Sustainability vs. Win Now

[Benton]

(04-29-2016, 05:15 PM)Beaker Wrote: I totally agree with taking BPA when your turn comes up. Never draft and reach for need. Only draft for need when the BPA matches your need. Good teams are built this way.

Eh, I don't know a lot of successful teams with 10 tackles, 16 punters, 4 quarterbacks and a slew of runningbacks. Or however you want to structure it. Saying 'only BPA' sounds great, but it's just not realistic.

One, it's all subjective. BPA depends on who is making the determination. In this case, our staff. And our staff loves the heck out of OL and CBs. So if we go 'only BPA' then we're drafting seven rounds of giant tackles and fast corners.

Two, it's not a good way to fill a need. Because eventually, you're going to have a need. If your BPA falls to the same five or six positions in your first three rounds for three or four years, you're restocking those other ten or so positions with fourth round or later guys. Generally hit or miss players. That leaves you pretty thin. Like our LB spot. After Rey, we dropped down to later round guys. Moch, Muckelroy, Porter, Flowers, Dawson. It's showing every time we bring in another team's near-retirement LB to get us through another season.

You've got to balance it out. If you're thin at corner and there's a corner you've got graded near your spot, you take it, regardless if there's a bad ass punter or a seven foot tackle you don't need. It's not reaching, it's building. And it's building around a lot of guess work.

I'm a fan of the way we've approached things, but we've got three first round CBs on the roster and the last one is looking to replace at least one of the first two. So we're not hitting that BPA mark there. And we've spent some later round picks on defense, but we're an injury away from Pat Sims being a starter on the line or Tate being our third receiving option.