The Official 2020 NFL Draft Thread

Discussion in 'Portland Trail Blazers' started by Hobbesarable, Feb 8, 2020.

  1. Hobbesarable

    Hobbesarable Cartoon Character

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    Haha. I doubt he will drop that far.

    However, we can wish!
     
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  2. Dom McBlazer

    Dom McBlazer Well-Known Member

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    Ravens defender to Packers again, huh??



    Wait......WAIT.....WAIT A MINUTE! Packers defender to Ravens? To my favorite two Packers fans on this thread........lolololololololol the irony.

     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2020
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  3. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    Everytime I read the name Jake ryan I think isnt this a show on Amazon with Jim from the office???? Heh
     
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  4. hoopsjock

    hoopsjock Well-Known Member

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    I know it doesn't really have many consequences anymore with the new CBA but it always amazes me that someone with their career and millions of dollars on the line while knowing the exact date of the combine for over a year can't stay off drugs long enough to pass his "job interview."
     
  5. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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  6. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    Lol thats great
     
  7. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    Did you notice when they cut to NY in the upper left hand corner of the screen it has the text "Patriots are recording" so damn funny
     
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  8. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    I didn’t but im going to watch again lol
     
  9. Hobbesarable

    Hobbesarable Cartoon Character

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    Lol

    I think of the movie Sixteen Candles when I hear the character's name Jake Ryan.
     
  10. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    Love washington has the nfl draft for dummies icon on his screen heh
     
  11. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    And their screen background is a pic of Cousins and RGIII. Really good stuff.
     
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  12. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    I missed that. Gonna go watch again.
     
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  13. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    Ha! Missed that before. Clever shit!
     
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  14. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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  15. Minstrel

    Minstrel Top Of The Pops Global Moderator

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    Hello darkness, my old friend
    After reading more and watching more on Burrow and Tagovailoa (including full games--quarantine gets boring), I'm still convinced that Tagovailoa is the superior talent, though not by a lot. With Burrow having significantly less health concern, he's a perfectly defensible choice as #1.

    Tagovailoa looks to me like Andrew Luck with not quite as strong an arm. It's plenty strong enough, but Luck had a stronger one. Everything else, the really important stuff, is the same--brilliant, quick processing and decision-making, fantastic accuracy to every level of the field, sharp and consistent footwork and mechanics, high level anticipation, compact release and sneaky good athleticism. Tagovailoa may not be straight-line fast, but he's extremely nimble in the pocket and elusive enough to make people miss in the open field. He won't make any 60-yard touchdown runs like Randall Cunningham, Michael Vick or Colin Kaepernick, but he'll easily rip off 10-15 yard runs for first downs when nothing's available and the defense loses contain. Which is enough to kill defenses when combined with his tremendous passing. More often, he'll simply avoid a sack and make a play with his arm.

    Joe Burrow reminds me of a poor man's Aaron Rodgers, oddly enough. "Poor man's" because he's not nearly as athletic as Rodgers, nor does he have nearly as big of an arm. But what he does have, which reminds me a ton of Rodgers, is the improvisational ability and the mentality of a gunslinger without the turnovers. Those two things are always what typified Rodgers to me. The confidence and ability to make difficult throws (i.e. what makes a "gunslinger" in my opinion) is not that uncommon--but usually those types of players commit a lot of turnovers in the process. In fact, if you want to compare Rodgers and Brett Favre, both were gunslingers, both were great at improvisation. But what separated Rodgers was that he did it without all the interceptions. I see the same thing from Burrow--he makes a ton of high degree of difficulty throws, but his gambles pay off more often than not, and when they don't, he doesn't end up putting the ball in harm's way. He knows how to attempt improbable throws in a way where either his receiver gets it, or no one does. And the consistency with which he puts these "spinning out of a sack, dodging another would-be-tackler and firing the ball 40 yards downfield while falling out of bounds" throws right on his receiver was what was so stunning about his 2019 season.

    If (and obviously it's a huge "if") Tagovailoa is healthy, I'd rather have him. He not only played at an exceptional level longer, he's as can't-miss (again, on talent, disregarding health) as any quarterback prospect I've seen, because he does everything so well technically and understands and processes the game at such a high level. But both prospects are outstanding.

    Where pundits (and NFL GMs, if reports are to be believed) lose me is when they start pushing Herbert or Love ahead of Tagovailoa. Even when you factor in injury risk, it's absurd to draft either of those two ahead of Tagovailoa. Herbert is your average first-round quarterback prospect--potentially quite good, but nothing that screams special--and Love is your average second-round lottery ticket who might be elevated into the first round by a desperate team. Even with the risk that Tagovailoa flames out because of injury, he still represents a much better chance at a superstar, franchise quarterback because he comes into the league as nearly a ready-made one. He just has to dodge the injury bullet. Herbert doesn't have superstar talent and Love is the kind of prospect where if you hit the 5% chance that everything clicks, you could have a star quarterback. If it goes the other way, you have an athlete who's a mediocre quarterback.
     
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  16. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    Any chance you watched games from Burrow's junior year or did you stick strictly to his senior year? By all accounts his jr year was bad and then he follows it up with the greatest season in CFB history. Is this a byproduct of supporting cast or did he just get better? Or a combo of both? It's just interesting to me that a guy like Love can have a great Jr year and take a step back his Sr year and his stock drops (understood). But the same logic doesn't at all apply to a guy like Burrow when I think it should even if it's to a lesser degree.
     
  17. Minstrel

    Minstrel Top Of The Pops Global Moderator

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    Hello darkness, my old friend
    I didn't watch full games from Burrow's junior year (those are hard to find, because no one cared about him back then), but I read up on it. There's no question that having a better supporting cast helps, but it seems to me that the biggest difference was Joe Brady, the former New Orleans Saints assistant, who became LSU's passing game coordinator in 2019. He helped implement a more modern spread offense that has really taken advantage of Burrow's strengths to make quick decisions, to read defenses on RPOs, and to leverage his quick release. The changes, it would seem, really unlocked Burrow's game and now, with such a level of comfort, he's able to show off his gifts for making plays out of nothing even though most of the time he's thriving within the system.

    I don't know if Burrow would be as good in any system but then, I don't know if Patrick Mahomes would be as good in any system. Andy Reid purposely put this system around Mahomes because it was ideal for Mahomes' talents. Bill Walsh put a system around Joe Montana that was ideal for his talents. If Cincinnati is smart, they'll design a spread offensive system tailored for Burrow. I'm not too concerned about whether Burrow will continue to succeed if he's allowed to play a style he clearly excels within.

    As for your point that struggles before a breakout should affect one's stock like struggles after a breakout, I think there are two things about that. Well, maybe three. One is that both from a human psychology standpoint and a "latest information is the most relevant" standpoint, when the breakout is the most recent thing, rather than the struggles, it carries more weight. You can conjecture "Maybe if Burrow had one more year to play in college, he'd regress from his breakout" but ultimately, their last year is the most up-to-date information we have. The second thing is how concerning was the final year regression or, on the flip side, how convincing was the final year breakout? This can't be determined entirely from the numbers, it's the scouty side of things. Some struggles might be explainable, or they may point to red flags. Some breakouts may look like flukes or they may look like the result of sound process. Depending on which way you go on that, you'll dock the player more or less. And finally, Burrow was having his stock docked by his work before 2019. The narrative around Burrow for a lot of his year was, "He's having a great year, but where did this come from? He may have played his way into the first round, or even the top-half of the first round, but buyer beware, as he's the greatest one-year wonder in history." It was only as he kept destroying the best teams in the nation that the evidence became too strong for that docking to drop his draft level from presumptive #1 pick, especially after Tua got hurt.
     
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  18. The Professional Fan

    The Professional Fan Big League Scrub

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    Welp.
     
  19. PtldPlatypus

    PtldPlatypus Let's go Baby Blazers! Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    Everything I've heard indicates that Herbert may well have the NFL's best arm outside of Kansas City. If you consider the talent and coaching at Oregon to have been detriments to his performance/development, there's a lot to be excited about.

    I still rank Tua ahead of him because I value demonstrated accuracy and decision-making, but Herbert's size and strength make him a pretty elite prospect.
     
  20. Minstrel

    Minstrel Top Of The Pops Global Moderator

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    Hello darkness, my old friend
    There's no question that he has a great arm, but his decision-making (both speed and quality) and accuracy seem merely solid, rather than exceptional. He neither has the crazy play-making of Burrow nor the remarkably polished game of Tua. A "typical first-round quarterback" still makes him an exceptional prospect overall, but nothing, to me, separates him from guys like Darnold, Rosen, Mayfield, etc. Obviously, that pool also includes guys like Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes, so that type of prospect can turn into a standout. I just can't find reason to push him into the class of Burrow and Tagovailoa, and I see lots of pundits, and reports of GMs, doing just that, often ahead of Tagovailoa.
     
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