If you google the terms 2010 nfl draft big board, you get close to a million results. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry puts together a big board of names for their amusement and to try and draw some hits. Given the size of our ever-growing community here at Niners Nation, I thought it'd be fun to come up with a community big board of players for the 49ers draft. This has been made immensely easier thanks to Chris Pokorny over at Dawgs By Nature, our Browns blog. Chris developed a nice little program that will allow us to tabulate votes for the board in a fairly simple manner.
After the jump, you'll find a poll that allows you to rank your top 5 players. I've included a pool of 25 players, whom I grabbed from the Scouts Inc Top 32 over at ESPN.com. I listed the top 20 players, and then picked 5 more from the remaining 12 that I thought were worthwhile to include.
After the jump, I run down what I'd like people to consider when placing their votes. After that you can vote for your top 5. After we get that compiled, we'll remove the top 5 names and vote on 6-10, 11-15, etc. Given that this is a first effort, if we have any glitches we can always start over.
We're all fairly smart people, but for those who don't quite know all the terminology, each NFL team creates a big board of players they are considering drafting. When Scot McCloughan was shown the door (or found the door for himself, or whatever), his replacement, Trent Baalke, stated that the team had compiled something like 85-90% of its big board. Over the course of many months (I'd imagine starting not too long after the 2009 NFL draft), the team has scouted, discussed, and debated the many draft-eligible players. Over the course of that discussion the team comes to some kind of consensus in ranking them starting at 1 and going for however long they feel is necessary.
In the end, I'd imagine each team's big board looks different than any other team because of a single team's own needs. Additionally, a certain character flaw in a player can be enough to nix him on one draft board, and potentially boost him on another.
In doing this community draft board, I'd like you to keep in mind a couple of things. I don't want you ranking players based on where you think they'll be drafted. I want you ranking them based on how they would fit the 49ers needs. The 49ers have a whole variety of needs, so this is not a simple task. The team doesn't need a quarterback, but the team still has to rank Sam Bradford under this hypothetical: If the 49ers were the only team drafting and thus they had access to every player in the draft pool, who would you take first? If that player was gone, who would be their second choice?
Now, if you're a believer in "best player available," rank them accordingly. If you think Ndamukong Suh is the 10th best player on the board for the 49ers purposes, DON'T RANK HIM IN YOUR TOP 5. In the end it comes down to how you value things like need, value, and character. That's not an all-inclusive list, but certainly something to consider.
Niners Nation Community Draft Board
So how will your vote help determine our draft board? Well, the guy you rank 1 gets 5 points, the guy you rank 2 gets 4 points, and so forth. Unranked players get 0 points. The program tallies up all the votes and provides us with a ranking of the 25 players listed. The top 5 point-getters will comprise our top 5.
Again, we're developing a draft board for the 49ers. This is not a mock draft, this does not factor in the needs of other teams, or trades, or anything like that.
So, go ahead and vote, and please only vote once. I think technically you could stuff the ballot box, but don't be "that guy."
This is a first time thing for us, so if there are any glitches, let me know and we'll get it fixed up. Ignore the excessive commas (that came due to some typos on my part and won't be there next time). I'll leave this up for a couple days to see how quickly we compile votes and then post the second one at some point this weekend I'm thinking. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.