AsylumGuido

With all of the talk about draft "grades" today the following thoughts were brought up. What determines draft grades? Usually it's the ranking of players by the person doing the grading. That ranking can be, and usually is, a great deal different than what the 32 individual teams come up with in their own rankings. It was said that the individual teams put in countless hours by as many as 30 or more people and millions of dollars to delve into every draft eligible player to develop their individual boards. Nobody doing this grading can hope to have a microscopic fraction of that preparation. Those 32 team constructed boards are as unique as are fingerprints. No two will be near the same.

These graders include meaningless terms like "value" and "need" in their grading process. How do you determine "value" when every team has a different evaluation of the players? How does the grader know the team's "need" without being privy to their long and short term plans or goals?

Personally I believe that the Saints had Shough pegged as a must addition, a primary target. I would imagine these graders had him slotted as a 4th rounder or so for their own personal reasons. Therefore they deem it a bad "value" for the Saints to draft him where they did. However, the Saints could have had Shough at the very top of their priority rankings for their own reasons. I suspect Banks was a 1A or 1B on their board. They knew they probably wouldn't get Banks later so they made a smart pick at #9. Then came pick #40 and they could not guarantee Slough would make it to their next pick. With Slough being at the top of their board #40 was actually a great value.

As for my order of Saints pick favoritism, I'm going with the same 1A and 1B as did the Saints.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

BakoSaint

There is an element of truth to this. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder on these picks and every evaluation is different. However, I do believe in grading drafts but my approach would not be to grade perceived value at each pick which cant be that great in more than one opinion because any player you draft, every team before you passed on them.

What I would grade a draft on is what you might call macro strategies, especially involving the first round since the value of that pick is so much higher. The absolute worst thing you can do in the first round is trade future first round picks at a discount, especially picks that could end up being top 5-10 or even #1. The best thing you can do is acquire those picks from teams with a potential to collapse. By this measure I would grade the best draft as the LA Rams, A+, and the worst as the Atlanta Falcons, F-. The Falcons wanted a second pick in the 1st round to draft another pass rusher, I believe at 26, and they got some guy who is supposed to be good, but 25 other teams passed on him, so a lot of people have to be wrong for him to be earth shattering. Meanwhile all the Rams need for that pick to be very very high is for a QB who has torn the same ACL twice and only played a few ok NFL games to either get hurt or prove ineffective, led by probably the worst experienced active head coach in the nfl based on winning percentage, an offense with no standout receivers, and a running game and oline that carried the team and cant afford to regress. Trading future picks like that is desperation and desperation often leads to collapse. And maybe the guy the Falcons took is a good pass rusher, and maybe they have the beat case scenario and the pick they traded next year ends up being 26, but whose to say an even better pass rusher isnt available at 26 next year in what is widely considered a deeper draft, and they trade more picks like their 2025 second round to get the swap. Meanwhile in the worst case its super easy to see the Falcons trading or cutting on IRing Cousins, having Penix get hurt, and being 2-15 earning the #1 overall pick for the Rams, who draft a 15 year franchise QB successor to Stafford or flip the pick for 3 1st rounders. At least if you trade future picks to take a QB young can hit the jackpot since its such a high value position, but to trade a potential future #1 overall pick, which could easily be #1 overall given that Penix is one of the least experience QBs in the league and Morris is one of the worst coaches in the league, for a late round pass rusher your own team passed on in the middle of the round, to me its just insane. F for Falcons.

If you think about it, the worst draft in recent Saints history may be 2022, which was probably graded as the best, but where we traded a future 1st and more for non-QB talent.