Disagreeing with draft picks is par for the course for fans of all teams. There's certainly a lot of it here, every year. This year is no exception.
Basically, it boils down to, "What?! They took That Guy, when [fill in the blank] was available?! Crazy!"
Although I am underwhelmed buy our picks this year, I just don't see that argument applying to who we took versus who we didn't select.
True, in the first round, you can make an argument for why Dallas should have taken the guys selected after Tyler Smith — Tyler Linderbaum, Jermaine Johnson, Devin Lloyd, and Devonte Wyatt. But we all were clamoring during the season for a physical presence at left guard, were we not? Well, Tyler Smith seems to fit that bill as well as or better than any of the players we could have chosen at any point later in the draft. Whether you believe Jerry that Tyler Smith was higher rated than Zion Johnson and Kenyon Green, or you just realize that the chance of another guard good enough to help us right away being available in a later round was slimmer than slim, and this pick was about the draft order forcing our hand… it's really hard to knock.
In the second round, I thought we'd jump at the chance to take Travis Jones because we also really need a big, disruptive defensive tackle to improve the run defense. But I can't complain about the choice to take Sam Williams, who looks like a much better answer to the hole at defensive end that none of us really believes would have been filled by Dorance Armstrong and Dante Fowler. And there was no one else taken after our pick at 56 who would obviously make a bigger impact that Williams, so I'm good here, too.
In the third round, are there any players chosen after our pick at 88 that you would absolutely pound on the table to take over Jalen Tolbert? Nick Cross and Kerby Joseph are intriguing safety prosects, and Jeremy Ruckert and Channing Tindall look good, too… but I don't know that anyone is arguing that they're better than Tolbert — especially with our losses at WR and Gallup not guaranteed to be available for the start of the season.
In the fourth, I would have been happy with Cade Otton, or Neil Farrell, or even Pierre Strong — but all those guys were gone before 129. We did need a tight end… Is it a slam dunk that Isaiah Likely, taken later in the round, is a better choice than Jake Ferguson? No. Is there anyone else at the bottom of the fourth that you think we just *had* to have?
The fifth round is a crap shoot, so I'm neither too upset by nor too jazzed about any of those guys. Our sixth rounder is a flyer, too, and, honestly, if we had packaged that pick to move up this year, or traded it for a higher pick next year, I would have been at least as happy, so I'm for sure not complaining about anyone we didn't pick with it.
Was there a trade up that would have made sense? We'll never know what the front office tried, or what it would have cost to obtain Player X. But considering all the things we needed to come away with, and the resources we had (picks in the bottom third of the rounds and no big value player to trade), I think we were better off standing pat and making the best of what was available.
Sure, that's not a ringing endorsement of our picks… I just think it's more about the downside of picking in the 24th slot in each round than "missing" on picks or passing up better guys.
