A Football Life, Mud City Manglers Evaluation

This name is a reference to a 12-segmant story arc from Rocky & Bullwinkle in the 1960s.

Sean Kennedy, No. 7 pick overall

Biggest Catches

Toby Gerhart, RB, JAX (+30)

Stevan Ridley, RB, NE (+15)

James Jones, WR, OAK (+11)

Biggest Reaches

Nick Novak, K, SD (-49)

Antonio Gates, TE, SD (-42)

Steve Smith, Sr., WR, BAL (-17)

Projected Starting Lineup

QB Peyton Manning, DEN (No. 2 QB)

RB Reggie Bush, DET (No. 13 RB)

WR1 Brandon Marshall, CHI (No. 5 WR)

WR2 Michael Floyd, ARZ (No. 22 WR)

TE Antonio Gates, SD (No. 15 TE)

FLEX C.J. Spiller, RB, BUF (No. 42 FLEX)

DEF Denver Broncos (No. 2 DEF)

K Nick Novak, SD (No. 8 K)

Almost anybody can be a great catch at the right spot in the draft. Stevan Ridley was a solid pick 15 spots after his projected value. I loved the Toby Gerhart pick. Well, actually I hated it because I was going to try and get him with my next pick. And James Jones could be even better value than my projections show with Derek Carr taking over as the starting quarterback in Oakland.

Nick Novak was a big reach, made worse by the fact that there were four better kickers available. Unless you’re going after Stephen Gostkowski, there’s really no reason to push for a kicker in the mid rounds of the draft, but if you’re going to do it you need to really look for value. Phil Dawson and Steven Hauschka are ranked higher than Nick Novak by every expert I’ve seen and were both on the board when Sean made his kicker selection. If his purpose was to have a University of Maryland grad on his team, he could have taken Novak in the 15th round, when the 8th kicker was taken, and gotten much better value in the 11th round.

Antonio Gates is an interesting pick. On one hand, it was a huge reach to take him in the 12th round. On the other hand, all of the better tight ends had been taken and even one tight end ranked behind Gates was off the board. Ultimately, this was Sean reaching for a guy because he waited too long to take his first tight end. Hopefully it works out, but with Ladarius Green expected to be the starter by midseason, that may leave Sean with rookie Eric Ebron who has had some trouble catching the ball this preseason.

Steve Smith, Sr. was a 17-pick reach, which isn’t the end of the world, but there were at least eight better receivers on the board, guys like DeAndre Hopkins, Doug Baldwin and rookies Markus Wheaton and Kelvin Benjamin would have been better picks at that point.

The value-based draft grade for the Mud City Manglers was a -109 for the starting unit (a big part of that was the reach for Nick Novak), a +31 for the bench and a -78 overall.

Sean’s starting unit is ranked 10th in the league based on value, but his overall team rank is 7th. The hope here is that some of the depth he has will make up for the lost starter value.

Bonus

In order to include something without my biased rankings at its core, I’ve included the average bottom line of the evaluations by the four official evaluators at FootballGuys.com.

• With great in-season management, we think you have about an 81 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good in-season management, we think you have about a 73 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average in-season management, we think you have about a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs.

You can read the entire evaluation of this team at FootballGuys.com.