More Kvetching About An Awful Draft Class (Mailbag Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a two-part mailbag. You can find Part 1 here. We have lots of ground to cover, so let’s get straight to it.

At what point in a player’s career do their intangibles all become tangible? – Nick Parke

An NFL player’s intangibles become tangible …

• When he wins a starting job or significant role over a superior athlete.
• When he plays through minor-ish injuries during a playoff push.
• When he is named special teams captain.
• When he follows a coordinator who just got a head coaching job to another team to help “install the culture.”
• When he’s 30 and still holding down a starting job even though every draft class is full of bigger, faster, younger, cheaper guys.

To cite an Eagles-centric example, Brandon Graham was the 13th pick of the 2010 draft. He left Michigan with a high-effort/character reputation, plus lots of sacks, but wasn’t considered a workout demon. Graham battled injuries in his first two seasons. He spent three more years as a rotation lineman who never cleared a half-dozen sacks. He didn’t have a double-digit sack season until he turned 34. Yet Graham stayed in Philly through the Andy Reid, Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson AND Nick Sirianni regimes, won two Super Bowl rings and will enter the Eagles Ring of Honor as soon as he finally stops un-retiring. He’s been a capital-L Leader for the Eagles for about a decade.

That’s what intangibles look like when they become tangible!

How would “fake GM Tanier” approach the draft in general from an analytical/Moneyball angle? For example, for years now pundits/podcasters have posited that there is nothing more valuable than a QB on a rookie contract given the surplus value generated between what you pay him on his rookie deal vs. his real market value. That is true provided the QB is, say, at least QB15ish or better, but what are the odds of you ACTUALLY hitting on a better-than-average QB in the draft? And with JSN setting a new record for WR pay, maybe it makes sense to draft more WRs in the top five or even #1? Their pay may not yet be at QB levels, but (I think) it’s easier to identify and hit on “can’t miss” WRs in the draft than their QB counterparts? – FinsUp72

This is one of those classic “thought experiment versus real life” questions.

Thought Experiment Tanier would only draft a quarterback in the first round if he were a Trevor Lawrence-caliber prospect. Until then, TETanier would select mobile mid-round quarterbacks in search of Dak Prescott or Jalen Hurts, making them compete with young reclamation project veterans. Meanwhile, TETanier would load up on talent at high-leverage positions like cornerback, edge rusher, tackle and wide receiver in every first round, ensuring that the mid-tier quarterbacks would succeed. No quarterback would ever be overpaid. The roster would always be strong enough to win with Sam Darnold.

Real Life Tanier would have an impatient owner and an angry coach screaming in each ear, while the local media and Internet roasted him so hard for every misstep that his sons want to change their names. He would lunge at any viable quarterback prospect if he had a top 5 draft pick until he found “his guy.” If a quarterback reached CJ Stroud-level success, RLTanier would fork over $240 million of the boss’ money in a heartbeat.

RLTanier wouldn’t draft running backs in the first round or trade up 20 spots for some “missing piece” receiver – he’s not stupid – but he would succumb to the realpolitik of his situation. RLTanier knows that if he fails while making conventional decisions, he’ll just become a deputy GM for some other team. If he thinks too far outside the box, he’ll end up running a Substack full of crackpot theories.

My issue with most game-the-system-for-a-QB theories is that they only work in a vacuum where an entire organization is thrilled to play along with the theory until it works. Even if the owner is the one trying to play the “cheap QBs” game, he or she would soon have a hard time finding/retaining good coaches and execs, free agents would skip town, etc. And that owner would start getting nervous at the first sight of a half-empty stadium.

Finally, RLTanier sounds like the author of a successful series of young-adult horror novels. I envy him!

Will the union get crushed in the upcoming negotiations or folded into a paper airplane and tossed out a window? – Tracer Bullet

It will get walked and fed a Milk Bone like the obedient puppy that it is.

The league will get its 18th regular-season game. The NFLPA will huff, puff and walk away with a 0.05% increase in revenue sharing and even shorter minicamps. (Players will show up, watch a TikTok video, and go home.) Hardliners among the owners seeking to union-bust will realize that doing so will only make their lives harder.

Hey Mike, have you been following the NFLPA/J.C. Tretter nonsense? The players just elected a jackass who has been bungling union activities since he was player president to the Executive Director position of the NFLPA. And I say “bungling” as if he was simply incompetent and not purposefully corrupt, though I very much believe he has shown a willingness to cut players out of the process to enrich himself and his cronies.

What argument could you make to an “average” player to start paying more attention to their Union so that dirtbags like Tretter don’t profit off of their disinterest? – Kevin Langstaff

I initially liked J.C. Tretter. I heard him speak and pressed flesh with him at a few events back in the day. I thought he was a moderate and a realist, two necessary qualities for NFLPA leadership. His coziness with management didn’t bother me, because I come from a teacher’s union background, where many principals are former union leaders and many union leaders are just waiting to get hired as principals. In a world where unions rarely negotiate from a position other than extreme weakness, it sometimes pays to play Cleopatra to Caesar.

Tretter has indeed turned out to be a bungler who may be a little too comfy on management’s lap. Unfortunately, any union is only as strong as its membership makes it.

The NFLPA is full of 20-somethings who barely understand what a union does, may be actively suspicious of unions because of their upbringing/politics, and are likely to be out of the NFL (and NFLPA) before they turn 26. This has been the NFLPA’s existential crisis for decades. The strongest thing it ever did was temporarily dissolve so Reggie White and others could sue for free agency.

I don’t know how to tell young teachers to get more involved in unions that are desperately trying to preserve the benefits they will be counting on for the next 30 years. I have no idea what to say to an NFL player who is going to get paid no matter what and will probably never get franchise-tagged or deal with any of the other ramifications of a bad contract. I can’t even warn players to start saving for a 2030 strike now, because half of these players will be out of the league by 2031, and the guys who should be saving money for a work stoppage might still be finishing high school.

Let’s switch gears!

Hey Mike, where do you stand on head coaches being playcallers? Obviously for elite ones like McVay, Shanahan, and Macdonald it’s a huge asset for them. But I can’t help but feel that it distracts from the head coach’s in-game duties, and is a big reason why playcalling head coaches often struggle with in-game management (we are both old enough to remember the Andy Reid Eagles after all). To me, playcalling is something the head coach can entrust to a coordinator, whereas game management is his hands alone. What do you think? Is the tradeoff worth it? – Ken Raining

As you state, this is a case-by-case situation. New coaches who try to call plays often seem overwhelmed by the task and end up fumbling other responsibilities, from fourth downs to locker room management to media messaging. Mike McDaniel never became a terrible play caller, but he lost all ability to manage his players and forgot what joy feels like. Probably a problem!

It all comes down to a logical delegation of duties. If I am hiring Ben Johnson, I want him to call plays. Therefore, I would expect him to hire a defensive caporegime like Dennis Allen who can operate with autonomy, I would limit his personnel responsibilities to the bare minimum, and I would want him to fill out his staff with veteran coaches, perhaps including some “associate head coach” type.

On the other hand, if I just hired some generic off-the-rack coordinator, I might insist that he select a trusted lieutenant to be his playcaller right off the bat. Nothing about the backgrounds of Mike LaFleur or Jeff Hafley screams “this guy is ready for DUAL ROLES at the top of an org chart!”

A generic interview question I might ask: It’s 4th-and-2 at the opponent’s 40, you are trailing by three points, it’s raining, and you are out of timeouts. Who is responsible for what component of the decision process? And if the answer is “you and only you,” start telling me what you plan to do. NOW. Go. I am certain that if Brian Callahan were faced with this very question by Titans leadership, he would have thrown up on his shirt.

Based on the way different positions are valued now, do you think a non-QB will win the MVP award again? And if so, who could you see doing it (or if not a specific person then the “type” of player) and why? – Gordon

No non-quarterback will win the MVP award for the foreseeable future. The current MVP voters agree, nearly unanimously, that quarterbacks are inherently more valuable than players at any other positions.

The voters are right, but that’s not really relevant. It doesn’t matter that an argument for a Jaxon Smith-Njigba or Christian McCaffrey might convince podcast listeners or prop bet wagerers. A small group of voters will remain fundamentally unconvinced on a philosophical level, and theirs are the only opinions that matter.

For a non-quarterback to win the MVP award, either:

• A cataclysmic quarterback season must occur in which: a) all the quarterbacks play poorly, and b) four or five of the “best” quarterbacks have nearly identical seasons. This would result in multiple quarterbacks splitting the ballot, so a JSN or CMC could rack up enough third-to-fifth place votes to come out on top. Or,
• NFL tactics must change in such a way to lessen the importance of quarterbacks. For example, the whole league reverts to the Wing-T or something.

I don’t see the latter happening. The 2025 season was a bit of a test of concept for the former scenario, but two relatively weak quarterback candidates just split the ballot.

If there was no draft (and no rookie pay scale) but there was still a salary cap, would it make the offseason more entertaining? Asking for a friend in 2036. – Martin Driver

There will never not be a draft. The draft controls salaries. The league likes that. Veteran players also like that, because it nominally protects jobs and increases veteran salaries. The NFLPA itself would back-burner any effort to eliminate the draft. And if the draft is collectively bargained, it’s legal.

Unpopular take: I don’t see sports drafts as any kind of loathsome restraint-of-trade situation. If you hope to enter a highly-specialized industry, expect some highly-specialized rules of entry.

Also, covering a free-for-all of college players negotiating with NFL teams sounds like hell!

If I were a prospect hoping to get drafted, I would loathe the idea of getting drafted by the Jets, Browns, Falcons, etc. Do you think actual prospects have the same feelings in general? A QB certainly thinks he could turn a franchise around immediately, but I doubt an IOL has those thoughts. If so, do they try to look bad during certain interviews to escape the leer of the terrible teams? (Andrew Berry: “welcome potential WR, we like your tape and are excited for this interview.” Prospect: “Hey coach, oh wait, you’re the GM, that’s right, sorry man - my brain’s all spacey these days. BTW, I forgot to bring a pen to take notes, do you have a spare?”) – Mike Schobazaford

No one is going to sabotage an interview on purpose. There are 32 potential employers, and they all talk to each other! We’ll discuss that phenomenon in more detail in a bit.

Caleb Williams and his father gave us a glimpse into this mindset last year, with an assist from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham. We saw earlier examples with Eli Manning and John Elway. College quarterbacks might now be playing a form of NIL Roulette in the hopes of getting another spin on the draft board, for all the good that will do.

As you suggest, we need to take the mindset of an elite athlete into account. These young fellows have the confidence-bordering-on-arrogance to think they can fix the Jets or Browns. They need that mentality to thrive in a hyper-competitive environment. Williams may have a Zoomer’s ask what your employer can do for you attitude, but I am pretty sure Cam Ward was eager to kick down the door of Titans headquarters and show them how much of a leader he is, and Jaxson Dart would throw himself on a grenade for the greater glory of football. (Fortunately, Brian Daboll did not have access to Tom Coughlin’s old cache of grenades.)

As you point out, the situation is different at non-quarterback positions. Running backs want 400 carries. Wide receivers want the spotlight. Defenders want to hurt other men. They all want professional satisfaction, too, but that can be a pretty vague concept for someone in their early 20s.

Everything I read tells me this is a historically bad draft. PFF says there is one blue chip prospect in the whole draft-RB Love. Prospects with a true first round grade supposedly end around the top 10-12. Is this just some lazy media groupthink or is this draft really that bad? – Scott

This is one of the few examples of media groupthink that is not lazy or incorrect! This draft class stinks!

Draft analysts LOVE analyzing the draft. We want the prospects to be awesome so we can have fun watching their film on cold February mornings and interviewing them in Indianapolis. Draft analysts are also incentivized to err on the side of optimism. Our media models are built on fan enthusiasm, after all. It’s hard to sell Mock Draft 6.0 or fill a two-hour podcast with, “Eh, only six of these guys are any good.”

I charged into heavy-duty draft study right after the Super Bowl, hoping to find all the diamonds my groupthink-plagued colleagues missed. I hit a brick wall very quickly.

Have you covered any draft classes that were universally regarded as weak but ended up strong? How did the experts/predictors get it wrong? – Noah N.

The 2013 draft class was extremely weak. Those of us covering it knew it at the time. The top five picks that year were Erik Fisher, Luke Joeckel, Dion Jordan, Lane Johnson and Ziggy Ansah. Tavon Austin was the first skill position player taken (eighth overall), EJ Manuel the top quarterback (16th), Geno Smith (second round) the most talked-about personality.

Johnson, of course, has gone on to what could be a Hall of Fame career. Travis Kelce was a fourth-round pick that year. DeAndre Hopkins left the board late in the first round. If you sort the Pro Football Reference 2013 draft page for career Approximate Value, however, you come to guys like Sheldon Richardson really quickly. It was a weak class.

It’s rare for there to be a “weak class” consensus opinion. Usually, draft analysts will point out that a given year is deep in wide receivers, linebackers or whatever, just as 2013 was indeed very deep in offensive linemen. The 2026 draft class is deep at edge rusher, but it’s so thin just about everywhere else that it’s hard to get jazzed about. Mock-drafting edge rushers to 10 teams in the first round is no fun. Cue Ty Simpson instead!

Can you think of any existential reason this draft class is “bad”? Is there some NIL reason, or something that you think is making this year a poor year? Or is it just “some draft classes are underwhelming “? – Dubious Food

I have been thinking about this question for weeks. The answer: some draft classes are underwhelming, and don’t draw sweeping conclusions based on one outlier!

I have seen theories that players are not getting the development they need at the college level due to NIL or the transfer portal. Poppycock. Urban Meyer wasn’t “developing” players for the NFL 10 years ago. Steve Spurrier sure as hell wasn’t doing it 25 years ago. And before that, college teams ran the wishbone option or whatever.