I did and your statement that "reaching" is not always a bad move is questionable, at best. Arguably, Fred worked in our favor. But it was also a move based on desperation. Over the long haul, reaching will yield bad results.
Lets separate the discussion into 2 parts.
1. Is reaching a bad strategy?
If a team continually drafts players that had a
high probability of being available later, then reaching would be a bad long term strategy.
I think we an all agree on that.
2. What defines reaching?
There is no set draft value on each player. The draft media puts out their best guess. We like to assume that since there are multiple draft media, that we can average the rankings and come out with a definite draft ranking for each player. The problem with this is that we have no idea how other teams have players ranked. We know for certain that the draft media is often wrong and often miss some details.
In 2014 a great example is Jackson Jeffcoat. Many media had him highly ranked, especially early in the off-season. The did start moving down some when they got feedback from teams, but in general he was still considered a mid-round pick. In reality he went undrafted. None of the draft media seemed prepared for that to happen. In 2013 the draft media had Jesse Williams as a borderline 1st to solid 2nd round pick. He ended up in the 5th round. The draft media somehow missed the fact that he had a knee problem.
It's easy to see where the media was wrong with higher ranked players that fall like Jeffcoat. The problem with "reaches" is that we never get to know where other teams would have picked them. We don't know if the media was wrong on 10% of players that are called reaches or if they were wrong on 90% of players that were called reaches.
3. Was Hitchens a reach?
If you follow the draft really closely, you probably know that about 90% of the time and effort that the draft media puts into ranking players is spent on about the top 50 or so players. They all put a huge amount of time and study into Manziel and those types of players; however, when it gets later in the draft, especially after the top 100, the majority of the draft media spend a minimal amount of time studying these players. Guys like Kiper will know the general description of players after the top 100, but for a large majority of those players it's highly unlikely that he spent hours watching their game film. There are hundreds of players eligible to be drafted. It would be impossible for a draft analyst to watch game film on all of them. There's very little reward for Kiper to make himself an expert on players after the top 100. The payoff is all about the players that might be drafted in the 1st round. Sure there will be some later round players that get some focus because of their specific story or because they were ranked highly in the past but ended up ranked lower once all the info came out, but in general guys like Kiper are not obsessing about guys in the 4th round and later.
4. Was Fred a reach and does it matter?
No way to know. There were some draft media that originally had him as a 1st rounder until he ran a poor forty time. Fred was at the top of their board at the time he was picked. They would have had to pick a player that they had ranked lower because they used some process to determine that Fred would be available later. What is that process and when do you skip a player that is the top rated player on your board because he might be available later. They actually did do this with the Escobar and T. Williams picks. They had Williams ranked slightly above Escobar, but they decided that Williams would likely still be available with their next pick and they were correct.
5. Did the Cowboys believe that they were reaching on the Hitchens pick?
They actually had Street ranked higher than Hitchens but believed that Street would be available later than Hitchens. This shows that they didn't just pick Hitchens with no regards for where they thought he would get picked by other teams. Something obviously made them believe that he would be picked before their 5th round pick; otherwise, they would have drafted Street in the 4th.
Seattle was one of the teams that was reported to have been interested in Hitchens. They did take a LB with their 4th round pick, Kevin Pierre-Louis. In looked back at several draft sites, it looks that the draft media had Pierre-Louis as a 6th to possible UDFA. Some had him as probably needing to convert to Safety. It's not really a stretch if you compare Pierre-Louis to Hitchens that Seattle really might have preferred Hitchens.
6. Bottom line.
The accuracy of the draft media is not that great in the 1st round. Their accuracy drops as in later rounds. There have been some bloggers that posted a chart/table that showed where some of the mainstream draft media had projected a player to be draft and where they were actually drafted. The results were not good to say the least.
The Super Bowl winner pick Kevin Pierre-Louis in the 4th after the Cowboys pick Hitchens which basically means that the question comes down to:
Anthony Hitchens vs Kevin Pierre-Louis
