They tried to trade up to pick Aldon Smith, which would have been a good pick too, but obviously, they were not in love with JJ.
Crazy that Aldon Smith, JJ, & Von Miller were all drafted in the same year. Cornerstones for their respective franchises for years to come.
His good drafts pre-date Wade Phillips. He had a tough debut (2007, though he did spend picks on Schaub, which can't be discounted) - but drafted Duane Brown in '08 (as well as contributors Slaton and Adibi); Cushing, Barwin, Caldwell, Quin, Casey amd McCain in '09; Jackson, Tate, Mitchell, Sharpton and Graham in '10. And other than '07, he never had a top 10 pick, either. He signed Antonio Smith, Arian Foster, Wade Smith, Jonathan Joseph and Daniel Manning. Plus the Schaub trade. There have been bad picks, bad signings, bad trades - NO ONE is perfect. To mine that level of talent over a pretty short period of time, though, almost eliminates any bad moves since none of them derailed the team (other than passively allowing or encouraging Kubiak to hire Bush) At one point, I was convinced he was the problem; I soon found my way to the Smith/Bush combo platter. He's either an exceptionally good GM; or his coaches are geniuses and he deserves credit for listening to their opinion.
Von Miller was drafted higher than Smith and JJ (IIRC) and if we redrafted today he'd be behind both. I know we're all homers but i wonder who would be the higher pick...JJ or Smith? IMO Smith is better than JPP and Dware right now.
They simply had a draft board. Smith would probably be even more of a monster here if we had him. Nothing wrong with Smith. Meanwhile Watt would have probably slipped to 18. Of all the teams that passed on Watt I would only guess about 4-6 would change their minds at this point.
the most important task for an nfl gm is mastering the salary cap. Evaluating smith's performance starts with not resigning mario and dunte
7 He's done a pretty good job of building this team, but there have been some blunders that he's made that could have been avoidable.
I am surprised we have not mentioned maybe his best pickups. Signing Arian Foster as undrafted? Trading for Chris Meyers with a 6th round pick? Picking up Kevin Walter? (or did he trade for a 7th round pick, I forgot) Derek Newton, although I know is not the greatest, but can be good in the future, could look like a score pickup. Got Briesel and signed Wade Smith for nothing. Bryan Braman is an underrated pickup. Vonta Leach was also a good pickup, along with Laurence Vickers. Heck, even Forsett is playing well in his limited playing time. In addition, with all the injuries, you can see the outstanding depth he has created on the roster. This guy is one of the best, the results show.
According to Rick Smith, they tried to trade up to take Aldon Smith, but the price was too high. http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/teams/report/HOU/houston-texans
Yeah, I never disputed that. Had he taken Smith it wouldn't change his grade and Watt would have slipped IMO, making him a find.
Took him a long time to quit screwing around with DC hires, as well as appointing/okaying David Gibbs as db coach. I do like how he's much more public these last couple of years. I look at how McNair wanted his franchise to be like the Steelers, who until this season had a pretty good handle at bringing in new talent while still keeping their cap under control. It's very unfortunate that after this team's first playoff berth they already had to part with good talent because of cap problems.
To me, his best move was picking D.Manning and J.Joseph instead of Ashomugha. I can see A.Foster with R.Smith's handprint on that so that is very high up there, but C.Meyers might be a Kube/Smith choice.
Not so much him deciding that JJ and Manning would be better than Ashomugha, but once he realized that Ashomugha was playing the Texans for a higher contract from other teams he went quickly after JJ and Manning.
