Season 1 Draft Losers

[wyrmreaver]

Keep in mind that this is entirely the opinion of one person......

By and large, most teams drafted well, but a handful of teams came away as losers from the year one real player draft. The following entries highlight the 3 teams I felt made significant misses in the draft. They are in no particular order.

 

[wyrmreaver]

The fire on this logo looks really cool, unfortunately for the Bengals its from the dumpster fire where the front office put all of the scouting reports for players that didn't play for the Colorado Buffalos, at least thats the only reason I can see that 5 of their 8 picks came from there.

Here are the picks
1-19 : CB Isaiah Oliver, Colorado - 78 OVR
2-19 : FS Afolabi Laguda, Colorado - 70 OVR
3-19 : LOLB Dante Booker, Ohio State - 69 OVR
4-19 : RT Jeromy Irwin, Colorado - 70 OVR
5-19 : WR Shay Fields, Colorado - 67 OVR
6-19 : WR Bryce Bobo, Colorado - 69 OVR
7-19 : DT Michael Hill, Ohio State - 73 OVR
7-24 : SS Chris Hawkins, USC - 70 OVR

Isaiah Oliver looks like he should be a solid player. And lucky for the front office, all the eligible colorado players were taken by the time the 7th round came up so they lucked out with the DT out of Ohio State who looks like he should be an okay pro as well.

Here is the rub, the teams top needs were Offensive line and Cornerback. When the only OL you draft is a middle of the road 25 year old prospect in the 4th round, you aren't filling a need. Also, as good as Oliver is, another CB would have helped, but no other Colorady corners were eligible for the draft.....

Anyways, lets hope the 2018 Cincinnati Buffaloes have a nice season

 

[wyrmreaver]

It a little hard to tell, but this shot is of the Rams logo in front of an empty stadium in LA on game night! After a tough year last season, the team promised its fans that they would get the most electrifying player in the draft... Saquon Barkley!

I mean, look at that athleticism! A guy like that would draw LA football crowds bigger than any since Reggie Bush was playing for the USC professional team!

So the Rams leaned into their goal, trading away superstar HB Todd Gurley, trading away athletic, hard hitting LB Mark Barron, Trading away their own 1st round pick, trading away their dignity and their moral compass...... in the end they had the #2 pick in the draft and a variety of sanctions from the league office. They also had their new stud HB from the Big Ten...... LJ Scott!

After missing out on Barkley, the Rams had an okay Draft. CB Minkah Fitzpatrick looks like a stud, and they got a quality TE and a WR with quick development late in the draft. The only issue here is that the Rams already had a young, athletic stud TE in Gerald Everett and they already had a young core of WRs with Watkins, Woods, and Kupp. One of their major needs heading into the draft was on the offensive line and they didnt draft a single one.

So, miss on Barkley, give away superstar HB and solid LB and fail to draft any offensive lineman to help protect their young QB or open holes for a now mediocre rushing attack, and then to get league sanctions on top of it?!

Yeah, the rams were definitely draft losers this season.

 

[wyrmreaver]

Let me start by saying that the Broncos had a good draft overall. They snagged a number of solid players including a pair of guys with quick development with WR Cedrick Wilson in the 3rd and then one of the biggest late round steals of the draft, DE Rasheem Green in the 6th round. Adding to that, they grabbed a stud DT in the 2nd round and a pair of solid linebackers in the middle and later rounds. So why are the Broncos on this list of Draft Losers?!

one reason:

Here's what happened......
The Broncos caught some tape of Baker Mayfield and saw that a lot of folks didnt even think he was a top 5 QB. In the chat folks were chatting up Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, and Josh Rosen. So the Broncos decided that they needed to move up from pick 26 to pick 13 to grab Mayfield without anyone being the wiser. It didn't work.

In a panic the front office scrambled to find the other QB scouting reports as their pick approached. Josh Allen had exploded onto the draft landscape after a mediocre sophomore year playing against lower level competition and had followed that up by playing terribly so far this year, especially against teams with NFL quality talent, so naturally the scuttlebutt was that Allen was a sure fire first round talent.

The Broncos got Allen at #13 overall and that alone makes them a draft loser. If you trade up into the top half of the first round to get yourself a QB, your teams biggest need, you can't draft Allen when there are 3 players that were better than him drafted after (one in the 1st, one in the 2nd, and one in the 4th) and 7 players with equal ratings to Allen picked after him (2 in the second, 1 in the third, one in the 5th, 2 in the sixth and 1 in the 7th).

I'm sure the Broncos will be fine, they have a good team and a solid user. Maybe Allen will even develop into something despite the fact that the other 3 QBs on the preseason roster are all as good or better than he is.