Quote:
Originally Posted by kccrow
Not bad considering I have absolutely no idea why on Earth Sills went undrafted. I'm still perplexed by that one.
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Something I alluded to briefly with the Omenihu pick and even Sills specifically when I said I kept talking myself out of him (without realizing you'd already taken him).
Sometimes guys just end up the #2 or #3 pick on every team's draft board and just keep sliiiiiiding. The next round they're still there but now you're thinking you see another value play at a position you need to have and he slides again.
I had to do this draft for a few years before I really understood how these in-draft slides work. It isn't that these guys are clearly worse prospects than a dozen or more guys taken before them - it's that they just didn't have that 1 team at any point that moved them to the top of the draft board while they may have had 20 teams that were routinely staking them at #2. Just a strange phenomenon that you don't really figure out until you're actually doing a competitive(ish) draft instead of a dozen different mock draft simulators.
I'll bet most teams already do this but I'll be honest - the CP mock has convinced me that if I were a GM, I'd take my 15 most trusted scouts/personnel guys and we'd all run with 2 teams and run a draft. If I had 32 guys I trusted, all the better. And we'd do that at least once a week once the season ended.
Seeing Sills slide like that after saying "man, I spent 3 rounds talking myself out of him every time" just perfectly demonstrated that feel that I've had with the draft for a few years. In many ways it's better to be a polarizing prospect because then SOMEONE will love you and you'll get picked. Darius Slayton probably had a lower 'aggregate' rank on NFL draft boards than Sills - didn't matter. Kelvin Harmon falling behind Travis Fulgham is a similar phenomenon. I think that's how Stanley Morgan went undrafted; just nothing to wow anyone but damn he looks solid to me. I gambled on Ratliff-Williams thinking there might be one team out there that fell in love with him and took him higher than some 'aggregate' rankings would have him, but the risk is that they don't and boom - UDFA.
This is a fun exercise every year and I feel like there really are things to be learned from simply doing it, moreso than the outcomes.