adambr2

One problem these days is that people hear the WHO say something like, "there's no evidence that those who catch COVID-19 are immune from a second infection," and what half the population hears is, "I can get seriously ill from this virus, spend 2 weeks in the hospital, get better, test negative and get discharged on Wednesday and catch it again on Friday." That almost certainly isn't the case.

Normally even when I don't love a Packer draft, I d have a very "wait and see" attitude about it because I really don't think you can accurately evaluate a draft for 2 to 3 years. In this case I am having a really hard time even doing that because it's just really hard to see how we haven't committed ourselves to some pretty significant regression in 2020. There are people throwing out the scouting reports of guys like Derrick Henry and George Kittle to compare to draftees like AJ Dillon and Josiah DeGuara. I really don't think people fully have an appreciation for how rare players like Henry and Kittle are and how many "types" of those are drafted over a period of time that never really amount to much of anything. The best, best case scenario I can really think of in the short-term for this draft is that we get one average startable quality lineman out of the 3 in the 6th, Dillon is a rookie sensation and we have one of the most feared 1-2 punches at RB. That's absolute best-case scenario for 2020, though, and there's a lot of scenarios that fall short of that. Obviously, this draft will probably be remembered by what Love amounts to, and if he turns out to be a future star QB no one will really care about the rest of it and if he turns into DeShone Kizer it will likely cost Gute his career. I don't have a problem dreaming on Love but I think people have had their expectations for our QB developments blown out of proportion because of the successes of Favre and Rodgers. It just doesn't always work out that way. In fact, the odds are that it probably will not. We will see I suppose. It'll have to be revisted in a couple years, but yeah, right now it feels like Justin Harrell all rolled up into one draft.

Isn't our HOF QB one of the best out of the pocket and at play action? Maybe the tailoring is for Rodgers too. He's not 26-year old Rogers, he's 36-year old Rodgers that needs some assistance these days. I am hoping this change allows him to continue to take advantage of what he does do well. I don't think spread em out 4-wide is the way to go with him anymore. He will eventually get killed and we don't possess the ball long enough for our defense to do its thing. We will see I guess. Seems like a pretty big investment in your stat QB to be planning to transition him to more of a game manager role. I forget what the actual extension was but I thought it was around 33M a year in additional money. .

That steategy may have been outdated for some time, then again maybe things have shifted so far away from the run game that the pendulum is starting to swing back. More to be gained by being an early adopter if that's the case. Outscoring everyone with a mediocre defense has essentially been the formula here for the last 30 years, I'm fine with possibly trying something new. So why extend Rodgers to an untradeable contract if you weren't planning on tailoring the offense for his last few years to the things he does well? Doesn't make much sense. Or, why hire MLF if you were just going to let him install a completely new offense that is centered around the run game and not the HOF QB that you just extended for 30M+ a year? These are legitimate questions.

I just don't really understand why we're so insistent on gearing our offense toward a smashmouth type strategy that is frankly kind out of outdated and relies heavily on defense. Not many championships have been won on the back of this idea in this era and the ones that did almost always had an elite defense to complement it. Tennessee didn't have a wildly successful offense under MLF and didn't really find success until Henry broke out in '19. You could point to the '17 Rams but Goff really broke out that year and they also had some very good receivers, and used Gurley out of the backfield much more frequently. I'd rather build the Chiefs' offense and outscore everyone and not have to have an elite defense out of necessity to win a championship, frankly.

Gute: "We really like the group of receivers we have. We feel like we have some guys who are coming into our own. ... There's been some question of whether we're trying to transition into more of a running offense, I don't think that's it at all." Also Gute: "Matt really wants to tie everything to the run game and off the run game, and these guys will help us do that.” Wot

NFL.com only gave one team below a B for draft grades: Packers. By far the lowest at C+.

Minor rant -- can we please stop saying "Look what the 49ers did to us!" as rationalizing that building a run first team is the way to go? This is still a passing era and passing league. It's not like the 49ers have just been neglecting their passing attack like we have the last couple drafts. (2017!!) was the last year that the 49ers did NOT take a receiver in the 2nd round or earlier. The last time we DID? 2014. They traded for Jimmy G, they traded for Emmanuel Sanders. They have been making huge investments in trying to build a passing attack. They ran the ball down our throats in the NFC championship game because they knew we couldn't stop them, and they were right. Not because of some sort of longstanding strategy they've had to just focus on running the ball.

[attachment=0]FB_IMG_1587859787420.jpg[/attachment]

Don’t forget about this guy! We are set at that position. Is Ryan Grant still with us? I completely forgot we signed him last year. I'm not sure anyone ever even knew.

Us 2 days ago: "Funchess isn't going to be our only addition, relax. This is the deepest WR class ever. That's why we didn't go big in free agency for one." Us today: "Who needs WRs anyway. Look at the 49er offense."

Why would that part be in blue? Maybe not 2 years. But either Aaron Rodgers or our first round pick is not seeing the Packers' roster in 2023. I don't think there's much doubt about that.

I think they want to mirror what San Fran does and have 3 backs that could carry the load. Ride the hot hand. Lafleur said as much at one of his press conferences this offseason. Its going to be a multi year process if that's the end goal. San Francisco is just so far superior athletically to where we are, particularly on the defensive line where we have one great player in Kenny Clark and then a rotation of warm bodies. They could use their running backs interchangeably because their offensive line was so dominant in run blocking. It's great that they have a long-term vision (whether or not I agree with that vision), but it may be awhile before they really have the personnel to make it work.

I kinda get the feeling people are eventually going to really like the Dillon pick the best. He's the type of runner that can piled up yards. Not the type that will have a very long career, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was an All-Pro level RB for a few seasons. I'm hoping we're eventually going to really like the Love pick the most. If not, I'm not sure any of the rest of it will matter much, to tell you the truth. So much on the line with that one.

I can't imagine OJ Howard will be back in Tampa. Maybe we're going to swing something for him for Jamaal Williams and a 2021 4th. That would reconcile the Dillon pick and lack of a receiver taken much better.

Runyan's fine. Good pick. I just wish my favorite pick so far wasn't a guard in the 6th round.

I can't believe with as big of a need as WR was for us (and now still is), we managed to let the first 5 rounds of the most WR talent rich draft in history pass us by without getting one. IMHO, if ESB and MVS were holdovers from the Thompson regime and not Gute's first draft, we would have drafted replacements for at least one of them.

I think my prejudice against Dillon is that he reminds me so much of Alex Green. I can't think of a single running back that we've drafted in the last 30 years before day 3 that has panned out even remotely well save for Eddie Lacy.

There is, but I also feel like I've been saying that when our pick comes up in every round so far only to end up saying, "Who?"

I would like to see retrospective studies done that look at immediate draft grades, and reevaluate and regrade them 5 years later, and see how much correlation there is between immediate draft grades and how they are perceived years later. Is this commonly done?

There's a difference between a 'contributor' like Ripkowski and an all-pro level player, regardless of position. Scott was basically the MVP of the first Bears game last year. Regardless, the point is that I challenge the narrative of people 'convincing themselves' about the 2018 draft. Alexander wasn't on many radars, and he's been great. Everyone was excited about Jackson, because he was a percieved mid-first rounder that fell to our 2nd. The rest? Who convinced themselves anything other than the typical hopeful potential of the 3rd-day guys? Now if he had said the 2015 or 2017 drafts? You bet. But that's again a different regime. I don't know what Scott being the MVP of one single game has to do with convincing anyone that he was a solid use of a draft pick. I still dont believe you can use a typical special teams player as a real success story of a draft unless that player ends up being Justin Tucker. Scott hasn't really had enough cumulative success or failure to define him either way. I agree with your point on Josh Jackson. I thought he was a great pick and I was iffy on Jaire. But for the most part I liked our 2018 draft. It's true that sometimes draft grades don't pan out as they are originally perceived. My point has been more that Gute doesnt really have the established track record of draft success to where you can point to it in response to the many experts right now that are asking, "What in the world is he doing?!" Thompson had pretty much earned that benefit of the doubt after 5 years or so, even if most of it was because of Rodgers. Gute hasn't really earned that yet. And his career as a GM at this point honestly probably hinges on the career of Jordan Love.

Scott was 2nd team All-Pro. Ok, but..it's a punter. One that was not very good in 2019. I'm not saying Scott is a bust and won't have a bounceback 2020, but those special teams guys are graded on a little bit different scale than most contributors. To draft any of these guys on day 3...well, you're pretty much expecting to get an immediate starter and contributor. To hang your hat on any of those guys as a great draft pick is a little bit of a reach IMO, is all I'm saying. It's like giving Ted Thompson a big win for drafting Aaron Ripkowski in the 6th round because he was a contributor for several years. It's a fullback. To me, if you have to point to these guys to highlight a draft, it wasn't a great draft.

Who were people 'talking themselves into,' exactly? Josh Jackson, who had been mocked to teams in the mid-first (including the Packers' first round pick)? Maybe Orin Burks? After that, you have a bunch of mid to late-round picks, many of which have shown some promise in some ways, and the others are the typical fliers that sometimes work and often don't. I don't know what the heck happened with Scott midway through last year, but they got two all-pro level players from that draft, and I'm convinced that one of Madison, MVS, or St. Brown will end up being the 3rd 'significant contributor' that you need to call a draft successful. Jaire Alexander was the only great pick from that draft (so far). I don't know who the second all-pro level player that they got from that draft that you're referring to.

Did you not see what happened last season? The Ravens set the NFL record for rushing yards and the 49'ers...who were up 10 late in the 4th against the Chiefs threw the ball about 9 times against us. Now if you want to ignore the Ravens because Jackson is an outlier, fine, but we're literally building the same type of offense as the 49'ers. And people are upset because we got an athletic move TE and a big back? Aaron Jones is a really nice back. I wouldn't count on him being healthy for all 16 games again and even if he is, we JUST saw the best team in the NFC dominate us by having multiple RB's available to them and using them in multiple different roles. Can we also have the dominant lines on both sides that the 49ers have, with numerous early round investments? Because that's the only way we're riding that formula to the Super Bowl. It's not impossible in this era to build a run first Super Bowl winner, but almost all those successes have a dominant defense to complement it that we don't have. And let's not pretend the 49ers have been actively and purposefully building a run first team. They have been investing numerous high picks in receivers in recent years, traded for Garrapolo, traded for Emmanuel Sanders ....they are very actively trying to build a strong passing attack. They ran all over us in the NFC championship because it fit their strength and our weakness, nothing more. It's not like they've just gone philosophically run heavy. Also, the Packers' offensive line has been built around protecting Aaron Rodgers. They're built for pass blocking. They're not terrible at run blocking, but it isn't built to dominate in opening up the running lanes that the 49ers line does. We also already have the Aaron Jones complementary back that you're describing already on our roster, it didn't require an additional investment of a 2nd round pick. The 49ers plugged in two UDFAs in those running back roles and had success because their offensive line is that good in run blocking. I don't know how burning a 2nd round pick on Dillon compares to their situation. And to mention George Kittle with LaGuara.....I'll just say George Kittle is an exception, and LaGuara isn't the athletic freak that Kittle is. The chances of Josiah LaGuara turning out to be half the player that George Kittle is are so minuscule I don't even know how it's worth mentioning. He has a much, much greater chance of being Richard Rodgers. The fact that I've seen Derrick Henry and George Kittle's names thrown around in comparison to Dillon and LaGuara to me indicates we are really really reaching hard to love this draft. It's ok to hate it, I get that we have to wait and see. Maybe I'm wrong. But Gute hasn't inspired a ton of confidence in early returns so far from '18 and '19 drafts, either, so I understand the lack of faith.

I'm trying to find the upside in this. I just don't see it. Unless I actually end up being right about Rodgers traded eventually, the fact that he said he wants to play until his 40s makes it unlikely that Love sees the field before his 4th year. So there will be rookie contract value with Love. It's quite possible the whole thing becomes a distraction and Love is traded anyway. We didn't address either O-line nor receiver before Day 3. We're already worse on the line without Bulaga and we didn't adequately replace him. We spent how many months talking about needing to add targets for Rodgers and he will have the same guys to throw to in 2020. We managed to somehow ignore every single major need on offense. What is the upside with Dillon? Maybe, if we're lucky, he becomes as good as Aaron Jones and replaces his production? That's unlikely, and that doesn't make us any better on offense than we are now. DeGuara is nothing. He's an H back. This isn't a Rob Gronkowski upside pick. We took an H back and special teams TE in the 3rd round. Sorry, I really do want to like this, but I have to look at this impartially. Where is the intrigue and upside? It's Love, and that's about it. The only way this draft isn't a disaster is if Love turns out to be a Pro Bowl QB, and even if that happens, it won't be for years.