Galloway: On draft day, Jerry Jones stayed true to the board

[data]

It's easy to stick to the board when you rank your players higher the rest of the NFL.

Quincy Carter! We got him and "didn't reach" because our board is asinine enough to rank him where he was ranked.

 

[ravidubey]

Once again, Frederick being #22 on the Cowboys board means nothing. They don't rank half the players.

I will say I would like this draft a ton better if it we had taken Warford or Winters in the 2nd.

"Half" is extreme, but if players don't fit your team then they shouldn't be ranked. The Cowboys aren't in the business of building draft publications. I doubt most teams' final draft boards have every single prospect ranked and listed on draft day.

These guys go ever this shit every day for months, so you'd expect most bad fits to be off the board altogether. Where I disagree in taking some of the guys off the board like they did (Hankins, for example) is that they would be a value in later rounds for Dallas if they happened to fall.

 

[Cotton]

That's a separate issue. Floyd being there presented an opportunity that we couldn't capitalize on. Mostly because we (as a team and fans) overrated him. It's not like teams were falling over themselves to go up and get him. We traded with a team who took a 2nd round safety instead of him. In the end, he wasn't near the 5th best player according to other teams.

This makes no sense. We had him ranked on OUR board as the #5 player for OUR team and we passed on him at 18 to trade down and get f'ed in the trade. It would be one thing if we had a trade offer on the board that we just couldn't pass up, but we got screwed in the trade and still missed out on our #5 ranked player. I agree that he shouldn't have been that high, but he was on our board, and we deviated from that board.

 

[gator]

Basically what iamtdg said.

When you pass up your 5th rank player and accept a sub-par trade down offer, that's not sticking to your board. Your board is telling you that you have an exceptional value staring you in the face. You passed up what your board is telling you to take less than fair value in a trade down. It's not that we passed up BPA, it's that we passed up BPA we had marked as an elite talent that we were lucky to be staring at.

Also, I think it's a lot of nonsense when we say Floyd wasn't a scheme fit. Minnesota runs the cover 2 also, and they're the team that selected him.

 

[Genghis Khan]

Sticking to your board and trading down are 2 different things.

That's part of the point of BPA. You either take the best guy or you trade out of the pick if you don't have use for the player. Whether you got value for the trade is a separate issue. Whether you should pass on a top 5 player at 18 is a separate issue. But let's keep in mind that this isn't a traditional draft with elite top 5 players.

 

[Cotton]

Whether you got value out of the trade is exactly the issue. If you got ho'ed in the trade like we did, you are not sticking with your board if your #5 player is there at 18. You can't separate the issues.

 

[Jiggyfly]

Whether you got value out of the trade is exactly the issue. If you got ho'ed in the trade like we did, you are not sticking with your board if your #5 player is there at 18. You can't separate the issues.

Yes you can and several people have explained why.

Value and sticking with your board are 2 totally different issues.

 

[Genghis Khan]

Not only CAN you separate the issues, they are inherently separate.

 

[Cotton]

I absolutely disagree.

And, the main reason is what we got in the trade.

Had we gotten some stellar value in the trade I would have no problem with us leaving the #5 player on our board. But, we got fucked in the trade, so trading down was definitely deviating from our board. In a normal situation, I would agree that trading down is not getting away from your gameplan, but in this case, we absolutely did.

 

[ravidubey]

Also, I think it's a lot of nonsense when we say Floyd wasn't a scheme fit.

Exactly. Floyd likely would have fit better and brought more talent to the 1-technique position than Jason Hatcher ever could or can.

Jerry was focused in on trading down and getting the OL he promised Romo no matter how highly Dallas ranked a player was at any other position who fell to 18.

In the end the Cowboys got helpful players but they got less potential for star talent. Still positive, but in a way opposite to 2010 when they found two budding stars in Bryant and Lee.

 

[Cujo]

Not only CAN you separate the issues, they are inherently separate.

I disagree as well. If they truly thought Floyd was the 5th best player in this draft, logic dictates you run to the podium and select him. Trading down is what you do when there is no one of value left on your board when it's your turn to select. Ya, we ended up getting value (supposedly) by getting Frederick (22) at 31, but we were sitting at 18. I honestly don't understand how you guys can defend JJ pissing down his leg, determined to trade down no matter what he got in return. And all this by a team that had, what, 14 picks?

 

[Genghis Khan]

I disagree as well.

I feel bad that you are wrong.

If they truly thought Floyd was the 5th best player in this draft, logic dictates you run to the podium and select him.

Normally I would agree. In fact, I think we should have taken Floyd. But trading down has nothing to do with sticking to your board. To say otherwise would be to say that it is never ok to trade down, which is obviously not true.

If we had taken Frederick (or Pugh, or Reid, or anyone else) at 18, that would be not sticking to your board.

Trading down is what you do when there is no one of value left on your board when it's your turn to select.

That's simply not true. You might also say, for instance, that there is plenty of value on the board at your pick, but the value you can get in a trade down is greater than the value of the top player left on the board at your current pick. There's no legitimate reason to say that the only reason to trade down is that there's no value left.

I honestly don't understand how you guys can defend JJ pissing down his leg, determined to trade down no matter what he got in return. And all this by a team that had, what, 14 picks?

Who is defending that? Certainly not me. Reread anything I said and show where I defended what Jerry did.

I would have picked Floyd, at that point. Jerry's problem wasn't that he was going to trade down come hell or high water; it is that he was going to pick an offensive lineman in the first round come hell or high water. That's always a mistake.

I'd rather we traded down and picked Frederick than what the alternative was, which likely would have been picking Frederick or Pugh at 18. I think that would have been a bigger mistake. And it would have been not sticking to the board.

Trading down has nothing to do with not sticking to your board. Would anyone say that a team with the top pick in a particular draft wasn't sticking to their board if they trade down? Of course not. You trade down if you like the value of the trade better than the value of the player at your pick. It has nothing to do with sticking to your board, that's a different concept.

You can certainly complain that we didn't get enough value for the trade (we didn't), but that's a different complaint than sticking to the board.

 

[Carp]

In thoery we did stick to our board, but it seemed pretty clear that according to our board we were about to get an alltimer of a steal in the first and we passed on that chance for a less than stellar trade down.

 

[Genghis Khan]

In a normal situation, I would agree that trading down is not getting away from your gameplan, but in this case, we absolutely did.

This was a normal situation. The value we got in the trade down is a separate issue from the decision to trade down.

As an aside, the fact that Floyd was overinflated due to this being a weak top end of the draft and the fact that Floyd wouldn't be a top 5 player in a normal-strengthed top five (in other words, if Floyd was a top-5 type player this year, it was because there was a dearth of elite talent this year, not because Floyd himself is elite) makes it more palatable to trade out of the pick when he's sitting there at 18.

It's hard for me to go crazy over trading out of the chance to pick Floyd because he probably isn't elite. It's not like it was Warren Sapp falling.

 

[Carp]

I'm not going crazy over this, but if we had no intention of draft the player, there was no reason at all for him to be on the board. If it were the case to show what his potential trade value is then no player should have been left off the board.

 

[Genghis Khan]

I'm not going crazy over this, but if we had no intention of draft the player, there was no reason at all for him to be on the board. If it were the case to show what his potential trade value is then no player should have been left off the board.

Yeah, you are absolutely right. No matter how you look at it, it doesn't make sense.

 

[Smitty]

I feel bad that you are wrong.

Hell of a response.

 

[Cujo]

I feel bad that you are wrong.

Doesn't make your argument any more convincing.

 

[Cujo]

Hell of a response.

There's a ringing endorsement.

 

[Cowboysrock55]

I feel bad that you are wrong.

This is correct. Plain and simple. I don't think people understand what BPA means if they think it has anything to do with trading picks.