We need to stop trading up for now

[Galian Beast]

we traded up for Emmitt when we terribad and that worked out OK.
we traded up for Dez and that worked out OK.

the biggest hits in the franchises history have been trading up.

we did a lot of trading down or sitting tight in 2009....

you make the move that makes the most sense at the time.
sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't.

I think if you're an absolutely terrible team you can trade up to get a franchise player.

When you have franchise players who you've built around, you still need to build around them.

We're in a position where we have to get as many good players as possible, not get more franchise players.

 

[Galian Beast]

Just the passing on Floyd issue, I know that the coaches didn't feel that he fit the system, but then you have to question why was he a top five player on their board? From what I understood it was the coaches that nixed the idea of Floyd, which is fine unless they did it on draft day. There seems to be some confusion on what happened and I just believe that, confusion on draft day of this magnitude is inexcusable.

I saw several threads on the days following the draft, my main point is that strategy, especially on draft day has to be worked out beforehand and I don't get the feeling that the Cowboys are working on every possible scenario. Maybe, I'm wrong on this, that is just the impression that I am getting.

Miscommunicatioin between scouting and the coaching staff. They made the right choice, and we can see the results in hindsight.

 

[craig71]

I think hindsight is always 20/20. I also think that the fluid nature of the draft can ruin months of planning in one spectacular or unspectacular moment. Point being, a team that fully intends to implement its pick or strategy can be found scurrying to either move up or down with reckless abandon if the situation dictates it. That is why the draft will always boil down to being a crapshoot at best.


Craig

 

[Joe Realist]

Trading up has really not worked out for us, and if you look at it, it has really hurt us.

We have way too many holes (especially on defense) to take the risk of combining draft picks towards players who may or may not work out.

It may make more sense to trade up to a player who has slipped like Dez, but trading up to get guys like Claiborne... just a disaster.

If anything, trading down has proven much more successful for us.

I am fine with talking draft. I am looking forward to it.

 

[jterrell]

I think if you're an absolutely terrible team you can trade up to get a franchise player.

When you have franchise players who you've built around, you still need to build around them.

We're in a position where we have to get as many good players as possible, not get more franchise players.

nice try but Troy and Mike were here when we got Emmitt.
the team added Deion and Haley after that....

guess we just had too many franchise caliber guys?

You post a lot of weird generalizations that no football team could ever put in place.
I like trading down and posited hundreds of trade down options over the off-season but you never write any hard and fast rule about not trading up.
If we had been able to trade up a couple spots for Aaron Donald the fan base would have went crazy went joy.

 

[noshame]

Q......B

 

[theSHOW]

enjoyable topic and discussion. I like the general direction the organization is moving. Jerry has a sound group around him that he now listens to as he plays billionaire fantasy football

 

[Sinister]

Miscommunicatioin between scouting and the coaching staff. They made the right choice, and we can see the results in hindsight.

That is my whole problem "miscommunication", in my mind whether they made the right decision in hindsight it is beside the point. It could have been a disaster because of that "miscommunication". Luckily I think they did OK, but I still have problems with the strategy they employed during that draft.

 

[Zordon]

It does bother me every time I watch Seattle and one of the two players we gave up to get Claiborne is their stud linebacker Bobby Wagner.

The other player (so that is Wagner PLUS one of these) could have been Brockers, DeCastro, Chandler Jones, Alshon Jeffery...etc.

Could you imagine? And the that would a have affected the last two drafts as well.
It shouldn't keep depressing me, but it does.

Like xw said above...time for real football!

Yes, I feel your pain. It gets me everytime. You'd think he'd learn his lesson but 2 years later he does the same thing over again. *sigh*

 

[Sinister]

The Cowboys brought in a new defensive staff and system half way through scouting that class.
The staff upon hire spent all their time evaluating what we had in house. And looking at a DL of Ware, Spencer, Hatcher, Ratliff, Crawford and others, that was never a target in the draft.
Dallas simply wasn't going to go DL high unless it was a great value and the guy was an explosive pass rusher who could replace Ware or Ratliff.
Floyd wasn't judged to be that guy. But he might have been the top 3-4 DE in that draft. No one suspected he'd last that long.

Floyd became a vegetarian in the off-season and dropped 30 pounds. He still weighs ~300. That's just not elite pass rusher stuff.
He is going to start this year as a replacement for Kevin Williams, the run stuffer.
So while it may seem Dallas was confused or conflicted in the end it looks like they made the right call IMO.
They traded down and added TFred who looks like a Pro Bowl center fixture and a WR who is starting opposite Dez allowing us to move on from expensive and always injured Miles.

The Mo thing hurts us because we had scouted well there and Brockers and Wagner are just really friggin good players we'd love to have
Even more those are the two weakest positions on the team.
--tho if we didn't have Mo CB would be the weakest position on the team for the next 4 weeks.

I just have so many problems with the conclusions that the front office reached. At the end of the day, their strategy to deal with these issues was extremely poor.

 

[jterrell]

I just have so many problems with the conclusions that the front office reached. At the end of the day, their strategy to deal with these issues was extremely poor.

It certainly didn't "look good".
But if we have real insight into war rooms I think a lot of them would look bad.

In the end I actually think it was handled well.
The GM took in all the info, pointed to the top guy on the board and said to his coaches, convince me not to take him... they did.
He bailed out of the pick and took someone the position coaches liked more than the value of the pick paid and continued following the board and taking guys scouts had rated above grade.

I can't be mad because I can't say I would have handled that much differently than Jerry.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Trading down allowed us to get Frederick and Williams, which may be a pivotal move for our offense for some time.

Trading down in 2004 was disastrous was we had the ability to draft Steven Jackson and instead got Julius Jones and Marcus Spears...

I think the Brady Quinn trade has mixed results, but at the time had a lot of potential. The team misread running backs a bit, though I think Jones had a lot of potential that was wasted. We really shouldn't have drafted a running back in the first in the first place at that point.

I think we developed Julius poorly. Tried to make him into a RB that he's not. Dorsett spoke openly about it. And I'm honestly not a big Steven Jackson fan. He gets injured too often and is poor at picking up the blitz.

I just think in the end, you're better off erring on the side of trading down than trading up. I do think we traded down too far in the Jackson trade because I would still want that first round talent. But, I think they were Parcells moves and I don't think Jones fit the type of RB he wanted him to be and Spears didn't fit the 3-4 quite like he thought he would.

The problem with the Claiborne trade is that it had been established that this isn't the same passing game that it was back pre-2008. And if you look at the successful defenses and really the successful teams in the league...they were doing it by focusing on getting top-tier safeties and paying less for cornerbacks and getting big, physical, good tackling corners at a cheaper price.

The league developed into a lot of quick hitting passes that required the CB's to be good tacklers. The league developed into frequent use of pass catching tight ends and quick slot WR's and a lot of pick play patterns. Now you had to have safeties that could share both FS and SS responsibilities. They had to play deep and mid-zone coverage. They had to blitz. They had to stop the run. They have to defend TE's, RB's and slot WR's while helping over the top.

And by focusing on getting top-tier talent at safety and going cheaper on CB's...the end result was a better cap figure so they could spend their cap money on other positions on the team.

Jerry, Garrett and Ryan were not keen on recognizing that. So we end up with paying Carr huge dollars, trading up for Mo and having lousy safeties (maybe Wilcox and Church work out, but until then...)







YR

 

[TwoCentPlain]

Trading up has really not worked out for us, and if you look at it, it has really hurt us.

We have way too many holes (especially on defense) to take the risk of combining draft picks towards players who may or may not work out.

It may make more sense to trade up to a player who has slipped like Dez, but trading up to get guys like Claiborne... just a disaster.

If anything, trading down has proven much more successful for us.

And if Claiborne plays well this year and helps the Cowboys make the playoffs, will your hindsight-grading change? Pretty easy to armchair grade a trade in hindsight. Pretty sure any of us could do it. I'm sure people here were wanting the team to trade up and take OL Jonathan Cooper last year. On paper, it probably looked good. In reality, it would have been a disaster. No one has a crystal ball.

Making an overarching generality on trades is difficult. Need to consider each trade as it comes. How about the Dorsett trade? Did we move up to take Emmitt ( I think so but forget)? Some trades work, some don't. I don't think anyone really knows in advance. If we did, I guess there would be no trade partners ever.

Look at the recent Rams. They stockpiled all these picks with trade-downs and what do they have to show for it right now? As an overall team, the Rams have jack squat. They are rolling with Shaun Hill at QB and have little to nothing on offense.

 

[Blackspider214]

You got a problem with our Starting Center and #2 WR?

Could have had Frederick without moving.

And when we continue to ignore defense, yes, I have a problem.

 

[DeaconBlues]

Trading up has really not worked out for us, and if you look at it, it has really hurt us.

We have way too many holes (especially on defense) to take the risk of combining draft picks towards players who may or may not work out.

It may make more sense to trade up to a player who has slipped like Dez, but trading up to get guys like Claiborne... just a disaster.

If anything, trading down has proven much more successful for us.

Doesn't make sense. Dez was a much riskier pick than Mo. This is just hindsight.

 

[Sinister]

It certainly didn't "look good".
But if we have real insight into war rooms I think a lot of them would look bad.

In the end I actually think it was handled well.
The GM took in all the info, pointed to the top guy on the board and said to his coaches, convince me not to take him... they did.
He bailed out of the pick and took someone the position coaches liked more than the value of the pick paid and continued following the board and taking guys scouts had rated above grade.

I can't be mad because I can't say I would have handled that much differently than Jerry.

Let me ask you this do you think in hindsight the Claiborne trade-up was handled well?

I know it is a loaded question, because it looks like it was mistake to trade-up for Claiborne. But in my opinion the strategy to trade-up for Claiborne was not that much different than the strategy to trade down for Fredbeard, so I definitely don't think the trade down or the trade-up was handled well at all.

 

[Galian Beast]

And if Claiborne plays well this year and helps the Cowboys make the playoffs, will your hindsight-grading change? Pretty easy to armchair grade a trade in hindsight. Pretty sure any of us could do it. I'm sure people here were wanting the team to trade up and take OL Jonathan Cooper last year. On paper, it probably looked good. In reality, it would have been a disaster. No one has a crystal ball.

Making an overarching generality on trades is difficult. Need to consider each trade as it comes. How about the Dorsett trade? Did we move up to take Emmitt ( I think so but forget)? Some trades work, some don't. I don't think anyone really knows in advance. If we did, I guess there would be no trade partners ever.

Look at the recent Rams. They stockpiled all these picks with trade-downs and what do they have to show for it right now? As an overall team, the Rams have jack squat. They are rolling with Shaun Hill at QB and have little to nothing on offense.

We didn't draft Claiborne to play well, we drafted him to be a franchise player. I hope he does play well, but it doesn't change the point I've made, which is we shouldn't mortgage our drafts to trade up for players like Claiborne.

 

[Blackspider214]

Doesn't make sense. Dez was a much riskier pick than Mo. This is just hindsight.

How was Dez riskier? I hope it's not because of his "off the field issues" because those were overblown. He made a silly decision to get in bed with that sleazeball Deion. And the NCAA went way too hard on him. But it's the NCAA and they are the biggest slimeballs out there in how they exploit these kids.

Dez had tons of talent. He would have ate up every defense if he got to play in 2009.

Mo was already injured when we drafted him. And how valuable was he on LSU's defense? Was he good because of the team he was with or did he make the team better because of his play? Definitely the former. He looked good because the SEC at that time was 3 yards and a cloud of dust offensively and LSU's dline was so good, he rarely had to cover for any periods of time.

He got exposed when he actually had to face competent QBs and offenses. Happens all the time.

 

[Galian Beast]

I think we developed Julius poorly. Tried to make him into a RB that he's not. Dorsett spoke openly about it. And I'm honestly not a big Steven Jackson fan. He gets injured too often and is poor at picking up the blitz.

I just think in the end, you're better off erring on the side of trading down than trading up. I do think we traded down too far in the Jackson trade because I would still want that first round talent. But, I think they were Parcells moves and I don't think Jones fit the type of RB he wanted him to be and Spears didn't fit the 3-4 quite like he thought he would.

The problem with the Claiborne trade is that it had been established that this isn't the same passing game that it was back pre-2008. And if you look at the successful defenses and really the successful teams in the league...they were doing it by focusing on getting top-tier safeties and paying less for cornerbacks and getting big, physical, good tackling corners at a cheaper price.

The league developed into a lot of quick hitting passes that required the CB's to be good tacklers. The league developed into frequent use of pass catching tight ends and quick slot WR's and a lot of pick play patterns. Now you had to have safeties that could share both FS and SS responsibilities. They had to play deep and mid-zone coverage. They had to blitz. They had to stop the run. They have to defend TE's, RB's and slot WR's while helping over the top.

And by focusing on getting top-tier talent at safety and going cheaper on CB's...the end result was a better cap figure so they could spend their cap money on other positions on the team.

Jerry, Garrett and Ryan were not keen on recognizing that. So we end up with paying Carr huge dollars, trading up for Mo and having lousy safeties (maybe Wilcox and Church work out, but until then...)

YR

If we draft Steven Jackson mark my words, Romo wins at least one or two super bowls already.

Steven Jackson might not be the healthiest player, but his ability to carry the load and take the burden off of a QB has been immense. He fell to us despite all the odds, and inexplicably we traded down anyways.

I think Julius had potential too, I was really excited about him his rookie year, but even then it was the wrong move.

 

[Doomsday101]

Moves tend to be good or bad based on the end results. I'm sure many like the fact we moved up and got Dez, he is showing himself to be a legit playmaker. Thus far the move to get Claiborne has not looked good. I think as Gil Brandt once said if there is a guy there you like a lot then you do what you can to move up and get him. Same when players at your spot are not exactly what you are looking for you can move down to get the extra picks but all moves will be judged on how the player produces.