After hours and hours of draft research its hard when your favorite team drafts players you don’t know, but does that mean your team failed the draft?
Hello, my name is Lyle Graversen and I’m a draft junkie. I love it. I’m obsessed with it. Next to watching the actual games, it’s my favorite part of following a NFL team. I spent countless hours this offseason poring over prospect lists, reading scouting reports, and watching game tape of prospects that I felt could help my beloved Kansas City Chiefs.
Because I have a full time teaching job (that I love) and a family (that I love even more). my part time “Chiefs draft scouting” is relegated to evenings and weekends. That is why I focus only on the positions that my team really needs. That way when my team calls a player’s name in the second round, I am armed with a wealth of knowledge on that player that I can share with my fellow Chiefs fans. Then we can all decided for ourselves if it was a smart pick or not.
Here’s the problem. That didn’t happen.
Kansas City Chiefs great Priest Holmes walked out onto the stage and called the name of their first pick in the 2018 NFL Draft and it was… Breeland Speaks, linebacker, Ole Miss.
At first, “Wait….who?”
“This can’t be right! I studied SO MANY players preparing for this pick. I recognize the name. Isn’t he a mid-round interior guy? They announced him as a linebacker, he’s like 285 right? What is happening right now? Isaiah Oliver was RIGHT THERE FOR THE TAKING!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING BRETT VEACH!?”
Maybe my reaction was more extreme because of all the time I put in studying draft picks, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that many of you had similar reactions. It’s understandable, when you commit hours of time to going over rankings, scouting reports, mock drafts, and even film you want the satisfaction of your team taking a guy that was high up on those lists.
“Yes! The Chiefs drafted a guy in the second round that was consistently mocked in the first round! What a steal! Mel Kiper had him at #28 on his big board and we got him at pick 54. That’s a home run pick! Brett Veach is a genius!”
We’re all guilty of it.
Don’t believe me? Let me ask you this. How many draft grades have you poured over in the last 24 hours? What are we hoping for when we read those grades? They’re grades assigned by the same people that posted the positional rankings and mock drafts that the average fan bases their prospect values on. Guess what grade they’re giving the team that picked a guy in the second round that they predicted would go in the first round? Guess what grade they’re giving the team that picked a guy in the second round that they predicted would go in the fourth round?
Here’s the bottom line. Our perception of the draft is influenced way more by media outlets than it is by NFL scouts. That’s not a knock on all the guys out there grinding to provide good draft content. They’re still just one guy. Each NFL team has an entire department of guys working on it.
By the time they take a guy in the draft they’ve often worked him out first hand. So when the Chiefs take a guy like Breeland Speaks in the second round, the fact that he wasn’t a guy that I watched YouTube film on or hadn’t been mocked that high at genericdraftsite.com doesn’t mean they were wrong to take him there.
Ultimately, its a blow to our ego when they draft someone we don’t know. It makes us feel better about ourselves to say they messed up and drafted someone that “nobody” else thinks should have gone there rather than say I didn’t study or read anything about so I have no idea if this is a good pick or not.
Right now I’m just going to have to wait and see. That’s not a very exciting take, but its the truth.
The Chiefs loved Breeland Speaks. They did a ton of homework on him and were worried another team might feel the same way so they made a move to go get him. It’s easy for us to say he would have still been there at pick 54 but if the Chiefs loved him that much, how can we possibly know that another team didn’t feel the same way?
Could Breeland Speaks be a reach and a bust of a pick? Yes.
Could he be an impact player that we all adore and hail Brett Veach’s draft genius for taking? Yes.
In theory, if Speaks can be an effective pass rush force for the Chiefs then this will be a great pick. In the coming weeks I’ll dig up all the film on Speaks that I can find and try to have an informed opinion on how he plays. Right now I’m just going to have to wait and see. That’s not a very exciting take, but its the truth.
So while our gut reactions don’t mean squat when it comes to a player’s long term success, since that is what everyone is looking for on the Monday after the draft, I thought I’d share the instant reactions I had to K.C.’s other picks—if for no other reason than so you can laugh at me or to have something on record that you can throw back in my face if I’m wrong.