“You have a choice. You can have the boat or… the mystery box.”
“What are you crazy? We’ll take the boat.”
“Not so fast Lois – a boat’s a boat but the mystery box could be anything! It could even be a boat!”
The maniac obsession with hoarding draft picks has logical roots. The NFL Draft is a lottery and the more tickets you have, the greater chance you have of hitting the jackpot. In many ways, it is akin to Peter Griffin’s fixation on the contents of the mystery box; the allure of the unknown.
Perhaps this obsession stems from overconfidence on the part of talent evaluators in the league. General managers aren’t in the business of doubting their abilities to accurately evaluate talent. Scouting departments spend all year long traveling around the country to watch players, foregoing any semblance of a conventional, run-of-the-mill life by poring over thousands of hours of tape and conducting countless interviews in order to be as well-placed as possible to strike gold in the Draft.
A firm belief in the merits of their evaluation process naturally leads to a belief that a greater number of draft picks leads to a greater number of talented players being added to the roster. And in many scenarios, trading down to acquire additional picks is a sensible move. A team that has multiple glaring holes on its roster would be smart to convert a single selection into numerous picks in order to plug as many gaps as possible. Likewise, if there is no standout prospect sitting pretty atop the team’s draft board, a southbound move down the draft order makes a great deal of sense.
In the context of the current debate surrounding the Bengals and the first overall pick, none of the aforementioned acceptable trade-down scenarios are applicable. The Bengals have been presented with a key on a silver platter – it unlocks the door to an elite quarterback prospect that can alter the fortunes of the franchise for years to come. At surface level, three or four first-round picks from the Miami Dolphins may sound like an enticing haul that would bolster the roster with premier talent at multiple positions. However, such a projection involves making an incorrect assumption that each of these first-round picks translate into high-end NFL starters that prove to be worthy of a first-round selection.
A first-round pick generally sounds substantially more attractive than the name of the player ultimately selected with that first-round pick. When pondering whether Joe Burrow is worth sacrificing for multiple first-round selections, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Bengals could be punting away the best quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck in exchange for 2020/2021 equivalents of Jonah Williams, Billy Price, John Ross and William Jackson III. Or perhaps the haul is more akin to a combination of players that proceed to have NFL careers in line with those of Cedric Ogbuehi, Darqueze Dennard, Tyler Eifert and Kevin Zeitler. Suffice to say, the franchise quarterback wins out on both occasions.
Of course, all of this is premised on the belief that Burrow will pan out in the NFL. Down the line this article may prove to be evidence of a deranged belief that Burrow was a can’t-miss prospect with elite traits, preferable to a bevy of first-rounders offered by the Dolphins. However, my belief is that when a quarterback with the talent and resume of Burrow comes along, you politely field trade offers to fulfill due diligence requirements but don’t get cute – there is no adequate compensation for a franchise-changing quarterback.
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