Why drafting WR3 at 17 would be dumb but taking CeeDee Lamb was not

RS12 said:

Too me it is as simple as the games Cooper disappears, the offense probably won't disappear with him.

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AsthmaField said:

It was definitely the right move.

My contention, all along, was that, yes I wanted defense, and yes I think the offense is OK with a later round WR... however, IF a highly rated WR were there and much more highly rated, you might have to take the WR.

Every time I ran through the first 17 picks, I ended up with there being a very good chance of one of the big 3 WR’s available at 17. I said it would never be Lamb, but if Ruggs or Jeudy was there, they’d probably be the BPA by a mile.

In that case, with the team losing Cobb and needing a 3rd WR... I couldn’t imagine taking Fulton or Gross-Matos and leaving Jeudy for the Eagles.

Anyway, the best of all the WR’s was there and the team absolutely did the right thing. And they got some good defenders later, just like I thought they would.

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xwalker said:

The only time I was wrong is the time I thought I was wrong...

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WillieBeamen said:

Ceedee will fit well here because he can catch these Dak specialties

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Verdict said:

Any of the Big 3 WR would have been BPA, but because it was Lamb it wasn’t even close. BPA by a mile at #17.

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bewp7 said:

yep ur right and aside from the fact that as a wr ceedee isnt sitting behind or being blocked by anyone and can contribute and make a huge impact day 1 and also in the nfl what people call a luxury can become a need in 1 play.

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jterrell said:

Prior to the draft for Dallas there were specific camps with regards to Dallas drafting WR at 17.

You could simply split those camps into team 40-burger and team DraftDefense.

I was violently opposed to drafting a WR at 17. The logic for being so I'd gladly argue is 100% sound. Especially given the arguments of team 40-burger.
1. We are just gonna score a zilliion points and win. --No, you likely won't. Teams that performed best last year were balanced teams that could score when needed but operated as football teams. Tennessee made an efficient QB of Tannehill largely by pounding D Henry. Balt made Lamar an MVP candidate by running the ball, playing defense and giving him big-bodied TE options galore. SF finally made Jimmy G look like the guy they paid all that money to. Kittle dominated and the defense that was loaded with high draft picks was insanely good. You aren't going to out Mahomes, Mahomes. There's a lot of years of losing for teams that try that. But I saw Pat lose a lot more than I wanted in college. No defense, shoddy blocking and he will lose.
2. WR3 is a starting position and uber-important. This is over-stated by quite a lot. 3 WR sets account for about 64% of the snaps in the NFL. That is what they call a 2 down player on defense. It's a pseudo-starter but definitely has value. If you rank the 11 starters on an NFL offense WR3 is going to be near the bottom. But more than this DAL has had a top 5 performance at WR3 frequently of late. Cole Beasley many times and Randall Cobb in 2018 were really good WR3 options. Dallas won all of 1 playoff game for their success.
3. More offense wins. This one is pretty easy to disprove. Dallas finished with the league's highest rated offense and had an elite performance at WR3 but missed the playoffs. Compare that to Dak's rookie season in 2016 where they won 13 games.... The NFL is still as Jimmy Johnson coined back in 1991 about winning two of the three fronts. Offense, Defense and Special Teams.


All that said, Dallas did NOT draft WR3 at pick 17.
CeeDee Lamb was my top ranked WR and he was their 6th overall player. In a WR class that was largely a glut of guys who all looked a choose your own adventure character, CeeDee Lamb had no peers to me in overall play. He's a big play guy who attacks the ball and makes people miss. He's consistent versus elite defenses like Alabama and LSU and anyone else you throw at him. He doesn't require play-action because he is the play.
Dallas didn't go draft a guy to be WR3. They went and drafted a better player than Michael Gallup. There was only 1 WR I thought actually was. But for whatever insane reason Las Vegas did the most Raiders thing ever and drafted the elite speedster with holes in skill. Did they not recall Darrius Heyward-Bey? I mean they drafted that guy at pick 7 for his speed. He had a long career but averaged ~20 receptions a year.
Then Jerry Jeudy who is a Calvin Ridley clone goes because teams value that elite route running and Dallas is left staring at an unbelievable option. A guy you can comfortably project to WR1. It is insane.
Dallas paid Amari Cooper 20M per because WR1 is so insanely hard to find. WR2 and WR3 not so much. But elite talent? Very, very hard. Dallas was handed that on a platter so of course they tore up their draft list and took the faller. A guy who can make the offense go with Cooper on the sideline.

In case you wonder what a WR1 looks like merely think back to when Amari Cooper wasn't playing on plantar fasc.... 10 yard stops turn into 25 yard plays when he shakes off a tackler then burns a safety.
12 yard slants become TDs when he outruns people that have an angle.
That's CeeDee Lamb.
He isn't a Gallup that will simply run long then make about half his deep plays.
And he isn't a slot only guy that can be an elite WR3 but force others to set the table.
He can play X, Y, Z and play them well. He turns short passes into long gains.
He excelled on deep crosses, slants, and every version of WR screen that exists (it was Lincoln Riley calling plays so you know...).
That skill-set has elite value and getting that at 17 is a no-brainer.

So even if you were as opposed to going WR at 17 as I was, you can hardly argue CeeDee Lamb wasn't worth that draft capital. And if you were team defense like me, the draft had to make you feel about as good as humanly possible. They felt no apparent need at LB which is an actual show rather than tell statement on LVE. They got 2 CB in the same mold of Byron Jones (lean, strong, press guys) but with big play resumes. They got a 34 sack P5 pressure player. They got a big athletic guy in the middle to work into immediate DL rotation. So 4 defenders whom you'd expect to help and not have to sit on a practice squad. That's a lot of help from this draft class which ends up being very balanced.
All these A grades aren't wrong.

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Beast_from_East said:

Nobody predicted Lamb would still be on the board at 17, nobody...……...I never saw one single mock draft with Lamb still on the board at 17

Jerry said their analytics department had the chances of Lamb being there at 17 to be less than 1%.

So yeah, I get that a large number of fans wanted defense but you just cant pass up the chance to grab a player like Lamb. Opportunities like these come around like once a decade in drafting, you dont pass them up.

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JBell said:

Nice post OP. My only gripe is when you used the league average number of 64% when talking about how often a WR3 sees the field, when not every team runs the same personnel groupings. McCarthy runs a TON of 3 WR sets. The only team that ran more 11 personnel than McCarthy's 2018 Packers was McVay's Rams.

McCarthy had 3 WR's on the field 77% of the time. You could've justified taking a WR at 17 not named Lamb there with that type of playing time.

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ultron said:

CeeDee Lamb is more of a 1A and Amari is 1B, we didn’t draft a #3 WR

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