NFL Draft Grades 2011: Mel Kiper, Todd McShay Look At Winners And Losers

I have a feeling we’ll be hearing the opposite from other draftniks out there, but I think Mel is dead on— Aldon probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer, and if that’s that’s the case he wasn’t really a reach, was he?

I voted B-. I could easily see this grade going much, much higher down the line, but the fact is it’s very contingent on two guys with TONS of potential but also have lots of growing to do to reach it. I’m optimistic about both Smith and Kaepernick, but I don’t think you can just assume the best case scenario when grading a draft. If Smith becomes a double digit sack guy, and Kaepernick is the QB of the future, though, this is going to be remembered as an amazing draft.

Other picks I liked: Kendall Hunter and Ronald Johnson.

If he becomes the player that we know he can be… This will make this an A. Not matter how the other guys pan out, if you get a Franchise QB; make life a whole lot easier.

Way too hard to grade niners draft. But nose guard was overlooked so could only give a c grade.

I think they chose players that would help special teams but more importantly to change the character of the team to be more aggressive and upbeat. This is the consistent theme: a hardworking football player. The FO is trying to change channel on the moribund and downbeat Singletary era but keep the core players together. I respect this idea, if this is what the coach and GM think the greatest need was—intangibles. We are going to see a more fun team and the starting players will have to work harder, but now with hands-on coaching, or lose their job to a guy with less talent perhaps but who “gets it.”

5th round…. yeah buddies…

really, all drafts are “incompletes” but this draft seems to have even more question marks, injury risks and change of positions guys than usual. Sure, one or two could hit big, but they all could bust. It seems like a high risk draft and I’m still not sure about where the reward measures – moderate to high. Baalke and Harbaugh sure didn’t play it safe.

This guy I knows sister was sitting by Harbaugh at the Kraft fight hunger bowl(formerly Emerald bowl) and said that after one series Harbaugh stared at Kaep all the way off the field and even after he came off, just totally enamored by him.

Pat Devlin is free now..soo uhmm..

I gave the draft a C, but to be clear, I use a C to denote average. It was an average draft. They didn’t really get lucky and have something come to them, they weren’t able to trade up and get someone falling, they weren’t able to trade down and get amazing value. They took guys they wanted at spots that were there, the guys weren’t particularly established as NFL ready talent.

I think in other years I would be upset with this draft, but this year I am willing to give it a pass. It is Baalke’s first year with final say, and Harbaugh’s first year as coach. They were not able to hit free agency, they haven’t been able to really talk to the players or establish a tone in the off-season training camps. What they did was go out and get a bunch of guys who have the personalities they want on the team. A tone setter in and of itself, guys who love football, who are going to push themselves no matter what.

I think that was the point of the draft, to get guys that fit the personality they want the team to have. Going forward, I would expect them to be more willing to bring in guys that don’t match exactly because the team’s personality will alter or push those without it to join in.

Carroll did something similar in Seattle last year, but he was able to do it with free agency and trades as there was no cap and they had the money, so it cost them 170mil or whatever their ridiculous spending was last year.

Harbaugh and Baalke had to do it through the draft. We’ll now wait and see what they can basically do with the talent the team had last year, as I don’t see many of these guys making real big impacts on the field this year, or at least not until late into the season. Hopefully Aldon Smith can get in there, hopefully they resign Baas, Franklin, and Spikes, hopefully they pick up a FA corner. Hopefully Harbaugh can get the offensive shipwreck sailing again.

Ronald Johnson. The guy has a knack for getting open. He will be better than anyone on the current roster at YAC. This guy was a big play guy in a big time program.

Cool pics from a blog by someone Kaep knows. Sister? Wife? Mom?

He just tweeted a link to it.

http://fb.me/vQFC3GKz

I wish we would have taken Tyler Sash. Granted I am an Iowa fan, but that kid was a baller who worked his ass off to get to where he is. He has alot of heart and alot of smarts. He was solid playing center field coverage even as a SS and he was great at coming up and making tackles in run support. In our defense it was sometimes his responsibility to come up and make the play on the RB against an option instead of the corner and he awesome at it. I don’t know how good the kid we got from TCU is but I would have loved to see Sash get a chance on this team.

Time to Pop a Kaep in your Ass

We wouldn’t have had to trade up to get CK and still had our 2nd 4th and 5th, so we wouldn’t have had to trade back into the 5th. Probably could have gotten a good NT and The FB from Stanford.

But let face it. No one knows.
Only the coaches know what they wanted exactly, but even they don’t have a clue of what player will succeed or not.

“Kaepernick currently stands as the only quarterback in the history of Division I college football to have passed for over 10,000 yards and rushed for over 4,000 yards in a collegiate career and also as the only QB to have passed for over 2,000 yards and rushed for over 1,000 yards in a single season three times in a career (consecutively).”

I don’t think we’ll have to worry about his 9 1/8" hands.

Also from Wikipedia:

‘His nickname is “The Transformer”.’

The 45 people that said the 49ers deserve an F for their draft grade can go suck a dick.

We are the 49er faithful here… Those who voted for F grade don’t have any faith in Harbaugh as I can see. With all the players he chose I did have mixed reactions some happy some confused but never did I say what a garbage draft Harbaugh and Baalke conducted.

Have faith in Harbaugh you posers or you can go walk across the bridge to Oakland or better yet swim to Oakland.

king coif:

Jim Harbaugh found a quarterback he can develop with Kaepernick in Round 2, but even with the run on quarterbacks, I saw that as a reach. There’s a lot of development needed.

duke of coifbridge:

Kaepernick needs work and is a long way away, but with the right coaching he could be one of the steals of this draft.

i feel like throwing my laptop at the wall after reading those. for the last time, teams do not take time to develop QBs. of the 44 QBs drafted in the first 2 rounds from 93-06, 28 became their team’s full-time starter during their rookie season, and 35 were the starter by Week 1 of their second season. of the other 9, 2 never became the starter, and almost all of the other 7 only waited more than 16 games because they were sitting behind productive/winning starters:

jason campbell (waited 25 games) — mark brunell threw for 3000-25-10 in 2005. campbell started midway through 2006 when brunell stopped being any good.
steve mcnair (waited 32 games) — chris chandler threw for 2500-15-10 in 13 games during 1995 and 2100-15-10 in 12 games during 1996. dude was productive, but couldn’t stay healthy, so HOU/TEN dumped him and went with mcnair.
philip rivers (waited 32 games) — drew brees. nuff said.
todd collins (waited 32 games) — some guy named jim kelly.
kordell stewart (waited 32 games) — neil o’donnell took PIT to the SB in 95. mike tomczak threw for 2800-15-15 for a 10-6 team in 96.
chad pennington (waited 36 games) — vinny testaverde threw for 3800-20-25 in 00, and 2700-15-15 for a 10-6 team in 01.
aaron rodgers (waited 48 games) — brit far.

ok, so maybe mcnair and stewart were “allowed to develop.” one could easily argue, though, that they only got their opportunity because their teams had past-their-prime fogies at QB, and didn’t feel like ante-ing up anymore (both PIT and TEN are notorious for this; see steve mcnair and kordell stewart themselves in 2006 and 2003, respectively). either way, you’re still looking at (max) only 2 of 42 highly drafted QBs being “developed” over the course of any meaningful amount of time.

and of course this makes sense. teams are under too much pressure to win to have some stud QB riding the pine because he’s not “polished” or whatever. hell, VY was borderline illiterate — both learning ability-wise and nuances-of-offensive-football-wise — and TEN made him their starter after only 3 games. point being, QBs get thrown into the fire 75% of the time, sit for a couple of years behind a productive/winning starter 15% of the time, “develop” over a couple of years 5% of the time, and are an abject busteriffic failure the remaining 5% of the time. yet, it seems like every year these talking heads discuss high QB picks as if they’re “developed” 75% of the time. sure, teams would love to have the luxury of developing their young QBs; but, unless they’ve already got a productive/winning starter, it just doesn’t happen more than 5% of the time in the real world. it’s maddening.

the niners do not have a productive/winning starter. if kaepernick shows the supposed talent that everyone seems to think he has, he’ll more-than-likely become the starter by week 1 of year 2 at the latest. mark my words.

because Kaepernick was “a reach”.

Okay, who knows more about quarterbacks?