TIME TO FREAK OUT!!!!!

"It's OK that people have a difference of opinion. Time will tell how successful this draft was."
-Gene Smith, courtesy of the Florida Times-Union

Can you feel the freaking out in Jaguars' nation? I can. At first elation, then panic. Everyone hates us!!! I have a relatively neutral friend who reached out to console me on the Jaguars draft. Initially, I was confused, maybe a little surprised. If for no other reason than I thought after the last two years people would pause before criticizing Gene Smith's picks (national media people, not my friends, they're all thoughtful assholes, pointing out Marcedes Lewis' forty time and Blaine Gabbert's hair). There are, however, larger forces at work and, alas, like being the nerd in high school, they suck in the short term but in the long term, fingers crossed, it'll work out all right (I really like this analogy of the Jaguars as the nerd in high school.)

Time to make a few points. Bullet style (pow pow):

• Day after grades are stupid stoopid. They're so dumb that literally almost without exception everyone who puts them out says they are dumb in their introduction (except maybe Mel Kiper who is almost lovingly lacking in self-awareness). There are however a number of ways to rank highly in them
1. Be a large market team or team with a large following. Writers are people and since these things are pretty much entirely subjective, plus no one remembers them (except me down below), writers are going to, either consciously or subconsciously, try to avoid angry criticism. This means teams with lots of fans are going to be pushed to the top (see Steelers, Packers, Cowboys).
2. Pick who the draft niks thought you should pick. You want to rock the boat, fine, it might work (see Dwight Freeney), it might not (Dimitrious Underwood, anyone?) but it will hurt your grade. Rarely is an unusual move going to be universally celebrated. Unless its genius is of the sort that it is self-evident after the fact (Nick Fairly to Detroit), otherwise your grade will be punished. These grading things are a zero sum game. Writers gotta have that five worst to go with the five best, might as well pick off the guy out on a limb. He's an easy target.
3. Draft large school guys, big conference guys. This is a similar to point two but when you draft two thirds of your players from non-FBS schools then that's going to bring some criticism. Once again, Lehigh? Middle Tennessee State? Furman? Do these schools even have football teams? Are we scouting frat boys intramural games? There's a lot more risk for the writer in pontificating that the guy from Mount Union is going to be a hit. People could actually remember that. Just play it safe and say you like the SEC player they picked up in the 7th.
4. Be a team national guys are familiar with. This is similar to the large market idea but it can vary from year to year depending on where you pick. If you're the Panthers, then yeah, everyone is going to write three stories diving into your draft philosophy but the Jaguars, drafting in the middle of the round, hey, there's only so much time in the day, right?
5. Finally, draft for need. Nothing makes your team look better than putting a guy, any guy, into that hole on your team everyone knows about. Does it matter that you just passed on a guy you think will be better? Meh, so what. Now you have that awesome DE or FS from Florida

So here's why I'm not worried. This has literally happened for the last two years and everyone was proven wrong. Here's Real Clear Sports 2010 report card. We were dead last and yet, a year later, Mel Kiper is praising Tyson Alualu (ESPN has removed the On The Clock breakdown from their website. I say conspiracy but you can imagine the link here). Football outsiders goes a little more in depth about last year's draft here. They do good work. We still rank last.

2009 was a little better, mostly cause we drafted two large, big school guys who fit a position of need, even still, Kiper and a number of other writers gave the Jags a C+. That said, we did come out with a very nice aggregate ranking of 8th. The most important reason these don't matter though is how incredibly god awful they are at predicting success or failure. They almost always hate the Jaguars draft, even in 2006, which yielded two Pro Bowlers, the aggregate ranking for the Jags was 27th (to be fair their hatred of other years was somewhat justified as we kind of sucked at drafting but if there's no variation in where you rank the teams it makes it kind of hard to give any credit when they get it right).

Here's the breakdown of FO's aggregate:

2011 - 30th
2010 - 32nd
2009 - 8th
2008 - 31st (Nailed this one)
2007 - 15th
2006 - 27th
2005 - 26th

One final note on the small school thing, I actually really like this strategy from a pure value standpoint. It helps answer the question, if we like him so much, why is he still here in the 7th? I don't have any way of proving it (ok, I'm too lazy to try and prove it) but I'd hypothesize guys drafted in the later rounds (5-7) who succeed, especially succeed in a spectacular, home run-esque fashion, are more likely to be from non-FBS schools, or at least outside of the so-called big six BCS conferences. I'm thinking Cortland Finnegan, Robert Mathis, Michael Turner, Trent Cole, Marques Colston, etc. Even the most thought of examples of late round home runs from large schools tend to have a glaring reason why they fell. Tom Brady had lost his job to Drew Henson. Terrell Davis and Willie Parker were backups as well. I'm sure there are some exception but its always good to try and answer that question of why this guy was available so late. Luckily for Jags fans, when you draft a QB from Nebraska-Omaha you're converting to TE, you know the answer.

-Q