That's just not a good way to look at it dude. You need to draft great players regardless of whether or not you are one guy away from winning! I'll ALWAYS take 1 great player over a couple of "pretty good" ones. Every great team has a few superstar/truly elite players on it, and statistically your best chance to land one of those players is to draft one very high. It's not a perfect science by any means, but it's statistically proven.The Marshall Plan wrote:Great podcast.
Regarding the feeling Bears fans have about draft pick value and the number of picks we have.
Had we traded down out of #8 to the mid or late 1st round and accumulated an additional couple of picks I would have been happy. I'm happy we have Smith, but a scenario with Vea / Davenport / Edmunds instead plus more players would've been great too.
The reason being for me is because we are not, and have not been for a long time, a team that is one player away from solving its problems. That's honestly why every year I always wonder why the team with the #1 pick keeps it. They have that pick for a reason. They weren't good last year. One player won't fix that. Sell it for a bunch of picks and rebuild the team. We have made significant progress this offseason, but Smith is not going to be the reason why we have a winning season. I am NOT trying to be negative about Smith, far from it, but we aren't in a situation where one guy is the difference between making the playoffs and not.
Your method would make our path to creating an 8-8 team much faster, I'll give you that. But it won't help you win a super bowl. Patience, build through the draft, and you have to find some special talent along the way esp at QB. If you keep trading down to accumulate picks then you are, by and large, watering down your overall talent (noting of course you can always get "Tom Brady lucky"). At some point you need some superstars, and I don't intend to be picking Top 10 again for a good while.
I'm thrilled to have Smith, I believe he's going to be a GREAT one for us for a long time. We now have young, talented leaders on both sides of the ball in Smith/Trubisky. High quality people, smart hard workers, example setters. Exactly the type of core we want.