Teams somehow manage without having to invest a 1st or 2nd round pick at every position.
This team needs to figure that out as well.
- Tyron Smith - 1st round pick
- Connor Williams - 2nd round pick
- Connor McGovern - 3rd round pick
- Zack Martin - 1st round pick
- La'El Collins - 1st round pick (we all know that story)
Thankfully, the new staff somehow managed to win without 1st rounders across the board and I expect them to do that again. When you have coaches, you don't have to have 1st round picks everywhere and try to 'out talent' everyone you play.
You can't really count Collins since we didn't spend a draft pick on him. Where they were projected (based on talent) and what we spent on them are two different things. Getting Collins was just a good job (by Jerry) and a low risk-high reward move.
Looking over the past 9 years (since we drafted Tyron Smith and started rebuilding the OL) here are the positions we drafted in the first 3 rounds:
Offense (11 total):
OL (6 total) - three 1st (Smith, Frederick, Martin), one 2nd (Williams), two 3rd (Green, McGovern)
RB (2 total) - one 1st (Elliott), one 3rd (Murray)
TE (1 total) - one 2nd (Escobar)
WR (2 total)- two 3rd (Williams, Gallup)
Defense (14 total):
DL (6 total) - one 1st (Charlton), three 2nd (Lawrence, Gregory, Hill), two 3rd (Crawford, Collins)
LB (3 total) - one 1st (Vander Esch), two 2nd (Carter, Smith)
DB (5 total) - two 1st (Claiborne, Jones), one 2nd (Awuzie), two 3rd (Wilcox, Lewis)
Just looking at this, sure we spent the most 1st rounders on OL, but we also spent quite a lot all across the defense. We invested quite a bit into every level of the defense. It just seems like we got the better value with our 1st rounders on offense. All 4 of our 1st rounders on offense were All Pros, while we didn't have much luck with our 1st rounders on defense.