*A Tale of Two Rebuilds

[Beaver]

Kara doesn't know what she's missing, buddy

Good read, and thanks for linking my article on it for reference.  Not only was it nice to look back at some of my older work, it's always interesting to see immediate reactions v hindsight.  Honestly, I thought it held up pretty well.

I do think you were too generous.  Longshaw, for example, didn't magically return as Miller.  They spent a pick to get him.  Also, you described Pierno as a great earner despite the fact that his activity plummeted about a season after the trade.

Yeah, I always love looking at initial reaction versus hindsight and especially places where that differs. That's how this article started, I was reading old trade threads for giggles. The quote of yours I included about the Jackson-Longshaw trade I thought was a great example of a heavily criticized trade working out in hindsight. You certainly can't blame anyone for mocking the Yeti trading 3 actives for Longshaw and a 1st basically but when Longshaw turns out to be a franchise mainstay AND the pick turns into an HO member AND none of the actives wanted to play for Colorado (from what I understand) AND one of them (a lineman) goes inactive before the OL changes the benefit of hindsight softens the trade a bit.

But of course, I should say that just because an old take turns out to be wrong doesn't mean it was bad at the time. Sometimes it was but sometimes unforeseen (or hard to foresee) circumstances changed. And sometimes an old take that was unappreciated in its own time turns out to be hilariously prescient, like slm's quote I included about how the trade is good "if the draft isn't terrible."

I did not describe Pierno as a great earner, though. They made the trade thinking they were getting the quarterback of their future and a great user to boot. It obviously didn't work out but I can't blame them for the attempt. And as for Longshaw, they got a couple seasons out of him and enjoyed having him around the team enough to spend the 1st overall pick to ensure they'd get his recreate. There's value in having people like that on your team even if (especially if) your team is bad.

I was probably a bit too generous but I don't think overall they did horribly getting assets for expiring contracts and people who wanted to be traded. It's really a question of "could they have gotten more for that player?" more so than "should they have traded that player?" And as for that question, I have no idea. I wasn't around for the trades and I certainly wasn't privy to trade block discussions. It's entirely possible they could've gotten more and better assets (especially in the Longshaw trade) but I think if the Season 4 draft class wasn't so bad we wouldn't be looking at those trades as a whole so negatively.

Yikes that S4 draft was brutal for Las Vegas. I will say that the Stormblessed trade was made by us in BAL because we could already tell it would be a terrible draft. The YKW trade we didn't realize exactly HOW bad it would be, but damn going all in on a crap draft class and winding up with just one player to show for it is tough.

It's a stark and damning contrast between S4 for Las Vegas and S7 for Colorado where they they loaded up in the first round and were able to grab Howard Miller, Mark Grau, Ryan Lefevre, Desta Danger, and Ryan Applehort. Timing is important and there was no worse timing than sucking in Seasons 2 and 3 then loading up in the Season 4 draft.

I was curious about when people started to realize that S4 was going to be garbage. The Stormblessed trade (24 Sept) was quite a bit after a lot of the trades (Ramrio was 2 Sept, the Colorado flurries were 10-12 Sept and 15-18 Sept) and towards the end of the cut-off for Season 5 (4 Oct) so that makes sense. That turned out really nicely for Baltimore and definitely shows the benefits of keeping on top of scouting and such throughout the season.

You mean to tell me he's going to mention your BFF and you are just going to pass right over it?

Also, on a semi-unrelated note, although Trey Willie was a high-ish TPE earner leading into the S3 draft, real-life OL players were still a thing and were every teams top targets allowing Willie to fall into the 2nd round and be selected one pick after SLMs BFF.

I was reluctant to compare draft classes because those first seasons (even still, to some extent) were so turbulent with rule changes and such wildly different draft classes that it's impossible to say "well these guys were 2nd rounders this year and these guys were 2nd rounders that year so we can estimate 2nd round value based on those" but I wasn't sure how else to illustrate the best (well, better) case scenario for Colorado and Las Vegas had the S4 draft been deeper. I did enjoy stumbling on slm's write up on those picks and specifically his BFF while browsing about.