NN Community Big Board: Sorting through the noise

In case you missed it in the FanPosts, user Poldarn has been putting together an intriguing set of positional big boards, compiling a consensus of "expert" positional rankings. While no one person knows everything, compiling multiple rankings can help provide some ideas on how certain players should rank. You can check out the individual posts as follows:

Defensive Line
Tight Ends, Outside Linebackers
Defensive Backs
Inside Linebackers

If you are new to the site since last year's draft, we have been doing a community big board in which everybody gets to help decide who are Top 50 prospects are for the coming draft. We stole the idea from our Browns blog, Dawgs by Nature, and it has been a lot of fun.

The 49ers have their own draft board they will use later this month to figure out who to draft. We have no real idea what that board includes, and thus are left to speculate. Given that we will never know the 49ers draft board (barring a mistaken picture leaking out), we are left to come up with our own board.

As we have done in the past, I will set up a poll with 25 names on it. You will be able to rank five of the names. A first place ranking gets five points, a second place ranking gets four points, and so on to one point for a fifth place ranking. The top five point totals become the top five players on our draft board.

What do you take into consideration when voting? Well, first off, do not consider whether or not a player will actually fall to the 49ers. Assume every player listed were to fall to the 49ers. If Player X was there at 31, would you, as 49ers general manager, select that player.

In ranking your players, you can consider anything from need to value to intangibles. If you just want the "best player available" you would rank the BPA at the top of your five. Once the first five are selected, we would then move on to players 6-10, then 11-15 and so forth.

Before we get started, I had a tricky consideration on which I wanted to get some input. Some of the players that rate among the Top 25 on many draft boards are players I would not see the 49ers drafting. For example, if Geno Smith fell to the 49ers at No. 31 (again, we're assuming all players on the list fall to the 49ers), would we really see the 49ers draft him? They might trade down, but they also might just consider other players on their board because maybe Geno Smith is not anywhere near the top of their board.

Basically, I'm asking if there are certain players/positions we should leave off the ballot? Do the 49ers really need to draft an offensive guard? The 49ers have Mike Iupati and Alex Boone locked in as starters, and then have Daniel Kilgore and Joe Looney as potential backups.

Another example would be offensive tackle. Do we include guys like Luke Joeckel, Eric Fisher and Lane Johnson? The 49ers could use some depth at offensive tackle, but would the 49ers consider Joeckel or any of these guys if they happened to be there?

It might just be easiest to include everybody and let the voting sort it out. What do you all think? I don't have a poll because I can't think of specific answers, so just throw out your opinions and I'll figure it out from there.