Sunday, September 03, 2006

The price was right

I was all worried that we were going to be without our 5-7 rounders (or worse) for all our center movement. But according to Crennel, the Browns surrendered a conditional draft pick in 2008, either a sixth- or seventh-rounder. Alright, we can live with that. If I remember correctly, the Ross Tucker trade was conditional, so it probably didn't cost us anything. So, in the end of the day we gave up a 07 6 or 7 rounder (I don't remember which) for Lennie Friedman) and an 08 6 or 7 rounder for Fraley.

Among yesterday's cuts was Andrew Hoffman, Nick Speegle, and Jon Dunn, all 05 draft picks of Savage. Is it a sign that Savage's first draft was sub-par, or that the level of talent on the team is getting higher, so we just don't have the room to keep bench warming projects around? I think its a little of both.

Don't get me wrong, I still have full faith in Savage. I still see the quality of players on this team getting better. I'm willing to give Savage a pass on the '05 draft because he was only a couple months into the job at the time. Two reasons:
  1. The scouting almost all happens during the months of September to December, and the fact that he didn't get his system into place until January means that the scouting leading up to the 05 draft wasn't under his tenure as Browns GM.
  2. I assume that alot of the scouting analysis that he did while working for the Ravens was intellectual property of the Ravens organization. Sure, he was able to bring with him everything that he remembered about the players, but (hopefully) NFL scouting is a more rigorous process than just watching guys and judging based on a "gut feeling". I'm sure he had tons of notebooks full of notes on players, and I assume that alot of that material belonged to the Ravens.
While I'll give him a pass for 05, 06 is on the table, and so are rounds 1-3 from 05.

2 comments:

MoL said...

I was thinking about Savage the other day. He gets a lot of credit for the success of the Ravens. The Ravens have been built on defense. Their offense for the past X years has been pretty anemic, Jamal lewis being the exception. Do you see this happening to the Browns? A solid/premier defensive team with an offense that kinda just gets the job done. I know I'd like to see an offense that can point some points up on the board.

Dwayne Rudd said...

Who ever said the Ravens offense gets the job done? They downright stink.

We had a comments discussion a while back. Apparently, alot of the Ravens missteps (offensive-wise) can be put on Billick's shoulders. Billick was the big Boller fan.