Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab weigh the importance of early draft picks in the NFL after the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies traded away Desmond Bane for two players, a pick swap, and four unprotected first round selections. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Desmond Bain, uh, traded this week by Memphis to Orlando in a trade that shocked some because Orlando gave up a boatload, I mean 4 picks.
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So C. Rob’s right on.
If anybody in the NFL is actually worth 4 first-round picks.
All right, Mahomes, I’ll give you Mahomes.
Who else is worth 4 first-round picks?
Yeah, I mean, it was interesting because I sent out a ton of texts.
I had, you know, 14.
Uh, guys responded to me between coaches and executives and interestingly enough, out of the 14, 6 set a flat no, no way.
You don’t give up 4 firsts for anybody.
It doesn’t matter who it is, what quarterback it is, the, the picks are just too important from a building standpoint.
88, said Patrick Mahomes.
And of the 8 that said Patrick Mahomes, 3 of Those 8 also said Josh Allen, 2 of those 8 also said Joe Burrow, 2 of those 8 said, uh, Lamar Jackson, and 2 of those 8 said Jayden Daniels, which I thought was kind of interesting.
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It’s just that NFL picks are not even close to, in terms of the value, there, there’s no real comparison with NBA picks.
Like they all kind of picked a part where the NBA shelf drops off.
Where you, where you can’t find starters in the NBA draft in the first round, and they all kind of said the same thing about the NFL.
Like, when you roll out 22 players, 11 on defense, 11 on offense, you just can’t surrender picks at the top of the draft when you have so many holes to fill.
I just want to play Dell’s advocate a little bit.
I’m just gonna give you 4 late first round picks from this year.
Are you telling me you would rather have Malachi Starks, Tylike Williams, Josh Connerly, and Maxwell Hairston rather than Lamar Jackson?
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Really?
Really?
Like I, I take Lamar Jackson.
One personnel guy brought this up.
He said, look, You have 5 guys that walk out on the floor in an NBA team.
So automatically, you’re influencing 20% of the equation that walks out onto the floor in an NBA game.
He said, but interestingly, that one guy so heavily influences the other 4 on the floor, you could really realistically be impacting 40, 50, 60% of your game or more.
Quarterback, you can stay on offense, can go out and raise multiple boats, right?
From a skill position standpoint.
But again, it’s just the offense.
You still have special teams to worry about, you still have the defense to worry about.
So, going and acquiring one guy, um, is rarely a, a fix that, that actually works.