Serious Question about OL talent in round 2.

[Whatever]

(04-24-2021, 09:34 PM)Essex Johnson Wrote: The Bengals need top Oline regardless position besides  they do need tackles.. Williams hurt for two years.. Reiff signed for a year.. no very good backups, also you see more and more Oline play tackle and guard... Going from #5 to #38 is potentially a major drop at both Oline and WR... 

And if we are going by need we  already have two quality starting NFL WRs (which is more than we can say at tackle/guard) so do we really need a WR at #5 ?

Analytics will tell you that the Wins Above Replacement for an elite WR is over double that of an elite OT.  An elite WR and an average OL in the first two rounds will help the team win more games than an elite OL and an average WR.

In fact, a lot of people indirectly defended this philosophy last year when defending the team FT'ing AJ by pointing out the vast disparity between the team's W-L record when AJ was in the lineup Vs games he missed.  

Depth at WR is far worse than depth at OL.  Tate, Thomas, and Morgan have a combined 2 TD's in 10 years in the league.  That's pathetic.  All three are in contract years.  Don't even get me to the point where I start comparing the number of career starts we have on the bench between the two groups.  If you want to say Jonah is injury prone and can't be counted on, you would also have to say the same for Tate.  Not to mention that we're in 3+ WR sets 83% of the time, so who's the third starter?  I don't see one.  

Jonah and Reiff are quality starters and Trey is average (good pass blocker/bad run blocker).  I am not a Spain fan, but he has his supporters and at one point was a good starter and could potentially be so again.  I would personally like a G in 2 and a T in 3 or 4 and maybe a flyer on a guy like Dickerson who falls due to medicals.