Lou’s Future in the Jungle

[Soonerpeace]

(01-13-2023, 12:49 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Never said it's a no fail process. I just said that's where the blue chip guys traditionally are. The whole draft is a gamble, but having real real high picks give you better odds. Case and point is the first guy you brought up. Higgins was the 33rd pick in the draft, nearly an extra 1st being that bad and getting a pick that high. In a normal bad year rather than a terrible year we'd be picking somewhere around Laviska Shenault or KJ Hamler in the 2nd round. Or in a year where they were 1-and-done in the playoffs it'd be more like Van Jefferson or Dinzel Mims.

We don't know if Volson or CTB are good picks yet or not, and Wilson is pretty good but seemingly always hurt and also came in the year where the Bengals had the 1st pick in every round, so he's very nearly a 2nd round pick. Logan Wilson was the Bengals 3rd round pick at 65, and the Bengals 2nd round pick in 2022 was at 60 and 3rd round pick was 95. That's a huge difference in number of players taken off the board. They could be, but unless the guy is incredibly good from Day 1 (Chase) or just absolutely next level terrible (Ogbuehi) you can't really properly judge a draft until after their 3rd year. It's why I didn't really participate in that 2022 Draft thread other than posting their ratings without comment on the actual players. We need to see if guys improve in 2023.

And I’m not disagreeing that it’s hard to turnaround a franchise like this w/o major help via great draft opportunities. But several teams had early picks and didn’t move the needle during that time. So having early picks is no guarantee. But I’m simply not a subscriber to your rationale on Higgins, Logan Wilson, Volson, CTB, and others as being lucky.