raven-flavored-ultron

That's not going to work. I'm pretty sure that a man like Bisciotti is going to give Newsome and Harbaugh the treatment here in a day or two. He's been very patient with both and the expectations for next year are probably going to be Super Bowl contention or the ax. That's going to necessitate an instant injection of transcendent talent, like Ozzie you better get a Julio Jones clone in here regardless of what need to be done to get him in here: trade, free agency, draft. There is no patience left at this point, and quarter-measures are not making this team a Super Bowl contender. The poor drafts and bad schemes are coming home to roost, so if big rooster moves aren't imminent, this team is neither contending, and the incumbent administration isn't going to keep their jobs. The schemes can be fixed with new assistants, perhaps some of the holes can be filled by young guys that finally realize their potential (I'm looking at dudes like Maxx Williams who was being compared to Jason Witten when we drafted him), but for the most part this team needs a couple of players on an All-Pro level. The front office better find them fast for their own survival. Bisciotti hasn't put the screws to Newsome or Harbaugh yet, when he does, we better just hope it doesn't force them to make a debilitating move that eventually costs them their jobs anyway and puts the organization in a hole. The sort of scenario you get when you have too much patience with a front office and coaching staff.

Well don't stop at sixth-round picks, why not talk about undrafted free agents? Justin Tucker, Bart Scott, Mike Flynn, Priest Holmes, Dannell Ellerbe, Ma'ake Kemoeatu,etc, I'd like to see a team with a better record than that on players that in an earlier era would have been 8th or 9th-round draft picks. There isn't one. Historically you have a 4% chance of finding a Pro Bowl player in the sixth-round. You have a less than 1% chance of finding one in the seventh-round. Now a player doesn't have to make the Pro Bowl to be a quality player but when people talk about teams drafting in the late rounds, they're talking about a lottery pick. Last year NFL.com did a story on the best late-round picks of the last 5-years and there were some great players--Antonio Brown, Kelvin Beachum, Greg Hardy and Jason Kelce are the best of the bunch, the other players they featured, 8 others, were situational guys or quality starters like Alfred Morris. When you use an AV scale as the ESPN article does, the scale becomes skewed if you're lucky enough to get one of those lottery picks because so few late-round picks amount to anything across the league, one gem will weight the scale disproportionately. Look at the list of teams that allegedly draft well in the late rounds--lots of perennial doormats higher on the list. The ESPN article defines value in the late-rounds between 4-7 as opposed to just the last 2 rounds and if you want to go back the last 20-years the Ravens have a great deal of success in that range: Jeff Mitchell, Adalius Thomas (6th round), Chester Taylor, Tony Pashos, Jarrett Johnson, Derek Anderson, Sam Koch, La'Ron McClain, Dennis Pitta, Tyrod Taylor, Darnell McPhee, Ricky Wagner. 4 of these players made at least 1 Pro Bowl and Adalius Thomas and McClain were first-team All-Pro. The moral of the story is don't judge a front office by its inability to get a Richard Sherman, Tom Brady or Antonio Brown in the sixth-round because they are historically rare, with emphasis on "historically!", only one sixth-rounder has ever made the Hall of Fame--Jack Christiansen, drafted 2 decades before the merger when there were only 12 teams.

The guy struggled against good route-runners. He was an off-the-charts athlete for sure, but let's not act like the guy didn't have a not insignificant weakness. He wasn't Deion Sanders or Michael Haynes, some scouts said he'd have to play safety because he didn't possess elite cover skills, he could perhaps develop them, but then it becomes all about his potential. For every Patrick Peterson taken in the top 10 you've had a bunch of Terence Newmans, Morris Claibornes, Dee Milliners, Justin Gilberts and Mark Barrons. Now I would have been very excited had he slid to 6, because he has that potential and he plays a sexy position that we have desperate need at, but if obtaining him required giving up a second and third-round pick, then f-that. I'm not personally distressed in the least that we didn't get him and if Stanley turns out to be another Ogden or another Yanda, neither will anyone else. Looking at draft history it seems there is a higher probability Stanley is a transcendent lineman then there is that Ramsey is Revis, Polamalu or Ed Reed, just saying.

I don't get the angst about Tunsil, as others have noted, he is not on some ethereal level above Stanley, Stanley is a super-elite prospect, grades out as a better run blocker, more durable and better character risk then Tunsil. Now it is completely possible that had he been drafted by the Ravens, Tunsil would have been a model citizen, this organization runs that sort of ship, then again, if his judgment is poor, you can't take that risk. There is a stigma that still attaches to the handling of the Ray Rice situation in Baltimore and you can be sure the team is more proactive in dealing with possible embarrassments. You can't just take flyers on the sixth pick in the draft. They made the correct decision. As for Jalen Ramsey, again, people act as if he is this sure thing. Read his scouting reports, he had a lot of trouble with receivers with great route-running skills. Even someone as gifted as Ramsey has possible downside. In fact, DBs taken in the top 10 of the NFL draft in the last decade have busted out at a high rate. The Cowboys asked for the Ravens' second and third-round draft picks to move up for Ramsey and that's just too much to move up 2 spots when you have elite prospects at other positions of need available to you at the sixth spot and a need for those later picks.