Me too. I wonder if it goes round by round, the day of the draft right before the Chiefs pick.

...

http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/wp-...uste-Rodin.jpg

Look, we do have some excellent football minds here. Members offer up some great takes on team issues, scheme, personnel, etc. But none of us are getting paid for our opinions by one of the 32 best groups in the world when it comes to professional football. We can watch highlight films all we want and evaluate guys, but the fact is that we simply don't have the resources, time or knowledge to scout players the way that the pros do. This is their job...not a hobby or a time killer. I can look up youtube tutorials on how to rebuild my engine, but when it comes down to it, I want someone that gets paid for the job and practices it professionally every day.

The only positive I'd give the BB over Scouts/Gm/Owner/HC would be that our only concern is making the team better.

We (minus the true fans) don't worry over contract size or bonus money. We want a winner.

I'd argue our "opinions" are more objective than the team's...

Yep.

EDIT: Not only that, but as fans, we have the luxury of not only looking at the team today, but in 3 years, 5 years, even 10 years.

People employed by the team are thoroughly focused on today and if they're thinking about the future at all, it's all about keeping themselves employed.

I'm convinced the large fail ratio among scouts/Gms is due to overanalysis. The problem is the teams have too much info and too much time. The more info you receive the more likely you are to overvalue things that have nothing to do with football. Hackoli was great at doing this, as are alot of other GMs.

The game is played on the field - and what happens on the field is all that matters.

It doesn't take much info or observation to identify a player - But when it's your fulltime job maybe you start assigning too much value to things that have nothing to do with football.

The concept of thin-slicing comes to mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-slicing

Someone with only a few minutes to perform an evaluation has a much more intuitive view of things.

Eric DeCosta

Don't get a big head over this Sorter, but after seeing the dudes posts about football, I'd probably take Sorters opinion over most anyone.

Thin slicing is definitely going on here, but Groupthink, or rather Genothink here is just a textbook example of that phenomenon.

For the most part, you have a completely cohesive group here which all has the same thought. Of course, the longer discussion goes on, the more the pre-existing belief is reinforced. Those who may not hold the same opinion are quickly labeled, stereotyped, ridiculed, and ostracized. Most of the "ink" around here could be characterized as pressure to conform, or to leave.

Of particular interest is the fallacy of recent draft failures. Nothing about Geno Smith is related to the Chiefs' past draft failures. He is only seen as worthy of the #1 overall simply because the old strategy failed, it's got little to do at its root with his virtue as a player. You can easily see this by looking at how sources outside this forum rate him as a middle or late first round pick (or possibly not one) in most (other seasons') drafts.

The groupthink here is reinforcing the fallacious idea that "We need a new plan because we sucked at executing the previous plan"

It has nothing to do with We as the Chiefs. It was to do with Everyone. Every team that has gone that route has failed, save an anomaly here and there.

Milkman

And Dick Haley knew RIGHT AWAY Cassel was a piece of shit.

Yes, but that pre-existing belief is based on our gut reaction to what we saw from Geno initially. Almost everything since then has reinforced it. He doesn't have many warts.

This is also wrong. In fact some of us don't give a shit about what the Chiefs did previously. Mostly what people care about is that all the players we might draft instead of Geno are utter garbage value for a #1 pick.

But there are a few fallacies there.

As I stated before, we can't really judge that plan when we've done such an awful job of even executing what we'd say we were trying to do.

There's also the fallacies that (a) we have to get a QB this year, in the first round, or we're doomed to decades more failure and (b) we have to get one this year at all. We could, regrettably if we must, build and get one another time.

It's better, IMO, to wait for a QB class that isn't the worst in 10 or more years, than to pick someone a round too high just to satisfy panic/reaction. JMO

Did you just form this opinion? Cause I swear it's the same one we've heard since 1990.


But yes, it has to be the right QB, of course. It's been shown that the first round is the best place or the most favorable place to get the right QB, because said Qb is more talented. Obviously, there are anomalies to the rule, but they are few and far between.

But this is a selection bias. We're selectively ignoring contrary examples.

Sure, there's been a significant run of 1st round QBs winning super bowls over the last decade, no one disputes that. But if you look at who they were - Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, etc. - nobody had doubts that those guys were first round picks. These were consensus top of the first round, trade future first round picks for, kind of guys. There was never any doubt about their talent. Even Joe Flacco, who it seems like I remember slipped a bit, was never going to get out of the first, and he'd be a first any year.

We don't have that this year. We have a group of guys who are probably 2nd round talent most years, who will have their value falsely inflated by the current dynamics of the league and the desperation of our team.

We shouldn't wash out the true data - we shouldn't build a stereotype around any QB in the first round when (a) most of them do not turn out, even in the first round and (b) there is a VERY significant drop off in number of super bowls won by QBs drafted in the first the last ten years, if you drop out the really exceptional examples - which clearly there are none of available to us this year.