There's no offseason in this Forum. This is the best time of the year.
I'm loving Bloom's posts, his brain dumps are always awesome to read. My W17 RTD column is usually dedicated to quality control, reviewing projections and rankings and other debriefings. I'll try to add some more specific thoughts later this week particular to the points in your opening post, but here's
last week's column for those who may have missed it. Unfortunately, I tend to be a more long-winded than Sig.
In the meantime, here are a couple of excerpts for non-subscribers:
Revisiting the biggest misses of 2009
Defensive Line (final preseason rank)
Osi Umenyiora (9)
Gaines Adams (14)
Chris Long (15)
Derrick Harvey (20)
Cliff Avril (27)
This list is a who's who of lost upside and talented teases. While I wasn't an outlier on Umenyiora, Adams, Long or Harvey - the FBG collective had each right around my personal ranking - that's little consolation. All of these players were projected to the top of their upside. All had clear question marks that they wouldn't be able to live up to the two-way run support, pass rush ability that warrants a top 20 ranking. It is worth noting, however, that this is precisely why the stud DL strategy was a good plan. After a nice group of consistent linemen, the rest of the top twenty through 15 weeks included luminaries like Randy Starks, Marcus Stroud, Kroy Biermann, Brett Keisel and Jimmy Wilkerson. None of those guys were rostered in most leagues. Taking shots on upside isn't entirely unreasonable, but highlighting players with better track records - e.g. Ray Edwards or Chris Kelsay or Darnell Dockett - may be the better way to go in future seasons.
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Calling out the big potential of the LB2 tier
I think my low-teens ranking of Justin Durant is awfully conservative, even in such a deep tier of LB2 potentials. He's been confirmed as the MLB and we've seen the pedestrian numbers Daryl Smith and Clint Ingram have put up as OLBs. None of the secondary potentials are consistent run support options. Durant is at the top of the list of LB2s with 95+ solo tackle upside. (10 Aug From the Gut)
At his current price [which was around LB45 or later], Clint Session is a slam dunk easy flyer as a depth LB. There remains a small chance that Freddy Keiaho will outplay Phillip Wheeler to start, which could push Session back to the strong side, but the team is clearly high on Session and with good reason. Session was among the league leaders in tackles for loss, an impressive achievement for a SLB and even more impressive in a read-and-react Cover-2 defense. He's going outside the top 30 linebackers right now and will be a steal if he sticks at WLB and holds an every-down role. (10 Aug From the Gut)
I've tried to temper expectations on Derrick Johnson many times in recent seasons. I've argued that he wasn't dynamic enough as an all-around player to continue his hot start at SLB a couple seasons ago and wondered openly how he'd fare at ROLB last year. This year, I'm driving the Johnson bandwagon after the news broke during OTAs that the Chiefs were planning to use Zach Thomas as the plugging SILB and Johnson WILB in Clancy Pendergast's hybrid 3-4. I'm not saying Johnson mirrors the production that Karlos Dansby had in that role, but the lack of any real competition for tackles in what looks to be a very target rich environment gives Johnson LB2 value at a LB3/4 price. (10 Aug From the Gut)
Durant ended up missing three games to injury, which limited his usefulness during the bye week portion of the NFL schedule, but he mostly lived up to the argued 95+ solo upside. His 78 solos in 12 games through Week 16 projects to 104 solos over a full season of play. Session was another "read between the lines of a high upside role change" upside pick that hit. Session's 84 solos and handful of coverage plays had him in the top fifteen among all linebackers in FBG scoring entering Week 15, when he joined the exodus of Colts' starters watching from the sidelines. To be fair, while I ranked both players well above their consensus rankings, I still undersold them significantly. Still, their outlier rankings highlighted their upside and hopefully had them on short lists for big value late in drafts.
Not all the upside rankings met expectations, however. In my final preseason rankings, I put the cherry on top of my love for Derrick Johnson with a LB14 endorsement. In hindsight, the writing on the wall was clear. Johnson was deep enough in Todd Haley's doghouse that he had no chance of assuming an every-down role without injury. Still, it warrants mentioning that the Demorrio Williams-Derrick Johnson RILB platoon has a stat line of 107 solo and 28 assisted tackles, 1.5 sacks, a forced fumble, four passes defensed and an interception. It's pushing the limits of credibility to suggest that Johnson could be projected to that kind of production had he been an every-down player, but it suggests that the process wasn't terribly flawed.
On the other hand, the process was flawed on other highly ranked upside linebackers like Lawrence Timmons, Channing Crowder and Kevin Burnett. Timmons oozed upside and I ranked him LB22 as the preseason ended. Injuries clearly held him back, but he wasn't consistent enough to be trusted as a LB2 when healthy. Crowder has known injury problems and questionable instincts. Ranking him LB25 was projecting him at the top of his upside, a decision that rarely works out for the best (see the note on Durant, who had a more conservative ranking that still highlighted his upside). The same argument applies to Kevin Burnett, who had yet to prove himself durable enough to hold an every-down role for 16 games. If you ended up with Lofton, Durant and Session as your LB2/LB3/LB5, you were sitting pretty. If you ended up with some combination of Johnson, Timmons and Crowder as your LB2-LB4, you were at a big disadvantage early and left to fight over David Hawthorne, etal on the waiver lists later.
The take home point here: Upside is tempting, but make sure you're comfortable with the price of the risk-reward involved. If you're drafting a player in a round that puts his expectation at the height of his ceiling (i.e. Lawrence Timmons as your LB2), you need to be certain that you've got his expectation pegged correctly. It's much better to take your upside targets at least a tier later than you reasonably expect them to finish (i.e. Curtis Lofton as your LB2, Justin Durant as your LB3, Clint Session as your LB5).
