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sg3
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Even more surprising that he was still there at 6 after Dumbass Snyder decided that his Washingtons needed to reach for an Offensive Guard at #5
#6 pick in 2015 - Jets select Leonard Williams DT USC
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Actually, scot Mccloughan is the new GM of the Redskins.
Not sure if you know who he is, but he was the independent scouting consultant hired by both Seattle and 9ers to build their organizations over the last 7-8 years. Danny cut him a fat check to leave the west coast and become their GM.
He's regarded as one of the best scout in the industry. He had fowler and Scherff ahead of Williams on his big board.
He might be the best judge of talent whoever lived, but unless Scherff is at the John Hannah/Jim Parker/Larry Allen level, which is to say a perennial All-Pro and a first ballot HOFer, IMO its not smart to use a TOP 5 Pick on an OG. There are just certain positions I don't believe you take that high, its poor positional value, and in my view OG is one of them. But again, if he's John Hannah/Jim Parker/Larry Allen, then its a great pick even if its # 1 overall.
Thats asking a lot from any draft pick, he basically needs to be an All-Time Great.
I know you didn't ask me, but I would have been pissed and borderline despondent if we passed on Williams and Kevin White for an OG. Like I said above, I would have changed my tune if Scherff turned into the most dominant OG in the sport, but initially it would have been hard to convince me that picking an OG in that spot was a smart move.
Another thing to consider:
Its really a passing league now, at least more than it was in the past, so if anything OG's have depreciated in value over the years along with the RB's. That said, I can see the OG being essential if you are, oh say, the Patriots, and you need to neutralize the inside pass rush of some of the best DT's in the sport, who happen to play for your division rivals (Kong Suh, Mo Wilkerson, Sheldon Richardson, Leonard Williams, Marcel Darius), heck even Snacks and Kyle Williams are tough to deal with, and yes, I do view the 3-4 ends as players the OG needs to contend with, so I could maybe see NE making that pick at # 5, sometimes you draft specifically to neutralize your division rivals because winning your division is always the first priority, but what dominant DT's do the Redskins need to deal with in the NFC East?
There's some good ones in every division, but are there any dominant DT's in the NFC East?
Dallas has Nick Hayden & Tyrone Crawford penciled in as starters, they'd have a hard time sticking as backups for the Jets.
The Giants have Kuhn and Hankins ... again, backups for the Bills and Jets at best, probably Miami too.
Lastly the Eagles have a good 3-4 D-line, but they would easily rank behind the Jets, Bills and Miami.
So I'm having a hard time seeing the urgency to draft an OG in the TOP 5
Its really a passing league now, at least more than it was in the past, so if anything OG's have depreciated in value over the years along with the RB's. That said, I can see the OG being essential if you are, oh say, the Patriots, and you need to neutralize the inside pass rush of some of the best DT's in the sport, who happen to play for your division rivals (Kong Suh, Mo Wilkerson, Sheldon Richardson, Leonard Williams, Marcel Darius), heck even Snacks and Kyle Williams are tough to deal with, and yes, I do view the 3-4 ends as players the OG needs to contend with, so I could maybe see NE making that pick at # 5, sometimes you draft specifically to neutralize your division rivals because winning your division is always the first priority, but what dominant DT's do the Redskins need to deal with in the NFC East?
There's some good ones in every division, but are there any dominant DT's in the NFC East?
Dallas has Nick Hayden & Tyrone Crawford penciled in as starters, they'd have a hard time sticking as backups for the Jets.
The Giants have Kuhn and Hankins ... again, backups for the Bills and Jets at best, probably Miami too.
Lastly the Eagles have a good 3-4 D-line, but they would easily rank behind the Jets, Bills and Miami.
So I'm having a hard time seeing the urgency to draft an OG in the TOP 5
I would be rip shit pissed. I said through the entire process he cant play OT and was bitched in his final college game vs the Vols which I watched for no particular reason and was shocked how bad he was abused. That was never the point of my response.
Im not defending the pick, Im clarifying Snyder had nothing to do with it. Living in DC, they havent had a real GM for awhile. Bruce Allen is living off his dad's legacy and was GM more for selling seats/box sets than his eye for talent. He sounds great telling tales of being in the locker room in the old days, and despite working in the Bucs scouting department, it's far from his area of strength. However, Scot is highly regarded...he was so good at scouting he stopped scouting in the NFL to open his own firm. Its wrong to pretend the skins are still run like the cowboys. They arent.
BTW - my facebook page was filled with posts from Redskins fans on draft day pissed with their pick and congratulating me on our pick. 80% of my local friends are redskins fans, with the remaining being ravens, cowboys, eagles, and steelers...but those last 3 teams are everywhere you go I guess and Baltimore is up 95 30 minutes.
i recall you not liking scherff, so i was surprised at your posts before. but now i understand your position in that discussion above. thanks for clarifying.
btw - i'm not sure if the reason the skins GM wasn't currently working for a team was because he chose to start his own firm. IIRC, he had some major issue with alcohol and was let go a couple of times. i don't dispute he's a widely respected scout and people sought his opinion on players. but there was more to the story than him just deciding to go off on his own. how he does for the redskins remains to be seen. i share the view i would have been pissed if we took scherff at 6.
He did have an admitted drinking issue which is true. I've listened to him speak several times. He went through a stage of depression and didnt feel like he deserved his job, despite the high accolades. Instead of returning to the NFL where his problem began, he started his own firm. If they even mention his name on Sirius, everyone rains praise on the guy.
He is the guy who pulled the trigger on Wilson, Sherman, Chancellor, and Earl Thomas after leaving the 49ers. For the 49ers, he drafted: Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Patrick Willis, Joe Staley, Dashon Goldson, Justin Smith and Ahmad Brooks.
But the guy did suffer through issue and lost his job, wife, and kids because of it. I think it was a wise choice for him at the time and he came out the other end a changed man.
[MENTION=285]Superman55[/MENTION] [MENTION=298]hobson54[/MENTION] -- here's a good article on the Redskins GM. I remember posting it months ago. It's a great read.
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12014699/scot-mccloughan-nfl-best-talent-scout-self-employed-living-farm
I remember wanting the jets to take him but then someone made a good point that the NY media and the fans would drive him back to drinking. Lol
This was a great read. I had never seen it before and only heard him speak a couple times (and I've heard him on the radio). This was very well written...it also shows the type of man he is which is why I jumped in so fast to defend the off the cuff remark that dumb ads Snyder picked for the Redskins, when it was a guy considered by most NFL circles to be a genius, despite his demons.
Also, his thoughts on the draft class is exactly why I hate people saying Williams was the #1 player in the draft...the jets were one of the few teams that felt that way. That statement is totally not true. Will he end up being the best? Maybe. But to say he was just means you believe in fan's mock drafts over people like scot who breath and live scouting...in his case, to the level it almost destroyed his life.
I skimmed through the article, but didn't see mention of "his thoughts on the draft class". Are you assuming them because of the Redskins ultimate choice, or do you have a link to them? I openly admit that I go by what I hear/read, and this post is the first time I'm hearing that the Jets were one of the few teams that considered Williams the best talent in the draft.
Also, does his apparent opinion of Schreff change yours?
to be fair, it seems williams was among the top 3 players on macc's draft board (rumored to be there with fowler and cooper). and macc is also a scouting lifer.
and he was also very highly ranked from almost every single "professional" draft expert (meaning those that get paid to opine, not joe shmo on a message board). not just the espn talking heads, but almost every football talking head, including some former GMs.
now obviously there's no way to know how the 32 professional teams ranked the players. so we will never know how the pro scouts felt. but there is a huge cottage industry surrounding the nfl draft, and many people dedicate a lot of time and effort into scouting players. and if you take out the QBs (who get elevated because the position they play), i'm not sure there were many, if any, prospects as highly ranked as williams. and it's pretty certain that if you eliminate fowler and cooper, williams was probably the highest ranked player left on the vast majority of the so-called experts' boards.
Well, yes, if you remove enough names, Williams was #1 . The point is, with all the names in the draft, Williams was not #1 on almost any boards. So saying the Jets got the #1 guy in the draft, without taking Cooper, Fowler, and Scherff off the board, he was not #1 on many boards (including the Jets depending on who you believe).
My point is, Williams was not the #1 player in the draft, that statement is false. If you want to say top 3-4 and we got him at 6, that would be a true statement, and great value for where selected.
But there is a difference between 1 and 3 or 4...like saying the Patriots and Colts last year finished "about the same." I dont feel that's true, but if you or others who claim Williams was #1 , is like saying the Colts were the best team in the NFL last year.
Here is his board: Fowler 1, Scherff 2, Williams 3...from the horse's mouth:
Post-draft Monday is normally a good day for us to question why the general manager of our favorite team didn't pick the same players who televised analysts said were better than the ones our team actually picked.
2015 NFL DRAFT
So naturally, that made us curious to hear what Washington Redskins general manager Scot McCloughan had to say about taking guard/tackle Brandon Scherff over Leonard Williams, a defensive end believed by some to be the best player in this year's draft.
Here's McCloughan:
"The thing about Leonard (Williams) -- very good football player," he said. "I was hoping to be able to move back there and it didn't happen. Everyone was talking about trading up, trading up to our spot but it was all for (Dante) Fowler. Once Fowler went (to the Jaguars), then all the talk went off the board. Leonard is a good football player. If for some reason Brandon (Scherff) would have been gone, he probably would have been your one seed. ... Going into this thing I knew we needed some help up front on the offensive side and it was too good of a bang for the buck to not get Brandon there."
Like we said before, it's impossible to fault McCloughan for this until we see how both players fit their respective systems and how they perform in games.
Just because Williams was believed to be the better player doesn't make it so.
It's also interesting to hear about a mad rush to get into the top five for a player not named Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota. Before the draft, one of our predictions centered around the fact that we were probably all ignoring another coveted player atop the draft. Jacksonville might have ended up the luckiest team out there, not the Jets, who ended up with Williams at No. 6.
But either way, this was McCloughan's first draft, and he could not betray his board. Locked in a room with everyone he's now managing, what kind of message would it have sent to everyone that, all of a sudden, the team is picking their 1B player over their 1A player just because you could't move back?
Maybe McCloughan is losing on post-draft Monday, but none of the good general managers care much about that.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000490878/article/redskins-gm-explains-scherff-over-leonard-williams
Sounds like he had Schreff rated higher because of need, no?
Certainly appears the majority considered Fowler #1 , as trade requests disappeared once he was off the board.
As always, time will tell . . .
agreed. But it seems like Scherff was 1a and Williams was 1b regardless of where they picked. I am sure most teams draft based on BPA at a position of need; well, except us.