Scout on 2013 draft "It was a disaster, everyone thought Fisher would be good"

[Quesadilla Joe]

Peter King had a nice breakdown of the 2013 draft in his most recent MMQB article. He also makes an argument that maybe Pioli wasn't so bad.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/09/21/n...ng-quarterback

Spoiler!

It’s not altogether strange for the top of a draft to crap out. But so fast? That could be the lasting story of the 2013 first round. The first overall pick, tackle Eric Fisher, is on the bench with the Chiefs. Four players in the top half of the first round look like looming busts, and the bottom half of the round looks stronger than the top half already. Keep in mind that the 2013 class was not evaluated to be particularly strong. There wasn’t a no-doubt quarterback, and the skill positions and corners were below average. But who’d have thought it would look this bad 34 games later?

Surveying the carnage leads to one overriding conclusion: We hype drafts to a silly level of expectation. We overrate players just because of where they are picked. We can’t wait to see how they play before we rate success and failure. And then, a couple of years later, we look at a draft like the 2013 draft and say with some incredulity, W-w-w-what happened?

As one longtime scout told me Saturday when I showed him the results of the draft: “That draft is a disaster—a total riddle. You simply can’t predict how players will do in a different environment. Everyone thought Eric Fisher would be good. Everyone. I thought Jonathan Cooper would be good. Easy pick. There is a randomness to the draft that you can’t explain.”

I’m going to get to the lesson of why a volume of compensatory picks should be as valuable as first-round picks in a few moments. But first, learn a draft lesson this morning. The badness of the 2013 draft:

• There is not a star among the top dozen picks of the first round. Not close. Ziggy Ansah, maybe. But if the best player in the top 12 of a draft after 2.1 years is a guy averaging half a sack per start, that’s a terrible bit of testimony to the quality of a draft.

• The No. 1 overall pick, tackle Eric Fisher of the Chiefs, lost his left tackle job to the 74th pick of the 2012 draft, Donald Stephenson. And then, under cloudy circumstances, Fisher lost the right tackle job—either because of an ankle sprain or poor performance—to a tackle on the street, Jah Reid, signed just seven days before the season-opener. The Chiefs will have paid Fisher $17.7 million by the end of this season, and they’ve got to be having major buyer’s remorse for a guy who, according to Pro Football Focus, was the 34th-rated right tackle in the NFL his rookie year (among 36 who played at least eight games) and the 28th-rated left tackle in 2014.

• The No. 3 pick, defensive end Dion Jordan, is suspended for the season for violating the league’s substance-abuse program, his third substance suspension in three years. He has started one game and had three sacks.

• The No. 9 pick, cornerback Dee Milliner of the Jets, had a poor rookie year, tore his Achilles last year, and saw the Jets sign three free-agent cornerbacks this year to play above him … then needed wrist surgery in camp (his seventh football-related surgery of his life) and will be sidelined until at least midseason. So it’s not all his fault, certainly. But he hasn’t been a profitable pick for the Jets.

• The No. 16 pick, quarterback E.J. Manuel, is the third passer on the Buffalo depth chart after 14 underwhelming starts in his first two seasons.

Then there are the marginal starters: tackle Luke Joeckel of Jacksonville (second overall), defensive end Barkevious Mingo of Cleveland (sixth overall), guard Jonathan Cooper of Arizona (seventh overall), and cornerback D.J. Hayden of Oakland (12th overall). So in just 28 months, eight of the top 16 picks have raised major questions about their future. That is significantly more than the major questions in the second half of the first round. The last 16 picks, overall, are clearly better than the top 16. Compare for yourself:



If I were to rank the top quarter of that draft’s first round, I’d go this way:

1. Sheldon Richardson (13th overall).
2. Travis Frederick (31st).
3. Desmond Trufant (22nd).
4. Kyle Long (20th).
5. Xavier Rhodes (25th).
6. DeAndre Hopkins (27th).
7. Sharrif Floyd (23rd).
8. Ziggy Ansah (5th).

Quite an indictment of the scouting process in 2013, that six of the top eight players may have been picked from No. 20 and beyond. There are several messages here. The easy thing to say is that scouts stink, and the thought process of teams is flawed. What I would say is that scouting is an incredibly inexact science. Joeckel and Fisher have struggled with the outside speed of the pro game, though Joeckel, specifically, played against speed rushers on the outside of a spread system at Texas A&M. So how do you figure him struggling so mightily? I think it’s also the case that some years, and this one certainly appears to be one, are just not top-heavy. The strength of the draft looked to be on the outside of the offensive and defensive lines, and it’s been nothing like that.

Two other points need to be made.

In this draft-evaluation business, you’ve got to be careful with making absolute statements. For example, GM Scott Pioli was ridden out of Kansas City after four seasons, in early 2013. But from his four drafts come the guts of the current Chiefs defense that looks so good right now: Dontari Poe and Allen Bailey on the line, 2014 NFL sack leader Justin Houston (with the 70th pick in 2011) at outside linebacker, and Eric Berry in the defensive backfield (if he can continue his comeback from lymphoma). The left tackle, Stephenson, was a Pioli third-round pick in 2012. Pioli had his share of misses, and didn’t leave Andy Reid with a quarterback of the future. But his hits go to show you—and the team’s relative success since his dismissal—that the tar-and-feathering business in personnel evaluation can be pretty misleading.

Also, I’ve become convinced—and this started with the way Jimmy Johnson/Jerry Jones were wheeling and dealing when Johnson got to the Cowboys—that the number of picks in a draft is far more important than the location of the picks. With lots of low-round gems, Johnson proved that collecting lots of picks was the way to go since history says teams are bound to be wrong on even some of the seemingly surest things. Take the Ravens. They are the biggest believers in the compensatory pick system. That’s the lottery in which teams lose pricey free agents and collect picks between the third and seventh rounds in future drafts as compensation for the losses. In the past five drafts, the Ravens have had 15 compensatory picks and turned them into two key pieces of the offensive line—starting tackle Ricky Wagner and third guard John Urschel—and starting fullback Kyle Juszczyk and pass-rusher Pernell McPhee. Love this irony: McPhee could net the Ravens a pick at the end of the fourth round in 2016 after he signed a five-year, $39-million contract with the Bears last spring. That’s the kind of personnel discipline, knowing when to let good players leave because you trust you can train new players who cost much less, that consistently good teams have.

[BryanBusby]

Originally Posted by mcaj22

aka we would be 2-0 if Matt Ryan was our QB

You have no idea how much I wanted Matt Ryan before the 08 draft.

[mcaj22]

if we drafted Matt Ryan we probably never have those god awful nightmare Fat Scott Patriots fraud tree years. What could have been.

[GloucesterChief]

Originally Posted by BryanBusby

They were dumb for passing on Raji, although he slumped for awhile.

Raiji, Cushing, or Orakpo would of been great.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by GloucesterChief

Raiji, Cushing, or Orakpo would of been great.

Matthews would have been even better, as would have Maclin

[Mav]

Originally Posted by Brock

He still isn't worth that and wouldn't have gotten that anywhere else.

Not at all. Agreed

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by BryanBusby

They were dumb for passing on Raji, although he slumped for awhile.

Originally Posted by BlackOp

Thank all the defensive draft contributions to Crenell...as bad as he is at HC..he knows DL. I'm not sure who pounded on the table for Jackson though...rumor was NE wanted him. So fat Scott did what a hack GM does....

If I remember right, most of Chiefsplanet's discussions were between Aaron Curry and Mark Sanchez, with a few people promoting Raji.

The Tyson Jackson thing was perhaps the biggest curveball ever in a Chiefs draft. He wasn't even in the discussion until the day before the draft or so. I remember scoffing when I first heard it. There's no way they would reach down and take a guy who was not even in the top 20 on most boards, right? Right?

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by jd1020

Pretty unfair to say Fisher isn't good. Didn't he bulk up on muscle this offseason? He did the same thing last offseason and it made a remarkable difference!

WTF?

People really need to stop giving this guy excuses. He's a soft piece of garbage of a OT. The guy doesn't even need to be starting in this league. No toughness whatsoever. I fully believe he was dodging guys like Watt and Miller/Ware etc. Fully believe that 100% and the players know that too.

[CoMoChief]

Everything bad that's happened to this franchise over the last 6 yrs, I blame solely on Bernard Pollard.

If it weren't for his hit on Brady, Cassel never starts a game, never goes 10-6 w/ his time w/ the Pats and the Chiefs probably never trade for the guy. I mean talk about a trickle down effect.

Wonder what this franchise would look like today had Pollard not hit Brady low the way he did.

[Easy 6]

Originally Posted by Cochise

Really, if you look at both franchises since Jacksonville was founded, the Jaguars have 5 playoff wins, have appeared in an AFC championship game, were fairly good for about 10 years and have been pathetic for the last 10 or so years.

Pretty much the Chiefs' story since Marty arrived. Chiefs have more regular season wins, Jaguars have more postseason wins. Chiefs have more kicks in the balls when you thought they were turning the corner, Jaguars never seem to have hope. But the total misery index is about the same.

Well said.