The 2012 draft was a masterclass by the front office

[Shake n Blake]

(08-19-2015, 01:51 PM)djs7685 Wrote: Wow.

Anyone claiming that this draft was anything short of great needs to go look at your average draft for any team around the league.

Go to Wikipedia, type in a random season and random team, look at their draft, and then come back here and let me know what you think. Here are a few examples, I just put in a recent year and picked a team off the top of my head. I tried to not pick teams that have been just BAD at drafting either to make it fair.

2013 Detroit Lions
Ezekiel Ansah
Darius Slay
Larry Warford
Devin Taylor
Sam Martin
Corey Fuller
Theo Riddick
Michael Williams
Brandon Hepburn

2012 New England Patriots
Chandler Jones
Dont'a Hightower
Tavon Wilson
Jake Bequette
Nate Ebner
Alfonzo Dennard
Jeremy Ebert

2011 San Francisco 49ers
Aldon Smith
Colin Kaepernick
Chris Culliver
Kendall Hunter
Daniel Kilgore
Ronald Johnson
Colin Jones
Bruce Miller
Mike Person
Curtis Holcomb

2012 San Diego Chargers
Melvin Ingram
Kendall Reyes
Brandon Taylor
Ladarius Green
Johnnie Troutman
David Molk
Edwin Baker

2012 Baltimore Ravens
Courtney Upshaw
Kelechi Osemele
Bernard Pierce
Gino Gradkowski
Christian Thompson
Asa Jackson
Tommy Streeter
DeAngelo Tyson

1. You're ignoring the fact that we had an extra 1st, 3rd, and a pair of extra 5ths to work with. So comparing it to these other drafts isn't exactly fair.

2. If you're counting Brandon Thompson as a good pick then maybe you're being a little biased. Thompson is possibly on the bubble this year and he's had a very underwhelming career thus far.

3. In 2012, all 10 of our picks were in the first 6 rounds. We had 5 players that look good IMO. That's a 50% success rate. In the previous draft, we had 6 picks in the first 6 rounds. We got AJ, Dalton and Boling out of it. The success rate was the same and the players were better.

4. Just looking at the Lions draft you listed, Ansah, Slay and Warford have been starters. Taylor and Riddick have contributed as much as Thompson has for us. Sam Martin has been their punter since he was drafted. I'm not going to go through each of these other teams, but I see plenty of contributors mixed in. 

If you actually watched some of these other teams year round like you do the Bengals, I have a feeling that you'd feel differently about their players. Just because you don't recognize their names doesn't mean they're no good. A Lions fan may look at names like Iloka and Zeitler and feel the same way you do when looking over the drafts of these other teams.