2023 NFL Draft Thread

[Tenacious D]

In MLB, the owners instituted the lottery to pacify the players union, who felt teams were going on the cheap to save payroll and tank.

[Longgone]

4 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

In MLB, the owners instituted the lottery to pacify the players union, who felt teams were going on the cheap to save payroll and tank.

Which is a non sequitur.

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

no, but it did prevent them from being rewarded with the #1 pick!

again, i dont like lotteries.

 

Yeah, I don't like lotteries either.

But I understand why the NBA would resort to something like that, for reasons as you've pointed out:

 

1 hour ago, buddha said:

i dont really care about tanking, but i do think its a bit of an issue in the nba where a team like okc "rests" their best players for the last month of the last three seasons.

 

[RedRamage]

12 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

Also... addressing tanking specifically...

I don't care.

I mean that... if a team is not successful, then dump veterans, high dollar contracts, and rebuild. You call it tanking, I call it rebuilding. And I don't think rebuilding is a crime like how many treat a "tanking" team, as if it were criminal or something.

If a team wants to strip down and try again, do it. It's no skin off my back. And it's a smart play.

One could argue that tanking effects more than just the team tanking though.  For example, if the Lions decided to tank late in the season we wouldn't have put up as much of an effort against GB, they might have won and gotten into the playoffs over Seattle.

Now personally I think while this IS a reality, it's a minor reality.  I don't think there's that often that a team tanking will have an impact like this, and even in those rare cases where it does, there might be any number of other factors that effect games through out the season that have playoff implications.  For example, I suspect that Green Bay would have much rather played the Lions early in the year when Seattle did vs. late in the year.

Some years you have a team in your division that tanks and it helps you... some years you don't.  It's a fact of life. (On a side note, this is another reason why I like division winners getting into the playoffs rather than just the best x-number of teams from the conference.)

[RedRamage]

12 hours ago, Longgone said:

TLDR, but I had and old business school prof who had a rule that an organization should never punish the many for the transgressions of a few, and if you have to deal with an issue, don't do it obliquely, but directly and specifically and any changes should be based on solid data and analysis, not "perception". Lotteries fly in the face of that.

FWIW, I think the idea of a lottery is to stop an issue that can't be address easily directly.  How do we know that a team is definitely tanking vs. just being really bad?  How do we know if a team is resting a players because they need it or they want to lose?  How do we know if a team is actually going to rebuild after being bad this year vs. just perennially tanking?

It's hard to flat out accuse a team without proof when there's plausible deniability.  So the lottery, in theory, is suppose to fix the motivation without having to confront teams without ironclad evidence.

Of course the problem here is that the fix doesn't really work!  If a team is tanking it's because they want a higher pick.  The lottery says: "Well, you can tank, but you won't necessarily get the best pick."

Teams reply: "Yeah, but I still have the best chance of getting the best pick, and even if I don't, I still have a very good chance of getting the 2nd or 3rd or 4th pick... which is better than if I played mediocre and ended up with the 10th or 12th pick."

Maybe if you made it a truly even lottery... every team in the lottery gets an equal shot at the #1 pick... then maybe.  But as it stands all you've done is slightly lower the incentive to tank, not eliminated it.

[NYLion]

15 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

14 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

There's no point to NHL tanking is my opinion and I'm sticking with it.

The NBA? I get it. One transformational player changes the entire trajectory of a team. And if 14 teams are suddenly dumping every single player that gets team a win in order to chase the #1 or a top 3 spot, I get it... it's a mess.

But I didn't complain about a lottery in the NBA (I still hate lotteries...), but my complaint was on the NHL and MLB lotteries, FYI.

 

There's no point in tanking in the NBA either. All this tanking for Victor yet you only have a 14% chance of landing him if you finish bottom 3 and the odds are smoothed out after that. You take out the lottery especially in a draft like this in the NHL and NBA with generational talents as the prize and it would be a complete shitshow of positioning to land these guys.

I'd agree that a generational prospect changes the trajectory of a team in the NBA more than the NHL (as an Edmonton Oilers fan, I sadly know this all too well) but tanking teams would be stepping on the neck of their fellow tankers like we've never seen before for Bedard if there was no lottery.

Edited January 12, 2023 by NYLion

[Longgone]

53 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

FWIW, I think the idea of a lottery is to stop an issue that can't be address easily directly.  How do we know that a team is definitely tanking vs. just being really bad?  How do we know if a team is resting a players because they need it or they want to lose?  How do we know if a team is actually going to rebuild after being bad this year vs. just perennially tanking?

It's hard to flat out accuse a team without proof when there's plausible deniability.  So the lottery, in theory, is suppose to fix the motivation without having to confront teams without ironclad evidence.

Of course the problem here is that the fix doesn't really work!  If a team is tanking it's because they want a higher pick.  The lottery says: "Well, you can tank, but you won't necessarily get the best pick."

Teams reply: "Yeah, but I still have the best chance of getting the best pick, and even if I don't, I still have a very good chance of getting the 2nd or 3rd or 4th pick... which is better than if I played mediocre and ended up with the 10th or 12th pick."

Maybe if you made it a truly even lottery... every team in the lottery gets an equal shot at the #1 pick... then maybe.  But as it stands all you've done is slightly lower the incentive to tank, not eliminated it.

So in summary, the lottery was an illogical response to a false premise.

[RedRamage]

20 minutes ago, Longgone said:

So in summary, the lottery was an illogical response to a false premise.

Well sure... but my way of saying it is much more long winded and longer responses mean that the responding is more important, right?

[CMRivdogs]

I've long been a proponent of "rewarding" teams that make an effort. Give teams that just miss the playoffs the higher picks. #15 first (if you're talking NFL) and continue in order to 32.  Looking at this year's standings it would go something like Lions, Steelers, Commanders, Packers, Patriots....down to the Bears. Playoff teams would draft in traditional order.

I tried pushing that proposal for many years in draft leagues I've belonged and lost every time. Probably because my teams continually finished in the middle of the league while teams around me alternated between being very bad and very good. 

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, NYLion said:

... You take out the lottery especially in a draft like this in the NHL and NBA with generational talents as the prize and it would be a complete shitshow of positioning to ...

I DO agree with that in regards to the NBA. We've seen it.

I do NOT agree with that in the NHL. Show me an example where multiple teams at the bottom sold off everyone at the deadline, and sat their best players/ goalie in order to lose more games. I need an example with multiple teams, the year, the shitshow moves they made (like benching healthy players/ or loading up on IR, just for example...) and the player they were falling all over themselves in this perceived shitshow.

[1984Echoes]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

I've long been a proponent of "rewarding" teams that make an effort. Give teams that just miss the playoffs the higher picks. #15 first (if you're talking NFL) and continue in order to 32.  Looking at this year's standings it would go something like Lions, Steelers, Commanders, Packers, Patriots....down to the Bears. Playoff teams would draft in traditional order.

I tried pushing that proposal for many years in draft leagues I've belonged and lost every time. Probably because my teams continually finished in the middle of the league while teams around me alternated between being very bad and very good. 

I HATE this idea.

Garbage.

[CMRivdogs]

Just now, 1984Echoes said:

I HATE this idea.

Garbage.

Communist

 

Stop rewarding failure, reward teams that at least try to win

Edited January 12, 2023 by CMRivdogs

[1984Echoes]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

Communist

Stop rewarding failure, reward teams that at least try to win

Nope.

Your record says what you are.

I could try everything in the book trying to win and still end up with the worst record. Who are you to say I should be penalized because, what, you tried harder? You mean you got luckier. And didn't have the injuries that my team had and therefore... you're going to penalize me?

Pure trash.

[buddha]

lotteries also bring more media attention and fan discussion around the sport.  another way to keep the product in the news.

[Longgone]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

Communist

 

Stop rewarding failure, reward teams that at least try to win

What you propose is contradictory to the entire function and purpose of a draft. If you want to discourage "tanking" and reward "trying", there are a plethora of ways to do it without tainting the draft.

[NYLion]

2 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

I DO agree with that in regards to the NBA. We've seen it.

I do NOT agree with that in the NHL. Show me an example where multiple teams at the bottom sold off everyone at the deadline, and sat their best players/ goalie in order to lose more games. I need an example with multiple teams, the year, the shitshow moves they made (like benching healthy players/ or loading up on IR, just for example...) and the player they were falling all over themselves in this perceived shitshow.

There are sellers every year in the NHL, no less so than the NBA. You don't have load management in the NHL because NHL players are wired differently than NBA players (namely they'll play through anything, most of them at least) but there are teams built specifically to tank, look at Arizona and Chicago this year.

[MichiganCardinal]

29 minutes ago, buddha said:

lotteries also bring more media attention and fan discussion around the sport.  another way to keep the product in the news.

This is the only reason I could see the owners doing it. Yet another event to sell to the public, and in the March/April timeframe that isn’t monetized yet.

I don’t think the chronically bad team owners would give the okay though.

[buddha]

1 minute ago, MichiganCardinal said:

This is the only reason I could see the owners doing it. Yet another event to sell to the public, and in the March/April timeframe that isn’t monetized yet.

I don’t think the chronically bad team owners would give the okay though.

contrary to what i said, the nfl is probably the one american sport that DOESNT need a lottery to drive any talk.  people talk about the nfl all year long.

baseball?  basketball?  hockey?  they need all the pub and talk they can get.

[MichiganCardinal]

1 minute ago, buddha said:

contrary to what i said, the nfl is probably the one american sport that DOESNT need a lottery to drive any talk.  people talk about the nfl all year long.

baseball?  basketball?  hockey?  they need all the pub and talk they can get.

They don’t need it the same way the draft doesn’t need to be three days. Doesn’t mean people wouldn’t tune in.

[buddha]

9 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

They don’t need it the same way the draft doesn’t need to be three days. Doesn’t mean people wouldn’t tune in.

its the nfl.  

the nfl could schedule a paint drying competition and it would be the top watched show of the week.

[MichiganCardinal]

9 minutes ago, buddha said:

its the nfl.  

the nfl could schedule a paint drying competition and it would be the top watched show of the week.

That might be a contest the Browns can finally win!

[1984Echoes]

3 hours ago, NYLion said:

There are sellers every year in the NHL, no less so than the NBA. You don't have load management in the NHL because NHL players are wired differently than NBA players (namely they'll play through anything, most of them at least) but there are teams built specifically to tank, look at Arizona and Chicago this year.

You call it tanking, I call it rebuilding.

Again... in MLB and the NHL, there is zero sense to "tanking" because MOST prospects take years to develop so it's a crapshoot and "tanking" is a meaningless word. Being a "Seller" does NOT automatically make a team a "tanker". I mean seriously, are you kidding me? Are teams NOT ALLOWED to rebuild in your mind? Is Stevie Y NOT ALLOWED to trade pending Free Agents this year because he is then performing the "sin" of tanking?

I think the angst over "tanking" is overblown and ridiculous. Teams in the NHL do not go crazy and send their best goalie to Grand Rapids in order to get more losses or sit a healthy Larkin-Seider-Raymond in order to get more losses so they have a chance at Bedard.

If a team is crappy then they are crappy. If they trade players away because they're a crappy team, it's called a...

Rebuild.

Plain & simple.

[buddha]

5 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

You call it tanking, I call it rebuilding.

Again... in MLB and the NHL, there is zero sense to "tanking" because MOST prospects take years to develop so it's a crapshoot and "tanking" is a meaningless word. Being a "Seller" does NOT automatically make a team a "tanker". I mean seriously, are you kidding me? Are teams NOT ALLOWED to rebuild in your mind? Is Stevie Y NOT ALLOWED to trade pending Free Agents this year because he is then performing the "sin" of tanking?

I think the angst over "tanking" is overblown and ridiculous. Teams in the NHL do not go crazy and send their best goalie to Grand Rapids in order to get more losses or sit a healthy Larkin-Seider-Raymond in order to get more losses so they have a chance at Bedard.

If a team is crappy then they are crappy. If they trade players away because they're a crappy team, it's called a...

Rebuild.

Plain & simple.

did you see what the blackhawks did this year?  there isnt any other word to describe it but tanking.

[RandyMarsh]

Lottery isn't needed in the NFL cause aside from that once in a decade type player there really isn't any reason to try to tank to get the number 1 pick. I mean since Peyton Manning 25 years ago I can only think of 3 times where the number 1 pick was a franchise altering guy that teams would be willing to lose for and that was Michael Vick, Andrew Luck and Trevor Lawrence and in the case of Lawrence the Jets won a meaningless game at the end of the season to prevent them from getting number 1 so it shows that it's hard to openly tank in the NFL anyway. 

[RandyMarsh]

It's a couple pages late but in regards to Goff's arm strength. This past year he threw the 5th longest in air completion in the NFL and all time he has the 2nd longest throw since they've been measuring with a 67 yard in air completion. Also since they started measuring velo at the combine in 2008 only Josh Allen has thrown a higher velo than Goff among QBs that made it in the NFL of any significance. For reference Allen threw 62, Goff threw 59mph while guys like Herbert and Mahomes were in the mid 50s. 

On top of that he was in the top 3 for rating when throwing to the sidelines from the opposite hash which is the main throw where arm strength is needed. So You may or may not be able to argue his accuracy on deep throws but you can't question his arm strength, he has plenty of arm.