Cowboys22
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Thornhill
- The Cowboys considered Thornhill as Safety.
- A 3rd round Safety would also project to be an improvement over Heath at SS.
- If the NFL had a magic rule that said Thornhill could only play Strong Safety, then he would not have been a 2nd round pick.
- Heath is not great but was way down the list of reasons the Cowboys lost to the Rams in the playoff game.
Hill vs Thornhill (DL vs Safety)
- The other issue is that DL has a higher positional value than Safety.
- At any given pick, the best Safety available is highly likely to be a better prospect as a Safety than the best available DL is as a DL.
- If a team always picked the best player at his position, then that team would never pick certain positions.
- For many years the Cowboys had that issue at OLine.
- Their grades on OLinemen meant that an OLineman was rarely ever going to be available where they had them graded.
- Their grades on ranking OLinemen relative to each other were fine, but their rankings of OLinemen relative to other positions was the problem.
- It meant that multiple other teams would have those OLinemen rated higher.
- Example: If the Cowboys had an OL rated as a 3rd round pick, then most other teams had that player rated as a 2nd round pick.
The year their draft board leaked, i compared every OL on their board to where they were actually picked. The result was on average OL were gone 1.5 rounds earlier than where Dallas had them slotted. I think they realized this and adjusted.