I am not a Reese apologist. I have been a vocal critic of his draft record for a while. However, I think we need to take a step back when thinking about this pick. We have to keep in mind that this was not a strong draft especially at the Safety position. I think when the Giants were looking at the Safeties on the board in the 5th which included many names we all knew from mock drafts, they saw guys they were familiar with were not impressed and did not believe would substantially improve. In picking Thompson they saw some one with the physical attributes and intelligence to get better and some one who just needs more experience.
In short they are gambling that the future potential of Thompson is higher than any of the other guys available whose proven production wasn't that impressive. In a weak draft like this, it's a gamble that I can accept. Better to take a risk in this kind of draft than one that is solid.
I think his only obvious problem is strength. He (like almost all NFL rookies) is a little slight in the pants. He's pretty quick. I guess he is supposed to be very good on specials too.
Time will tell.
Your point being?
You have to stop and think how stupid that sounds to anyone with half a brain. This isn't apples to apples, this is apples to tomatoes
Did you forget Kenrick Ellis (better than any DT in the 5th or maybe even the 3nd round) and George Selvie?
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..these comments sounds a lot like the reaction people had last year to the Bromley pick..
Your point being?
My point being looks like that pick has turned out to be pretty solid..
You have to stop and think how stupid that sounds to anyone with half a brain. This isn't apples to apples, this is apples to tomatoes
By thy fruits, ye shall know them.
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In comment 12267929 JCin332 said:
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..these comments sounds a lot like the reaction people had last year to the Bromley pick..
Your point being?
My point being looks like that pick has turned out to be pretty solid..
Based on what exactly?
Thompson wasn't even considered draftable. He would have been around in the seventh.
And by the way, I agree about Bromley. He is going to shine this year.
Its not easy to keep in mind and make plays from multiple positions. Its one thing to "know" several languages and another to switch back and forth easily in real time.
DB that are smart and versatile are hard to find and important to find because there are always injuries ...even during games.
If you notice the Giants drafted or FA signed several guys who can fill more than one slot and can be good special teams players.....roster flexibility and depth means carrying a better overall talent base to develop
id rather the last DB be position flexible than just play one position. How many times have we had to hire or find someone off the street who did not know our schemes mid year?
Kendrick Ellis will provide as much to the Giants defense in 2015 as Danny Shelton would have.
With Bromley also in the mix, Giants should not have been looking to load up on DTs, particularly if they are going to be part-time players.
I have no trouble with our 3 last picks particularly if a year on the PS is looked at as a normal development possibility.
The result? Maybe its keeping Ayers or Cruz off IR so late year they start to make more and more contributions. Or keeping 10 OL or 10 DL or 7 WR
smart attempts at roster management
The Mykkele Thompson pick is most fairly viewed in the context of the fifth round of this particular draft. If you look at the fifteen picks after M.Thompson, very few of them were highly regarded during the pre-draft buildup. One exception is Jay Ajayi, but he seems to have a huge medical red flag. So the Giants are far from the only team disregarding draftnik consensus and following their own board. Mykkele Thompson might be an extreme case, but he's hardly unique. If you're going to criticize the Thompson pick on the basis of opportunity cost, who would you have taken instead? Michael Bennett? He sat on the board until #180, perhaps because of size and a nagging injury that limited his workouts. Tony Lippett? The Giants may have simply liked Geremy Davis better. And who's to say Mykkele Thompson would have lasted until 186? He probably would have, but who knows?
Then there's the issue of the safety class. The next safety taken, Cedric Thompson (to Miami, six picks later at #150) is a player the Giants scouted thoroughly. They obviously preferred M.Thompson, and drafted accordingly. After the two Thompsons, no safety of any kind was taken until Jarrett at #181 to the Redskins. The next free safety was Derron Smith at #197 to the Bengals. Smith had a third- or fourth-round grade on lots of sites, but apparently no team saw him as good value before late in the sixth round - including the Giants.
It would be interesting to know how NYG graded Adrian Amos, who went to the Bears at #142. On paper, at least, Amos and M.Thompson are similar prospects: young, big-school CB-to-S conversions with good size/speed numbers, though different frames. There would be few complaints if the Giants had taken Amos at #144. Maybe he's a better player, or maybe he just had a smoother transition to safety in 2013, and entered his final season with more positive buzz.
Draft is a crap shoot. I hope their evals are good and they don't allow a player to be on the roster wasting a spot for 3 straight years like Robinson.
If they don't look solid after a 2nd year, get rid of them and pick again. (There are of course exceptions.)
I spent a lot of time doing mock drafts for fun and every one of them had Eskridge, Drummond, Hackett, and Prewitt gone by the 5th. Prewitt was often picked before that. Does this mean Fanspeak knows more than 32 pro football teams? Of course not.
If 32 teams passed on these guys 7 times, guys that we "knew" were getting drafted then how can we be so arrogant as to assume we know where Thompson "should" have been drafted? How do we "know" that somebody else wasn't going to pick him in the 5th or 6th?
How many of you mocked Prewitt to us in the 3rd or 4th? Guess maybe we aren't the scouting geniuses we think we are? Just maybe?
Who gave him a FA grade? Reese? Ross? The other 31 NFL GMs?
The draft guides give these guys grades, and based on how drafts tend to go, they're not terribly accurate once you get past the first round or so. To you, this is some horrible reach, but if our FO thought the guy was rated higher than the remaining players, then he was picked accordingly.
Three years from now, you can look back, see if anyone picked in this round and the next two turned out to be any better, and then point fingers at the rating scale, not the tendency to 'reach'.
The Mykkele Thompson pick is most fairly viewed in the context of the fifth round of this particular draft. If you look at the fifteen picks after M.Thompson, very few of them were highly regarded during the pre-draft buildup. One exception is Jay Ajayi, but he seems to have a huge medical red flag. So the Giants are far from the only team disregarding draftnik consensus and following their own board. Mykkele Thompson might be an extreme case, but he's hardly unique. If you're going to criticize the Thompson pick on the basis of opportunity cost, who would you have taken instead? Michael Bennett? He sat on the board until #180, perhaps because of size and a nagging injury that limited his workouts. Tony Lippett? The Giants may have simply liked Geremy Davis better. And who's to say Mykkele Thompson would have lasted until 186? He probably would have, but who knows?
Then there's the issue of the safety class. The next safety taken, Cedric Thompson (to Miami, six picks later at #150) is a player the Giants scouted thoroughly. They obviously preferred M.Thompson, and drafted accordingly. After the two Thompsons, no safety of any kind was taken until Jarrett at #181 to the Redskins. The next free safety was Derron Smith at #197 to the Bengals. Smith had a third- or fourth-round grade on lots of sites, but apparently no team saw him as good value before late in the sixth round - including the Giants.
It would be interesting to know how NYG graded Adrian Amos, who went to the Bears at #142. On paper, at least, Amos and M.Thompson are similar prospects: young, big-school CB-to-S conversions with good size/speed numbers, though different frames. There would be few complaints if the Giants had taken Amos at #144. Maybe he's a better player, or maybe he just had a smoother transition to safety in 2013, and entered his final season with more positive buzz.
Exactly. Look at all the big name Safeties that were supposed to go in rounds 2-4 and didn't get drafted. BBB is absolutely correct that the pick must be viewed in the context of the 5th round of THIS draft.
But they didn't draft any of those guys - they drafted a kid that few, if any, had heard of - so we come to bury Reese, not to praise him.
But, you know what? 31 other teams passed on Prewitt, Eskridge, Drummond, and Hackett, too. We'll never know if any of those teams would've have drafted Thompson later on in Day 3. We'll never know if we could've signed him as a UDFA, assuming he went undrafted.
What we do know is that Thompson is on the team, and he'll have an opportunity to prove his doubters wrong. At this point, that's all you can ask for.
It happens. The team liked the player and how he fits with what we need.
I like the type of player we added. Fast and rangy coverage S. Exactly what we need.
Exactly.
Every GM has a history of mid and late round flops, because most players in the mid and late rounds don't every do much.
Yeah it's crazy. "Jerry reached again!" It's like some people will get made fun of on Monday morning at work because we took a guy not on everyone else's online draft board.
Because of 5-7, many gave the draft a much lesser grade because of the no-names drafted there..Just check the draft grade thread..
B3, well thought out post per usual
No guarantees in the draft it is all about risk and reward. The higher rounds there are more players where the odds are in your favor without having to expose yourself to as much risk. The further down in the draft you go the more that formula starts to reverse itself.
^This
Derron Smith would have been heralded as a steal around here due to his success in the college game. However his size may make it very difficult for him to become an every-down safety. His ceiling is pretty low imo.
Last years 5th round picks looks pretty good. It wasn't some unheard of reach. It was a player who actually expected to be drafted and had a good track record at his position. Reese could have done the same thing this year and picked Mr learning how to tackle in the 7th round.
Brandon Jacobs
Barry Cofield
Kevin Boss
Zak DeOssie
A. Bradshaw
That's from 2005 to 2013. That's nine years. That's like a 16% success rate. 84% bust rate. If someone sells me a fake item 8 out of 10 times i'm not buying from them anymore. You have a better chance of throwing a dart at an Ourlads book and picking a better player. Scouts make there money on rounds 4-7. How do the scouts defend that track record. Reese is only at fault because he hasn't made changes to personnel in that dept.
Some will say the Giants personnel know what there doing. For Decades the Knicks FO thought they knew what they were doing and we all know different. Yet they are "Professionals". If the Giants keep drafting this way and compensating by over paying Free Agents they will continue to miss the playoffs and Mara will continue to have fire everybody press conferences.
Again, how exactly do you know where he would have been drafted? Are you privy to the draft boards from the other 31 teams?
If you don't like the pick that is fine, nobody has a problem with others not liking the pick. The thing that is frustrating as shit is when some of you make definitive statements about where he could have been drafted or picked up after the draft. You are talking out your ass. You have no way of knowing that.
That said, I will give them the benefit of the doubt on this one based on need and the scouting reports that I have read on the guy.
The real waste was the next pick on a sub-standard WR.
Brandon Jacobs
Barry Cofield
Kevin Boss
Zak DeOssie
A. Bradshaw
That's from 2005 to 2013. That's nine years. That's like a 16% success rate. 84% bust rate. If someone sells me a fake item 8 out of 10 times i'm not buying from them anymore. You have a better chance of throwing a dart at an Ourlads book and picking a better player. Scouts make there money on rounds 4-7. How do the scouts defend that track record. Reese is only at fault because he hasn't made changes to personnel in that dept.
Some will say the Giants personnel know what there doing. For Decades the Knicks FO thought they knew what they were doing and we all know different. Yet they are "Professionals". If the Giants keep drafting this way and compensating by over paying Free Agents they will continue to miss the playoffs and Mara will continue to have fire everybody press conferences.
Nothing personal, but this is incomplete imo..Incomplete as long as we don't have comparative success or failure rates from the 31 other teams in rounds 4-7..Without that comparative, we only have the biased assessment of Reese and Reese only..
Point? If he has in fact fucked up in the hit or miss fashion of the lower rounds, is that the relative norm in the league or is he, in fact, a fuck-up compared to his peers?
My biggest issue with that argument is that a relatively high 5th round pick should not necessarily be considered "late," per se. I believe part of the Giants' drafting woes stem from shifting to sleeper/project mode too early.
So no one KNOWS but from that the guess is to fall. Not a huge loss if we miss, since we just pick a different 5th rounder. If we hit it's more value at multiple spots (if a 7th, 5+6 are better values). That's the risk of reaching, if available later we lose the added value. Important team-wide & long term
Nothing to do with how good MT is, our scouting, the first 3 picks, simply about value and efficiency. Since we can all agree there's been a bit of a talent vacuum across the team (see 0-6). Doesn't matter he's one of us, but for discussion sake
I just cannot comprehend the fact that Reese/Ross absolutely WILL NOT draft a linebacker. It's as if they won't even acknowledge the position exists.
In this respect, IMO, they are assholes and failures.
And by bust I don't mean relative to expectations or a marginal NFL career - zero NFL career. To put that in perspective, Jacquian Williams was an extremely successful late round pick.
With that as the backdrop, it is very hard to take criticism of these picks seriously, particularly in what was obviously a shallow draft.
Data - ( New Window )
Part of the franchise's ability to win so many Championships is that it is better at evaluating talent (for the most part) than many teams. So there will be times we select players that other team didn't haven't rated as high, because the team is damned good at their jobs. They don't always hit. No teams does. And these are later round picks that we're complaining about after 3 picks that were top notch players at need positions. deer baybee jeeziz helpus?
A lot of BBI'ers were saying, "when are they going to draft a FS?" even after they took Collins. Well, Thompson is a FS. He is one of those FS-CB tweeners now in vogue. Is he a good player? I have no idea. Draft guides and draftniks don't think so.
And then go back and look at the draft reports from 2004 on BBI..
Both safeties with question marks coming out of college.. Both drafted in the fifth round..
Compare the reports..
Remarkably similar in many aspects..
Just food for thought...
Collins went 20-30 picks later than expected, yet everyone seems to trust where the same folks had a much later round prospect graded...
Further, in a shallow draft, the later rounds tend to get populated by guides and pundits with high production, large program, physically limited prospects (think Michael Bennett)...
I think this was a top-loaded draft and the players going on day 3 will be forgotten. So the Giants got what they thought was useful pieces, but in the end, it won't matter.
They also look like a group that will hit the 'film room' (who knows, being polite)
Let's pretend that the team had film of Drummond in an al-queda training camp or something.
One caveat, when I did (an unrelated to sports research job), I used only my own research and did not rely on 'the dudes network'...now, some of those guys made more money (who didn't, fuchers). but:
any 'network' us liable to manipulation, i.e. "we are grabbing unknown player 'X' in round six if he is there"
(which could be total bullshit)
As a giants fan, I'm excited to see another longhorn beside C.B. and Aaron Ross be on the roster at this time. This guy has Jerry Reese pick written all over him as he is a physical freak with great potiental for a high football acumen. The man may make the final roster as a special teams ace, but will develop quite nicely into something more.
and this one
Texas Fan here, Giants, what you got is an elite athlete who was really starting to develop into a solid player under Charlie Strong. Before Charlie was hired Mykelle was soft as a pillow, but he's turned into a more complete safety. He can also play corner if needed. There are no limitations on him physically, he's as athletic as any DB in this draft, he just needs to develop with his attitude in the game. He's not a dog yet.
Thompson's struggles and growth - ( New Window )
Based on the reactions to this pick, the number of posters who got a glimpse at our board and the boards of other teams is astoundingly high.
Who knew BBI was so clued in all over the NFL?
"growth" or "improvement factor"
I.e., 'does a given kid learn and improve/respond to coaching, how much and how quickly'
if so, and if the kid in question does, that counts for a lot.
having said that, only 2 INTs, I look at the idea that spatial (field vision) is innate, i.e. endemic, more so than learnable...so...that would indicate the other side of the coin.
That said, I will give them the benefit of the doubt on this one based on need and the scouting reports that I have read on the guy.
The real waste was the next pick on a sub-standard WR.
I don't think this was a bad draft in and of itself, but the fact that it was a largely need dictated draft has to be considered, and the fact that when that's the case, opportunities to get the highest graded players go by the wayside as you pick for need to fill the gaping holes, and you wind up with a compromised roster until it gets sorted out. It's a hole that once you get into is very hard to ever get out of.the effects of earlier shitty drafts are compounded by compromised drafting, even if in later drafts you did the best you could all things considered. it would be nice to get back to drafting the highest graded players, maybe next year if the current roster works out.