Why the low draft grades?

As of now, I can’t give the team a mark higher than a C.

We had two goals for the upcoming draft:

To find the players to keep or make us more competitive.

To use rookie salaries in order to clean the cap.

Clearly we got two, maybe three players so far that fit the goals.

But at the same time, we committed way too many resources obtaining these players. For this and the next two drafts.

Second and third round picks may not be building blocks, but core players that can give us 3-4 years on cheap salaries. We have given those away.

We are already cap strained, and giving away those present and future picks restrain us to move around and be able to make decisions building a younger roster.

We achieved quality, but forgot about much needed quantity.

It’s too early to grade the off-season, but even now I can say that giving away resources will keep the grade down for me.

Quantity of rookies won't clean up the salary cap, their position matters more and we got 2 at the highest priced offensive positions outside of QB. Our rookie last year is at the highest priced position on defense and our 2nd round pick will start his career at the other highest priced position on defense.

Also I think people are looking at the trades all wrong.

Olave cost us a 1st, 3rd and 4th this year. For as polished as he is and a perfect a fit as he is for what we want, few will complain with that.

Penning cost us a 3rd this year, 1st next year and 2nd in 2024. He's better than any 3rd round tackle we could draft this year. So we get that boost. And after a year of being coached by Marrone he'd be going in the top 10 of next year's draft if he was in it and we'll be picking 20+. All it cost to trade up and get that talent was a 2nd round pick in the draft after. That's cheap.

We're adding high impact players at premium positions and only lost a couple 3rd round picks and a 4th, one 3rd we only had because of a new rule for hiring minorities in the front office so it was lagniappe anyways that came via the Falcons.