I'm not real big on blasting somebody for "reaching" either, because we really don't have anything to base it on. If a team has a good feel for what the rest of the league thinks of a player so they feel they can risk waiting, that's great, as they can move back and pick up more picks or take another player who they don't believe will be there later. But otherwise they need to trust their evaluations and not worry about what anybody else thinks.
Looking at it from the other end, every year there are guys who get drafted much later than the "consensus" expects, either because of medical or character issues that aren't public or at least fully public, or because the real scouts just don't think they're as good as the "experts" do. I can't think of a glaring example this year, except maybe LBs Erin Henderson and Ali Highsmith, both of whom were projected by some as high as the 3rd round but went undrafted. If the Texans had picked one of those two in the 4th or 5th it would have been considered a solid value pick and if they had picked one in the 6th or 7th it may have been considered a steal. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that those picks would have been too early.
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05-07-2008, 10:00 PM
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