Although I am still interested in the potential of a top 5 offensive tackle as well. Basically, I agree that we will not have this good a chance at a top talent again in a while (especially if we trust Ruskell to turn around the utter shipwreck of a year). I would be more excited about drafting that top quarterback if there was one out there I felt being worth that top draft pick. Right now I am not totally sold on any QB that would be in the top five that they would be worth top five money. That will be the fun of the draft prep, I suppose.

Who is that top 5 quarterback? If Bradford declares, perhaps. Who else? Harrell, McCoy??

If anything, I think that the strongest argument arising out of Burke’s analysis might be that very competent quarterbacks can be had in the second round. Despite the more limited playing opportunities which come with a lower pick, QBs picked in the second round are not dramatically worse (in terms of “Wins Above Basement”) than those picked in the first round. And yes, it’s true that the probability that the first QB selected is better than the second QB is 81%, but that says nothing about how much better the former is than the latter.

Also, a complete picture would include similar analyses for other positions (though, of course, assessing performance is much more difficult for these). Maybe if you were able to quantify the performance of offensive linemen, you’d see a much bigger drop off between first and second round picks than you see for QBs. If true (and I believe it might be), this would lead you to conclude that you’re better off drafting a player at a position where you have very little chance of finding a hidden gem lower down in the draft.

take a QB with the first pick and they shouldn’t. You heard it here first. The reason is simple. A QB won’t have an impact for at least a few years. Hass will be better than any rookie until then anyway. The team is still good enough to contend now if they get an impact player almost anywhere else on the team. Even an impact player at RB or LB, but certainly at safety, DL, OL, WR, even CB will have more of a positive effect on the team for the next two seasons than a QB high draft pick.

1)The NFL’s scouts and general managers are usually correct in their rankings and analysis of players coming out of college, as one would hope, considering the amount of money they’re paid.
2)Higher picks are more valuable than lower picks due to 1.

The article offers no real information to any football fan, just data to support that which anybody who follows football even casually already intuitively knows.

One point that was hinted at above but not clearly made is that while this is a unique opportunity, it’s a unique opportunity for every position and we have more time with regard to the QB position because we want someone for the bench.

Lets say a first pick QB has a 90% chance of being successful and a 3rd round has a 30%. then one method of gaining a good QB would be to draft first pick. Another method is to draft 3rd round and test them out in camp, practice, pre-season, junk-time and injury time. If they aren’t any good, you try again. In (very simplistic) theory three of these tries should be about the same as that first pick QB for percentage chance (not really the math here, but the point is simple enough).

That depends on our ability to evaluate QB’s on our bench. But if we think Beck has 4 or 5 more years in him then we have the time to try-out lots of QB’s behind him, and even if it is much less likely that these guys will be good, we can make up for the lower odds with higher number of potential QB’s.

The advantage would be to gain an immediate impact player next year. Maybe gaining a great OL would be the key to making sure that Beck actually does have 4 or 5 more years….

But I think it is going to be one of the top olinemen and someone the Hawks can plug in at OG for the time being.

I know every draft it seems a QB or two emerges from the pack and becomes a top 5 pick, but from what I have seen in CFB this season I just don’t see the guy that that’s going to be when the scouts go over the tapes.

Matt Stafford ? all the tools you want but I am not buying him as a winner/leader.

Tim Tebow? might stay in school and is a winner and has all the intangibles you want but there are serious questions about his game translating to the NFL.

Sam Bradford? one of my favorites and the one I probably would take in the top 5. But he has a dominant oline, good wrs an awsome TE and is in a spread – Jason White looked just as good under the same circumstances.

Mark Sanchez? Like him a lot but I think he’ll stay.

Nate Davis? love him, but he’s staying.

Josh Freeman? somewhat high on him.

I’m just saying there is no need to draft a QB for the sake of drafting a QB if it isn’t the right player.

with pretty much everything here. Whether we have to take a QB with our top pick depends a lot on who comes out. I think Sanchez or Bradford are worthy, I am not so sure about Stafford. Also, you have to construct your draft board and then trust it come draft day. We also don’t really know which offensive coaches will be around and what their prerogatives will be.

I like the fact that the zeitgeist here has shifted towards wanting a higher pick. I don’t even want to see the hawks lose, but the blow is softened by knowing we will be picking at the top of every round. I understand that the top picks do command more salary.. Stil, the difference in salary is very often worth it. I would say it comes down to a wash with early first round picks. Consider CIN and DET. One team wants a QB and the other (likely) a lineman. Therefore, those teams ought to compete for the second pick because it will save them money. The thing that tips the scales towards the weaker teams though, the thing that has gone strangely unmentioned here, is the later rounds. The NFL draft does not work like your fantasy draft. If we get the 3rd pick, we get the third pick EVERY round. That means our second round pick will be nearly as good as our 1st round pick in recent years. Ditto our third with our previous second rounders. It is as if we are getting the same draft we got last year with the 3rd overall pick thrown in as a bonus. That is HUGE. This is why a team like Arizona has good odds of eventually becoming competitive. Now we get the boost.

Malcolm Gladwell has a new piece up at the New Yorker, where he looks at “the quarterback problem” in a number of fields (the NFL, education, financial services). He writes the story around a scouting trip to Columbia, MO where a scout takes a look at Chase Daniel.