Draft illusion and reality

[*bengalfan74*]

(02-12-2020, 04:04 PM)bengals1969 Wrote: The NFL is built on 12% turnover via draft every season.  So in about 4 years 50% of the team is new with young players.  Free agency should  only be used by teams that make mistakes in the draft.  But those mistakes won't be off the team till about 4 to 5 years after a player was drafted which corresponds with rookie contract length.  So that means the team could also draft their replacement instead of going with a FA. 
Teams that have to dip into the FA well every year and spend significant cash aren't doing it right.

Now trades are awhole other thing, and a team that drafts well should also be ready traders.

I absolutely agree the draft has to be the core of your team. Myself and many others, the majority of posters on here and the mother ship have stated this many times. 

But a bunch of the teams that "are doing it right" regularly use free agency to replace draft misses when they're close. Granted they're not always successful, but sometimes they are.

Almost nobody wants us to be the Redskins, Eagles, Cowboys, even Browns to a degree that often try to "buy teams". That rarely to never works. The key is knowing when to pull the trigger and who on.