SPORTS MONDAY 04/20/20

NFL Pre-Draft Special, Part 1 of 4

I’ve been writing about COVID-19 and quarantine for a month now. It’s time to change it up. One of my “hobbies” is being a sports fan, which began when I was 9 years old. Now one of my favorite diversions is gone! For that reason, I and others are spending far too much time analyzing the professional futures of a bunch of young male football players, many of whom have not finished college.

Today, I make some productive use of this time with the help of two special guests. The first is a former Tight End/Defensive End whose promising career was cut short by concussions. The second absorbs and analyzes troves of information with the help of a photographic memory. Together, they are the most knowledgeable football guys I know.

Introducing the Hausser Boys, Brian and Ethan!

Wynn Hausser (WH): Welcome, boys. Thanks for joining dear old dad.

Brian Hausser (BH): Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Dad.

Ethan Hausser (EH): Really excited that I was able to get booked on the show. Long time listener, first time caller…

WH: Excellent! We should let people know that you are linked by genetics to the Buffalo Bills, but also grew up rooting for the home-town 49ers. As Stanford fans, we all also share a rooting interest in teams featuring players we watched when they were in college (see Colts with Andrew Luck) and sometimes even high school (see Davante Adams, Packers).

The two biggest thing we learned in the process of creating this? Figuring out the NFL draft is a massive undertaking with more variables than you can shake a stick at. Also, once we get going, things take on a life of their own.

For that reason, what started as a one-day post has turned into four! Those of you not into college or pro football can take a break until Friday. Those of you who are, I hope you find this entertaining and informative. Comments, suggestions and alternative viewpoints most welcome!

Today we look at the draft as a whole. What storylines are we following? If we were GM, what approach would we take? Tuesday will focus on the San Francisco 49ers, Wednesday the Buffalo Bills. We’ll wrap up on Draft Day (Thursday) with our players and teams to watch. Then, next week, we’ll look back at the draft to see how prescient we were. A month’s worth of sports posts in a week!

Future Sports Mondays will be published around specific events or developments (e.g. NBA Draft, a much simpler undertaking) until we have actual seasons to discuss. We hope to create podcasts out of our discussion, so stay tuned for that.

Ok. Let’s pick up the conversation.

WH: I’m happy to let you both know I am appropriately dressed in my Bills cap and 49er T-shirt! Can we start by stipulating that it’s simply nice to have the diversion of football and have something tangible to talk about? Let’s also stipulate that the NFL Draft is a total crap shoot. Draft day is about nothing but dreams and potential. And hype.

BH: Oh, definitely. I think between the Michael Jordan documentary coming out this week and the NFL Draft on Thursday, it’s nice that we can focus on sports, at least to some degree. And yes, obviously the Draft is a crapshoot. These are our best guesses and some educated opinions but we’re not experts.

EH: Exactly. But I’d like to throw out there that a lot of times, the person who wins the March Madness pool is the person who picks based on the mascot. So, we might end up just predicting everything perfectly. I don’t want to say that we’re not going to do that because I think we should shoot for the stars…

WH: I believe that’s something to aspire to and we’ll be revisiting that next week, by the way. So, let’s jump in. What three storylines are you most interested in tracking from now through draft weekend? Brian?

BH: This is obviously a pretty unique time in all of America, particularly in sports. And the NFL is the only professional sports league that’s willing to continue its operations during the global pandemic. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how that end up affecting the draft.

Obviously these teams haven’t had a lot of contact with many of the players they’re looking at, and I think it’s going to be really interesting to see which teams excel under these circumstances, which teams can really find value where other teams haven’t been able to, and then which teams kind of fall behind. I think it will be pretty revealing which front offices really are able to do their due diligence, who’s better able to take the proper steps and really get their evaluations down, I think there’s going to be a lot more value in the draft for those teams than there would be in a in a traditional draft.

WH: To follow up on that, do you think teams are going to be relying more on the combine because that’s the only real chance they’ve had, when they normally get a lot more one-on-one time? Or does it mean they go back to the film room and that’s where the emphasis goes?

BH: Because most players haven’t had their pro day, and the combine is largely an interview and medical process, I really think teams are going to be leaning more on film, especially given we’ve all been in quarantine with nothing better to do than grind game tape. I’m guessing that’s got a chance to play an even larger role than it usually does. I would be surprised if the combine plays a larger role than usual, though, other than obviously helping players who performed well there since very few were able to hold pro days.

EH: Like Brian said, I see the focus being more on game film. I’ll be interested to see if that actually helps teams identify players better and not overthink things. Every draft there are these players that drop to 2nd, 3rd — even 4th, 5th, 6th rounds — who produced in college week-in and week-out. And then you go through the entire pre-draft process and see a lot of overthinking and teams talking themselves out of this guy who didn’t run a fast 40 or what have you. I’ll be interested to see if going back to really trusting the film helps talent evaluators just go with the guy who has produced in the past, and if that proves effective down the road.

Which leads to the storyline that I’m going to be watching, which is where the runs on position groups start popping up. Given the lack of information we have, it’s going to be tougher to separate prospects. A lot of play has been made about how deep of a draft this is, and that depth can create a lot of interesting potential scenarios. You see these groupings — tackle for example — most people have the top four tackles. But there’s seven or eight tackles that could potentially go in the 1st round.

Then with wide receiver, there’s that top-line group of three, but a lot a lot of receivers (and cornerbacks as well) in the early-round conversation and it seems that their valuations are kind of all over the board, with not a ton separating these prospects. So, when do those runs start and when do teams decide that now is the time to really jump in on the cornerbacks, or the tackles, or what have you? I think that’s something I’ll be very interested to see that I think could have ripple effects throughout the draft.

WH: I think those are both really crucial points. I’ll also be looking at what teams are willing to give up making sure they get “OUR GUY.” How will teams with stockpiles of picks use them to move around? What moves make you nod your head? What moves make you scratch your head? Then, as mentioned, there are always those one or two players that for some reason drop almost inexplicably. Who are those players and what does that tell you about how the rest of the draft goes?

The other thing I just love watching for I call Geniuses and Dunces. Every year there’s at least one — and we can predict now who that might be but sometimes there’s a surprise — “Genius GM” who believes that he has found that gem that everybody else is under-valuing. The Texans’ Bill O’Brien is a clear leader heading into draft day to make that kind of “I know better than anybody else” move. And, let’s face it, we’re all waiting to see what Bill Belichick does to bring “The Next Brady” to the Pats, and whether he does that this year.

BH: I’ll just jump in real quick to add that it will also be interesting to look at where some of the smaller school prospects end up. As we’ve all said, coaches are going to have to rely more on game film; a lot of times, it’s harder to evaluate how good a small school prospect is since they’re going up against second line competition. Guys either rise up because they were so productive in college or might fall down because it’s hard to say exactly how good they are.

WH: Well said. All right let’s move on to a question of approaches to the draft and basically two drafting philosophies that are represented by our two teams, at least it seems. That is, drafting for position of need versus the Best Player Available or BPA for short. From what I’ve observed from his previous drafts, Niners GM John Lynch seems to be more of a draft for position guy, while Bills GM Brandon Beane is clear he’s all about the Best Player Available. Do you guys agree with that assessment?

EH: I generally agree with that, especially with Brandan Beane, who’s shown he’s incredibly willing to trade up as soon as he starts to see value fall. But I’m not sure if we can entirely say that about John Lynch. I get where you’re coming from in that they’ve been drafting very specific positions to fit with Lynch and Shanahan’s blueprint for building this team, which is positionless versatility on offense, and then a really, really, aggressive and nasty defensive line — which John Lynch, from his days as a safety, believes is the best way to build a really good defense.

But if you look back at the players they’ve taken so far, especially in the 1st round: Nick Bosa last year was definitely the best player on the board, and I think you can definitely make an argument that the previous top picks Mike McGlinchey and Solomon Thomas were also best players on the board at the time, keeping Lynch’s disinterest in top safeties in mind. So I think we need a bit more of a sample size than that for John Lynch, but I don’t think we’re going to get that this year — they have so few holes that really attacking the key positions is the only logical strategy for the Niners right now, in my mind.

BH: I totally agree with what Ethan is saying. I think it’s clear that Brandon Beane is a Best Player Available guy and really looks at value. But as Ethan said, I think when you have a team with so few holes — I mean, obviously they almost won the Super Bowl last year and didn’t have a whole lot of high-profile departures besides Buckner and Sanders. So, I think we can definitely expect John Lynch to take a position-first approach again this year. But I agree with Ethan that I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say that, in the long term, he won’t be someone who goes BPA when the team is in a slightly different position.

WH: Well we’re going to check get a chance to test that theory. But do you guys have a strong feeling about what kind of GM you would be?

BH: I think if I were to be a GM just in a vacuum I would generally go for BPA. I just think ignoring value in today’s NFL means you’re really selling yourself short. But if I were John Lynch in this draft, for example, there are lots of situations where I do have to draft for positions.

EH: Yeah, I would agree with Brian if you’re talking about one general approach or philosophy. In a draft, you’re looking to make an investment in a player and ideally keep them around for 10 years. Free agency is really good for addressing those specific needs and getting more proven players who can help fill gaps. But if you weren’t able to address those in free agency then that need might beat best player, especially if you’re in a situation like the Niners where you’re a guy or two away. Ideally though, you wouldn’t let it get to that point.

BH: One other just thing is if you’re really hamstrung by the cap and you can’t really go and get those players to fill certain holes. The Niners, for example, are playing their 3rd-year quarterback $30M a year, which means they can’t be as aggressive with free agents as teams still paying their quarterback a rookie contract. Those are the teams you see generally go out spending in free agency, because they’re trying to maximize their window of cheap QB play and obviously just have the money to spend. Otherwise, you’re forced to go through the draft because it’s cheaper. So, it also very much depends on your cap situation.

WH: I think that’s a really good point. The cap is a whole topic we won’t get into now, but one of the things to remember is that the Bills have a ton of salary cap room this year because the work Beane has done in previous years. So a lot of times we like to judge General Managers on “what has he done for me lately” or “what are you doing for me right now.” But the fact that Beane did his job the way he did the last two years puts him in a position where he is not hamstrung. In any case, it’s going to be interesting to watch these guys work.

And with that, I’m ready to dive into our two teams. Dress code tomorrow is Red and Gold, gentlemen. We’ll pick it up then!