For those complaining about giving up all our late round picks

Will Clapp started three games for us last year and was the sixth OL power guy in a bunch more. Tyeler Davison started for three years and got a FA contract with Atlanta. Muhammed started four games for Indy last year, and Boston Scott averaged 4.0 YPC for the Eagles late in the season. Elliss and Hampton are still with us. Jamerson and Mack are still bouncing around the league.

What I am sure we are banking on right now is that given these odd circumstances, more guys that we might have liked in rounds 5-7 than usual will slip all the way through and be UDFA (e.g., Shy Tuttle), so this was the year to pull the trigger on Trautman.


I like having the late round lottery picks and I'm not in love with trading them all away this year. But, for every guy that makes the team, there are 3 or 4 who don't. Even in your example above, at least 4 of those guys are just going to bounce around the league and be "a guy" in the last 5 spots on a roster some place and most of the guys who made our roster are just guys that we want to upgrade. That's certainly the case with Clapp and probably the case with Hampton. And those are the relatively successful ones. Many guys taken in those rounds are selling cars to trade on their college fame. And I'm not sure that some of those guys don't get the benefit of the doubt and stay on some rosters just because they were draft picks with some resources invested in them.

But, I do agree that part of what is going on this year is that they preferred quality over quantity in a year with no off season program and that they figure a lot of guys from small schools or who were backups at big schools will fall through the cracks in UDFA. So, the UDFAs probably have just as good of a chance of making the team as most of the guys who will be taken in rounds 4 to 7.