2025 NFL Draft

[lordstanley]

53 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Just a crank? So is swatting people, these types just can't take a joke. Messing with people's livelihoods...their hopes, dreams and aspirations is never "just a joke." It's inexcusable. 

Yep. Imagine calling a high school senior, telling them you were the admissions officer of school X, and that while an email or portal update will follow shortly you personally wanted to call to congratulate and welcome them to the Class of '29. And then 10 seconds later say, just kidding. 

One guy on ESPN Radio this morning was saying that a good counter-prank would be for the dad to come home today and inform the son that the organization is taking this very seriously and feels this phone number leak damages their relationships with players and agents going forward, and that therefore the dad has been from his job as defensive coordinator. Let the son stew on those consequences to the family until the next morning. 

[Sports_Freak]

19 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

Yep. Imagine calling a high school senior, telling them you were the admissions officer of school X, and that while an email or portal update will follow shortly you personally wanted to call to congratulate and welcome them to the Class of '29. And then 10 seconds later say, just kidding. 

One guy on ESPN Radio this morning was saying that a good counter-prank would be for the dad to come home today and inform the son that the organization is taking this very seriously and feels this phone number leak damages their relationships with players and agents going forward, and that therefore the dad has been from his job as defensive coordinator. Let the son stew on those consequences to the family until the next morning. 

I figured he may be disciplined by the team. Leaving confidential information for prying eyes to see is kinda serious. Smack the snot outta that kid. 😡😡

[Shinzaki]

I seriously question this kid's character...thinking this kind of cruel prank would be funny...it has a certain sociopathic element to it.

I got an A in abnormal psych so...

[holygoat]

2 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Just a crank? So is swatting people, these types just can't take a joke. Messing with people's livelihoods...their hopes, dreams and aspirations is never "just a joke." It's inexcusable. 

Swatting is attempted murder. What this kid did was cruel and childish, but in no way is it "just like swatting." 

[Sports_Freak]

Just now, holygoat said:

Swatting is attempted murder. What this kid did was cruel and childish, but in no way is it "just like swatting." 

True. Swatting is almost terrorism.

[buddha]

back to football...

when brad misses, he seems to miss when he goes WAY off board.  martin, sorsdal, and maybe manu (too early to tell) and he trades up to do it 

teslaa fits that mold.  just sayin.  we'll see.

overall, i think brad holmes has been one of the best team builders in the nfl.  he deserves all the benefits of all the doubts.

but he's not infallible.

that said, i love the first and second rounders.  i hate hate hate the trade up for a guy that was slotted 100+ picks later.

[Motown Bombers]

At least he's taking those gambles with middle and late round picks. Mayhew used to take those gambles with 2nd and 1st round picks. 

[Jason_R]

Sorsdal was a miss but I don't hold it against Holmes for missing on a 5th round guard. Martin was a head scratcher. So was Hooker for that matter. 

But these Rams guys have a knack for uncovering late round WR talent. And Holmes has earned the right to trust his gut in finding undervalued players. 

[RedRamage]

13 hours ago, Hongbit said:

These kids should be sent to CECOT

I think they should be sent to play for the Bears. That's gotta be one of the worse punishments imaginable. 

[RedRamage]

12 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

I figured he may be disciplined by the team. Leaving confidential information for prying eyes to see is kinda serious. Smack the snot outta that kid. 😡😡

On one hand you figure that your family has gotta be trustworthy... but on the other hand I have a hard time believing that this is the first incident with Jax and maybe dad should have known better. 

But I dunno... I'm also a parent and I know that kids can do stupid, unpredictable things sometimes.

[RedRamage]

10 hours ago, buddha said:

back to football...

when brad misses, he seems to miss when he goes WAY off board.  martin, sorsdal, and maybe manu (too early to tell) and he trades up to do it 

teslaa fits that mold.  just sayin.  we'll see.

overall, i think brad holmes has been one of the best team builders in the nfl.  he deserves all the benefits of all the doubts.

but he's not infallible.

that said, i love the first and second rounders.  i hate hate hate the trade up for a guy that was slotted 100+ picks later.

I'm still surprised that no one has done a study yet of all draft picks... even something as simple as "For everyone picked at this spot, Y-% are still in the league after X-number of seasons" I suspect the percentage of success in the draft is much lower than we general think. But it would be nice to know what the "average" is as a baseline, even an imperfect one, to compare to.

As for the TeSlaa pick... I honestly couldn't careless anymore where the pundits say a guy should be slotted. Okay, that's not quite right. I kinda care, but not much. I remember in 2019 then Tavai was drafted by thinking: "Well, I hope he proves all the talking head wrong!" But it was sorta like me thinking: "Well, I hope I stumble across a multi-millionaire winning lottery ticket on my way into work this morning."

After the TeSlaa pick I'm more leaning towards: "It'll be nice when TeSlaa proves them all wrong."

You're right that Holmes isn't infallible, but dang if he hasn't proving other wrong more often than not. I'm gonna trust him and accept the occasional swiiing-and-a-miss until his OPS+ drops below 100. 

 

[Longgone]

9 hours ago, Jason_R said:

Sorsdal was a miss but I don't hold it against Holmes for missing on a 5th round guard. Martin was a head scratcher. So was Hooker for that matter. 

But these Rams guys have a knack for uncovering late round WR talent. And Holmes has earned the right to trust his gut in finding undervalued players. 

Why is Hooker a miss? Seems like a solid backup for a 3rd rounder 

[Jimbo]

I just don't like the fake outrage (because they want clicks) that goes on now and then it results in someone's life being ruined.  We are all just discussing what happened and that is fine.  Its not cool what he did to these players.  We are also talking about some of the toughest people on the planet.  I am not sure I want a player that would be destroyed by this on my team.

Howard Stern's staff (or Drew and Mike) didn't just do dumb prank calls.  They got personal sometimes.  A lot of the time on red carpets or calling players on sports teams before they woke up.  These are just some small sample sizes.  If you listened to them as I did, some were a lot worse than what he did.  I can guarantee if a staff member of Howard Stern (back in the day) could of done what he was able to pull off, they would of in a second without any remorse.  Not justifying either of them, just saying we shouldn't over punish the kid.  How many 21 year olds would take the opportunity to do what he did if they could get away with it.  Heck, I think a lot of adults would.  The fact is since caller ID and the ability to find out who does the pranks, they just don't happen as much anymore.  Actually, crime in general is very hard to get away now with cameras everywhere.

This can also be a great lesson for kids in today's world.  That whatever you do on social media could come back and bite you in multiple ways for the rest of your life.

 

[Jason_R]

24 minutes ago, Longgone said:

Why is Hooker a miss? Seems like a solid backup for a 3rd rounder 

I assume they signed Teddy Bridgewater going into the playoffs last year because they didn't trust Hooker. 

This was another Holmes special, buying low on an injured or otherwise undervalued prospect. Maybe he will develop into something, but just like Martin, it is not a good sign that they had to bring someone in to his position. 

[Jimbo]

1 hour ago, RedRamage said:

I'm still surprised that no one has done a study yet of all draft picks... even something as simple as "For everyone picked at this spot, Y-% are still in the league after X-number of seasons" I suspect the percentage of success in the draft is much lower than we general think. But it would be nice to know what the "average" is as a baseline, even an imperfect one, to compare to.

As for the TeSlaa pick... I honestly couldn't careless anymore where the pundits say a guy should be slotted. Okay, that's not quite right. I kinda care, but not much. I remember in 2019 then Tavai was drafted by thinking: "Well, I hope he proves all the talking head wrong!" But it was sorta like me thinking: "Well, I hope I stumble across a multi-millionaire winning lottery ticket on my way into work this morning."

After the TeSlaa pick I'm more leaning towards: "It'll be nice when TeSlaa proves them all wrong."

You're right that Holmes isn't infallible, but dang if he hasn't proving other wrong more often than not. I'm gonna trust him and accept the occasional swiiing-and-a-miss until his OPS+ drops below 100. 

 

I also think he has a history of reaching and being right on WR's.  Not just with us but with the Rams.  He hasn't been 100% on them but a pretty good track record.

Its nice we have a guy that's pretty universally thought of as a top 5 GM in this league.   A lot of people have not been happy with his FA pickups but I look at that portion of his tenure as different because of his success in the draft.  Maybe the biggest knock is he swings for the fences with injury plagued guys looking for a discount.

[Stanley70]

I was just reading an article regarding the 2024 draft and Rakestraw, Wingo, and Mahogany were all considered steals according to consensus. Manu was considered a reach. Even in the 2025 draft he had one reach and one steal.

Reaching in general is a bad bet, the draft is more crapshoot than GM's want to admit, but Holmes seems to balance it out.

 

https://calltheshots.substack.com/p/an-analysis-of-reaches-and-steals?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

[slothfacekilla]

edit: never mind realized I don't need to stir anything up lol

Edited 18 hours ago by slothfacekilla

[MichiganCardinal]

The thing about being the smartest person in the room is that it works when you actually are the smartest person in the room.

Edited 18 hours ago by MichiganCardinal

[lordstanley]

And a reach pick doesn’t even necessarily mean you think you’re the smartest person in the room. May be that you think your team has spotted something suggesting some unlocked value in a player compared to the consensus, but that you assume there are a few other teams thorough or sharp enough to figure that out too. So you better pick the guy before one of those other smart team does. 

[4hzglory]

19 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

And a reach pick doesn’t even necessarily mean you think you’re the smartest person in the room. May be that you think your team has spotted something suggesting some unlocked value in a player compared to the consensus, but that you assume there are a few other teams thorough or sharp enough to figure that out too. So you better pick the guy before one of those other smart team does. 

Exactly.  There has been talk that Buffalo was high on TeSlaa 

[Jason_R]

8 minutes ago, 4hzglory said:

Exactly.  There has been talk that Buffalo was high on TeSlaa 

Also on Williams. 

[KL2]

5 hours ago, RedRamage said:

I'm still surprised that no one has done a study yet of all draft picks... even something as simple as "For everyone picked at this spot, Y-% are still in the league after X-number of seasons" I suspect the percentage of success in the draft is much lower than we general think. But it would be nice to know what the "average" is as a baseline, even an imperfect one, to compare to.

As for the TeSlaa pick... I honestly couldn't careless anymore where the pundits say a guy should be slotted. Okay, that's not quite right. I kinda care, but not much. I remember in 2019 then Tavai was drafted by thinking: "Well, I hope he proves all the talking head wrong!" But it was sorta like me thinking: "Well, I hope I stumble across a multi-millionaire winning lottery ticket on my way into work this morning."

After the TeSlaa pick I'm more leaning towards: "It'll be nice when TeSlaa proves them all wrong."

You're right that Holmes isn't infallible, but dang if he hasn't proving other wrong more often than not. I'm gonna trust him and accept the occasional swiiing-and-a-miss until his OPS+ drops below 100. 

 

way too many variables to do pick by pick. But in aggregate its been done 100 times over

 

[Jason_R]

One other thing that occurs to me about this draft is that Dan Campbell came up through Saints/Sean Payton tree. Their offense was based on an immobile but accurate passer in Drew Brees, who has a lot of similarities to Goff. 

Those Saints teams were always very strong in the interior OL. In their Super Bowl season they had Jonathan Goodwin at center with Jahri Evans and Carl Nicks at guard. All of them had at least one  Pro Bowl season. Later, when Campbell was there, they had Max Unger at center with Andrus Peat and Larry Warford as guards. They also all had  one or more Pro Bowl seasons. 

Goff is just completely helpless when his IOL misses blocks or assignments. Guard was an urgent need. 

[NYLion]

17 hours ago, buddha said:

back to football...

when brad misses, he seems to miss when he goes WAY off board.  martin, sorsdal, and maybe manu (too early to tell) and he trades up to do it 

teslaa fits that mold.  just sayin.  we'll see.

overall, i think brad holmes has been one of the best team builders in the nfl.  he deserves all the benefits of all the doubts.

but he's not infallible.

that said, i love the first and second rounders.  i hate hate hate the trade up for a guy that was slotted 100+ picks later.

I don't lump Sorsdal in with the other guys, he was a 5th round pick which have like a .0000001% chance of being an= regular NFL player. The Martin swing baffled me at the time but that was only mid to low round picks so not much loss. Manu was a gamble because they traded away the future 3rd (that was recouped with the Glenn comp) then used both of his comps plus their own 3rd next year for Teslaa. Those are the big risks, Manu and Teslaa so....we'll see. If they hit on Manu, they have their bookend tackles for the next half decade at least once Decker is done which is massive so very high reward on that risk. Teslaa? I don't know, unless he's a Jamo replacement in a few years I'm not sure it's worth the risk. We'll see....

I think the Lions are in a position with a stacked roster that they can take some swings with quality over quantity. They already got their plug and play guys early in the last two drafts so the homerun swings are understandable.

I'd also add the Hooker pick into the miss pile. Odd move with very little upside for a team that already had its franchise QB. Could have traded a 5th or 6th for a development QB if they wanted one so bad.

Edited 16 hours ago by NYLion

[NYLion]

6 hours ago, Longgone said:

Why is Hooker a miss? Seems like a solid backup for a 3rd rounder 

He's not even a backup. They brought in Bridgewater for the playoffs because they didn't trust Hooker as backup. It's a miss, the Lions aren't getting the dividends on Hooker unless Goff gets injured long term and Hooker gets them some wins. Holmes first two 3rd round picks were McNeil and Joseph for emphasis. I can even get the Martin trade in a sense because there's some upside for him to be a starter if he panned out, Hooker was never going to be a starter here.

Edited 16 hours ago by NYLion