Vikings draft CB Mackenzie Alexander

[808vikingsfan]

Mackenzie Alexander's reaction when he gets the call

https://twitter.com/MackAlexander20/sta ... 3209426944

[mosscarter]

like mothman said how can you truly assess who is the best player available? i'm also not sure where this talk is coming from about waynes being a bust, what led anyone to even assume that? he stepped up big time in the playoff game when we needed him and would have had another pick (can't remember what game it was i think arizona) but it was called off by a penalty. the guy barely played at all last year.

[Jordysghost]

like mothman said how can you truly assess who is the best player available?

Again, your scouting department go through the long arduos process of assesing a player for a reason, if we are going to write off that info as worthless, we might as well just grab any old scrub anywhere, or hey, not draft anyone at all! I mean, how can you truly assess who is a good player and who isn't anyway?

[mondry]

Again, your scouting department go through the long arduos process of assesing a player for a reason, if we are going to write off that info as worthless, we might as well just grab any old scrub anywhere, or hey, not draft anyone at all! I mean, how can you truly assess who is a good player and who isn't anyway?

WREKT

[Mothman]

Again, your scouting department go through the long arduos process of assesing a player for a reason, if we are going to write off that info as worthless, we might as well just grab any old scrub anywhere, or hey, not draft anyone at all! I mean, how can you truly assess who is a good player and who isn't anyway?

You keep talking about this in ridiculous extremes and frankly, it's getting frustrating. Nobody but you is talking about the difference between a solid second round pick and a "scrub". Nobody is suggesting the scouting should be ignored or written off as worthless either. The point is that determining who the "best" player is at a particular spot is subjective, especially because some positions are so different. At most spots in the draft, teams likely have at least a handful of players closely ranked on their board and in some cases those players might even have identical rankings. Who is the obvious "BPA" in such scenarios, which are likely more common than situations where there's one obvious pick that stands out from all the "scrubs"?

[Jordysghost]

You keep talking about this in ridiculous extremes and frankly, it's getting frustrating. Nobody but you is talking about the difference between a solid second round pick and a "scrub". Nobody is suggesting the scouting should be ignored or written off as worthless either. The point is that determining who the "best" player is at a particular spot is subjective, especially because some positions are so different. At most spots in the draft, teams likely have at least a handful of players closely ranked on their board and in some cases those players might even have identical rankings. Who is the obvious "BPA" in such scenarios, which are likely more common than situations where there's one obvious pick that stands out from all the "scrubs"?

In the scenario you laid out, there likely would be a player that grades out as the best on the board (Even if just slightly, players dont often have identical grades) and in that situation, with closely ranked grades I would go with the pick that fits a need, if there is no glaring need to be filled, I go with who is highest on my draftboard, it seems like I am one of the few not advocating extremes here, the best player available doesnt need to be the proverbial man amongst boys, he just needs to grade out higher then those remaining.

You are taking my comments about picking up "any old scrub" far too litterally, the point of that comment was that writing off your own teams draftboard as "Being subjective anyway" makes absolutely no sense, the entire draft is 'subjective', if you are going to suggest the team not subscribe to the notion of taking the best remaining available player on the premise of 'The best available player is subjective', then why not just throw away the draftboard entirely? It is all subjective, even NEED is often subjective.

[Mothman]

In the scenario you laid out, there likely would be a player that grades out as the best on the board (Even if just slightly, players dont often have identical grades) and in that situation, with closely ranked grades I would go with the pick that fits a need, if there is no glaring need to be filled, I go with who is highest on my draftboard, it seems like I am one of the few not advocating extremes here, the best player available doesnt need to be the proverbial man amongst boys, he just needs to grade out higher then those remaining.

You are taking my comments about picking up "any old scrub" far too litterally, the point of that comment was that writing off your own teams draftboard as "Being subjective anyway" makes absolutely no sense, the entire draft is 'subjective', if you are going to suggest the team not subscribe to the notion of taking the best remaining available player on the premise of 'The best available player is subjective', then why not just throw away the draftboard entirely? It is all subjective, even NEED is often subjective.

Jordy, at this point you're basically just trolling. Give it a rest.

[Jordysghost]

Jordy, at this point you're basically just trolling. Give it a rest.

I dont see how anything I said can be even remotely misconstrued as trolling, but on your order, Motorman.

[PurpleMustReign]

Jordy, at this point you're basically just trolling. Give it a rest.

Having a bad day jim? I didn't take it as trolling at all. Just because he is a Packer fan doesn't mean he automatically trolls the board.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Mothman]

Having a bad day jim? I didn't take it as trolling at all. Just because he is a Packer fan doesn't mean he automatically trolls the board.

I understand that, Josh. As Jordy knows quite well, I've defended his right to post here more than once. I think he makes some valuable contributions to the board and I appreciate that he can respectfully exit an exchange like that with a "thumbs up".

It just seemed to me that the original point was being twisted into a rather large straw man to provoke an argument, even though that original point was explained and understood. After a while, that behavior comes across as a deliberate attempt to provoke an angry response, which is trolling or at least close enough to the basic internet definition of the word for me to suggest giving the subject a rest.

In other words, I'm not having a bad day.

[720pete]

BPA is such an arbitrary concept. How would you compare the best place kicking prospect in the league in the last 10 years versus the second best cornerback in the draft? How do you figure that subjectively? You can't after the first couple rounds.

[Jordysghost]

BPA is such an arbitrary concept. How would you compare the best place kicking prospect in the league in the last 10 years versus the second best cornerback in the draft? How do you figure that subjectively? You can't after the first couple rounds.

While heavily overstated, the concept of BPA is obviously more then an arbitrary buzzword, I dont think who you view as the best football player can be written off as an 'arbitrary concept' in regards to an NFL draft, but I should probably leave it at that.

But to answer your question, position (and importance of position) is factored in when grading out a player.

[John_Viveiros]

The discussion between you guys about BPA and subjectiveness has led me to think deeper on the subject. As someone who is married to a physics teacher (and have a science degree myself), she is always teaching students about error bars. And that might have some relevance here.

Imagine I not only ranked players, but I estimated some type of uncertainty to my estimate (if the draft is my job, then I think this would be something I would put into practice). You can do it by draft grade, or by draft ranking, or both. For the purposes of discussion, I'll stick to draft ranking, but it should be applicable in the case of draft grade too. [Mocks may or not help with this, if you believe they have value.]

Say, for example, you had a guy like Josh Doctson, who seems to be pretty much a "you-get-what-you-see" guy. You have him as the 21st best player, but chances are, he was going in the range of 18-23. Then you have a guy like Eli Apple, who you see as the 30th best player, but he's a lot harder to pin down, so he's maybe going somewhere between 20-40 (in most cases, but not the one that actually happened, eh?). So the error bars overlap a bit, in the range of 20-23. Maybe, in that case, picking BPA at #23 in a rigid sense, you go for Doctson every time. But in the case where you know there's uncertainty (subjectiveness is the word used earlier), true BPA may be either player, even by your own rankings. So maybe you are already stocked with WR's (say, if Wallace, Diggs, Patterson, and Johnson had turned out to all be as good as we had wished), and your secondary is hurting (that gruesome injury to Rhodes was as bad as we initially thought) - in that case, the BPA choice is wisely modified by your need at CB, as the two players overlap in your assessment.

But you have to be true to your own board. That's what you get paid for as GM's and scouts. You are paid to be as accurate and objective (unbiased) as possible. As I was reading the PFF grades and such I thought that, if I was GM and wanted great publicity, at least for a year, I could just ignore any work on my part and use the PFF grades. Every single pick would be praised as getting "great value at that pick".

I wonder if there should be some modification - maybe everyone drafts BVA. Best value available to help the team.

[fiestavike]

In the scenario you laid out, there likely would be a player that grades out as the best on the board (Even if just slightly, players dont often have identical grades) and in that situation, with closely ranked grades I would go with the pick that fits a need, if there is no glaring need to be filled, I go with who is highest on my draftboard, it seems like I am one of the few not advocating extremes here, the best player available doesnt need to be the proverbial man amongst boys, he just needs to grade out higher then those remaining.

You are taking my comments about picking up "any old scrub" far too litterally, the point of that comment was that writing off your own teams draftboard as "Being subjective anyway" makes absolutely no sense, the entire draft is 'subjective', if you are going to suggest the team not subscribe to the notion of taking the best remaining available player on the premise of 'The best available player is subjective', then why not just throw away the draftboard entirely? It is all subjective, even NEED is often subjective.

Well said and good point.

[Mothman]

The discussion between you guys about BPA and subjectiveness has led me to think deeper on the subject. As someone who is married to a physics teacher (and have a science degree myself), she is always teaching students about error bars. And that might have some relevance here.

Imagine I not only ranked players, but I estimated some type of uncertainty to my estimate (if the draft is my job, then I think this would be something I would put into practice). You can do it by draft grade, or by draft ranking, or both. For the purposes of discussion, I'll stick to draft ranking, but it should be applicable in the case of draft grade too. [Mocks may or not help with this, if you believe they have value.]

Say, for example, you had a guy like Josh Doctson, who seems to be pretty much a "you-get-what-you-see" guy. You have him as the 21st best player, but chances are, he was going in the range of 18-23. Then you have a guy like Eli Apple, who you see as the 30th best player, but he's a lot harder to pin down, so he's maybe going somewhere between 20-40 (in most cases, but not the one that actually happened, eh?). So the error bars overlap a bit, in the range of 20-23. Maybe, in that case, picking BPA at #23 in a rigid sense, you go for Doctson every time. But in the case where you know there's uncertainty (subjectiveness is the word used earlier), true BPA may be either player, even by your own rankings. So maybe you are already stocked with WR's (say, if Wallace, Diggs, Patterson, and Johnson had turned out to all be as good as we had wished), and your secondary is hurting (that gruesome injury to Rhodes was as bad as we initially thought) - in that case, the BPA choice is wisely modified by your need at CB, as the two players overlap in your assessment.

But you have to be true to your own board. That's what you get paid for as GM's and scouts. You are paid to be as accurate and objective (unbiased) as possible. As I was reading the PFF grades and such I thought that, if I was GM and wanted great publicity, at least for a year, I could just ignore any work on my part and use the PFF grades. Every single pick would be praised as getting "great value at that pick".

I wonder if there should be some modification - maybe everyone drafts BVA. Best value available to help the team.

I think that's pretty much what happens, John, and I'm sure personal bias and personal favorites are a part of the picture. Coaches and GMs "fall in love" with certain prospects. If teams just ranked players and then rigidly followed that exact order by automatically selecting the top pick available on their board, there would be no need for a "war room" or discussion during the draft. Heck, an intern could just follow the board, make the selections and everyone else could take vacation, their work already done by preparing the board in the first place. A certain degree of flexibility, and some discussion, is definitely involved. Your example of Doctson and Apple is a good choice because it illustrates the potential nature of a draft war room discussion and/or how variables may get worked into the board. Add in that every team's board will have differences and there's rarely, if ever, going to be a unanimous "best player available" at most spots in the draft. Furthermore, the idea that every time a team selected a player, they were literally taking the top player available on their board is an assumption, since we don't have access to their board.

What is the likelihood that the Vikes didn't have a single player with a higher grade than the German Unicorn when they picked him vs. the likelihood that they simply thought he was worth taking at that spot and they wanted him?