08-19-2015, 02:42 PM
(08-19-2015, 02:15 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: 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.
I didn't say Brandon Thompson was a good pick, just that he was a solid contributor. If you don't remember, he filled in when Geno was injured and played just fine. I don't think he's a "good" player on the list, but he's worth mentioning moreso than a guy that didn't even make the team the year he was drafted like some of these others on the lists.
Using 2011 to somehow diminish 2012 doesn't make much sense. Why can't they both be GOOD drafts? They were, not just one of them, they were both very good draft classes. Kirkpatrick, Zeitler, Sanu, Jones, and Iloka coming out of the same draft class is impressive whether we had 10 picks in the first 3 rounds or in the first 7 rounds. I don't see why you're using these weird qualifiers to diminish this draft class. So what if we had 10 picks in the first round alone? The success rate for your average draft pick isn't very high, the fact that we got 2 top 10 (arguably top 5) guys at G and S, along with a solid #2 WR, solid #3 WR, and potential #1 CB is pretty much absurd and unheard of.
I watch tons of football around the league, I recognize a lot of those names and even remember when some of them came out of college, so it's not global name recognition I'm looking for. I also NEVER said the drafts that I posted as my examples were bad. I was merely using random team's drafts as examples of what your average draft is going to look like. Some of them were solid, others were very lacking. Even the teams that "draft well" don't have a very high success rate overall, you're bound to miss sometimes. Some of the guys on those lists were starters, but were they good starters? I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you want to insinuate that I need to learn more about other teams. I'm not your average Bengals fan that doesn't pay attention to sports outside of this team, I probably know more about the Raiders than some folks living in Oakland, and they're probably my least favorite team to watch.
