Rob Rang 1st-Round Mock

[dalemurphy]

Originally Posted by papabear

A top fifteen pick only guarantees that you will spend more money. It's easy to fall in love with the "top guys" in the draft, but the chances of getting a good player are pretty close to the same at 25 as they are at 15. The whole draft is a crap shoot and the more chances you have the better your odds of finding quality players. If you can can get a decent return for trading down then you should almost always do it. There's always a chance that you miss out on one of the rare great players, but no one has proved reliable at predicting who those will be so you still have a chance at getting that player later and paying him less.

I'm also not talking about taking a seventh round pick to move back 15 spots either. I'm talking about moving back by swapping first rounders and picking up an extra 3 or fourth round pick...where you still have a pretty good shot at finding quality players (Slaton, Daniels, Winston).

15 is usually a good spot for a trade down because there are still guys there that teams have targeted but the cost for them is no longer punitive. And, you're right, trading down 8-10 spots would easily net us 2 extra midround picks. That's why I've advocated the idea of trading down and picking up someone like Jonathan Wells in the first. If we did that, we'd still have 5 picks between rounds 2-4 to use for our need areas. We could get a couple of edge rushers, a pretty good interior lineman, a good prospect at safety, and a pretty gifted LB all before the 5th round. Meanwhile, we would have our "thunder" at RB to go with Slaton.

Anyway, it's just a thought but I do love the trade down possibility.