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The Random Thought Thread

UPennChem said:
Yep this one is as solid as they come.
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So here's my thing though...
1. None of these guys are studs. I like Dobbins. I like Madubuike. I like Stone. I like Washington. These are not high-end players.
2. Last year we couldn't run Queen out of town fast enough

This is a fine draft for me. Lacking in star power, get key contributors. But its like nowhere close to the 2018 draft, or the 2008 draft, or some of our franchise-changing one's. I'd also question just how many of the guys on this list are going to be here beyond their rookie deals. I don't think its many.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
So here's my thing though...
1. None of these guys are studs. I like Dobbins. I like Madubuike. I like Stone. I like Washington. These are not high-end players.
2. Last year we couldn't run Queen out of town fast enough

This is a fine draft for me. Lacking in star power, get key contributors. But its like nowhere close to the 2018 draft, or the 2008 draft, or some of our franchise-changing one's. I'd also question just how many of the guys on this list are going to be here beyond their rookie deals. I don't think its many.
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As I said it's a solid draft. Not an elite one. Totally agree with the assessment that it lacks superstar players. But there's no bad player there other than probably Proche. With some quality guys you'd really like on your team.
 
Adreme said:
The thing about those void years is a lot of their players are going to be leaving over the next 2 years which means all that void money is going to come through at once which makes their cap situation even worse than it looks.

Slay has no incentive to take less so either you pay him another huge deal or he just plays out the last year of his deal and walks knowing you cannot cut him.

Even with that though you make money with Slay and Johnson, the void years from players who are leaving hit and now you are in a bad situation still where you do not really have the money to sign your QB and more to the point he has 100% of the leverage to force an overpay even in the best case where they get some of those void year players to sign a 1 year deal just to exist. Now if the Eagles are dumb enough to do it after making the same mistake with Wentz, they will deserve the mediocrity they will be in for the next few years.
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Slay will absolutely not be playing on a 26m cap hit. He is playing in the last year of his contract next season and all they have to do is extend him and in the first year have a low salary while spreading out the bonus money over a 3 or 4 year period.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
So here's my thing though...
1. None of these guys are studs. I like Dobbins. I like Madubuike. I like Stone. I like Washington. These are not high-end players.
2. Last year we couldn't run Queen out of town fast enough

This is a fine draft for me. Lacking in star power, get key contributors. But its like nowhere close to the 2018 draft, or the 2008 draft, or some of our franchise-changing one's. I'd also question just how many of the guys on this list are going to be here beyond their rookie deals. I don't think its many.
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you don't have to have a star in each of your drafts for them to be successful, as you basically said, it's a fine draft.

Sure Queen we couldn't depend on the last couple years but he has taken off this year and started doing really well about a month prior to us getting Roquan Smith. We all thought he was a bust until something turned on for him. Getting this many starters out of one draft is fantastic. None of us are saying it's on the level of 2018 or our 1st draft or even as good as the 2022 draft (still too soon to tell). All we are saying is it was a very good draft.

edit: Queen did start doing much better down the stretch last season when we signed Bynes, however he got off to a rough start this season.
 
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UPennChem said:
As I said it's a solid draft. Not an elite one. Totally agree with the assessment that it lacks superstar players. But there's no bad player there other than probably Proche. With some quality guys you'd really like on your team.
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Ehh, I mean Phillips and Bredeson are gone and did basically nothing while they were here, and Proche is just basically a depth guy with a little ST help. Even Schultz's comment on some of them was "they're playing better elsewhere", which is great, but also does nothing for the Ravens.
Stone, Washington and Harrison are good depth.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
Ehh, I mean Phillips and Bredeson are gone and did basically nothing while they were here, and Proche is just basically a depth guy with a little ST help. Even Schultz's comment on some of them was "they're playing better elsewhere", which is great, but also does nothing for the Ravens.
Stone, Washington and Harrison are good depth.
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2 starters is normal with depth is normal. 3 starters is very good. When you get 3 starters and good depth you are doing very well.
 
RavensMania said:
2 starters is normal with depth is normal. 3 starters is very good. When you get 3 starters and good depth you are doing very well.
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Ehh I mean OK. How good are the starters? I think we all can agree the 2019 draft wasn't that good.
Yet I see two starters (Hollywood and Powers) and some depth (Hill, Boykin and Ferguson (RIP)). So is that now a decent or good draft or is it still ass like most people think it is?

I'd say if I look at every draft I'll find two starters + depth. The better drafts will have higher impact, franchise-level players, and the Madubuike-types would be the higher end depth guys instead of the starters.

2018 draft is an outlier draft, but I get three literally All-Pro level players and I got some pretty good starter or high end depth players (Averett, Bozeman, Elliott)

Like I'd say the 2017 draft class is better than the 2020 draft class. 2017 is what a good/solid draft class looks like to me.

I also personally do a heavier measurement of draft classes based on their contributions post-rookie contract. While I understand we can't keep everybody, we can normally keep core players and solid contributors if we want. I struggle with the 2020 class and isolate who's going to make it past a rookie contract. I don't think Queen will, I'm not sure Dobbins will. Stone and Madubuike may be only guys worth keeping. Even Duvernay I'm kind of like "eh", maybe.
 
Tank said:
Hollywood is fast and flashy, but also inconsistent and soft. He never was a WR1 and never will be, we were extremely fortunate to get what we got for him in trade.
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Thank the Cardinals everytime I want Tyler.

Mike Florio is a piece of shit
 
rmcjacket23 said:
Ehh I mean OK. How good are the starters? I think we all can agree the 2019 draft wasn't that good.
Yet I see two starters (Hollywood and Powers) and some depth (Hill, Boykin and Ferguson (RIP)). So is that now a decent or good draft or is it still ass like most people think it is?

I'd say if I look at every draft I'll find two starters + depth. The better drafts will have higher impact, franchise-level players, and the Madubuike-types would be the higher end depth guys instead of the starters.

2018 draft is an outlier draft, but I get three literally All-Pro level players and I got some pretty good starter or high end depth players (Averett, Bozeman, Elliott)

Like I'd say the 2017 draft class is better than the 2020 draft class. 2017 is what a good/solid draft class looks like to me.

I also personally do a heavier measurement of draft classes based on their contributions post-rookie contract. While I understand we can't keep everybody, we can normally keep core players and solid contributors if we want. I struggle with the 2020 class and isolate who's going to make it past a rookie contract. I don't think Queen will, I'm not sure Dobbins will. Stone and Madubuike may be only guys worth keeping. Even Duvernay I'm kind of like "eh", maybe.
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In the end, I don't think Queen makes it past his rookie deal, with the Ravens, if we extend Roquan Smith. That is the outlier and it doesn't mean he isn't a good player. Without Roquan Smith, at his current level of play, I could see him being extended. That doesn't mean he isn't a good player because for the past 9 weeks, starting with the Bengals game, he has shown he is a very good player.

BTW, It took Bowser 3 or 4 seasons to turn the switch also and he is one of our good players from the 2017 draft class, which is why I'm using him as an example. He wasn't good at all prior to that and many wanted JuJu Smith-Schuster after we made that pick. I think we all prefer Bowser now. 2017 also allowed us to draft 16th whereas in the 2020 draft class we were in the playoffs and drafted in the mid twenties.
 
RavensMania said:
In the end, I don't think Queen makes it past his rookie deal, with the Ravens, if we extend Roquan Smith. That is the outlier and it doesn't mean he isn't a good player. Without Roquan Smith, at his current level of play, I could see him being extended. That doesn't mean he isn't a good player because for the past 9 weeks, starting with the Bengals game, he has shown he is a very good player.

BTW, It took Bowser 3 or 4 seasons to turn the switch also and he is one of our good players from the 2017 draft class, which is why I'm using him as an example. He wasn't good at all prior to that and many wanted JuJu Smith-Schuster after we made that pick. I think we all prefer Bowser now. 2017 also allowed us to draft 16th whereas in the 2020 draft class we were in the playoffs and drafted in the mid twenties.
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Second paragraph is the key for me. It's why I usually get out of the "evaluate draft classes" space.
If we draft a guy and he does nothing for 2-3, but blossoms late, is that a good or bad draft pick? I honestly don't know.
Bowser's good example. So is Ryan Jensen. Or even Chuck Clark.

Clark played very little defensively for the first 2-2.5 years with the Ravens. Basically got like a year and a half of a "starter" out of him before paying market value. Is that good for somebody on a four year rookie contract? I don't know. For a 6th rounder, sure, I'd say yes. But if he were a first rounder, is that good or bad?

For me, if another team is getting most of the benefit out of you, then it wasn't a good pick. Like people sometimes say Waller was a good pick. He might have been for the Raiders, but he wasn't for us. I'd rather have taken somebody else, because he didn't do much for us.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
Second paragraph is the key for me. It's why I usually get out of the "evaluate draft classes" space.
If we draft a guy and he does nothing for 2-3, but blossoms late, is that a good or bad draft pick? I honestly don't know.
Bowser's good example. So is Ryan Jensen. Or even Chuck Clark.

Clark played very little defensively for the first 2-2.5 years with the Ravens. Basically got like a year and a half of a "starter" out of him before paying market value. Is that good for somebody on a four year rookie contract? I don't know. For a 6th rounder, sure, I'd say yes. But if he were a first rounder, is that good or bad?

For me, if another team is getting most of the benefit out of you, then it wasn't a good pick. Like people sometimes say Waller was a good pick. He might have been for the Raiders, but he wasn't for us. I'd rather have taken somebody else, because he didn't do much for us.
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for me it's why draft classes shouldn't be evaluated until year three. In my opinion its not that the draft pick isn't good, it's that they just needed more time to develop or possibly the coaching staff wasn't using certain players properly or they weren't getting enough playing time due to players in front of him. All in all they're are a ton of reasons why.

I mostly agree with you regarding if a player pans out on another team that you drafted 3 or 4 years earlier. However in Wallers case he may have screwed himself with the early parts of his career, plus changing positions certainly didn't speed up the process.

That being said we were the ones that realized he needed to change positions, but we were loaded at the position and let him go in 2018 or was it 2019 when we let him go. Yes, he's great on the Raiders but it was good evaluation. You probably could say that about a lot of players, but again as you said and I tend to agree, he wasn't good for us.
 
UPennChem said:
So two thoughts. The first one is some people on here constantly say stuff like you can't switch up an offensive philosophy in season. It doesn't and can't happen. That's literally never made any sense to me, but I've never had some evidence to the counter.

The Bengals fans are discussing their team this year and there's an associated article from the athletic which I can read because I don't pay for it. So I'm going off the comments here. Take that for what it's worth. What I've gathered is that Zac Taylor had a vision for their offense and it sucked and Burrow struggled to do well in it this year. So midway Taylor completely reinvented the offense to be basically identical to Burrows LSU offense given they had the talent to successfully execute it. (I know this is where people are gonna be like yeah see, but the Ravens don't have the talent to change).

So ultimately if true, teams can make huge changes in scheme and philosophy in season and it can be for the better.
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i mean we know that you can philosophically shift mid-season - the ravens are the best blueprint for that in 2018 when we changed QBs and changed our entire offence

i dont really get what you're advocating for here?
 
airconteka said:
He's made a lot of tackles, not sure whether that's an indication of outstanding play though
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Yeah raw tackle stats are an awful indicator of safety play. I wouldn’t doubt that a big number of those tackles were impactful though, deshon Elliott is an absolute bull and might actually be capable of playing off ball LB.

What’s more important though… what has he given up in coverage throughout the year? He gave up a lot of big passes in his time here.
 
rossihunter2 said:
i mean we know that you can philosophically shift mid-season - the ravens are the best blueprint for that in 2018 when we changed QBs and changed our entire offence

i dont really get what you're advocating for here?
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I'm actually not advocating for literally anything. There's just been multiple rounds of talk over the past year where people have said we need to make major in season adjustments. And that sparked a major pushback from people saying that's basically impossible it never happens.
 
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