If we drafted like Ditka for the Saints...

I keep hearing Berry can teach Ed Reed a thing or two. I'll take that for 6/7 picks.

 

I think that depends, I'd be more than happy to trade some of our entire years picks for the likes of a Manning, Brees or a Jerry Rice type player. Drafts like 2003, 2004 and 2005 jump out. Obviously hindsight's 20/20, but still what were we thinking?

 

No doubt he should be good.......but I wouldn't bet the farm like Ditka did for any draft pick, especially a DB. Only position I would gamble like that would be for a sure thing QB, and there haven't been many of those recently.

 

When was the last time our entire draft has been impressive? We usually get 1-2 good players...IF WE ARE LUCKY. After that, it's bench stars and practice squad depth. I would gladly give up our draft and spare ourselves the roster space that would be filled with "potential" and take an obvious stud. Plus we wouldn't be wasting money on PS players so there's FA..

 

The way to build a contending team is still through the draft. There is no way one player except for maybe a QB like Manning would come close to being worth trading a whole draft. For one it is too risky. I don't doubt Berry will be good but did he transform the UT defense into a super powerhouse at the college level? No, because one player especially on defense can't single handily do that. Say Berry is as good as a healthy Ed Reed. Is he going to be able to rush the passer? Even if we assume Berry is a pro bowler it isn't worth it.

Of course the other argument would be if Berry isn't as good as projected or if he has injury issues like Bob Sanders. What then?

The whole idea of the draft is to re-stock your roster and hopefully get a few really good players. IMO the odds are far better going with the picks we have and trying to make the best of them. Where we pick in the 1st round we could get another player who ends up being darn good along with a couple of other players that end up becoming starters. Heck, we could use our 1st rounder on Earl Thomas and still get a real good CB/S to help our defense and still have the rest of our picks. For all we know Thomas might end up as good or healthier than Berry. Since the draft is a crap shoot anyway IMO we are better making all our picks and building a well rounded team that can compete. Having an all-pro guy like Berry (again an assumption) but not having decent players at other positions makes no sense. We have too many needs to even consider that kind of move.

 

You basically described the Washington Redskins.

 

Peyton may never had a chance to become such a great QB if he were drafted in todays NFL. Remember, Peyton sucked his first year in the league and nowadays, if you have one bad year (unless you are marvin lewis) you get canned... Then peyton manning would have had to start over with new coach and new system and we would have had to give him a few years to adapt... if he was even the starter at that point...

(i.e. If Peyton Manning was a rookie in todays NFL as opposed to 1998, his career could have resembled Matt Leinart or Alex Smith)

 

Let's say hypothetically we could get the 2nd pick for our whole draft save the supplemental picks which can't be traded. Personally i might do it if it were not for the money.

To draft berry with the 2nd pick would mean releasing or trading Hope. Releasing Hope creates $5.5M in cap space but a 2nd pick would cost us a $9M+ a year contract.

Chris Long for example has a 5 year $48M contract. I would rather spend that money on the free agent market or to sign Brown and Tulloch.

What makes more sense if we were going to draft a safety? Use the 16th pick on earl thomas and sign him to a $2M a year deal and keep all our other picks or draft Berry and sign him to a $9.5M a year deal and lose all our other picks?