Many years ago, when I was a much younger man, a colleague of mine once told me, "When you buy cheap, you buy twice." As I began to age, I heard for the first time, "Buying cheap is one of the most expensive things you can do." I was starting to think about the upcoming draft, and these sentiments came to mind. I know people on these boards love the mid-round sleeper. Whether it be Falk or Lauletta, everyone seems to have found the next Prescott or Wilson. I think the problem with this mentality is that people can clearly recall the rare times a gem is found in a mid round, but discount the dozens and dozens of misses that occur. It's sort of like playing scratch off tickets. People remember that one time in which they won $50 but seem to forget the 200 times that they bought losers. Here is the reality of the situation. The first round of each NFL draft has the most highly coveted men in each draft. They have the physical attributes, and almost to a consensus, scouts, people that literally watch these players for a living, agree that these players are the most likely to develop into franchise quarterbacks. But the thing is, when all is said, and done, between 40-50% of these players wind up becoming franchise quarterbacks. If we go on the high end and assume that 50% in the first round pan out, what are the odds in the 2nd round and in the the 3rd round, and so on. Remember, the very reason that they are being drafted late is because they have significant deficiencies. The first rounders that have every physical trait succeed at a 50% clip. These mid round guys are far more likely to be cut from the same cloth as Chad Henne, Pat White, and John Beck than they are to be built in the mold Dak Prescott and Russel Wilson. And here is where the buying cheap really becomes expensive. Suppose we take a flier on a mid round guy, and it turns out that he falls into the statistically probability that he is not a franchise QB. The next year, we will find ourselves in the same situation - still needing a QB. Guess what? We bought cheap, now we are buying twice. And just for the sake of the hypothetical, we go on to use a first round pick on a QB in 2019. At this point, we have spent a 1st and an 3rd on a QB, but time has passed, and hot seats have grown hotter. We may very well be in a situation where the regime that drafts him is on the way out, and an entirely new regime will be stuck with somebody else's QB. So in my mind, I think if you are going to go ahead and draft a QB, you should be prepared to pony up. If it is entirely possible that we could spend a 1st and a 3rd in the next two years. Why not package them together to move up? It might not be quite enough to get us to a top QB, but we are getting closer. It might cost a 2nd perhaps even another 1st, but at least we are not squandering out picks like scratch off tickets.
