If Penei was drafted at 5, is this a playoff team?

[Whatever]

(01-07-2022, 12:33 AM)Murdock2420 Wrote: The real issue with this argument (outside of it shouldn't be happening with the team headed to the playoffs) is that there is absolutely no way to know what happens after the pick. Maybe it changes every pick, maybe just the 1st two? Who knows. Maybe they don't go for Carman since they'd have Reiff to move inside and they take Creed instead or they take a different edge or a WR or a CB or who knows.

If the Bengals take Sewell and then get St Brown in 4 then they most likely have the same win total. I'd guess they lose a game or two early while chemistry was built and then win a game or two later that the team struggled in due to Reiff's injury and the OL not getting push for Mixon. St. Brown showed you can get elite WR play outside round one, just like Creed showed you can find elite OL play outside of round one. It's over with, and we won't have a real understanding of how it looks until 3 or 4 years from now since that is about how long it takes to judge a draft class.

FWIW, my take was based on simply swapping Chase and Sewell with everything else playing out the same.  Otherwise, the exercise quickly turns into "If we took Sewell, plus did a complete redraft where we got the best/worst player in each subsequent round..."

I will say that I think people aren't properly valuing Amon-Ra's hypothetical impact on our win total.  When November ended, he only had 353 receiving yards and no TD's.  He went on a tear in December to put up a nice total for a rookie on the season, but his slow start likely dooms any playoff chance we have.  Higgins started slow this year and only had 560 yards and 3 TD's before December.  Chase had 906 TD's and 8TD's in that same span, which is a ton of production to have to replace.