The real cause of a lot of our problems - bad drafts

[CowboysFaninHouston]

So, we're going to just do this anecdotally again, are we?

If we're going to have multiple threads about how bad the drafting is relative to the rest of the league, shouldn't we at least try to support that? We all know the SEA did a great job drafting in the 4th a while back. But anybody can run off a list of failed or underperforming picks from any team's recent draft. That means nothing.

that;s the point. most teams will miss a lot in the middle rounds. that's why those players drop in the draft...however good teams, consistent playoff teams tend to hit on a couple of gems every 3 years or so and that gives them additional foundation outside of the first round picks.....we haven't hit on any mid round picks for 5-6 years now. except for murray......

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

lets stick with our drafts then.how many starters have we drafted in RDs 4-7 in the last 5 years?

I don't think its about starts....Jags have started a lot of their draft picks and they suck. its about quality of starters. where do they rank in the league among their peers. how mny pro-bowlers, etc....its about finding 2-3 impact players every 4 years or so in the mid rounds....

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

The problem is some fans have no clue what is good drafting. They just assume every other team is hitting on every pick which is very far from true

no team is hitting on every pick.....that 's absurd. but good teams tend to find good players in mid rounds..not every year, but consistently enough....

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Quick reality check...go back and check the success rates for the undrafted players that Dallas brought in, within the past six years. See how many of them are actually achievers.

great point. I guess if you want to throw Romo in there. but those all have been supplemental type players to fill the gaps and be contributors. outside of Romo is there a star or a probowler type among them?

 

[dfense]

I think if you compare the NFL as a whole we're probably in the middle when it comes to drafting. Some are better. Pittsburg Seattle Carolina.. Bad coaching is the real problem.

Or... 2 of those 3 teams sucked and got some quality players high in the draft. Or in Pittsburgh's case, players that got high in the draft.

Now it's come to full circle and Seattle has to pay those guys and they already peaked, same as Carolina.

 

[dfense]

great point. I guess if you want to throw Romo in there. but those all have been supplemental type players to fill the gaps and be contributors. outside of Romo is there a star or a probowler type among them?

How many undrafted players on one team are Pro Bowlers? Myles Austin was one, but his star kinda faded fast.

 

[CowboyRoy]

is bad drafting. this past season and all the injuries and losses to room, dez and loss of murray showed how thin this team was as opposed to deep.

and a lot of that falls on the shoulder of scouting. and some will argue with coaches developing players. or both.

for what ever reason dallas has done well in the first round. hitting on most players. 2nd round is 50/50 so far. with Lawrence seemingly a hit, but book is out on Crawford. lee is good but often injured. carter was a bust. Gregory was top 10 talent but risky and it shows with him being suspended for 4 games in his second season in the league.

I would venture to say that scouting is good on first round type talent, including lee who dropped because of injury concerns and same with Gregory. dallas has shown they will take risks on top talent in the 2nd round if nothing else.

past 2nd round our draft record is awful. the only player of significance is Murray. we haven't drafted a player of significance in the past 5 years past 2nd round. and that's where you build depth and have to hit on one or two to ake it over the top, given that the 1st and 2nd round talent resource is pretty much the same for all NFL teams.



so is that the fault of scouting dept? or coaching? I think we just haven't done a good job of scouting in recent years under mcclay. prior to him we found an Orlando scandrick and James "Rat" ratlieff, doug free....

Bottom line is that Jerry is a big risk taker. They take players with higher grades but drop for either injury or character issues. They love taking those guys in rounds 2-7. And we simply havent hit on many of them. Guys like Lee and Murray that always go injured and arent reliable. Guys like Gregory that havent panned out. Then all the 2nd round TE's that have gone by the wayside. Then you have Jerry drafting for backups and special teamers in the later rounds. Its no wonder we are bad drafters.

 

[CowboyRoy]

Crawford was a 3rd round pick and is an above average starter..

True, but he is paid like a pro bowler which he has never been. So it was a solid draft pick, but then a bad cap move.

 

[Jarv]

You want to see some REALLY bad drafts go pre-2010.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/dal/draft.htm

I do agree though that we haven't done too well in the latter rounds. Now I realize there's usually only a few scattered diamonds in the rough & it's mainly backup types, but we haven't even gotten many keepers in round 3.

Looking at some history here makes me feel bad for Dave Campo.

 

[CowboyRoy]

One guy? I didn't realize that Romo, Murray, and Bryant were one guy. This is quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever read. Congratulations.

You have to think about how losing those guys related to poor GM work or poor coaching.

-Romo: Tough loss, but clearly the offense was all Romo or too Romo friendly. Whenever one of the other QB's got in there, the coaches werent prepared and neither was the backup QB.
-And who decided that Weeden and Cassell were any good? Why werent they prepared? Pathetic coaching there
-Who's decision was it to let Murray walk and replace him the woeful McChicken and Randle. And why was Randle the main guy for the first 4 or 5 games? They also depended on Dunbar who gets injured every single year. Horrid coaching and GM work.
-We dont draft or develop young QB's. Relying on Romo at this stage is just plain dumb. Bad coaching and bad QB development by coaches and GM.
-Dez? Just bad injury luck. But he seemed a shadow of himself with the great Romo throwing to him. What did the coaches do to get him the ball while he was in there?

 

[CowboyRoy]

As it is with all of these threads, what's the basis for concluding we're bad at drafting again?

Bad win/loss record, lack of pro bowls, lack of hitting on guys other than the first round, no play makers on defense. Should I go on?

And what is your basis for concluding that we are great drafters?

 

[CowboyRoy]

Is the basis we want to use then the number of starters from a draft's last three rounds the last four years? That seems sort of arbitrary. Is it the number of starters overall? For the Cowboys? Or do we include players who leave to start elsewhere? Do we care about probowls? All-pros? Contributors who play a lot of snaps? If so, how many is a lot? What about college free agents who come in and develop into starters? They come from the same scouting process.

It's easy to say something isn't good enough relative to the rest of the league and then just point at an example of something that turned out bad.

And I should say, I'm not really at all interested in doing the work for the OP to make this thread an actual argument. I'm just saying that, as it stands, it's not.

Are you claiming that the Cowboys are one of the better drafting teams? How about you show proof of that? Or are you going to claim that we are middle of the pack and that is just fine by you?

 

[CowboyRoy]

As it is with all of these threads, what's the basis for concluding we're bad at drafting again?

On the basis of resigning draftees to 2nd contracts the Cowboys are slightly above average in the NFL. Now I would not call that "bad", but its certainly not good enough.

 

[CCBoy]

great point. I guess if you want to throw Romo in there. but those all have been supplemental type players to fill the gaps and be contributors. outside of Romo is there a star or a probowler type among them?

Let's see...Myles Austin, Beasley, Church, Wilcox, Bailey, Harris - that went to a NFC East rival...those were starters and contributers. Good returns.

 

[Verdict]

I am not sure where you guys get your information that we don't draft well. We obviously have three pro bowl players drafted in the last three years or so. I guess they don't count!!!

Murray had a career for the ages and he was drafted in the 3rd. Let's not count him too. Wait, what about James Hanna. Hasn't he been a very solid pickup in what, the 5th or 6th round? If it wasn't for Witten his numbers would undeniably be much better and he just earned a new contract.

What about Crawford? Yeah, he was extended last year. I guess we whiffed on that one too. Scandrick, arguably our best corner, was drafted in the 5th round. He is pretty darn salty and we extended him, but I guess we won't count him either.

Hatcher was a third round pick too, and he was stolen away by another team for a premium price. I guess he was chopped liver too. Wasn't Parnell a late round choice that we got a lot out of? I think he signed a pretty big payday to go play for the Jags. I guess none of those guys are worth mentioning. Oh my, we totally suck at this drafting thingy!! I think the sky is falling!!!

 

[Plankton]

But he just said we lost 3 guys from one unit. Not 1.

Two of them are top five players and we lost then essentially for an entire season.

Saying that the Cowboys lost Murray in the same way that they lost Romo and Bryant is intellectually dishonest. They chose to let Murray go. Same with Randle later. Technically, they lost two guys - same as the Steelers.

 

[jnday]

This team's record gives you a good ideal how they draft. IIRC , The team has a .500 record since 1997. That tells me that everything about the team , coaches ,FO, players are average. They are as average of an organization as any team can get. Average, average , average, and did I say average ? As a fan it explains why so many fans get so disgusted with this team and and it explains the homeristic attitude of others. There are areas that I like and just any , if not more that I don't . That is due to my belief that average sucks.

 

[Gameover]

Bad drafting got us a 12-4 record in 2014?

How did those All Pro's get here?(smith, Dez, Fredrick, Murray, Martin) #all draft picks.

Let's see were the team is this season with health at qb and the rest of the squad before we go this route.

 

[skinsscalper]

some how other teams suffer major injuries and they win games and come close to playoffs. we were one bad Commanders play away from the top pick.....

Name me the last team that lost a total of 35 combined games from their TOP QB, WR, and RB from the previous season and made the playoffs.

I'll wait..................

 

[skinsscalper]

You have to think about how losing those guys related to poor GM work or poor coaching.

-Romo: Tough loss, but clearly the offense was all Romo or too Romo friendly. Whenever one of the other QB's got in there, the coaches werent prepared and neither was the backup QB.
-And who decided that Weeden and Cassell were any good? Why werent they prepared? Pathetic coaching there
-Who's decision was it to let Murray walk and replace him the woeful McChicken and Randle. And why was Randle the main guy for the first 4 or 5 games? They also depended on Dunbar who gets injured every single year. Horrid coaching and GM work.
-We dont draft or develop young QB's. Relying on Romo at this stage is just plain dumb. Bad coaching and bad QB development by coaches and GM.
-Dez? Just bad injury luck. But he seemed a shadow of himself with the great Romo throwing to him. What did the coaches do to get him the ball while he was in there?

There's a lot of valid points there. I won't argue that for a moment. However, I was quoting rocket scientist that made the absurd proclamation that Romo was the only loss that affected the horrible offensive output and that somehow coaching is going to magically dig you out of that hole.

I've said before and I'll say it again: There's no excuse for only winning one game in the absence of your QB. It was a failure on every level. From the water boy, to the top of the food chain. It was such an epic failure that the blame simply cannot be laid solely at the feet of the coaching staff. Should they share their fair part in the blame? You bet. But this failure was so epic and on such a grand scale that focusing solely on the coaching staff and laying the blame completely at their feet is also a failure of epic levels (I realize that it is NOT what you're intimating TO ME, as you've stated in your post). But, the post that you quoted of mine was in response to a poster who used the simple minded and shallow myopic view of the entire situation because he's either too lazy to think any farther than that level, simply posted it for the sake of regurgitating the same things he's posted ad naseum for months on end (as if we hadn't read it from him 1000 times before), or too stupid to comprehend anything more complex.