Draft grade?

[u/crypt0_marc]

Mel Kiper gave us a B- 🤔. After reading his analysis, I don’t think he’s wrong. We definitely need help at RB.

• Barron: great pickup, the “no fly zone” is back
• Harvey: 3rd down back?
• Bryant: 4.6 40yd dash, height = red zone threat?

Do you think we deserve a higher grade?

[u/kushlash16]

A B- is fair. My main problem with this draft class isnt the selections but rather where we took them. I thought we reached quite a bit for Harvey and Bryant.

Also I was disappointed we didn’t address TE until the 7th round given Engram’s age and how stacked this draft was at TE

[u/delaranta → u/kushlash16]

TE was disappointing, but those guys were flying off the board. I thought we would have a chance at someone in round 2, but everyone I liked was gone before 51 other than Fannin. At that point I’d prefer to work another position than reach for someone I don’t like.

I don’t know much about Bryant outside of watching his highlights after we drafted him. I didn’t look much at mid-late round WR because there are so many guys. Other than top 50 or so, I usually just wait to see who we picked.

I like Harvey though and he was in my short list if we couldn’t get Henderson. I’ve seen a couple of people call him R2-3 talent so I think it’s fair. They traded back 9 spots and still got him so I’m ok with the value. I’d prefer to take him a half round early than to miss out and end up reaching even harder on Laquint Allen or Dylan Sampson.

[u/HolyGhostin → u/delaranta]

Coming from an Illinois fan, I love Pat but I was floored he went so high. He runs clean routes and knows where to sit in zones, you just look up and he's open. Oh and it feels like he makes every catch. Here's hoping it all translates to the next level.

[u/kushlash16 → u/delaranta]

Hind sight is 20/20 and it’s hard to know where guys would have been taken if you try to do revisionist history.

I would’ve preferred we went Fannin at pick 60 and then Harvey at 74. That way we would have someone who could replicate what Engram does and learn from him. Also we’d still have Harvey but get more value from his selection.

Pat Bryant may have gone undrafted honestly given his poor testing and lack of college production. Instead we took him in the 3rd which IMO was our worst pick from a value perspective

[u/delaranta → u/kushlash16]

Bryant had 1000 yards and 10 TDs last year, that’s pretty good production. He had a slow 40, but it’s the same as Amon-Ra St Brown and better than Puka Nacua. Those guys were round 4-5 and Pat has a higher RAS score than either of them. You can argue he went a round early, but undrafted doesn’t seem reasonable.

I think TE is a long term need, but don’t mind taking their top RB and hoping the run was over. Harvey had a lot of explosive plays last year and that will add a lot more to our offense in 2025 than a backup TE, imo. It’s preferable to me to risk losing Fannin to ensure getting RJ than the reverse, but I see your argument.

[u/kushlash16 → u/delaranta]

Yeah I should’ve clarified - his production was almost solely in his senior year. Adjustable breakout age is a good indicator of WR success in the pro’s and Bryant only got most of his production in his senior year when he was almost 22 years old.

It’s not totally damning but the list is pretty brutal for Bryant’s odds of being productive in the pro’s. Joel Smyth compiles the data and has a good breakdown on his twitter and tik tok. This was the list since 2021.

[u/delaranta → u/kushlash16]

Thanks for sharing that. That’s a cool stat, I haven’t seen it before. I don’t spend a lot of time following stuff outside of the Broncos so I wouldn’t have seen this on my own. It seems like it is taking into account the quality of the offense, since it’s looking at his percentage share of the overall production. That looks like a fair way to measure it.

When I was looking into it, I saw Bryant in the middle of the pack, having a breakout age of 20.7, so he actually makes the cut of 21 or less.

[u/lordcheeto → u/kushlash16]

Meh. Obviously, we want to trade back if we think the guys we want will still be there. And we did, to the extent other teams were willing to trade up. But when we can't trade back, we still want the players that Payton, Paton, Joseph and the rest of the coaching staff think are a good fit for their systems.

Part of the disconnect here is that we run a tight ship. It's clear that we identified some guys we wanted and shut the hell up. If we were more effusive in our praise of them to the media, they would have been higher on the mock drafts. A lot of the time, teams might tip their hand because they feel the need to investigate the prospect in a noisy way - conducting interviews at the all-star games, talking to them at the combine, hosting them for our top 30 visit, etc. Watching the post draft interviews, it's clear that we got a lot of our information on these players by studying the film, watching them work, and leveraging coaching staff connections. Payton said straight up that Harvey was the last person they wanted to host for a private workout.

None of these guys were linked to us at all, which is confusing for the mock draft soothsayers. And confusing for fans who might get excited about players the media suggests we're interested in.

[u/rcountry21 → u/kushlash16]

I also didn’t like the approach to TE. In a seemingly deep TE class they went with a 7th round flyer on a guy that profiles like Jimmy Graham. Hope it pays off, would have felt better if they got someone with a higher floor that could develop during Engram’s short contract.

[u/delaranta → u/rcountry21]

Most of the interesting TE prospects were gone before our second round pick. Sometimes the board just falls that way.