Tomorrow marks the first day of the 2023 NFL Season and as a team builder it's arguably the longest day of the year. I just want the season to get here as it's a long few months without football once the draft is over the first part of May. The 2023 season is going to be a wild ride, as it always is, but there are some things from the past offseason that definitely merit watching. I am going to go back and name a few things I liked from this offseason and a few things that I didn't like. All of this is from strictly a team building standpoint in terms of how these teams utilized their capital - whether that be draft capital or salary cap space. In a couple of seasons, we'll go back and see if I was right or wrong!
First notice here: The 2024 Draft is going to be an ALL TIME draft. Caleb Williams is a 99 and he's followed up by Drake Maye - a high 90s QB, Marvin Harrison who may be the highest graded WR I've ever scouted, a pair of ultra elite tackles in Olu Fashanu and Joe Alt, and maybe the best TE in the past decade in Brock Bowers. Beyond that we have 90 grades on Edge Jared Verse, and Kool Aid McKinstry already. There are also potential first round QB's galore in Bo Nix, Michael Penix, and maybe Shadeur Sanders and Quinn Ewers among others. It's also ridiculously deep, going at least 40 very good players.
1. Arizona embracing the tank - LOVE!
* This is probably my biggest love. The 2024 NFL Draft currently is the highest rated draft since I've started scouting back in 2011 - which was the one of the best drafts of all time. The Cardinals are one of the only NFL teams in the past decade or two that are essentially fully embracing the complete tank. The Cards traded away or let walk anything with any relevance to winning including even letting go of solid journeyman Colt McCoy at QB. The Cardinals even dropped back in the draft to add capital from the Texans, and odds are strong they will trade away the mess of a contract and player that is Kyler Murray this offseason while they add Caleb Williams and another elite player with the Texans 2024 first rounder. The Cards are the worst team in the NFL by a mile, it's not even close and when you're trying to do a roster reset this is what you should do - don't hedge, be as bad as you can be.
2. Arizona trading up in the draft to take Paris Johnson after moving back. - HATE
* Why? I don't get this at all. The Cards had ONE position of strength on their entire roster, offensive tackle. They had a perpetually underrated Kelvin Beachum, a very good LT in DJ Humphries, and Josh Jones who would be a starter on about 2/3 of the teams in the NFL. They make a great move and steal a 2024 first from Houston which could be INSANELY valuable, and then they give up pick 34 (an essentially first rounder - if you've read my past posts picks 24-42 are essentially equal in terms of hit rate) to move up a few spots to draft - a freaking OT. This is NOT how you team build. You litearlly had roster holes at EVERY OTHER POSITION, and you trade UP and give up big time capital for a position you already were strong. So dumb.
3. Philadelphia killing the draft - LOVE
NFL GMs are honestly mostly dumb. They overthink things and try to be smarter than everyone else in the room -therefore they end up dumb. Honestly it's like 1/3 that is even decent at his job. Howie Roseman is like the guy who wins match play every single time out there in golf by making routine pars and yet he wins the US Open and Match Play championship every year. Jalen Carter was the second best player in the draft and now he gets to pair up Carter with Jordan Davis and NFL teams in a year or two won't be able to run on Philly. I wasn't a huge Nolan Smith fan in terms of where everyone else liked him but for him to go #30 overall to the Eagles was just dumb. Honestly the fact that Philly even had the Carter pick was because Howie fleeced the Saints the year before. The rich get richer becasue most GM's suck and Howie doesn't.
4. Detroit not caring about positional value - HATE
Here's a caveat to me "hating" this move, I loved Jahmyr Gibbs. I thought he was an exceptional RB prospect and that he was an elite talent. I love that Detroit traded back and got pick 34. The fact that their 3 top 34 picks turned into a RB, an off ball LB, and a TE is problematic though. Even if those guys dominate and turn into great players - the positional value at those 3 spots are 3 of the 4 lowest in the NFL (guard). You need to get excess value from those spots by drafting premium positions - particularly when as the Lions you had serious needs at pass rusher and corner. On top of it I'm not a Campbell fan and didn't love the LaPorta pick. Bad value.
5. Houston taking care of CJ Stoud - LOVE
The Texans have watched as their young signal callers couldn't survive behind terrible OL play twice before. David Carr got sacked approximately 8000 times in his 4 years in Houston and Deshaun Watson mostly ran for his life and needed to spend approximately 8000 hours on massage tables to destress due to terrible OL play. Houston wanted to remedy that this offseason by giving three year extensions to Superstar Laremy Tunsil, good starter Tytus Howard, and trading for and exending quality starter Shaq Mason at guard. They also tried to fix the center position by drafting Juice Scruggs in round 2 - an ill advised decision considering my grade on Scruggs - particularly when they could have traded up and snagged Schmitz. But they tried. They also traded for Josh Jones, one of my favorite players, and Kendrick Green. They are making a big time effort to help CJ Stroud up front.
- A secondary prop being given here to Pittsburgh for doing the same thing - drafting my favorite OL in the draft in Georgia OT Broderick Jones and adding the highly intelligent underrated G Isaac Seumalo.
6. Carolina going small - HATE
I just can't draft a QB first overall when he's 5'10 and 178 pounds. I know that Young supposedly got up to over 200 pounds at the combine but I don't care how many cheeseburgers he wolfed down, I can't see any way that someone who played closer to 170 than to 200 during college is going to survive in the NFL. I know the NFL is okay going smaller at QB now with all the rules, but Tua's size was scary for teams and he is having trouble surviving and Young is significantly smaller than Tua. He'll make some spectacular plays and look great at times in the league is my guess, but he will rarely if ever play 17 games. Giving up DJ Moore - an elite WR, and all the capital they did to get a Lilliputian was a bad call.
7. Chicago trading back in the draft - LOVE
If this were the 2024 draft, you don't trade back, you take Williams and move forward but Justin Fields definitely showed enough to build around him. Moving back and adding DJ Moore, a top 15-20 WR in the NFL, and pick 10, a 2nd in 2023 and 2025, and Carolina's 1 in 2024 was a haul. Darnell Wright at 10 got some raised eyebrows but not from me. I had Wright as the 13th overall player and worthy of that pick. He's going to be perfect for that mauling downhill run system and his improvement last season means there's an even higher ceiling for him. They had to improve the OL and this was a great decision. They added a LOT of value. I thought their draft was a bit bizarre but it looks great if you add in DJ Moore and all the additional picks.
8. The Chiefs weird OL Makeover - HATE
So, you're going to let LT Orlando Brown, a very solid LT, walk but then give Jawaan Taylor, one of the worst run blocking RT's in the NFL come in and give him $9m more guaranteed and $16 million more in cap hit over 4 years? Brett Veach is great at his gig but WTF? Then you go out and add Donovan Smith to play LT, a guy who not only missed 4 games last year due to injury but was also WELL below average. This wasn't well thought out and I think this, along with an aging Travis Kelce will doom KC in 2023.
9. Teams not paying RB's - LOVE
RB's might hate the fact that NFL teams have - FOR THE MOST PART, finally realized that RB's are the easiest positions to replace. It's not that elite running backs aren't important - they 100% are - it's that it's easy to get 80% of their production for 8% the cost. Tyler Allgeir was a 5th round draft pick last season and busted out 1035 yards and 4.9 yards per carry as a rookie. Dameon Pierce a 4th rounder put up 939 yards in 13 games behind one of the NFL's worst OL's. D'Onta Foreman was a backup most of the season and had been out of the league for a couple years and still put up 914 yards while Isiah Pacheco was a 7th rounder whose angry running style transformed the Chiefs, an he put up 4.9 yards per rush. It's just easy to find guys at these positions. While Derrick Henry and Saquan Barkley, and Dalvin Cook are all thought of exceptionally well, Henry cost $9.37 million last year and was still owed $14m more - Barkley was taken second overall and Dalvin Cook was let go with over $8m guaranteed STILL on his contract this offseason - all players averaged 4.4 yards per carry last year with de facto 8 figure cap hits.
Dallas, LV, Minnesota, and Indianapolis this offseason called their RB's bluffs. So did the Chargers, and essentially said, go try to find more money. The RBs couldn't and slinked back to their GM's offices to sign for little or nothing more. This is the way it should be.
10. Teams overpaying B players - HATE
NFL Teams that don't do well consistently have a few typical characteristics. They do three things poorly.
- They are coached poorly by someone who was a good coordinator but can't delegate and therefore their teams are sloppy, disorganized, and try to get players to buy into their schemes instead of putting their players in a position to succeed. I think Vegas is a good example of this - consistently.
- They try to get cute with the draft boards and make errors, particularly in round 1 and 2. Think Green Bay here - they just don't get the right players at the top of the draft.
- They overpay C and B players and therefore don't allocate their cap properly. The Bears do this but a lot of teams are guilty.
- Adam Thielen - 3&25
- Miles Sanders - 4&25
- Vonn Bell - 3&22.5
- Hayden Hurst - 3&21.75
- Shy Tuttle- 3&19.5
- Bradley Bozeman - 3&18
- DJ Chark - 1&5
- I'm not a fan of paying off ball linebackers huge money.
- I DO like teams with QBs on rookie deals spending money. Starting QB's in the NFL cost a minimum of $37m toward the cap. If you have a QB who only costs $7m for example - you have $30m in excess dollars to spend each year. You better do it.
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