""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

[Bretsky]

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

[cpk1994]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

[MJZiggy]

Nice article. I hope Dekker can get it worked out, but if he doesn't I know one of his likely professors at Gtown...

[retailguy]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

How do you know this?

[Brando19]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

How do you know this?

TT said in his first post draft interview that BJ and Crab were rated the same on their board.

[Lurker64]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

How do you know this?

TT said in his first post draft interview that BJ and Crab were rated the same on their board.

I think this can be resolved by the facts that:

1) Ted Thompson has confirmed that the Packers use a horizontal board, ranking by position rather than "best player, second best player, third best player, etc."

2) Superlatives are not necessarily unique. There are infinitely many shortest paths between the north pole and the south pole, for example (without tunneling, that is.)

So can we just put this behind us and say that both B.J. Raji and Michael Crabtree were highest rated players on Ted Thompson's board. Both were the highest rated at their positions, and both were given the same grade by Thompson and his scouts.

[Partial]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

Why are you assuming that what he says isn't true? That's quite a leap. With that said, I'm with B on kudos to TT for going up and grabbing his guy. Love da pick. TT probably loves him more since he gave up a ton to get him.

Lurker, thats quite a leap. I think the logical answer is "Of course he isn't going to cut down the confidence of his new DT. 'Sure, Crabtree is the better athlete and higher ranked player, but we went with the worse player because he can plug a hole' isn't exactly giving the youngens confidence.

[pbmax]

The Packers, like most teams, have grades and tiers. Without a grade, you could not put someone into an accurate tier. Without the tier, you wouldn't know when to trade up or down.

So this is a rare PackerRats thread where everyone is right. Collect you participation certificate at the Home page! We should sticky it so everyone can see

And I am sure Ted is choosing to share information that sheds good light on his players. But others have seen the Packers board and McGinn could have gotten his info from a number of sources. He also said the decision for Raji over Crabtree had been made earlier. And that probably means there were others who participated in the discussions.

[cpk1994]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

How do you know this?

McGinn continnues to make this claim though no one has backed him up on it, most importantly TT. TT has never claimed Crabtree was highest on the board. He would never claim anyone was highest on his board.

[cpk1994]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

Good article

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/packers/44237962.html

Couple notes

KUDOS to TT for going for it
another reference to Crab being the highest graded player on their board

Becuase if McGinn didn't continue to beat that dead horse, he would have to admit he was wrong. McGinn will never admit wrong, so he will continue to claim Crabtree was highest on the board even though TT has never said one way or antoher what was truly the case.

Why are you assuming that what he says isn't true? That's quite a leap. With that said, I'm with B on kudos to TT for going up and grabbing his guy. Love da pick. TT probably loves him more since he gave up a ton to get him.

Lurker, thats quite a leap. I think the logical answer is "Of course he isn't going to cut down the confidence of his new DT. 'Sure, Crabtree is the better athlete and higher ranked player, but we went with the worse player because he can plug a hole' isn't exactly giving the youngens confidence.

I have no idea if he being truthful or not. But because no one from the organization, most importantly TT, has claimed whether or not Crabtree was highest on the board, McGinn is making the assumption.

[Lurker64]

It's also probably useful to draw a distinction between "highest grade" and "highest player on your board", since those aren't necessarily the same. Every player gets a grade from scouts based on a variety of factors, and in general as rule the higher the grade a player has the higher on the board he goes.

Thompson never claimed to be a strict "take the highest graded player at every opportunity" drafter and, in fact, nobody is since that's the way to end up drafting 7 quarterbacks every year. The players are ranked within their position generally by their grade (though it's reasonable to move down a highly graded player due to some red flag, or move up a lower graded player due to something about him you really like), but the decisions of "okay we have the nth best cornerback and the mth best running back on the board, which one do we take?" aren't made when you draw up the board. You either make those decisions on the fly ("okay, we have a pick coming up soon... we're probably looking at these three guys, who do we like?") or you do so in advance if there are situations you anticipate coming up.

I assume that Thompson and his staff evaluated every single combination of players that could potentially be available at #9 and decided which guy to take in that situation. So to think that they didn't anticipate both Raji and Crabtree potentially being available is pretty silly. I'm sure they had the decision made in advance, but still Crabtree actually being there gave Thompson pause, but he ended up picking the similarly graded player with a higher position value.

[Partial]

Re: ""MATTHEWS WAS A MUST HAVE"" For TT

I have no idea if he being truthful or not. But because no one from the organization, most importantly TT, has claimed whether or not Crabtree was highest on the board, McGinn is making the assumption.

Assumption? He's getting the information from a source within the organization, as he has said on numerous occasions. Big difference from assumption.

[The_Dude]

"Matthews reported Thursday weighing 250, 10 more than he was at the combine and 5 more than at pro day.

"I think it's a pretty good number, but I can get bigger," he said. "Within the next year I can get to 255."

--I thought he was going to be small for a 3-4 OLB, doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

[Lurker64]

The reveal that the Packers were interested in Pettigrew and Matthews (as well as Oher) at #9 was very interesting, to be honest. I never thought Thompson was that high on Pettigrew (he must have been special in Thompson's eyes since we didn't sniff a TE at any point later on, and we already spent a high pick on one last year), and Matthews was certainly higher on Thompson's board than I anticipated (though to be honest, I had him as the #2 OLB prospect, and the #1 3-4 OLB prospect on my personal board).

I do wonder, though, how some of this information is disseminated to sources who eventually get it to the media. The Packers never confirm or deny any of these sorts of things, so I wonder how anybody is sure what's true.

[Administrator]

I guess we can be "kinda" sure about both Matthews & Raji. Ted traded up for Matthews and gave up a lot, so it's clear he really, really liked him. And he actually took Raji at 9 over a bunch of other quality prospects.

I'm really excited about this draft.