Trade Up To 1st Round

[Jorgecasas10]

At first when i saw the chargers on the clock at 23 i was really mad worried that they gave up alot to trade up but when i saw it was just a 3rd rounder i was really happy and they really needed a true leader three down linebacker so it was worth it

[Boltjolt]

I’m pretty sure there is no best way. Trade up and have one less pick, trade down and have one more. What matters most is who you pick. I remember year after year Cleveland traded down and collected a huge stockpile of lousy players and were back in that same position the next year to trade down again and stockpile even more lousy players. Bad GMs making bad choices, doesn’t matter how many choices they get. NE has traded up many times and traded down many times over the years.

your strategy could be good, maybe not. The problem I see in it is we come out of the draft without a franchise QB. Its a QB league so thats a problem.

If Murray turns out to be what I think he will be - at a spot that has ached on the roster for a long time - its a great move imo.

Agree. Chaincrusher is just arguing they didnt do it his way is all. Thats not always the best way. If you look at HOF'ers, most of them are from the first round and after the first round the list gets significantly smaller.
Its just a gauge to go by and im sure it would hold true for probowlers as well. However, ...making a probowl means a lot les these days as players back out and guys like Trubrisky make it who have no business being there.

[Formula 21]

I'd love to be wrong about the trade. If Murray is Ray Lewis, or Mike Singletary, then he's certainly worth a 2nd and 3rd round pick. It's just that this was a deep draft, and I think we might have had a couple of good players, rather than one really good one?

And that’s the whole quandary. Murray looks really good. The two guys we passed on could be really good at their spots too. We’ve needed a great LB for years. But we've needed better OL for years too. There’s just no right answer.

[Guest]

I disagree, example:
In 2011; I remember I and a lot of people here were very high on JJ Watt we needed 3-4 DE and we did draft that position we just did not trade up.
JJ Watt was selected #11
we selected Corey Liuget at #18

I would have given a 2nd (Marcus Gilchrist) and a 3rd (Vincent Brown) + Liuget for JJ

Your example shows nothing other than A.J. Smith missing with his picks. Your issue disappears when we look at what we could have done versus what A.J. Smith actually did.

With a trade back to #24 from #18, we could have pocketed pick #88 and NO's 5th from 2012 and ended up with the following.

Cameron Jordan (5x Pro Bowl DE)
Justin Houston (4x Pro Bowl DE)
K.J. Wright (Pro Bowl LB)
Richard Sherman (5x Pro Bowl CB)
Greg Zuerlein (Pro Bowl K, 2012 draft)

That haul very much trumps J.J. Watt by himself. Again, it is virtually always possible to do better by trading back and adding picks. By adding extra picks, you also minimize the impact of any one draft pick miss. I will take 5 draft picks with at least one in the same round as a single draft pick every time. Trading back is clearly better because the trade chart overvalues higher draft picks. If you are trading back and are getting chart value, you should be able to do better in the vast majority of cases involving early draft picks.

[like54ninjas]

Your example shows nothing other than A.J. Smith missing with his picks. Your issue disappears when we look at what we could have done versus what A.J. Smith actually did.

With a trade back to #24 from #18, we could have pocketed pick #88 and NO's 5th from 2012 and ended up with the following.

Cameron Jordan (5x Pro Bowl DE)
Justin Houston (4x Pro Bowl DE)
K.J. Wright (Pro Bowl LB)
Richard Sherman (5x Pro Bowl CB)
Greg Zuerlein (Pro Bowl K, 2012 draft)

That haul very much trumps J.J. Watt by himself. Again, it is virtually always possible to do better by trading back and adding picks. By adding extra picks, you also minimize the impact of any one draft pick miss. I will take 5 draft picks with at least one in the same round as a single draft pick every time. Trading back is clearly better because the trade chart overvalues higher draft picks. If you are trading back and are getting chart value, you should be able to do better in the vast majority of cases involving early draft picks.

Hindsight drafts are always amazing.
Unless people post their OWN big boards prior to the draft, they are completely full of shit with their hindsight prognostications.

[Boltjolt]

Your example shows nothing other than A.J. Smith missing with his picks. Your issue disappears when we look at what we could have done versus what A.J. Smith actually did.

With a trade back to #24 from #18, we could have pocketed pick #88 and NO's 5th from 2012 and ended up with the following.

Cameron Jordan (5x Pro Bowl DE)
Justin Houston (4x Pro Bowl DE)
K.J. Wright (Pro Bowl LB)
Richard Sherman (5x Pro Bowl CB)
Greg Zuerlein (Pro Bowl K, 2012 draft)

That haul very much trumps J.J. Watt by himself. Again, it is virtually always possible to do better by trading back and adding picks. By adding extra picks, you also minimize the impact of any one draft pick miss. I will take 5 draft picks with at least one in the same round as a single draft pick every time. Trading back is clearly better because the trade chart overvalues higher draft picks. If you are trading back and are getting chart value, you should be able to do better in the vast majority of cases involving early draft picks.

Again, easy to say after the fact and we seehow the players actually faired in their careers.

Cam Jordan and Justin Houston i liked. I clamored for Houston in the first round a lot in that draft and he was a steal,in the 3rd. Not sure if the weed implications had anything to do with that or not.

However......you seem to pipe off about our drafts ,...even today but i dont see who you liked back then. Till you start showing what players you liked before drafts, citing the above is worthless to me. Anybody can show that after the fact and takes no balls to do so. The only player ive seen you bang the drum for is Trevor Lawrence.

I mean WTF....Murray hasnt played a down for us and your saying TT screwed up? lol .What 3rd rounder besides Keenan Allen has been worth a shit for us the last 10 years?

[Heatmiser]

Very happy with Murray. Fills a position of need. Outstanding player. Outstanding leader and person. Played in a big time program. Was a value when he was picked. I think a lot of the reporting that the “Chargers gave up a lot” is because this trade was with Belichek. And everyone just assumes that a genius handles everyone, everytime. This was a great trade and the best move for the Chargers.

What does kill me is trading picks to move up 3-4 spots to take players that would have been there anyway. Like Ryan Mathews.

TG

[Guest]

Again, easy to say after the fact and we seehow the players actually faired in their careers.

Cam Jordan and Justin Houston i liked. I clamored for Houston in the first round a lot in that draft and he was a steal,in the 3rd. Not sure if the weed implications had anything to do with that or not.

However......you seem to pipe off about our drafts ,...even today but i dont see who you liked back then. Till you start showing what players you liked before drafts, citing the above is worthless to me. Anybody can show that after the fact and takes no balls to do so. The only player ive seen you bang the drum for is Trevor Lawrence.

I mean WTF....Murray hasnt played a down for us and your saying TT screwed up? lol .What 3rd rounder besides Keenan Allen has been worth a shit for us the last 10 years?

I 100% agree that it is easy to see things after the fact. That was one of the points of the post that you quoted. The poster to whom I responded cherry picked some bad draft picks from A.J. Smith to justify a hypothetical trade up for J.J. Watt. The other poster to whom I responded did the same thing but got the trade values from the chart wrong so it was a crazy trade that nobody would do.

Neither approach is valid in terms of being realistic, but if you are going to use that hindsight approach, then I can kick the crap out of it virtually every time by trading back instead of trading up. I clearly showed that in both the Bosa example and the Watt example.

I get that you will want to assert that it is all hindsight and that I never would have known that certain players would outperform their draft slot. Neither would those cherry picking trade ups that would have worked because bad picks were made in the draft slots to be traded away.

There is a significant miss/partial miss rate with picks at every stage of the draft, so if you want to push the point about hindsight, my response is that more picks are better in the absence of hindsight because that helps to offset draft pick misses/partial misses whereas trade ups accentuate their impact (see Te'o, Manti; Attaochu, Jeremiah; and Gordon, Melvin).

I like Murray as a player. He represents solid value at 1--23. But from a strategy standpoint, it would have been better trade out of 1--6 down to where we could have selected Murray instead of reaching for Herbert (wasting draft capital) and trading up for Murray (wasting more draft capital due to the trade chart being skewed).

One poster commented that stockpiling draft picks did not work for Cleveland. That proves nothing other than that the Browns were inept drafters who wasted their draft capital. The same GM will always be better with more picks versus fewer picks in cases of small range trade backs.

Telesco's inability to draft effectively in the third round does not justify the trade up. There have been good players available even if Telesco was incapable of finding them. That is what matters. Frankly, if a GM struggles to draft well, that justifies trading back even more so in order to allow the GM to have a greater number of attempts to get it right.

Lastly, I am saying Telesco used bad draft strategy regadless of how well Murray does. If Telesco were to throw darts at a draft board, he just might pick the perfect player, but I would not recommend that as a draft strategy either. So, yes, without Murray even playing a down, I am saying Telesco screwed up in terms of the stategy employed. Even if the pick works, the strategy was, is and always will be bad.

This is not a case in which we got no value. We clearly did with Herbert and Murray, but it is a case where we did not get as much value as we should have had with picks 6, 37 and 71.

[rikardo]

Your example shows nothing other than A.J. Smith missing with his picks. Your issue disappears when we look at what we could have done versus what A.J. Smith actually did.

I was just explaining the difference between, drafting quality vs quantity.

This year the Chargers think they drafted the best LB that fits there scheme, and they dont seem to care about who they would have drafted in the 3rd round for it.

I will always like it when the Chargers take the risk of drafting a superstar (what TT and AL think they have in Murray) vs 2 average even if they turn out to be starters players

[Formula 21]

Trying to put some numbers to this problem. Perhaps a stats guy can do this a lot better

In 2013, in 1st round, 12 out 32 players made a pro bowl team. In second round and 3rd rounds combined it was 13 out of 64.
In 2014 it was 17/32 and 7/64
In 2015 it was 10/32 and 7/64
In 2016 it was 11/32 and 7/64
In 2017 it was 10/32 and 8/64

For an average, I'd say 11/32 = 34% chance of getting a pro bowler in 1st round picking one player.
And 8/64 = 13% chance of getting a pro bowler in 2nd and 3rd rounds combined picking 2 players. Or 7% chance of getting a pro bowler picking 1 player in either round.

It appears it is it heavily skewed towards picking a player in the first if you want quality over quantity.

But do you win with more better players or less weak players? Especially when you throw in a salary cap and the better players getting more than twice the money that the good players get.

[rikardo]

Trying to put some numbers to this problem. Perhaps a stats guy can do this a lot better

For an average, I'd say 11/32 = 34% chance of getting a pro bowler in 1st round picking one player.
And 8/64 = 13% chance of getting a pro bowler in 2nd and 3rd rounds combined picking 2 players. Or 7% chance of getting a pro bowler picking 1 player in either round.

It appears it is it heavily skewed towards picking a player in the first if you want quality over quantity.

But do you win with more better players or less weak players? Especially when you throw in a salary cap and the better players getting more than twice the money that the good players get.

Great post F21
This year we had 2 first round picks.
In other words getting 2 oportunities to get a Pro Bowler, from the 34% bucket. I like that.

We only traded 1 additional player to draft Murray (a 3rd round pick)

[chargeroo]

If Murray is as good as I think he is giving up a third for him is dirt cheap! Time will tell!