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Who would you protect in an expansion draft?


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I saw this topic on the footballsfuture.com board.  Let's say there is an expansion draft and you can only protect 3 players (and rookies are exempt).  Which 3 Bengals would you protect?  I thought it would make for some interesting discussion during this down time.

 

Here is my post to that thread:

 

Quote

AJ Green is easy.

Then it's 2 of 3, Dalton, Atkins and Burfict. I lean towards Dalton, but the team could win with McCarron at QB. Burfict is the heart of the defense, but Atkins is so good.

Do you protect Atkins and Burfict and risk losing Dalton?

In the end, protect Dalton and Atkins and hope that Burfict's history causes them to shy away from him.

 

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30 minutes ago, schotzee said:

Is 3 the usual number of players you could protect in an expansion draft?

 

No, it's not really like the NHL at all. The last NFL expansion draft, each team made 5 players available with some pretty lenient criteria. The Texans built their team (mostly) from the scrapheap of NFL backups.

 

3 isn't nearly enough players on an NFL sized roster, but I'd go with Green, Dunlap, and Atkins in this hypothetical scenario.

 

Dunlap is specifically because I'd assume most teams will value their elite edge rushers VERY highly, so the expansion team would be looking for guys just like Dunlap to be unprotected.

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NHL teams got to protect 7 or 8 of their players, essentially their best goalie and a couple of their top lines worth of players. I think the NFL version would be a lot more interesting to look at what a potential expansion team could look like if the NFL did something similar but allowed more guys to be protected.

 

Going by the idea of this thread, just think about an NFL team with the 4th best player from all 32 teams. That would be absolutely absurd.

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17 minutes ago, omgdrdoom said:

 

No, it's not really like the NHL at all. The last NFL expansion draft, each team made 5 players available with some pretty lenient criteria. The Texans built their team (mostly) from the scrapheap of NFL backups.

 

3 isn't nearly enough players on an NFL sized roster, but I'd go with Green, Dunlap, and Atkins in this hypothetical scenario.

 

Dunlap is specifically because I'd assume most teams will value their elite edge rushers VERY highly, so the expansion team would be looking for guys just like Dunlap to be unprotected.

Thanks and I think you make a good point citing Dunlap for that reason.

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48 minutes ago, kennethmw said:

The last time they had one, the teams picked 5 players who could be drafted, so the point is pretty moot.

 

Exactly, the player list for NFL expansion teams to choose from is a bunch of bottom tier backups and then a handful of decent players with shitty contracts that a team is trying to dump without dead money and whatnot.

 

It's much different from the NHL which is where people playing these hypotheticals are getting the X number of protected players thing from. Of course any of these "games" serve no real purpose than just sparking discussion, but it's mostly silly because even if the NFL went the route of the NHL, it would be a MUCH higher number than 3 players protected. A team of the 4th best player from 32 NFL teams would go 19-0 without even trying. It would be a Pro Bowl roster, even the backups.

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When someone asks a hypothetical question the point is not to attack the question.

 

Dalton has to be protected because QB is the most valuable position and the hardest to replace.

 

Then Green and Atkins.

 

I love burfict, but we can only protect three.  Microfracture surgery means Burfict will have a short career, and he showed up last season fat and out of shape.

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Elite level pass rushing is also extremely important.

 

How many 4-3 LDEs are better than Carlos Dunlap? Maybe 1? The dude is insanely underrated even by Bengals fans. His pressures per snap have come at a ridiculous rate throughout his career and nobody comes close to batting balls at the line like he did last year. His sack numbers have been fine for a few years but you don't need 20 sacks to be a good DE regardless of what the shock jock sports analysts and casual NFL fans on Facebook want to see. Dunlap is one of our best players by a wide margin IMO.

 

If you told me we absolutely HAVE to keep Andy as 1 of the 3, as crazy as this sounds, I'd probably say to keep Dunlap over Green in that case. Dunlap and Atkins are special talents at their respective positions, as is Green, but keeping your top tier LDE with no depth behind him is more important than keeping Green when we do have WR depth.

 

I'm honestly not sure you'd need to protect Andy. He isn't some young developmental QB anymore. He's going to be 30 this year and has pretty much been a middle of the road to fringe top 10-12 QB his entire career outside of 2015 where he looked great. Some teams have young(er), elite, non-QB players (like us) so it's not like Andy would be the only unprotected starting QB out there. I'm not trying to bash the guy or say that we don't need him, but I'm just not sure he'd be the choice for the expansion team even if we did leave him available. We have a ton of young, upcoming players that I'm sure a new team would love to have.

 

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuttttt again, this right here is why the "you can only protect 3" would NEVER happen in the NFL and why this hypothetical would make more sense if the list had to be a lot longer. There's a 0% chance they would let an expansion team be made up of players of Dalton, Dunlap, Burfict, Green, etc. caliber.

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1 hour ago, schotzee said:

Nice post^^^^. All this and like Jason said the team could still feel comfortable rolling with Mccarron.

McCarron has only started 4(?) games?  Also, elite WRs are not nearly as rare or important as  decent experienced starting QBs and guys like Dunlap and Atkins.

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8 minutes ago, SF2 said:

McCarron has only started 4(?) games?  Also, elite WRs are not nearly as rare or important as  decent experienced starting QBs and guys like Dunlap and Atkins.

This is true Mccarron has little experience ,but Andy fared pretty well out of the gate. Probably mostly because of Aj . We also saw Cincy's offense sputter mightily without Aj. I think there was a time he was right up there just a couple notches below Megatron.

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5 hours ago, schotzee said:

This is true Mccarron has little experience ,but Andy fared pretty well out of the gate. Probably mostly because of Aj . We also saw Cincy's offense sputter mightily without Aj. I think there was a time he was right up there just a couple notches below Megatron.

I don't disagree at all, I just think they are not as important as many feel.  Megatron, Randy Moss, Terrel Owens and Larry Fitzgerald were all great but didn't win rings.  Guys like Danny Amendila and Julian Edelman do.

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19 hours ago, SF2 said:

I don't disagree at all, I just think they are not as important as many feel.  Megatron, Randy Moss, Terrel Owens and Larry Fitzgerald were all great but didn't win rings.  Guys like Danny Amendila and Julian Edelman do.

Haha. I might agree with you if Brady was our QB and Belly was our head coach.

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I think you have to take into account age, positional value and contract status.

 

Dalton and Green are both signed long-term to good deals. Both are at very premium positions. They are the two obvious ones to me. 

 

Then you have 3 strong choices on defense in Burfict, Dunlap and Atkins. Picking just one is tough.

 

Burfict is a FA after the season, so I think that hurts his value as a keeper. He's out for me.

 

Dunlap is a year younger than Atkins and on a better contract (almost $3.5M per year cheaper). So I'd keep Dunlap as the 3rd keeper. 

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