Quote
Saguaro
Every team that picked 23rd in the drafts of years past did their level best to make the right choice.
The list is a representative sample. It's not a science experiment in a lab that can be repeated. But it's history. And history can teach lessons.
We can look back and see an entire spectrum of results, but IMO a majority of those players were not difference-makers for their teams.
Some were.
There are those who tend to imagine that a 1st round pick, even at #23, will be very likely, perhaps almost certain, to yield an excellent difference maker for the Rams for years to come. So they think it is a very valuable chip to trade away for Brandin Cooks.
The perspective offered is to look at the history and realize that the odds of that are not all that great. It is more than possible that the 23rd player chosen this year will be nothing special as an NFL player.
Or they could be excellent.
But at least the list gives people a chance to look at past results and decide for themselves just how valuable a prize that Rams traded away, or not.
I certainly found it informative.
YMMV
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I have seen someone say that trading a 1 and a 2 for both Watkins and Cooks is getting iffy, even though they get the 3rd rounder back. Particularly if they can't sign Cook longterm,.(Which is a different argument than just saying the pick is worth more than Cooks.) But that's it. I don't read every post but I think there's very little if any dissent on this idea: that odds favor taking the already productive young player over keeping a low 1st round pickl.
I think most people get that if you look at you trade a low 1 for an already productive young veteran, that's a good swap.
There ARE players there to get though, so I don't quite follow the focus on pick 23. The fact that a list of pick 23s isn't that appealing is just chance. Heck the Rams themselves have gotten good players in the 20s at the bottom of the 1st round, including Steven Jackson, Kent Hill, Doug France, Jack Youngblood, and Jack Reynolds. There's nothing magic about the number 23 and what holds in the past decade for that pick is not predetermined to hold for 2018.
So there's that. But that comes back to the question, is Cooks himself worth a low first rounder? And, I think the majority are in agreement on that. The better way to put that is the way I already did above...do the odds favor taking the already productive vet over keeping the pick? And I think most people automatically agree. I haven't seen much in the way of dissent on that, if any.