Steelers build thru Drafts but Top picks tend to take starting jobs sooner - Our flaw

[muskiesfan]

Mike Brown's entire philosophy is "future". We don't spend in free agency because of deals that need to be made in the future. We draft BPA to stash players for the future. There's no urgency to win now. They never step up and take the chances to win now. Obviously every year isn't the time to go all in. Some years you're closer than others and the Bengals have had some recent seasons where if they had put all their chips on the table, things may have turned out differently. Instead, we ignore certain positions in certain rounds of the draft, we refuse to draft for need, and we refuse to be active with productive outside free agents.

When it comes to 1st round picks, the Bengals have taken a real liking to drafting injured players. Jermaine Gresham, Andre Smith, Cedric Ogbuehi, and John Ross were all injured or recovering from injury and were all first round picks. To be honest, I probably missed another 1 or 2 during that time frame. After the McCarron debacle, does Mike Brown draft injured players in hopes of trying to manipulate the system to keep them longer? By having them ride the pine does he think that will lower their value so that they can be retained/re-signed for less? I understand first rounders fall under different rules than the other rounds, it just seems odd that we like to target injured players especially with our first round picks.