This draft is much more similar to the 2008 draft with McFadden, CJ, Felix, Rice, Charles, Smith and Forte. That draft had similar RB depth. The one you chose was full of fail which matches your bias though. Wilson was barely a first round pick and coming out this year would have been a third rounder. The other two worse as yes Ajayi, Coleman, et al are better prospects.
No. I just went back to the last one that had first-round picks, as I said I did. And as I said, I don't believe there are many like that one where teams go 0-5.
Truth is we don't know how any draft is going to turn out. For various reason, this year's crop could end up resembling 2012 or it could end up resembling 2008 or something in between.
Let's say it does resemble '08 (for argument's sake),which it doesn't because five running backs went in the first round that year. You had McFadden, Jonathan Stewart, Jones, Rashard Mendenhall and Chris Johnson in the first, then Matt Forte and Ray Rice in the second.
That's a pretty good haul overall, except McFadden has only had three years out of seven where he's averaged more than 3.4 yards per carry. Felix put up good numbers when healthy for four years before dropping off, but never proved to be more than a change of pace. And Mendenhall has a 3.9 career average with 2 years out of 6 at 4.0 or better. So three out of the seven are not what we want. And Forte was below 4.0 his first two years, too.
Then since you conveniently brought up Charles, but didn't bring up the other third-round picks (and then called me biased), let's look at all of them. In addition to Charles, there was Kevin Smith and Steve Slaton, who each had one good year. So in that running back-heavy draft, we (who did miss on Jones for all intents and purposes) had essentially a 50-50 chance of getting a good back in the first three rounds.
Historically evidence shows that about 60 percent of the backs taken in the first two rounds should succeed and less than 40 percent of those taken in the third round ... so this draft is like all others in that some of these backs will turn out to be no good.
That doesn't mean I don't want to draft one, and I'd rather get one in those 60 percent groups than in the less than 40 percent group ... but if the chief argument against Peterson is that there is a chance he's washed up, I'd say there's a greater chance of us missing on the back we draft.
The only argument that I agree with on getting Peterson if he becomes available is what it would cost to get him (and I'm not talking about salary because that will work itself out). I'd give up a third or fourth because of the probability that he can still rush for more than 4 yards per carry (since he's done it every full year of his career -- had 3.6 average in the only game he played last year) and because it allows us to role the dice on players at other positions in the first two rounds. I wouldn't give up more than that because of the probability that at 30 that wall running backs hit isn't too far away.
