Battle Red Blog
It’s actually three grades and not one
I made fun of people who do this and here I am doing it. I am grading the Houston Texans draft less than 48 hours after it was completed. I point this out because we must acknowledge the silliness of it all. At the end of the day, this is simply a way to get clicks in our business and this is no different. Maybe I could throw in some Shedeur Sanders commentary just to get a spike for the site.
However, I do promise to do things a little more thoughtfully than most. As the teaser indicates, the problem with draft grades is that there are really three grades we have to consider. The first is obviously the most important and the one we know the least about. How good are the football players that you brought in? We obviously won’t know for sure until two or three years down the road.
The second grade involves the needs that your team came into the draft with and whether those needs were addressed. This is also a perception issue. Executives, coaches, scouts, and pundits view needs differently because they view players differently. Nick Caserio and DeMeco Ryans obviously feel differently about certain players than we do. So, like any other grade, this grade is subjective, but it is separate from the quality of the players.
The final grade is how a team utilizes their assets. Teams move up and teams move down. Did the Texans win those trades? A large part of that discussion is not only the point value from the draft value chart, but also whether the team missed out excessively on players when they moved down or picked a player others were going to pick if they moved up. So, let’s tackle these one by one.
Again, I’d be nuts if I said I could answer this definitively. There are all kinds of scouting services that have varying track records of success. My stated goal coming into this draft was to get three eventual starters or heavy rotational players. For instance, last year’s draft produced Calen Bullock, Kamari Lassiter, and Blake Fisher. All three look like eventual starters. Cade Stover might or might not end up being a heavy rotation player depending on his development from year one to year two.
A similar impact from this draft would be welcome. We must remember that we can see some of this in their rookie year, but a lot of these grades say “eventual” before everything. For instance, Nico Collins played a lot in his first two years (when healthy) but was not an impact player until year three. Some of that was due to being on a bad football team and some of that might have been issues with the depth chart.
I personally think both wide receivers taken will be eventual starters or heavy rotation players. I think Jaylen Noel is waiting...
