2011 NFL Draft: Rounds 4-7

[Longtimefan]

Originally Posted by r08kessl

I think the most encouraging thing about this entire draft is the fact that they passed on taking a QB. We have both Shanahans, two guys who build offenses and know the importance of a QB to running that offense, and yet they passed on all the QB's. I think both of them recognized that every single QB in this draft was severely overrated due to the lack of talent, and that in addition to being overrated teams would over reach for them. That combined with the fact that the QB pool for next year looks to be much, much better and they obviously decided that they would wait for next year and get their guy instead of wasting a pick that we obviously need in other places on a QB that wasn't really going to be their guy.
Despite how much I love what we did in this years draft, I think next year we give up whatever we have to to get Andrew Luck. A lot of mediocre teams took a QB this year, and with any luck one of them will be picking first and Luck will be ours for the taking. When you have a guy that has the talent, size, and smarts to be the next great QB you give up what you have to, to go get him.

Shanahan had only to look at his current roster and see a QB...[John Beck] who had better numbers coming out of college than the vast majority of top QB prospects in this 2011 draft. He was forced to play before he was ready and his career has suffered as a result. The exact same thing is going to happen to the reached in this draft. Shanahan took the safe way and decided not to take the leap when equal or better may already be in his lap.