1 minute ago, UK Eagle said:

Good to see the Bucs are following the Lowie approved Super Bowl repeat method. Sign all of the FA starters from the team, regardless of play or development.  Licht must have learned from the master 😉

It's interesting that the Eagles let Ertz's agent talk to team to get a deal done and a deal has not been done as of yet.  The lack of deal is limiting the little cap space left.

Which free agent on the Bucs wouldn’t you have re signed ? Bunch of one year deals , with not huge money , and they have plenty of cap room in up coming years .

they should be better next year , Brady will have a year under his belt in new offense, young secondary a year further along 

22 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

I didn't realize Caleb Farley injured his back all the way back in 2019 and then took 2020 off due to Covid.  Why wouldn't he get the surgery done knowing that he had the year to recover instead of waiting a month before the draft?  Doesn't make much sense to me.  I'd feel much more comfortable if he had the surgery when he injured his neck and was through with his recovery. 

Could be that his agent and Doc thought it could be rehabbed and that would be better than surgery, which always scares teams. I agree with you though. 

https://theathletic.com/2482242/2021/03/29/2021-nfl-draft-top-100-big-board-kyle-pitts-zach-wilson-follow-trevor-lawrence-atop-list/

Looking at big boards like this (Dane is the best), I don't see how the best strategy isn't CB at 12, WR at 37.

Surtain/Horn + Marshall/Bateman/Moore is more exciting than Smith/Waddle + Stokes/Molden/Samuel

I admire how unflappable Afan is in regards to Howie. He simply cannot be flapped. 

3 minutes ago, RLC said:

https://theathletic.com/2482242/2021/03/29/2021-nfl-draft-top-100-big-board-kyle-pitts-zach-wilson-follow-trevor-lawrence-atop-list/

Looking at big boards like this (Dane is the best), I don't see how the best strategy isn't CB at 12, WR at 37.

Surtain/Horn + Marshall/Bateman/Moore is more exciting than Smith/Waddle + Stokes/Molden/Samuel

Horn and Marshall, like I said yesterday , for me anyhow .

19 minutes ago, Original Sin said:

Horn and Marshall, like I said yesterday , for me anyhow .

Same, but I think Marshall can go before our 2nd pick. I think he can go in the 1st. 

6 hours ago, TEW said:

The draft is a gamble, and as any winning gambler knows, winning is a numbers game. If you have an edge, you may lose in the short run, or over a given period of time, but you will win over the long run.

In the abstract, without any partisan context like pro/anti Howie sentiment, team allegiance, or whatever, just about every knowledgeable football fan will acknowledge that the draft has an incredible amount of luck and randomness to it. The college vs pro games are wildly different, the NFL is the most high injury risk professional sport in the world, scheme and coaching plays a larger role than in any other sport, and so on. The statistics support this. About 50% of first round picks bust league wide. The numbers plummet from that point. So judging your draft conversion rate is working from a baseline well under 50%. 

Yet, whenever the draft becomes contextualized, everyone tosses this out of the window. Take two recent second round picks. Howie takes a chance on Sidney Jones -- a projected top 15 pick before an offseason injury -- and it doesn't work out. Well, Howie sucks, because he took a risk on an injury to generate value and it didn't work out. Yet the same people who point to this as a gaff will, sometimes in the very same sentence or paragraph, criticize him for passing on DK Metcalf who also had a medical injury that made him fall in the draft.  So which is it? Are we willing to take the chance on injuries impacting a player's performance or not? Because this is a numbers game. Some will work out and some won't. You're hoping your doctors can give you an edge here, not the GM, and you're judging their edge from a sample size of 2.

From my view -- and I say this as someone who was pounding the table for Metcalf before and during the draft as you well know -- the doctors were probably correct in their risk assessment on both players. Achilles injuries, while season ending, are no longer the career destroying problem they were in years past. Players routinely recover to top form post surgery. Back injuries are a different level of risk. So was taking Jones and passing on Metcalf the wrong decision? If we had a few thousand opportunities at similar situations, would our view change? I'm guessing we'd be viewing the Achilles injury as the better bet. And keep in mind, the Metcalf decision was after a few seasons of our roster getting wrecked by injuries, so the emphasis had probably shifted at an organizational level to prioritize health in order to minimize future risk. It's really easy to criticize decisions like this with the benefit of hindsight and without any of the information available to the GM, but I think it's quite a flawed argument.

You mention refining this process to something better than gambling. The problem with the NFL draft and rating GMs in this regard is sample size. How many GM's make enough picks in their career to truly evaluate their ability in a statistically significant way? Usually you would want at least a sample size of 100 to even begin to judge anything. And really, if we want to be accurate, that number needs to be an order of magnitude greater. I gamble. A lot. I am a long term winner in both poker and sports betting over a 20 year period, so I know of what I speak.  And let me tell you, there have been stretches along the way where I could not win no matter how sound my choices were. That's the nature of randomness. It gets smoothed out over tens of thousands of bets, but within that you are going to have stretches where nothing you do works. That doesn't mean you made the wrong choice, either. If your expected value is positive, you make the bet, and you do it knowing that many high EV bets are going to lose.

To wrap up my treatise on GMs, the draft and gambling, I really wonder how many careers have been made or broken by this randomness? Jimmy Johnson built a dynasty in Dallas off of the draft. Then he went to Miami and was just above mediocre. Same guy. Same high volume draft strategy. Totally different results. So is he the guy who created a juggernaut in Dallas, or the guy who was barely above .500 in Miami? And if he had an even greater sample size, would the outlier period of the 90's get balanced out by an outlier period to the downside? Who knows, but statistically, he would absolutely have a period where all of his drafts failed eventually. Now imagine a good GM who starts his career with a losing streak. He's done, even if over time he might end up being an all-time great drafter.

So, is Howie a good or bad GM? Well, the results are mixed. He's won a ring. That's pretty darn good. His teams have mostly had winning seasons. Again, pretty good. On the negative side of things, his draft results of late have been poor. How much of that was due to the myriad of other factors like group consensus on players in order to make other people in the room happy, how much of it was coaching, or injury, etc. we will never know. If his job is to not lose and win championships and titles, he's done a good job of that overall. If his job is to refine the draft to something better than gambling, well, if we're being honest, the jury is still out on that and probably still will be even when he's out of the league. The sample size is just too small to make an accurate judgement. Of course, that's the job. Not For Long league and all of that. 

The point is that you should invest in index funds and replace Howie with an algorithm.  

17 minutes ago, Original Sin said:

Horn and Marshall, like I said yesterday , for me anyhow .

I think Denver and Dallas take Horn and Surtain.  With the Farley surgery and sitting out the season he falls- I don't want him.  Horn has become the #1 CB.  No doubt he is gone before we pick.  Dallas could surprise and take a DE or OL as they need both.  If that happens Surtain could fall to us.  I hope we can pick either of Surtain or Horn.  If Slater is there at 12 he would be tough to pass up.  But our CB group needs so much help.

25 minutes ago, RLC said:

https://theathletic.com/2482242/2021/03/29/2021-nfl-draft-top-100-big-board-kyle-pitts-zach-wilson-follow-trevor-lawrence-atop-list/

Looking at big boards like this (Dane is the best), I don't see how the best strategy isn't CB at 12, WR at 37.

Surtain/Horn + Marshall/Bateman/Moore is more exciting than Smith/Waddle + Stokes/Molden/Samuel

It's a good thought for sure but I can see one of TB or KC taking Bateman at the end of the 1st.  KC is losing Sammy Watkins, TB has Antonio Brown but how much longer is he going to play and is he going to be in check?  TB12 and Mahomes would probably LOVE to have a guy like Bateman to throw too.  

I think 12 is still high for any of the corners.  If CB is a target I think they can move back one more time and maybe pick up a 4th.  I'm just not getting any hopes up for Bateman because he's a fringer 1st rounder. 

Then you have to consider the teams taking QB in the top 5.  They all pick again before Philly in round 2 and might want to draft a young weapon for their new franchise QB.  I just don't see him falling to 37/

31 minutes ago, RLC said:

https://theathletic.com/2482242/2021/03/29/2021-nfl-draft-top-100-big-board-kyle-pitts-zach-wilson-follow-trevor-lawrence-atop-list/

Looking at big boards like this (Dane is the best), I don't see how the best strategy isn't CB at 12, WR at 37.

Surtain/Horn + Marshall/Bateman/Moore is more exciting than Smith/Waddle + Stokes/Molden/Samuel

If one of Smith or Waddle is there at 12, I'm taking that all day.

 From MMQB about the inner workings of this trade
 

Quote

The Dolphins, though, were looking for a way to stay closer to where they were originally picking, which led to this becoming what was essentially a three-team trade. And Miami needed a partner that would keep the talks in confidence. So Grier called the Eagles, who owned the sixth pick, a little more than two weeks ago to ask if they would be interested in moving back to 12 if the deal with the 49ers went through. Philly said yes, and the Dolphins told the Eagles they’d circle back. Then Grier and Eagles GM Howie Roseman chipped away at the parameters of a second-order trade.

The Eagles worked exclusively with the Dolphins, and Roseman had to keep the trade under wraps in the two-plus weeks in between to allow for the bang-bang nature of how it eventually would go down. And with the Eagles believing there is a pretty good chance the Bengals will take LSU’s Ja’Marr Chase at five (we mentioned in our mock this week that that Joe Burrow has given Cincinnati’s brass a glowing recommendation), Philly felt comfortable with the difference in talent between six and 12—and also operated with the knowledge that it’d be hard to get a future first (this being Miami’s slotted No. 1 in 2022) in exchange for moving down closer to the draft, particularly if it looked like the top four picks would be QBs.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/03/29/mmqb-inside-49ers-dolphins-trade-nfl-draft

1 minute ago, bpac55 said:

It's a good thought for sure but I can see one of TB or KC taking Bateman at the end of the 1st.  KC is losing Sammy Watkins, TB has Antonio Brown but how much longer is he going to play and is he going to be in check?  TB12 and Mahomes would probably LOVE to have a guy like Bateman to throw too.  

I think 12 is still high for any of the corners.  If CB is a target I think they can move back one more time and maybe pick up a 4th.  I'm just not getting any hopes up for Bateman because he's a fringer 1st rounder. 

Then you have to consider the teams taking QB in the top 5.  They all pick again before Philly in round 2 and might want to draft a young weapon for their new franchise QB.  I just don't see him falling to 37/

AB is currently not a buc , but they have Evans , Godwin , Miller ,  and Johnson , they could go WO but not that early , front 7 will be their pick.

6 minutes ago, Freshmilk said:

I think Denver and Dallas take Horn and Surtain.  With the Farley surgery and sitting out the season he falls- I don't want him.  Horn has become the #1 CB.  No doubt he is gone before we pick.  Dallas could surprise and take a DE or OL as they need both.  If that happens Surtain could fall to us.  I hope we can pick either of Surtain or Horn.  If Slater is there at 12 he would be tough to pass up.  But our CB group needs so much help.

I’m a little hesitant on Surtain , in fact I would probably pass on him at 12

50 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

I didn't realize Caleb Farley injured his back all the way back in 2019 and then took 2020 off due to Covid.  Why wouldn't he get the surgery done knowing that he had the year to recover instead of waiting a month before the draft?  Doesn't make much sense to me.  I'd feel much more comfortable if he had the surgery when he injured his neck and was through with his recovery. 

It's probably because either he recently made it worse or that the doctors did not recommend surgery until recently.  Even if they knew he had a symptomatic herniation in his back in 2019, they would likely not have recommended surgery unless he had a significant neurological component like leg weakness or loss of bladder control.  

29 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

It's a good thought for sure but I can see one of TB or KC taking Bateman at the end of the 1st.  KC is losing Sammy Watkins, TB has Antonio Brown but how much longer is he going to play and is he going to be in check?  TB12 and Mahomes would probably LOVE to have a guy like Bateman to throw too.  

I think 12 is still high for any of the corners.  If CB is a target I think they can move back one more time and maybe pick up a 4th.  I'm just not getting any hopes up for Bateman because he's a fringer 1st rounder. 

Then you have to consider the teams taking QB in the top 5.  They all pick again before Philly in round 2 and might want to draft a young weapon for their new franchise QB.  I just don't see him falling to 37/

If you're KC, I don't see how they don't go OL in RD1. They have no tackles!

The thing about WRs is that last year's class was strong, so WR is less of a need + a deep draft tends to push guys down.

I do think Bateman/Marshall can sneak into RD1 though. It's just luck of the draw. 

If we pass on WR in the first 3 rounds of this draft, it won't be a big deal. We're not contending anyway and next year's FA crop includes Godwin, Robinson, Fuller, Lockett, Anderson, Juju, M. Williams, Sutton, Chark etc. I'd rather us spend cap space on a WR than force a draft pick.

8 hours ago, austinfan said:

Name all the players who played above expectations from 2017 to 2020, other than OL.

Foles but only in the RPO. Who else? Ward? Edwards?  That's player development.

Sweat.  

1 minute ago, Bacarty2 said:

All in time friend. 

We got the WC loss, we're on coach 2. 7-10 this year and next seem almost reality.  

 

If i HADDDD to bet my salary on 3 more 10 loss seasons, or not. I'd go 3 more. 

For your family's sake, you need to stay the hell away from sports betting.

3 minutes ago, RLC said:

If you're KC, I don't see how they don't go OL in RD1. They have no tackles!

The thing about WRs is that last year's class was strong, so WR is less of a need + a deep draft tends to push guys down.

I do think Bateman/Marshall can sneak into RD1 though. It's just luck of the draw. 

If we pass on WR in the first 3 rounds of this draft, it won't be a big deal. We're not contending anyway and next year's FA crop includes Godwin, Robinson, Fuller, Lockett, Anderson, Juju, M. Williams, Sutton, Chark etc. I'd rather us spend cap space on a WR than force a dract pick.

True, they don't.  I'm a huge Mailata guy.  I also think Driscoll showed a lot in year 1.  I wonder if Andre Dillard could be dangled in front of AR.  Probably wouldn't fetch more than a 3rd but something to consider.  I'd forgive Howie for a lot of his mess if he could somehow get AR to bite on Matt Pryor!

We have 4 picks in the 1st 3 rounds.  I'd be pretty upset if we don't use at least one of them on a WR.

15 minutes ago, Original Sin said:

I’m a little hesitant on Surtain , in fact I would probably pass on him at 12

Let's say the following position players are gone at 12: Sewell, Slater, Chase, Pitts, Waddle, Horn, Parsons are gone-who would you take or try to trade back again?

2 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

We have 4 picks in the 1st 3 rounds.  I'd be pretty upset if we don't use at least one of them on a WR.

IMO, this team needs a veteran, stable WR more than a rookie draft pick. I think competence is more important for Hurts' development than greatness. 

2 minutes ago, Freshmilk said:

Let's say the following position players are gone at 12: Sewell, Slater, Chase, Pitts, Waddle, Horn, Parsons are gone-who would you take or try to trade back again?

If all of those players are gone, I'm 100% taking Rousseau. 

Just now, bpac55 said:

If all of those players are gone, I'm 100% taking Rousseau. 

Would you take Rousseau if Horn is there, or Waddle perhaps?  Rousseau is interesting.  Big, athletic, needs to build his repertoire of moves but could be a beast in 2-3 years.  

Just now, Bacarty2 said:

Surtain / Paye / Devonta Smith. In that order

Paye is a firm no for me.  

5 minutes ago, Bacarty2 said:

Lets play it out bud... 

2021 schedule looks hard, this team is depleted. I say 4-13 this year. MAYBE 5-12

2022. Probably draft a rookie QB at this point. Off the top of my head there's few instant success rookie QB;'s, Still in Salary cap hell. Ya, I can see 6-11. 

Then 2023. This is the crap shoot. You could have a new coach. You could still have Howie? You could have a 2nd year QB. And Dallas/Redskins/Giants are only going up... yea, I can 7-10

 

The problem is, this has been a 10 lose team for awhile now(even with Carson and Doug) but because they played in the worst division in football we didnt realize it. Lipstick on a pig. 

 

Two things that make me say "oh jeez":

Calling anybody "bud". 

The phrase "lipstick on a pig" as if lipstick alone would make a pig more attractive.  

Just now, Bacarty2 said:

Not saying theyre right. But Paye is ahead of Rousseau in every mock, scouting report, etc etc etc. 

I think Paye looked sharper/better against better competition. 

He looks too much like what we already have.  Rousseau looks like he could explode as a force on the line.  But I'm so often wrong about these things you could call me Howie. 

1 minute ago, Bacarty2 said:

said "bud" on purpose because your not allowed to curse on here. 

Doesnt matter what shotty analogy/comparison you want to use. 

This Eagles will have over 30 losses over the next 3 years. Count it. 

"Bud" still sucks.   So does "lipstick on a pig".  As for 30 losses.  Possible.  But so are 28.