last year i starting warming up to the concept of picking from the strengths of the draft positionally. I think there are a number of benefits of doing this, but the biggest selling point for me is that you get the benefit of comparing strong prospects to other strong prospects apples to apples in the present and being able to pick the player you like best from multiple choices as opposed to perhaps forcing a pick for the last or only option in a weak group (more expansive reasoning at the link below).
last year if you were to buy into this philosophy, it set up cb and edge/dl as the 2 most likely positions in round 1 (it ended up that 4 corners went round 1 and 11 dl/edge went top 33). 2 of those 11 were rookie pro bowlers out of 4 total in round 1.
cb and edge/dl look to me like the 2 positions that bode well conceptually in round 1. last year (2022) 8 CBs went in the first 2 rounds and Sy has about 13 this year graded 79 or higher. There are 8 in the consensus top 38 (per mock database) and 12 in the top 64. So at pick #25 there should be some real good corners available who in other years may have been one of the first few off the board. forbes, banks, ringo, brents, rush, smith, turner could all fit that profile, and it's not impossible that all of them could be on the board giving them a chance to pick their favorite of numerous quality options.
Edge/DL is similar. Will Anderson or Jalen carter may have been the 1st overall pick in last year's very strong class. Wilson, Smith, Van Ness, Murphy, McDonald, white, kancey etc could put more edges in this year's first round than last year's. There are 11 edges in the consensus top 53. just like cb it's possible there are multiple guys from that group on the board for the nyg to choose from at #25. |
in 2022 the giants ended up taking thibs from what was the strongest edge class in a long time (3 of the top 5 picks), last year they took Banks whom they liked enough to move up for even though Joey Porter Jr was still on the clock. so a year later having twice picked from strength with their highest pick it would seem nyg embrace some elements of this philosophy, some beat writers have even commented that the nyg like to schedule their top 30 visits with players at same positions back to back so they can get the best comparison between the players.
for this year, here are some positional breakdowns based on the mock database consensus draft board:
top 10
4 QBs
3 WRs
1 EDGE
1 OT
1 TE
the QBs/WRs are actually the consensus top 7, so i think that paints a pretty obvious picture for the first round pick.
top 32
9 OL
6 QBs
5 WRs
5 CBs
4 EDGE
2 DL
1 TE
i'd call this the trade up group, most specifically re QBs if they miss out with #6 because there are zero ranked between #33-60. the depth of the OL group is also notable knowing that's still an enormous question mark.
33-75
+10 WRs (15 total in top 75)
+7 OL (16 total in top 75)
+7 DL
+5 EDGE
+5 CB
+3 LB
+3 RBs
+2 S
+1 TE
giants have 2 picks in this range, a very obvious silver lining to passing on one of the elite WRs early is knowing they can very likely still get a good player on day 2. wandale was WR8 at pick #43, Hyatt was WR10 at pick #73, so we have seen that movie before. also in this cluster we start to see defensive prospects take a majority whereas they only make up 1 of the consensus top 10 and 11 of the top 32. also the depth on OL is again notable.
1 last thing -
this is not an argument against the proverbial "best player available" but rather a compliment to it. i believe this concept helps ensure you are getting the BPA since you are picking the strongest player from a strong group. it's not impossible that BPA just so happens to come from a weaker relative group, i just think that's a harder evaluation environment so the risk of a reach is higher. for example in this draft class, is there any way kenny pickett would go round 1 or above any of the top 6 qbs? or was he a classic reach who got picked where he did simply because he was the tallest midget?
picking from the strengths of the draft (2023) - (
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