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Kapadia: I wanted to ask you about using resources late in the draft. The Eagles spent a seventh-round pick on Australian rugby player Jordan Mailata. I’ve heard some argue that the best strategy in the late rounds is to swing for upside. Do you subscribe to that theory or a different one?

Banner: This is my belief, and it’s what we did when I was there. Watching them, I think it’s still what they do. We never went into a round thinking we’re picking a backup. Occasionally, we’d pick a specialist. But we always wanted to pick a guy that had a chance to overachieve and become a starter — I mean overachieve just based on where they were drafted. And that’s what I see them doing. They’re not saying, ‘We need a guy to be our sixth linebacker and play special teams. Let’s just do that.’ They’re picking players that at least have a scenario that’s credible in which they could actually become a good pick. Because there’s quality players on the good teams from every round in the draft. I remember when we were playing the Saints, those years where Marques Colston was killing us, and people give away their seventh-round draft picks like they’re nothing. And every year, there’s a couple of Marques Colston type of guys coming out of the seventh round.

So this is what we did, and it came out of some studies that we did, and at the time was something we held pretty close to the vest. We found that players in rounds five, six and seven that turn out to be quality starters came from three categories. One, they came from a small school. Two, they had been injured their last year in school so they were undervalued. Or three, they were undersized but for some reason overcame it. If you’re in the sixth round and you’re picking some guy from Ohio State that has great height, weight and speed, your chances that everybody missed him and he turns out to be a starter are miniscule. Now if you’re picking somebody from a small school that maybe didn’t get scouted as carefully or people worried about the quality of competition or somebody that was maybe a good player through their junior year, and then the senior tape isn’t really very good because they were playing with a high ankle sprain, we found that if you were trying to find guys in those rounds that could actually develop into real contributors or starters that you should stick to those three categories.

We didn’t have absolute rules. You can look it up and find exceptions. But as a general philosophy, that’s what we did in the later rounds, and I see them doing some of that same thing. And it was a study. It wasn’t out of some intuition or somebody trying to sound smart. We actually studied players in those rounds that had overachieved and become significant contributors. And that’s what we found to be the most common explanation. Because most of them fail. All this does is increase your chances a little bit. The odds are still that you pick somebody in the sixth round, they’re never gonna be playing a major role for you.

malk wrote:That philosophy isn't far off what I want in free agency and the lack of it is why I criticise Pace's MO.