FanPost

Which positional draft "upgrades" are overrated?

I see a lot of people here listing the positions the Birds need to address in this year's draft... Which of these positions shouldn't be considered eligible for immediate upgrade, in your mind? By "eligible for immediate upgrade", my basic metric is "should not be targeted in the first 2 rounds"; it doesn't mean they shouldn't consider adding depth at that position in later rounds. The Eagles have 3 picks in the top 2 rounds, and I've listed 5 positions here. I think the distinction between SS and FS has disappeared so I'm counting that as one position. Choose the one you think is a least concern in the first 3 picks. I'm not even going to list "offensive guard" or "defensive tackle" because these are retarded suggestions that will wind up getting runaway votes.

For me the overrated need is kind of a tossup between safety and wide receiver. On the one hand I don't think our WR corps is too bad even without DJax; between Maclin, Avant, Cooper plus Celek, Harbor and McCoy there are far, far worse, units in the NFL. New England has two TEs and NONE of their receivers possess even Maclin's speed and ability, and they lack an explosive back in the screen game but they passed for 5,000 yards this season. It's about efficient playcalling, QB play, and coordination.

Safety is hard to evaluate because both Coleman and Allen played some excellent games and both played some horrible games this season. I would attribute this perhaps to poor coaching/understanding of the scheme more than anything (especially in Allen's case, as he is gifted athletically and really underacheived this year). It's also worth remembering that basically ALL safeties were getting torched in this record season; there were far worse defensive backfields than ours. I saw Earl Thomas get beat badly by Riley Cooper in the SEA game...

The Eagles used 2nd rd picks the past 2 years on safeties, and Jarrett and Anderson are probably better than most backups. Add to this the incredible fact that our top 4 safeties are aged 22, 23, 24, and 26, and it's hard to justify another early pick here when these guys are still growing and had to deal with 2 DCs in two years.

I'm choosing safety as the largest overrated need I see listed here. My top need for them is LB-- in fact two linebackers, a SAM and MIKE. I also think they'd be wise to take a wide receiver and/or corner if the right one comes to them in round 2. I expect DRC/Nnamdi to be a much better combo than Samuel/Nnamdi next year, but Nnamdi and Hanson are both on the wrong side of 30 and beyond these 3 vets, there's zero depth. Marsh and Hughes suck ass.

Cast your votes!