2016 NFL Draft thread

[mike2mike]

I think OL and DL are deep enough where they can follow and we can still find some great talent round 4th and 5th.

Safety still fairly deep but not with talent in the Jeremy Cash/Darien Thompson tier left.

[John_Viveiros]

Just sayin... Our fourth round pick, packaged with our third, could get us into the range of #75 or so. That's if Rick and Zim see some guy falling that they want to go grab.

:cough: billings :cough:

[Mothman]

Devil's advocate speak - maybe this says bad things about Waynes or Rhodes? I don't think so, but it might.

As I say a lot, Rick and Zim have earned my trust. The Alexander pick wasn't out of left field. He had a first round grade is most of the lists I've seen, some were mid-second. But then it's value anyway, right? Clearly, they thought he was BPA, since we would have gone a number of other directions in the situation where we were drafting for need.

Everyone looks to the easy stats like sacks and interceptions for defenders, but those are pretty rare, sparse events. Hunter had 1.5 sacks in college, and quadrupled that in his first pro season. Was he actually four times better? Of course not. I'm sure he was coached up, but he had help from other linemen giving pressure and DB's covering well enough to make the QB hold the ball. And maybe things that were "almost sacks" in college became sacks last year.

Tampa Bay drafted a CB named Brian Kelly from USC in 1998. He had a bunch of interceptions his senior year. Might have led the nation. Can't find the stats on the internet! I remember watching his "highlight tape" (and even commented about it, maybe on the old alt.football.mn-vikings newsgroup) and seeing him out of position, a long ways away from the receiver, on most of the interceptions. The QB just threw a bad ball, over and over again. He went to the NFL, and had the following stats for interceptions each year of his career: 1, 1, 1, 0, 8, 1, 4, 4, 1, 0, 2, 0. One year, he led the league with 8. The other years, he averaged 2.

So Alexander's lack of interceptions don't bother me in the least. Not when multiple sites say things like "his lack of statistical production over the past two years (no interceptions, 11 pass breakups in 2014-2015) shows how little opponents challenged him". This seems like an incredible stat: "Allowed just 29.6 percent completions and no touchdowns." We're talking about making the opposing QB have a rating in the 40's over the course of two years. That's just phenomenal, even considering a lower level of competition.

Sure but we can apply the same logic you applied above. How many times was he beat and the ball was overthrown or dropped? How many times was he beat but the QB threw the other way?

Now I'm playing devil's advocate but we can spin the pick any number of ways. According to ESPN's broadcast, he had opportunities to make picks and didn't come up with the ball. That's not good.

He'll be tested in the NFL. Teams will try to take advantage of his size. Hopefully, he'll hold up well.

[dead_poet]

My safety is gone

[dead_poet]

Between Diggs, Treadwell and Alexander...we got some ####. Camp goin' to be fun

[mike2mike]

Lol oops... I guess Thompson is gone now. I didn't know the Giants read this forum

[Norv Zimmer]

I am guessing the next Vikings pick is a running back!

Alex collins!

[akvikingsfan]

Next pick will be Cook.

[halfgiz]

How is Jonathan Bullard still on the board?

Well he's gone now...that's a good pick for the Bears.

[JonPurpleHaze]

Ok, I like this Jonathan Bullard and don't know a thing about him....

[dead_poet]

Sources close to Andrew Billings say one reason for drop may be bc he "plays a certain type of DT & will play about 35% of the plays."

[dead_poet]

Sounds like Baylor DT Andrew Billings has a knee issue that's concerning teams as the draft wears on.

[Gordon Shumway]

Doesn't sound like a Zimmer kind of player. Zimmer seems to generally prefer versatility.

[John_Viveiros]

Sure but we can apply the same logic you applied above. How many times was he beat and the ball was overthrown or dropped? How many times was he beat but the QB threw the other way?

Now I'm playing devil's advocate but we can spin the pick any number of ways. According to ESPN's broadcast, he had opportunities to make picks and didn't come up with the ball. That's not good.

He'll be tested in the NFL. Teams will try to take advantage of his size. Hopefully, he'll hold up well.

Being thrown at is something that happens a lot (unless he really was that spectacularly good, which should make us all very happy). So there's a much higher tendency for that type of thing to be closer to the mean than a stat like interceptions, which happen much more infrequently. The question isn't all of your caveats in the first paragraph, it's how likely is it that he faced statistically significantly more of those than a guy like Jaelen Ramsey.

Let's do a little probability class here. Say I have a betting system for telling which way a coin will flip, and I tell you that I have a 75% success rate. It sounds impressive, but we can intuitively recognize that, if I'm talking about an event that has only happened four times (say, about the number of times Alexander got his hands on the ball each year), my system's not proven to be that great. But if it instead was where a coin was tossed 60 times (say, about the number of times Alexander was targeted each year) and I had a 75% success rate, you sit up and notice (either because I've got a system, or because I'm a con man).

Obviously, I'm not going to get you over your disappointment with the pick with a math discussion, but it's why I'm interested to see how the kid stacks up in September. Interception stats aren't nearly as important as preventing completions (many more drives are killed by 3rd down incompletions, rather than interceptions), and the scouts think the kid can clearly prevent completions.

[dead_poet]

Maybe Josh Perry?