Agreed. I think the overall premise is we were basically hitting homeruns with first rounders recently. Lamar, Marlon, Stanley, even Hollywood. These guys are high end players at their positions that could start just about anywhere on this league.
We really didn't have many, if any, of those during most of Flacco's tenure. We'd get some quality players in the mid to late rounds at key spots, but not a lot of playmakers, and no truly like All-Pro level players. Jimmy Smith, who was obviously a high end starter in his prime, was probably the best first round pick over like an 8 year period. That's simply not very good, really. And our struggles in round 2 were well documented.
I mean Bowser was a fringe roster player for a couple years, and he's probably easily like one of the top 3-4 2nd round picks we've seen from this franchise in a decade or more.
In the Harbaugh era, we've seen two high quality RBs taken in the 2nd round (Rice and Dobbins... over a decade apart), Torrey Smith, and KO. Bowser would probably be up there with Kruger. That's over a 14 draft period.
And in actuality, it apparently sort of goes back to the beginning of the franchise. If my math is correct, Ray Rice and Tyus Bowser are the only two 2nd round picks in franchise history to get contract extensions. I could be wrong, but even when I go back to the pre-Harbaugh era, I don't see a single 2nd rounder who played more than 5 years here, and I'm pretty sure they only played five because rookies had five year contracts in the older CBA agreements.
By my count, that's 22 draft picks who are or were eligible for extensions, and only 2 got one. That would be an acceptable ratio for like 6th round picks. Not for 2nd rounders.
