THE PLAN: Take a step back, regroup - then attack

I’ve never really truly believed in the BPA concept. It’s hard to see the value when your sights are set on the upcoming season.
I wasn’t sold on this approach until I was writing a response in another post. Writing my response I realized the true value of building through the draft properly (assuming you have a great FO). Then I figured I thought I had enough to make my own fan post to debate the concept of the BPA. Writing this made me finally realize what it truly means. Football is a business, pure and simple. If you’re strength as a FO is drafting quality players, always drafting BPAs is the perfect way to always have something to trade with others, providing more picks in future years.

It’s hard to see the value of drafting another player at a position that we already have good players, because we tend to want to gravitate around what we don’t have. Unless we have a great player at a given position, draft BPA. Let the better player win the spot, the fact that two good-great players are competing against each other makes them both better and increases the trade value of the one you decide to trade the year after. If you are good at drafting and you always have extra picks, you will eventually be a very dominating franchise.

Unfortunately for Mr Wilson, this approach takes time. Fortunately for us fans, this approach is the best way to ensure a very solid foundation for future years to come.

When was the last time this team actually went with a full fledged rebuilding attempt?

experience at losing does not breed a winning environment.

I don’t think you understand what I was trying to say.

What is Best Player Available (bpa) anyway? I know what it means to me, do you?

The way I would run my draft is to have 2 board system.

Big Board: My first board would be a list of the best possible players regardless of position. We would rate each player based on his production, achievements, stats, athletic abilities, school conference strength/schedule, character, measurables. As a front office we’d agree on a weighing system for each category. This board would provide us with the absolute best athletes that we feel will have success at the next level.

Positional / Needs board: My next board would filter the athletes by needs & positions rankings but based on our system and environment.

Draft day: Our goal is to draft the best athletes and our big board is our primary guide. If the difference between our needs/positional board is within an acceptable difference, then we can draft for position or need. If the difference is too much, we draft the next BPA (within 1-3 slots) that best fits our positional needs.

The point I was trying to make above is that players are worth major $$ to our organization and if we have a surplus at a given position, we can trade it for more picks in future drafts. What I think I have finally realized is that the only way to really get better in the long term and more importantly to sustain that success and possibly even create dominance is to control the draft. And the only way to control the draft is to focus on BPAs and it will eventually pay off dividends big time, when you have the luxury of being able to deal big names for great draft picks without it really affecting your team. The Chargers trading Cromartie or Cardinals trading Boldin are perfect examples. Both teams can easily survive without those players and now have extra chances to win the lottery.

that didnt exactly turn out very well.

First of all, I never said it was crap, I said that I now accept that drafting BPA is the way to go.

Either method could be used with good probability of getting good picks

no not at all, consider this:
2006: we chose need, Donte Whitner at #8 when we could have chosen Haloti Ngata or Jay Cutler
2007: we chose Marshawn Lynch (because we were flushing McGahee) when we could have chosen Darelle Revis
2008: We chose McKelvin (because we let Nate Clements walk) when we could have had Ryan Clady

All I am saying is that we should take the best player on the board regardless of what we need unless it’s between a spot or two. It would payoff in the long term big time. I read somewhere that Modrak has said that he had Cutler & Ngata ahead of Whitner and I believe he wanted Cutler. How different would our team be today if we had taken Cutler, Revis & Clady instead of Whitner, Lynch & McKelvin? My point is simply that you cannot go wrong by choosing the best player available instead of reaching to fill a need.

Tim Tebow almost certainly won’t.

I am 100% opposed to this line of thinking. He’s got 2 knocks on him, throwing motion, which is well on its way to potentially being cleaned up, and reading defenses, just like every other college QB other than clausen. Plus Tebow has shown himself to be a voracious film student, so he’ll probably do fine in that regard too

other than that I agree, the BPA arguement is stupid… there is no FO in football that doesnt consider need at all, and there is no FO in football, barring the OBD perhaps, that doesnt consider huge talent discrepancies. Why argue a moot point?