Nice draft Tomlin

Yep. Technically, Mendy and Mundy are the only players left from that draft. #2 and #3 were Sweed and Davis and they contributed nothing.

 

the bad drafting is catching up.

Timmons is looking like he is the best draft pick they have had in the last 5 or 6 years. he has become a beast, but they havent had too many picks like him lately.

 

Couldn't be bothered, but I will say this, we rely on the draft perhaps more than any other team in the league. We generally dont' go after free agents, and the ones we do go after tend to be role players more than anything. When you rely on the draft as much as we do, it's important to hit on draft picks, especially high draft picks. Other teams that sign free agents can afford to miss more than we can.

Besides, I imagine you'd see a trend. Without doing any research, I bet you that the teams currently in the playoffs have hit on the draft picks in the last 3-5 years, whereas we have had too many misses.

 

It's easy to say that Decastro and Adams may be great one day, and I don't disagree with that, but other teams seem to throw their rookies out there right away and they play a huge part in the teams success. Look at NE with Chandler Jones, Hightower, Vereen, Ridley, McCourtey, etc. Those are guys who stepped in and played right away and contributed. Seattle has thrown in a lot of young players as well, especially on the defensive side, and there's no denying they have a very good defence. Indy had 5 rookies playing on the offensive side of the ball.

Then when I look at our team, we have Ziggy Hood, Heyward, Gilbert, etc. all still either riding the bench or being inconsistent/mediocre at best. Our rookies rarely step in and play, let alone play well. I just think if we're going to rely on the draft as much as we do, we need to hit on more draft picks then we're currently hitting on. A lot of this years playoff teams had rookies step in and contribute. We rarely have that, and considering we don't sign free agents, we need to be better than other teams when it comes to drafting. Simply saying our track record mirrors other teams isn't good enough, we need to be better, because we don't fill our needs with free agents like other teams do

 

Does that mean the team is missing on the draft, or that they aren't developing the picks as well because the vets are getting most of the snaps in practice and games? The team needs to find a way to blow out weaker teams in the first half, so that the starters can be rested in the 4th quarter.

 

I don't know if we're missing in the draft or just not developing them well enough. Could be both. We do seem to have systemic problems on the Oline and it doesn't seem to matter who we bring in, it doesn't get fixed. I'm not hopeful that Adams and Decastro will fix the problem either.