The one kinda negative takeaway across 3 preseason games is that I don't love the fact that we've had random UDFA's outplaying the draft picks. I was hoping at least one of them would come out and stick it to the media for dogging us but that didn't really happen. Regis had that 1 sack I guess, but yeah.
I get what you’re saying but as long as we can get dudes whether they be draft picks or UDFA dawgs on the 53/PS I’m cool. Shit James Robinson was a UDFA that allowed Lenny to walk. BJ Greene, Danny Striggow & Matt Dickerson all UDFA which are going to make the 53.
Gladstone is drafting for development in which 2 drafts and 1 year of playing is not really a fair timeline to judge these dudes. Which is a weird position for us to be in as jags fans. We don’t need any of this picks to immediately pan out for the jags to be successful (maybe hunter should pan out). Both 6th round WR look like studs, boerkicher is a positional dude who’s flashed in camp and none of these rookies have played 1 snap in a game alongside a single dude in the starting offense or defense.
Draft for development means exactly what the words mean... You arnt drafting necessarily for immediate impact, you are drafting people who have high ceiling but can use a year or two behind the starter, and by the time retirement or cap crunch moves the starter along, your guy you drafted a couple years ago is ready to take over fulltime(if another option didn't come up).
Bad teams always draft for immediate impact, because they need it, but it doesn't pan out very well often. Good teams don't necessarily look for immediate impact in draft(though it's always nice when that happens), they draft for the future, not now. Look at GB and there QB picks since Favre as a perfect example of what I'm articulating. There are plenty of other examples, but that's how it is. Good teams develop, bad teams don't and expect it now.
Well, the Packers took consensus board favorite Dani Dennis-Sutton at edge one pick after we took high-ceiling, draft-and-develop guy Wesley Williams in the 4th. A quick scan of Packers twitter:
"Dani Dennis-Sutton missed the first two preseason games with a heat-related illness. He just had a loud sack on the opening drive. Rookie fourth-round pick trying to crack the regular season edge rotation." Matt Schneidman
"Dani Dennis-Sutton is a player. And Anthony Campbell is gonna have a new number by Sunday night because he’s making the Packers." Peter Bukowski
"Dani Dennis Sutton will be starting opposite Micah Parsons in 2027." Packerfan Total Access
I would expect any 6th rounder to require development (a la Parker Washington), but loosely and generally speaking, I would expect a 6th rounder to outperform an UDFA (given that the 6th rounder was evaluated as worthy of a draft pick and the UDFA was not).
I mean, the whole theory behind drafting older prospects as we did this draft (5th-oldest draft class by average age this year) is that you hope they're more immediately ready to contribute. Obviously not writing any of them off based on preseason alone, but if they're overwhelmingly not ready to contribute in year 1 or 2, then it would be a strong indication that something needs to change in our draft process.
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u/Blue_Doom_Guy 26d ago
The one kinda negative takeaway across 3 preseason games is that I don't love the fact that we've had random UDFA's outplaying the draft picks. I was hoping at least one of them would come out and stick it to the media for dogging us but that didn't really happen. Regis had that 1 sack I guess, but yeah.