If Chargers can get a 1st & 3rd for Turner, don't we have to shop Betts?

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by offiss

I do know what to tell you though, if that is the case why not pick the higher rated back late in the first round in Jackson with one of the picks we would have recieved for Bailey? It would make sense to take the higher rated back wouldn't it? If he's higher rated in college it would make sense that he would be a better back in the pro's which it has. Further more he was more of the type of back to handle what Gibbs wanted to do in the running game and that's pound the ball. But apperantly Gibbs doesn't have the mystical eye because he didn't agree with majority opinion, like most of his personel moves. Kind of like when the majority said Brunell is washed up, or Campbell is a mid second round pick.

Well, we very well could have traded up back into the first round to get Jackson. Would we be much different as a team now? Not really. Would we be better off in the distant future? Perhaps. Portis had more mileage on him than Jackson in 2004, but then again a lot can happen between now and the end of their respective careers. I wouldn't worry too much about a hypothetical situation of two years ago, especially one that would have changed our current situation as little as that one did.

One thing that had to factor into such a decision had it even been considered is the very real possibility that Stephen Jackson doesn't live up to his first round draft status. Anybody who compared Portis' production to Olandis Gary's or Quentin Griffin's could have seen that he was much more than a "system back" (a term with no real meaning). So he was not really a question mark at all, whereas Jackson was potentially following in the footsteps as guys like Trung Candidate and Curtis Enis.

We know now that the scouting projection to the NFL for Stephen Jackson was spot on. We didn't know that at the time. Considering the similarity in the production of the two backs over the last 3 years, I'd say we made the right decision at the time, and if we had honestly (hypothetically) considered both those options, we really didn't have a wrong move.

My previous post was not really enforcing the notion that it's always (or ever) smarter to pick the player who the scouting agencies love, just pointing out that its not really an outlandish statement to say the higher rated prospect will have a better career. As people around here have certainly realized by now, no one on this fourm thinks less of conventional football logic and player evaluation than me. I don't think of the Portis trade as an especially good nor bad move. I don't necessarily think that a trade up in the 2004 draft for Stephen Jackson would have been better, nor worse. I think it (should, at least) be obvious now that both backs would be playing the exact same role in the offense equally well.