The Linc - Limbaugh Sticks Up For McNabb, Keith Byars Overrated?

Re: the draft strategy article….I completely agree. Moving down and having 12-player draft classes is great, if you’re trying to turnover the bottom half of the roster and get younger depth. I’m pretty sure Howie said something to this effect when he was explaining his approach to the draft.

But eventually, he’ll need to take the picks we have and do the opposite: build the top half of the roster. If his plan is to continually fill the LB slots (or whatever) with 4th-7th round picks and hope we beat the odds, people will laud our draft strategy as they beat us in the playoffs. A continuous strategy like this will waste our resources that should have been used elsewhere, and give us a team of good depth, but not elite talent.

Always a pain in the butt when Eagles play the Giants.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, and if so inclined in the near future, then I may do an expanded FanPost to fully discuss them with the BGN universe, but not right now.

In the meantime, let me say this: this regime is clear in that there are certain positions (QB, LT, CB, DE) that they value more than others, and those positions are the positions that they will splurge on, ie through a fat FA contract or a high draft pick. Obviously, there are only so many fat contracts they can hand out to FAs and only so many high picks they can make. So they are somewhat limited in how deep they can build the roster.

As for the rest of the positions, this regime is also clear in the belief that the more bodies they bring into camp to compete (the key word here), the better that position will ultimately be when they put the finished product on the field. This is where they utilize the quantity over quality approach in the draft, by trading down and accumulating later picks. Picks they almost always use on guys who have slipped due to 1 of 2 reasons: coming off of a major injury and/or a perceived lack of measurables (size, speed or both). While this makes it harder and less likely for these guys to be NFLers, it doesn’t automatically preclude them from being great selections. These guys sometimes (admittedly, less often than not) turn into great NFLers. See Trent Cole, who fell to the 6th because teams questioned if he was big enough. The most obvious example of course is Tom Brady.

In the referenced article from McNabb or Kolb or Vick, he uses as an example Sean Lee vs the 6 guys taken in his place: Daniel Te’o-Nesheim, Mike Kafka, Clay Harbor, Ricky Sapp, Riley Cooper and Dion Lewis. Now, Sean Lee could turn out to be a Pro Bowler, or just an average NFL starter for a few years, or a guy who tears his ACL and never reaches his full potential /cough Stewart Bradley cough/, or he could end up being not good enough and out of the league in a year or two. The point is, from the Cowboys perspective, the success of that 1 pick solely relies on what Sean Lee does. Or doesn’t do. But for the Eagles, we now have 6 guys who will determine if that pick is a success. In essence, they have improved the probability of that 1 pick being a success by increasing the chances that the pick can succeed. Those 6 guys could all end up being filler for the bottom half of the roster. Or not. What if Kafka turns out to be an average QB and Te’O turns out to be a good to great DT? What if Ricky Sapp turns into a 10 sack guy and Dion Lewis turns out to be the next Darren Sproles?

While trading up for sure-to-be studs is sexy and makes the off-season fun, making sure that the bottom half of your roster can fill in for injured members of the top half of your roster when needed with minimal to no dropoff in production provided, and it absolutely will be needed during the season and playoffs, is what may end up determining whether or not you achieve the Ultimate Success, winning the SB. Green Bay showed this last year.