Welcome JT Woods, DB, Baylor (R3, #79)

[Scott Green]

You say that all of Cro’s picks his big year were fluke gifts and i call complete bullshit on that hysterical untrue claim. I was standing on the field the game he picked the shit out of Manning, those were not gifts he was balling up and over receivers and taking that shit away. He had a shitload of personal and personality issues that i think are what really led to his drop in production. But he didn’t just sit in centerfield collecting gifts from QBs his big year, thats horseshit.



https://youtu.be/GzCAI02cPXE

Another factor with Cromartie is teams stop testing you eventually. As for Woods awareness and vision is a skill and its a skill he has. Safeties that run a 4.3 forty and have ball skills and intelligence always have a place on teams. We got three legit speedsters in the draft. People look at who starts and who gets playing time. They need to remember special teams is 1/3 of the game and having theses guys including Woods will make them better.

[Formula 21]

Under your analysis, there would have been nothing wrong with us taking Woods at #17 overall. That is ridiculous. What happened was the same problem as that, just to a lesser degree.

The goal of the draft is to get the best players possible and a team that reaches does not do that--period.

While being nowhere near infallible, of course the presence of a consensus regarding a player means something. It is foolish of a GM to think that he and only he has a monopoly on the correct analysis of a player when that analysis is at odds with the gigantic consensus rating of a player.

And even when the GM strongly believes in a player, he should consider what the consensus means in terms of where the player he thinks highly of is likely to be drafted.

Further, to the extent that a player is a fit only in certain systems, something you specifically referenced regarding Woods, that reduces both the overall value of the player and the likelihood that the player will be drafted earlier by teams for which he is not a fit.

Frankly, the suggestion that there is nothing wrong with taking players early is absurd.

A GM should not be so wed to a particular player that he sacrifices more than a round of draft value to take the player early, especially when the GM has a chance to get extra value when there is a BPA value gap that can be easily exploited with even just a tiny amount of aggressiveness when what actually happened proved that the small trade up was available to be made. We do not have to speculate about it. The very pick in question that we could have acquired got traded and traded for less than what we would have offered with a similar package of draft picks.

The whole problem is that we did not "swing for the fences" when we had the chance to do so. When we had the chance to get the #44 overall ranked player (Travis Jones) at a PON in the middle of the third round by making a simple trade when everyone and their dog knew that BAL, a team that actually knows how to draft players outside of the first round, would take the player at #76, trading up to #75, should have been an easy, easy choice.

What a team should not do is to fail to get the pick that was proven to be available and then compound that error by selecting the #137 overall ranked player with the #79 draft pick, missing both the golden opportunity of getting great value and getting terrible value all at the same time. And then, of course, we reinforced the fact that we had the DL positional need by taking a much lesser caliber DL player in Ogbonnia.

We did not maximize our player talent with our draft picks. Our draft strategy in the third round was simply and quite obviously poor.

I suspect the 3rd round is where TT targets his must have players. His “most underrated” players. And he is going to take them no matter who falls to him.

You also have to admit that Woods has such an enticing combination of size, speed and ball skills that he potentially was one of the “most underrated” players in the draft.

I agree with your value based approach to the draft. But all GMs reach at times because they see players that fit their particular set of needs and don’t want to miss on them.

[sonorajim]

I suspect the 3rd round is where TT targets his must have players. His “most underrated” players. And he is going to take them no matter who falls to him.

You also have to admit that Woods has such an enticing combination of size, speed and ball skills that he potentially was one of the “most underrated” players in the draft.

I agree with your value based approach to the draft. But all GMs reach at times because they see players that fit their particular set of needs and don’t want to miss on them.

I suspect that Staley was a majority partner in this and last year's draft. JT Woods vs trade up for a DT * is on him, for better or worse.

* DT FAs who play his brand of D were on Staley's schedule.

[Xenos]

I suspect the 3rd round is where TT targets his must have players. His “most underrated” players. And he is going to take them no matter who falls to him.

You also have to admit that Woods has such an enticing combination of size, speed and ball skills that he potentially was one of the “most underrated” players in the draft.

I agree with your value based approach to the draft. But all GMs reach at times because they see players that fit their particular set of needs and don’t want to miss on them.

The Ravens drafted a punter in the 4th because they didn’t want to have the Bucs or Bengals get him. And he wasn’t even the punt god.

[Guest]

I suspect the 3rd round is where TT targets his must have players. His “most underrated” players. And he is going to take them no matter who falls to him.

You also have to admit that Woods has such an enticing combination of size, speed and ball skills that he potentially was one of the “most underrated” players in the draft.

I agree with your value based approach to the draft. But all GMs reach at times because they see players that fit their particular set of needs and don’t want to miss on them.

You could be right about Telesco's third round approach as it would be statistically difficult for a GM to be so wrong so consistently in a single round of the draft.

That said, as I have explained previously, I think Woods' ball skills are overrated based upon a review of the INTs he made. I see Woods as being the beneficiary of being "Johnny on the Spot". That is, he was a player that was for the most part gifted INTs by opponents, and did not generate them because he had great coverage or made a great play on the ball. That type of INT profile is not likely to be duplicated on a regular basis.

Also, Tycen Anderson is the same height and speed as Woods, but weighs 14 pounds more (more physical), has slightly longer arms, bigger hands (nearly two inches bigger) and had a top 3 3-cone drill time (6.64 sec.) at this year's combine versus Woods' 6.94 at his pro day. Anderson was selected by CIN with pick #166. We used pick #79 on Woods. Even with Woods being consensus ranked 22 spots higher (#137 versus #159), CIN got a similar player more than twice as late in the draft as the pick we used for Woods. It reminds me of when we took Jacob Hester in round 3 only to see Denver take Peyton Hillis in round 7.

[blueman]

I don't think he was as robotic as Daniel Craig.

It’s pretty bad when the actor you hire (talking about Brosnan) publicity admits he doesn’t know how to play the role. Didn’t help any he was a middling actor to begin with.

Very curious what direction they go post-Craig…

[Guest]

You overstate the gifts significantly. You overstate the difference between 3rd and 4th rd significantly and ignore the fact that some positions have runs and a guy slotted for pic 20 of round can very often go at 5 and vice versa. If Staley needed a blazing fast ball hawking safety to make his defense work and allow him to fully unleash James, and mid-fourth was a gamble his guy would be there, then its not a horrible overreach.

You say that all of Cro’s picks his big year were fluke gifts and i call complete bullshit on that hysterical untrue claim. I was standing on the field the game he picked the shit out of Manning, those were not gifts he was balling up and over receivers and taking that shit away. He had a shitload of personal and personality issues that i think are what really led to his drop in production. But he didn’t just sit in centerfield collecting gifts from QBs his big year, thats horseshit.

I watched all of Woods pics - he jumped routes many times to make picks, they weren’t just a half dozen tips deep all into the back of the secondary he was just randomly and luckily sitting in. Your analysis is shit from start to finish and i tried to be polite and say maybe because we really don’t know. You in particular don’t know.

go watch this clip and tell me that was a gift. Just stupid untrue fantasy.

https://youtu.be/GzCAI02cPXE

I never stated that all of Cromartie's 2007 INTs were gifts. in fact, I have previously stated that his one-handed INT of Peyton Manning is one of the best INTs any player has made ever. What I have said is similar to Woods' 2022 INTs, many in that season were of the gift variety. That is why after having 10 INTs in 2007, he never had more than 4 in any other season. Your personality issue discussion is some truly pathetic excuse making--as if Cromartie were a different person in 2008 and 2009 than he was in 2007. The difference was the number of fluke bad passes right to him in 2007, plays that are not typically duplicated from one season to the next, and that were not duplicated in Cromartie's case.

Further, I was not even the person that first raised brought up Cromartie, but the comparison in that respect is totally obvious.

Woods also had one very nice INT on a play on which he undercut the route, Stretched for the INT, grabbed it and took it in for a pick 6. However, on other INTs, the pass was thrown right to him or he had a teammate (on one INT) that had good coverage that deflected the ball right into his lap. Woods did very little on those plays. He did not have coverage. He showed that he could catch a pass essentially thrown or tipped right to him on plays where he was not very close to the intended receiver. Those plays do not establish Woods as a great ball hawk. That notion is just stupid.

Moreover, I have already gone through the exercise of showing what we lost by taking Palmer and McKitty too early instead of taking them closer to where they were ranked. The value lost can easily make not just a difference but a huge difference in overall team talent. One would have to be clueless not to comprehend that if a GM repeatedly takes players earlier than he has to take them, he is losing talent overall. That is why it is stupid for GMs to do that.

The issue is not Woods, but when we took him. He is a late round 4 talent taken in round 3. We keep wasting draft pick value.

[Guest]

Critty, I already posted that the consensus big boards that I have looked at are primarily NFL Mock Draft Database, but also The Athletic's consensus big board. NFL Mock Draft database discloses the number of big boards considered (102).

I have never discussed any big board that I personally have. You have 100% misunderstood my posts in this thread if you think that. My discussion has been about good and bad draft strategy, which applies regardless of the players involved.

I have stated that it is a bad idea to reach against the consensus big board when there is a large difference in ranking between the GM's big board and the consensus big board.

I have defined the word "reach" to mean taking a player significantly earlier than his consensus ranking. Whenever and wherever I have used that term, that is what I am saying. Again, I have been incredibly clear on this point.

I get that when Mike Mayock chose Alex Leatherwood with the #17 overall pick, that pick was not inconsistent with how Mayock ranked Leatherwood on his board just as the selection of Woods on the Stalesco board when he was selected was not inconsistent with how that board ranked him. I have never suggested any such inconsistency. The problem is that most other folks knew/know that those picks were reaches and they know that because of the consensus weight of publicly available assessments of the matter.

So, in an effort to be even a little bit objective and not a complete homer, I apply the same standard when considering whether a disgusting Raider player is a reach as I do in assessing whether one of our draft selections is a reach. But the truly hilarious thing is that many people on this forum rightly laughed at the Leatherwood pick because he was a clear reach based upon the publicly available consensus, but because their hearts are involved as Chargers fans here, they simply cannot employ the exact same analysis that was applied to Leatherwood to players like Palmer, McKitty and now Woods.

And, as I have stated multiple times, the fact that all of those players were defined reaches does not mean that they cannot have a solid career in the NFL. Numerous people have failed to appreciate that in calling a player a defined reach, I am not saying that the player is somehow not good. The concepts are completely different from one another.

Instead, I am suggesting that we are hemorrhaging draft pick value when we reach. I already went through the exercise of showing what it cost us when we simply did not take Palmer in round 4 last year and McKitty in round 5 because some people on this forum appear to think that just because we got a decent player, picking the player when we picked the player was somehow justified, which the exercise demonstrated is absurd because when a team pisses away draft pick value, the team is not as good as it could have been.

The standard that you have raised of not being taken early on the NFL GM's own board would validate just about every pick ever and would render any true discussion of draft pick value meaningless. So that can't be what we are talking about when we say player X was a reach or was not a reach. And, of course, nobody on this forum attempted to throw Leatherwood/Mayock any such lifeline.

I have explained many times why I think reaching against consensus big boards is a bad idea for an actual GM in cases where there is a big discrepancy between the GM's board and the consensus big board. In cases of significant discrepancies, a consensus big board is likely to be correct more often than any one individual's big board. So, the obviously better approach is to try to steal value (from the perspective of the GM) by taking the player in the consensus range.

Regarding Jones, players fall in every draft and those are the players that a GM should target. That's where a GM gains value versus other teams with a draft pick. That's why, when we were in a position potentially to get Travis Jones, we needed to get aggressive and trade up for him, assuming Telesco was clever enough to know what half of us knew on this forum at the time--that BAL would take Jones if given a chance because BAL knows what they are doing when it comes to drafts.

In the case of Keenan Allen, Telesco stated that he had Fluker, Te'o and Allen all rated as first round players. Allen fell because every time Telesco had a pick in the first two rounds, there was a first round rated player that covered Allen that he chose over Allen. That too is how a player like Travis Jones can fall.

The frustration is that in the case of Jones is that he was consensus ranked at #44 overall. We had a real chance to get him at #75 and he plays a PON for us, which is why we took the much lesser player (consensus rank of #187) in Ogbonnia later, citing his size as a major factor, size that, of course, is virtually identical to Jones' size (same height, Jones is 1 pound heavier). And then, after missing a chance to gain value, we threw away value by selecting Woods, the #137 ranked player, a player "only" ranked 93 slots lower than Jones.

[dmac_bolt]

I suspect that Staley was a majority partner in this and last year's draft. JT Woods vs trade up for a DT * is on him, for better or worse.

* DT FAs who play his brand of D were on Staley's schedule.

yup - they’ve added a lot of pieces to the DL that he sees in his plan. The Fox add feels like the last piece that fits in their resource limits imo. They didn’t add anything to S via FA. I have a lot of hope for this kid. I see the “not 3rd” assessment but if he can play, i don’t care.

[Formula 21]

It’s pretty bad when the actor you hire (talking about Brosnan) publicity admits he doesn’t know how to play the role. Didn’t help any he was a middling actor to begin with.

Very curious what direction they go post-Craig…

I see them going more like Fast and Furious. Much more action.

[powderblueboy]

You could be right about Telesco's third round approach as it would be statistically difficult for a GM to be so wrong so consistently in a single round of the draft.

That said, as I have explained previously, I think Woods' ball skills are overrated based upon a review of the INTs he made. I see Woods as being the beneficiary of being "Johnny on the Spot". That is, he was a player that was for the most part gifted INTs by opponents, and did not generate them because he had great coverage or made a great play on the ball. That type of INT profile is not likely to be duplicated on a regular basis.

Also, Tycen Anderson is the same height and speed as Woods, but weighs 14 pounds more (more physical), has slightly longer arms, bigger hands (nearly two inches bigger) and had a top 3 3-cone drill time (6.64 sec.) at this year's combine versus Woods' 6.94 at his pro day. Anderson was selected by CIN with pick #166. We used pick #79 on Woods. Even with Woods being consensus ranked 22 spots higher (#137 versus #159), CIN got a similar player more than twice as late in the draft as the pick we used for Woods. It reminds me of when we took Jacob Hester in round 3 only to see Denver take Peyton Hillis in round 7.

TYSEN ANDERSON SCOUTING REPORT: WEAKNESSES (from NFLDRAFTBUZZ.com)

• In coverage he rarely manages to get a good jam at the line and instead hangs back - surprisingly considering his frame
• Is not aggressive in coverage and rarely competes for the ball in contested catch situations - seems happier to break up the pass than make an interception
• Does not look confident in coverage and seems unsure leading him to become handsy and risk interference penalties
• Is not natural in coverage and struggles to display a inconsistent technique
• Looks too tight in coverage when attempting to cover the twitchier receivers. Has problems covering on intermediate and short routes
• NFL quarterbacks may take advantage of his aggressiveness in man and zone to eye up short routes and go over the top
• In his most recent playing season - he was a bit of liability in coverage demonstrated by a 114 QB rating when targeted
• Not fully consistent on making the interception in front of receivers. Best lined well off the line of scrimmage due to a high, stiff backpedal.
• Can be slow to react in coverage although has been masked by his catch up speed

SCOUTING REPORT: SUMMARY

Tycen Anderson is an elite athlete with perfect size, length, and speed for the position combined with strong tackling skills makes him seem on the surface like a quality prospect. However, Anderson really struggles in coverage, is very raw, and really needs to develop his skills if he ultimately wants a starting spot at the pro level. Currently, his skillset limits his NFL role to a short area box safety and we doubt he could hold up as a three-down player.

Anderson may be over-drafted due to his elite measurables by a team hoping to develop his raw talent into something a little more polished, but we can see his value as no higher than the fifth/sixth round of the 2022 NFL Draft.

[Critty]

Critty, I already posted that the consensus big boards that I have looked at are primarily NFL Mock Draft Database, but also The Athletic's consensus big board. NFL Mock Draft database discloses the number of big boards considered (102).

I have never discussed any big board that I personally have. You have 100% misunderstood my posts in this thread if you think that. My discussion has been about good and bad draft strategy, which applies regardless of the players involved.

I have stated that it is a bad idea to reach against the consensus big board when there is a large difference in ranking between the GM's big board and the consensus big board.

I have defined the word "reach" to mean taking a player significantly earlier than his consensus ranking. Whenever and wherever I have used that term, that is what I am saying. Again, I have been incredibly clear on this point.

I get that when Mike Mayock chose Alex Leatherwood with the #17 overall pick, that pick was not inconsistent with how Mayock ranked Leatherwood on his board just as the selection of Woods on the Stalesco board when he was selected was not inconsistent with how that board ranked him. I have never suggested any such inconsistency. The problem is that most other folks knew/know that those picks were reaches and they know that because of the consensus weight of publicly available assessments of the matter.

So, in an effort to be even a little bit objective and not a complete homer, I apply the same standard when considering whether a disgusting Raider player is a reach as I do in assessing whether one of our draft selections is a reach. But the truly hilarious thing is that many people on this forum rightly laughed at the Leatherwood pick because he was a clear reach based upon the publicly available consensus, but because their hearts are involved as Chargers fans here, they simply cannot employ the exact same analysis that was applied to Leatherwood to players like Palmer, McKitty and now Woods.

And, as I have stated multiple times, the fact that all of those players were defined reaches does not mean that they cannot have a solid career in the NFL. Numerous people have failed to appreciate that in calling a player a defined reach, I am not saying that the player is somehow not good. The concepts are completely different from one another.

Instead, I am suggesting that we are hemorrhaging draft pick value when we reach. I already went through the exercise of showing what it cost us when we simply did not take Palmer in round 4 last year and McKitty in round 5 because some people on this forum appear to think that just because we got a decent player, picking the player when we picked the player was somehow justified, which the exercise demonstrated is absurd because when a team pisses away draft pick value, the team is not as good as it could have been.

The standard that you have raised of not being taken early on the NFL GM's own board would validate just about every pick ever and would render any true discussion of draft pick value meaningless. So that can't be what we are talking about when we say player X was a reach or was not a reach. And, of course, nobody on this forum attempted to throw Leatherwood/Mayock any such lifeline.

I have explained many times why I think reaching against consensus big boards is a bad idea for an actual GM in cases where there is a big discrepancy between the GM's board and the consensus big board. In cases of significant discrepancies, a consensus big board is likely to be correct more often than any one individual's big board. So, the obviously better approach is to try to steal value (from the perspective of the GM) by taking the player in the consensus range.

Regarding Jones, players fall in every draft and those are the players that a GM should target. That's where a GM gains value versus other teams with a draft pick. That's why, when we were in a position potentially to get Travis Jones, we needed to get aggressive and trade up for him, assuming Telesco was clever enough to know what half of us knew on this forum at the time--that BAL would take Jones if given a chance because BAL knows what they are doing when it comes to drafts.

In the case of Keenan Allen, Telesco stated that he had Fluker, Te'o and Allen all rated as first round players. Allen fell because every time Telesco had a pick in the first two rounds, there was a first round rated player that covered Allen that he chose over Allen. That too is how a player like Travis Jones can fall.

The frustration is that in the case of Jones is that he was consensus ranked at #44 overall. We had a real chance to get him at #75 and he plays a PON for us, which is why we took the much lesser player (consensus rank of #187) in Ogbonnia later, citing his size as a major factor, size that, of course, is virtually identical to Jones' size (same height, Jones is 1 pound heavier). And then, after missing a chance to gain value, we threw away value by selecting Woods, the #137 ranked player, a player "only" ranked 93 slots lower than Jones.

There is no reason to believe that because a website processes 100 mock boards that spit out #137 for Woods, it should be considered best board to use for Chargers and Staley in drafting prospect to upgrade their roster. Or be used to gauge whether they should pick a player they really like and rated higher on their board or wait a round expecting the draft to play out per the supposed consensus board. They are drafting a person to compete for a role in their offense. And they have their own board.

You made your point about why you have these opinions and why you call it a reach. But that doesn't make it one for LAC.

The fact is JT was not a reach for B.Staley. if you paid attention to the facts, Staley specifically said he did not want to reach for a player when they drafted Johnson-OG in Rd1. So why would he then reach on the very next pick he has. He also told JT right after drafting him how he was an awesome fit. Woods was simply rated higher for them. Jeremiah ranked him #67.