BPA or Need - what did TT do?

[Fritz]

I think it had a lot to do with scarcity. 330 pound guys who can move quickly and laterally are harder to find than athletic 6'2" wide receivers.

Hey, I said the same thing...in about a hundred paragraphs...

[bobblehead]

I don't think that NFL teams actually do arrange draft boards vertically like "this is the best player, this is the second best player, this is the third best player". I think they organize them horizontally.

That is, they rank all of the prospects by position: the best WRs, the best DTs, the best QBs, the best RBs, etc. Then you draw lines to demarcate tiers. So your top tier might have the top 2 QBs, the top RB, the top 3 DEs, the top 2 LBs, etc. Then you cross off guys as they become picked.

Then when it's time for you to make a pick, you look at all of the players left in the highest tier that still has players in it. All of those players are more or less ranked equally (they're in the same tier) and you just pick the one that you think will help the team the most.

This draft came to a point where TT was looking at the top NT and the top WR left in his elite tier. There's no point in trying to compare DTs to WRs when it comes "ranking prospects", just rank the WRs against each other and the DTs against each other, so Crabtree probably wasn't ranked above Raji and Raji probably wasn't ranked above Crabtree. It ultimately came down to Thompson breaking the tie (between at least two prospects) by the scales and by position.

Amazing...that is exactly how I organize my fantasy baseball big board

[RashanGary]

I agree with what Lurker said could have happened. I think they had them equal and went with the tougher to fill position and bigger need.

We've been saying all along we'd probably see more defense than offense because need was going to be the tie breaker. I think Raji is the best player in this draft, so I don't believe they had Crabtree rated higher at all.

[HarveyWallbangers]

multiple outlets hinted that Crabtree was the BPA on the Packers board; outlets more credible than our viewpoints.

Who other than McGinn? I just wonder how anybody would know this. I doubt Thompson would let it be known.

[HarveyWallbangers]

multiple outlets hinted that Crabtree was the BPA on the Packers board; outlets more credible than our viewpoints.

TT went Need with pick #9 and BPA on his board with pick 26.

TT probably had Raji graded out near Crab so he went the need route

But nobody will convince me he rated Raji higher than Crab; pure homerism IMO

With that being said, I've always been a win now guy so I'm kosher with need

Pure speculation.

[Bretsky]

multiple outlets hinted that Crabtree was the BPA on the Packers board; outlets more credible than our viewpoints.

Who other than McGinn? I just wonder how anybody would know this. I doubt Thompson would let it be known.

McGinn, Packer Plus, Dennis Krause and Wayne Larivee to name a few

[Bretsky]

multiple outlets hinted that Crabtree was the BPA on the Packers board; outlets more credible than our viewpoints.

TT went Need with pick #9 and BPA on his board with pick 26.

TT probably had Raji graded out near Crab so he went the need route

But nobody will convince me he rated Raji higher than Crab; pure homerism IMO

With that being said, I've always been a win now guy so I'm kosher with need

Pure speculation.

"fan"atic homerism is more speculation than sources who cover the Packers

[HarveyWallbangers]

"fan"atic homerism is more speculation than sources who cover the Packers

I don't buy that any of those guys saw the Packers board. If I had to guess, I'd bet both guys were near the top with little separating them. Thus, I don't buy the angle that Thompson bypassed his obvious best player available to draft need. I think need and BPA were pretty close on this one. I'm guessing that if Thompson really liked Crabtree a lot more, he would have taken him.

[Lurker64]

Thompson already confirmed that he doesn't arrange his board vertically with there being a "best player in the draft".

When asked: (In general terms, how does your board work? You talk about the best player available but do you also need to marry that with your needs?)

We have all the positions across a long wall, like this, and we always start with the receivers over here, and then it goes tight ends, tackles, guards, centers, quarterbacks, running backs, fullbacks, defensive ends, defensive tackles and so forth. You don't need me to go through the whole thing. And then we have, it would be horizontal, right? Horizontal lines going like this, and the very top horizontal line, anything above that would be first-round players, second-round players, third-round players, fourth-round players. And so the board is going to look like it does now, like there's guys at each position and there's a certain number of players in a lot of the rounds at those positions, and some rounds there may be a blank where there's no players in that particular round. And when you go through the draft, in a perfect world, if you've done your job properly, you sit there and you just let it come to you, and if it's your pick in the first round, you look up there and if you've got two guys, then you say OK there's the two guys we would take at this pick, which one do you want to take? Or if there are four guys, and then somebody calls and wants to move two spots up to your spot, then you think, well, you know - to answer this question about moving back - we've got four guys we'd like to have, we can trade back and we know we're going to get one of two. That's kind of the way it works.

So I doubt, for a second, that Thompson had a "best player in the draft" decided on his board, since his board isn't arranged like that. Crabtree was certainly the top player in the first column (that column being "wide receivers" as he said above), but that doesn't mean he was the best overall player on Thompson's board, just that he was the first player listed in the elite tier.

Source

[cheesner]

"fan"atic homerism is more speculation than sources who cover the Packers

I don't buy that any of those guys saw the Packers board. If I had to guess, I'd bet both guys were near the top with little separating them. Thus, I don't buy the angle that Thompson bypassed his obvious best player available to draft need. I think need and BPA were pretty close on this one. I'm guessing that if Thompson really liked Crabtree a lot more, he would have taken him.

I agree.

I think that Crabs is #1 or #2 on so many draft boards on the internet that people assume he must indeed be up there on the Packer board. But there are many instances that show the Packers board is not the same as everyone elses - like having Greg Jennings rated higher than Chad Jackson. This year we took TJ Lang and then Merideth 2 picks later, but most mocks had Jermon going before Lang further down the list.

From TTs quotes it sounded like they had some long discussions over which to draft, Raji or Crabtree. So it was close and maybe need was the tie breaker. It gets extremely difficult to compare the different qualities of two football players, let alone having them play such different positions.

[CaliforniaCheez]

Raji was a great fit. Imagine the flak Ted would have received for drafting another WR. In my mind no WR should be a top 10 pick.

Matthews in many mocks was going to the Texans at 15 as the second linebacker. Ted saw great value and grabbed it.

Meredith was always listed as a late 2nd rounder. Mayock had him 8th on the OT list. For Lang to be rated higher on the Packer board than Meredith was something. Lang was probably the highest rated OT on the board.

After Lang I'm very convinced it went highest rated player on the board.

If Ted was filling needs he might have drafted a TE or a Punter.

[Guiness]

The 'tier' system has been brought up a lot on this board. I'm guessing Raji and Crabtree were on the same tier is what it comes down to. Maybe there was another guy too.

Raji was at a position of pressing need, so either there were no offers from SF, or they just decide ranking + need = must have.

[SnakeLH2006]

multiple outlets hinted that Crabtree was the BPA on the Packers board; outlets more credible than our viewpoints.

TT went Need with pick #9 and BPA on his board with pick 26.

TT probably had Raji graded out near Crab so he went the need route

But nobody will convince me he rated Raji higher than Crab; pure homerism IMO

With that being said, I've always been a win now guy so I'm kosher with need

Pure speculation.

Exactly, according to PackerChatters, it's a rumor...no wait...hold on...confirmed that Joe Arrigo killed Bedard thus making up shit about that Crabtree rumor of #1 guy on the Packer board.

Ok..sorry, that was fun..Just fucking around, but I think it was posted very well by many on here if Crabs was an 8.9 and BJ a 8.8 it makes sense to fill a dire ass position of need for similar potential returns. A great draft that got us at least 2 starters, maybe 4. (BJ, Clay, FB dude, and maybe one of the OT's).

Snake hates to quote (paraphrase) JSO but they had a link somewhere where TT was quoted about going for needs this year (but worked out well as they were close to BPA in his book) and trading up.

[Lurker64]

You also have to consider the possibility that the "Green Bay would take Crabtree if he's there; Crabtree is the #1 player on Green Bay's board" might be along the lines of the standard "pre-draft lie" that's circulated by teams in order to adjust the value of certain players and/or convince other teams to do something that they might not otherwise do.

Green Bay had every reason to hope that Crabtree went before they picked, since that would make one more player to fall to the Packers, and would have every reason to give the impression that they were going to take Crabtree as that might get another team to offer to break the bank in order to get Crabtree if he's there at #9 (or at least convince San Francisco to give up something to move up one spot). It wouldn't even be much of a stretch, as all you have to do is make sure the media is aware that Green Bay thinks Michael Crabtree is a very, very good player (which is true) without even mentioning the fact that there's no way in hell the Packers were going to draft him.

I mean, these sorts of misinformation campaigns before the draft are very, very common.
-The Patriots are going to trade up into the top 10 to grab an offensive player (rumored to be Percy Harvin).
-The Rams have already bought Mark Sanchez a plane ticket.
-The Lions had a deal in place with Aaron Curry.
-The Chiefs will draft Sanchez in order to hold his rights to trade him away.
-The Seahawks are very, very high on Mark Sanchez.

All things that were rumored before the draft, none of which came to pass.

[BobDobbs]

The team definitely has a game plan going into the draft. And as their comments show they use a tier system. But obviously they must have some understanding that they want some players within the tiers more than others. Is it position or overall talent I don't know. I do think that they liked Crabtree better than more than Raji, because of MM and TT's post draft interviews.

Both of them were pretty relaxed, the draft is over so there isn't as much need to spin and misinform. McCarthy said that when then Jets traded up it was pretty apparent that they would have Crabtree and Raji on the board. He gets a little glazed over in his eyes when he talks about the discussions they had about the Big 4 and 5. Of course, he's an offensive coach so that's going to turn him on.

Ted said something interesting. He talked glowingly about Crabtree and then said they had each player rated 'about' the same. Obviously I'm parsing his comment, but I think that means there was a difference. Why even make that qualification if your BPA and Need match up. It's not even a discussion at that point.

I think if they were picking a team from scratch they go Crabtree. But we're not. As was mentioned before, Raji probably improves the team more than Crabtree and that should be the criterion for a draft pick.