Draft grades from PFF

brandon2348

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Any reason why a lot of mock drafts have us taking a center in 2nd-3rd round? I know EDS was lost but Tretter was a 4th round pick last year. His injury maybe makes it tough to grade his rookie year but McCarthy seems high on him still. Is this something that mock drat boards are over-exaggerating our need for a center or does TT need to invest such a high pick on one? I know there was talk of Barclay moving to center if needed as well. I would hate to see such a high pick used to add depth at center when there are many other pressing needs.
 
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Any reason why a lot of mock drafts have us taking a center in 2nd-3rd round? I know EDS was lost but Tretter was a 4th round pick last year. His injury maybe makes it tough to grade his rookie year but McCarthy seems high on him still. Is this something that mock drat boards are over-exaggerating our need for a center or does TT need to invest such a high pick on one? I know there was talk of Barclay moving to center if needed as well. I would hate to see such a high pick used to add depth at center when there are many other pressing needs.

I think the Packers should add another center during the draft, don´t want them to do that in the second or third round though. Barclay was terrible at center during last year´s camp, don´t want him to be the backup plan if Tretter doesn´t work out.
 

Sunshinepacker

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The top five guys are probably better than the bottom five, I'll give them that. There are an awful lot of guys in the middle though that are better than the guys they rank at the top, and the contracts that guys get prove it. Only the coaches on the team know what each player's assignments were on any given play, and other top football guys (coaches, GMs etc) can probably guess a lot of the time. Those guys do their rankings and pay guys accordingly. The guys at PFF just try to find some stats to keep etc and then rank them based on what they think they could/should have done on one play or another. The guys whose entire lives have led up to player evaluation and whose dream jobs as GMs come down to making the right decisions on player evaluations go in different directions that PFF, which gives me confidence that it's just some BS stats for fans to play with and for lousy/mediocre "journalists" on bleacher report and/or blogs to use to have player comparison discussions all the time.

I don't know, Peter King frequently cites their data and he's about as plugged-in and knowledgeable a media guy there is when it comes to football. You don't think some team would tell him how terrible PFF really is? They mention that NFL teams use their grades as a check against their internal self-evaluation (and I'm inclined to believe them since that's a point they use to sell their product and if they're lying they'd be guilty of false advertising and basically go out of business due to refunds and penalties).


I've also never really understood the whole 'assignment' argument when it comes to grading. Sure, there might be an occasional off-the-wall assignment in a subpackage, exotic play call, but for the most part a guy that watches EVERY play for the player can get a pretty good idea of what it is the coaches want the guy to do. It's not like the defensive coaches have Sam Shields do twenty different things when an offense goes to three wide receivers. Based on his technique and the actions of others on defense, you can get a pretty good idea of what he was supposed to do. Same holds true for other positions.
 

Einstein McFly

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I don't really see how we'd be better off with McClellan. All he's done on the field is get abused game after game. Just because he's a better fit as a LB than a DE doesn't mean he isn't still an awful football player. We've at least gotten solid play out of Perry at times. I certainly wouldn't make that trade.
If you asked CM3 to play 4-3 DE, he wouldn't look like the same player because that doesn't suit his skills. See the Aaron Kampman experiment, for example. McCllellan has been horrible in Chicago because he's too small to set an edge and gets run at all the time. It doesn't help that last year the whole line was a mess and it was always second and short or third and short and he couldn't rush the passer. Peppers had the same problem last year.
 

Einstein McFly

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Any reason why a lot of mock drafts have us taking a center in 2nd-3rd round? I know EDS was lost but Tretter was a 4th round pick last year. His injury maybe makes it tough to grade his rookie year but McCarthy seems high on him still. Is this something that mock drat boards are over-exaggerating our need for a center or does TT need to invest such a high pick on one? I know there was talk of Barclay moving to center if needed as well. I would hate to see such a high pick used to add depth at center when there are many other pressing needs.

You're 100% right IMO. What you're seeing is called "out of town dumb" in the sports world. This is what happens when guys who don't follow a team try to make definitive statements about them. All most mock drafters know is what they've read about in the off season: "Packers need a safety, Packers lost EDS, Finley's status is unknown" and they go based on that. A lot of them probably think EDS got ripped away from them as they tried desperately to keep him and don't realize how much Tretter worked out at center last year, so they assume we need to upgrade it now or there'll be no one to snap the ball on opening day. This is my 99% of mock drafts are fun but totally divorced from reality.
 
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A lot of them probably think EDS got ripped away from them as they tried desperately to keep him and don't realize how much Tretter worked out at center last year, so they assume we need to upgrade it now or there'll be no one to snap the ball on opening day.

Tretter took some snaps with the scout team during the last few weeks of the season, hardly what I would describe any meaningful reps. I think the Packers should bring in another center in the draft (thought not in the 2nd or 3rd round) to have at least a backup plan at the position.
 

Einstein McFly

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Tretter took some snaps with the scout team during the last few weeks of the season, hardly what I would describe any meaningful reps. I think the Packers should bring in another center in the draft (thought not in the 2nd or 3rd round) to have at least a backup plan at the position.
It doesn't matter if you or anyone else think that the work Tretter did last year was "meaningful". All that matters is what TT, MM and the oline coaches think. They evidently either wanted to move on from EDS or didn't care much if they lost him, so that means a lot more than what non-experts who didn't have access to the practices think. Also, The well developed pattern is of TT drafting college left tackles (the only olineman on the roster that wasn't a LT his senior year is Taylor and he wasn't drafted) and moving them around. They seem to think that in a passing league every lineman should have LT feet. I'd be surprised if after all that time developing EDS and with Tretter, Barclay and Taylor on the roster they'll go out and get a guy who played center in college to play right away, and if they're going to draft a guy for the future it won't be a college center. Again, that's just based on the way they've drafted olinemen in the past.
 

Carl

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You're 100% right IMO. What you're seeing is called "out of town dumb" in the sports world. This is what happens when guys who don't follow a team try to make definitive statements about them. All most mock drafters know is what they've read about in the off season: "Packers need a safety, Packers lost EDS, Finley's status is unknown" and they go based on that. A lot of them probably think EDS got ripped away from them as they tried desperately to keep him and don't realize how much Tretter worked out at center last year, so they assume we need to upgrade it now or there'll be no one to snap the ball on opening day. This is my 99% of mock drafts are fun but totally divorced from reality.

I just saw a Packers analysis saying they should think about taking a guard high in the draft. Some more "out of town dumb."
 
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It doesn't matter if you or anyone else think that the work Tretter did last year was "meaningful". All that matters is what TT, MM and the oline coaches think. They evidently either wanted to move on from EDS or didn't care much if they lost him, so that means a lot more than what non-experts who didn't have access to the practices think. Also, The well developed pattern is of TT drafting college left tackles (the only olineman on the roster that wasn't a LT his senior year is Taylor and he wasn't drafted) and moving them around. They seem to think that in a passing league every lineman should have LT feet. I'd be surprised if after all that time developing EDS and with Tretter, Barclay and Taylor on the roster they'll go out and get a guy who played center in college to play right away, and if they're going to draft a guy for the future it won't be a college center. Again, that's just based on the way they've drafted olinemen in the past.

I don't think that even TT and MM can truly judge the potential of a player by only seeing him getting reps with the scout team.

I'm well aware of the fact that Thompson loves to draft LT, it would be nice to get a true center though for once.
 

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