let’s just say he’s the 16th pick. Some team is going to guarantee him $15 million in a rookie contract, perhaps not even meet him in person till late July (no one knows the COVID rules for off-season work), and pray this man who hasn’t played a football game in 520 days will be ready to rush the passer in an NFL game after seven weeks of professional training.

Yikes."

[RiverDog]

The pandemic most definitely has affected the way teams are approaching the 2021 draft, and the player you mentioned is a prime example. The fact that he hasn't played a down in 18 or so months makes him a huge risk to be spending a #1 pick on, so he could easily slip to the 2nd round or lower.

This draft is going to be one dull SOB. Not only do we not have a #1 pick, we don't have a #3 pick and we have just 3 picks overall.

[NorthHawk]

There are a lot of good players before we pick. Too bad because we really need an injection of good, cheap talent.
We now need to fill the DT role left by Reed along with a stud RB, 3rd WR, future LT, other OL depth who can challenge to start either this year or next,
CB, and maybe future QB. Unless we trade a player or two which will leave more holes to fill.

[Aseahawkfan]

This draft is crap. Pete and John made that assessment early on and traded picks for what they see as greater value.

We'll see if they are right in a few years per usual. I think their call was wise myself. Lots of players opted out. Lots of teams didn't play. The entire College football situation was terrible. I think this year's draft will be a real crap shoot. I'd rather pick up the cheap veteran talent as it gets cut.

[RiverDog]

This draft is crap. Pete and John made that assessment early on and traded picks for what they see as greater value.

We'll see if they are right in a few years per usual. I think their call was wise myself. Lots of players opted out. Lots of teams didn't play. The entire College football situation was terrible. I think this year's draft will be a real crap shoot. I'd rather pick up the cheap veteran talent as it gets cut.

I agree, but I do want to point out that we traded our top pick for 2022 as well.

[NorthHawk]

I don't think it's crap at all.
There's a lot of good talent from the mid to late 1st to the mid 3rd rounds. It would have been prime moving down territory for JS and get better value at lesser risk.
He'll probably still move down if there's a partner who doesn't back out at the last minute and get a value piece, but at 56 there should be some real good players. The
trick is to not drop past them like they did with Nick Chubb, TJ Watt, and others.

[Aseahawkfan]

I don't think it's crap at all.
There's a lot of good talent from the mid to late 1st to the mid 3rd rounds. It would have been prime moving down territory for JS and get better value at lesser risk.
He'll probably still move down if there's a partner who doesn't back out at the last minute and get a value piece, but at 56 there should be some real good players. The
trick is to not drop past them like they did with Nick Chubb, TJ Watt, and others.

I don't agree. I've kept up with the truncated college football season, all the players opting out, all the schools who didn't compete. I agree with the assessment this draft is crap. We'll see in time whether Pete and John are right about it or you are.

[Aseahawkfan]

I agree, but I do want to point out that we traded our top pick for 2022 as well.

Do you think we'll find a player the quality of Jamal Adams where we pick in 2021? I don't. Not too worried about it. We pick too late in the draft at this point to have a good chance of grabbing a player of Jamal Adams value who is just hitting his prime.

[RiverDog]

I agree, but I do want to point out that we traded our top pick for 2022 as well.

Do you think we'll find a player the quality of Jamal Adams where we pick in 2021? I don't. Not too worried about it. We pick too late in the draft at this point to have a good chance of grabbing a player of Jamal Adams value who is just hitting his prime.

I wasn't assessing Adam's ability. I was pointing out that we gave up more than just a weird draft pick with an asterisk behind it due to the effects of the pandemic. The 2021 CFB season will be very close to normal, plus a lot of college players will take advantage of a blanket waiver giving even those that participated last season an extra year of eligibility, meaning that the 2022 draft could be stacked with talent.

[c_hawkbob]

Adams, if we're able to get a long term deal done as I expect, is worth 2 late firsts. Complaining about not having them makes no sense to me.

[NorthHawk]

I don't think a Safety is worth starting QB money or trade value. 2 firsts, a 3rd and a starting Safety for another Safety is pretty high.
But I also don't think we saw how Pete really wants to use him as he was forced into the blitzing role to make up for a lack of pass rush.
As we should be able to get pressure on the QB, we should see what Pete really envisions for his role.

[c_hawkbob]

And I don't think the letter designation next to a player like Adams' name tells the story of his value to a team. We knew when we got him that his primary value was his contribution to our pass rush regardless of the fact that he's technically a Safety. We weren't "forced into blitzing" we adapted our defense to it's best player's skills. We knew going in that blitzing was going to be a big part of it.

[RiverDog]

Adams, if we're able to get a long term deal done as I expect, is worth 2 late firsts. Complaining about not having them makes no sense to me.

I wasn't complaining about not having them. I was simply pointing out that the 2022 draft picks will be of more value than corresponding picks from 2021. IMO the jury is still out on the Adams trade.

[NorthHawk]

And I don't think the letter designation next to a player like Adams' name tells the story of his value to a team. We knew when we got him that his primary value was his contribution to our pass rush regardless of the fact that he's technically a Safety. We weren't "forced into blitzing" we adapted our defense to it's best player's skills. We knew going in that blitzing was going to be a big part of it.

I disagree. We saw how teams ran up and down the field by air without pressure, so the only card Pete had to play was using Adams more than his plan. If this was his plan all along, we wouldn't have
gone after Hyder and re-signed Dunlap. We would have used our own players for rushing the passer. That's not to say he would never blitz, but rather it would be more strategic in his use.
Pete seems to like using Safeties in non traditional roles. Polomalu at USC could blitz, but didn't do it all the time and ET rarely did although he would have been quite capable of it. So I think we will
see some pressure from Adams, but not in the volumes we saw last year.

[c_hawkbob]

You're right, we disagree. This:

If this was his plan all along, we wouldn't have gone after Hyder and re-signed Dunlap. We would have used our own players for rushing the passer

Makes no sense to me. Just because we have a pass rush tool out of the defensive backfield does not in any way preclude us from trying to add to that with a better pass rush from our D-line. "Our own players" were obviously insufficient. Now, having a better group applying pressure along the line is going to make Adams coming from the backfield even more effective, just as the thereat of his coming when we show blitz (whether we actually blitz or not) will make the pressure from the line more effective. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

[RiverDog]

And I don't think the letter designation next to a player like Adams' name tells the story of his value to a team. We knew when we got him that his primary value was his contribution to our pass rush regardless of the fact that he's technically a Safety. We weren't "forced into blitzing" we adapted our defense to it's best player's skills. We knew going in that blitzing was going to be a big part of it.

I disagree. We saw how teams ran up and down the field by air without pressure, so the only card Pete had to play was using Adams more than his plan. If this was his plan all along, we wouldn't have gone after Hyder and re-signed Dunlap. We would have used our own players for rushing the passer. That's not to say he would never blitz, but rather it would be more strategic in his use.

Pete seems to like using Safeties in non traditional roles. Polomalu at USC could blitz, but didn't do it all the time and ET rarely did although he would have been quite capable of it. So I think we will see some pressure from Adams, but not in the volumes we saw last year.

IMO our acquisition of Adams was driven by the fact that our overall pass defense was so horrid and that we failed to improve it either via the draft or free agent signings (ie Clowney and Griffin) in the offseason. At least while he has been with us, Pete hasn't used his safeties on blitzes much at all, even when we had Kam. He seemed to rely on the front 7 to get pressure. I think it entirely possible that Pete changed his philosophy this past season and acquired the best pass rushing safety in the game in response to the failings in the offseason to improve our front 7.

It will be interesting to see if with a (hopefully) improved pass rush out of our front 7 if Pete returns to his previous philosophy and uses Adams in a more traditional role or if we see him continue to use him to get pressure on the QB.