Originally posted by tankle104:
One of the biggest differences this year vs the last few have been that when injuries happened - our rookies stepped up in a big way.
Notably Nick Bosa, Justin Skule and Deebo. In the last few years our rookies showed a lot of promise but wasn't really playing at a high level. Deebo has struggled at times but has gotten a lot better as the season has gone on, which is exactly what you want to see!
The punter has done well for himself as well.
Overall it's showing to be a pretty solid draft class.
If you can get 3-4 quality starts from one draft - that is excellent!
I had a fun back and forth with Raider fans on twitter the other day about their draft class lol.
GMFB said Oakland has the best rookie class in the NFL and I made a joke about how they should be taken out of the running for taking Ferrell at #4 instead of Burns/Allen.
I may have been trolling a bit but I think after what we saw in 2017 first year is tough to judge a rookie class. We thought that 2017 class was going to be legendary as we had Foster looking like a pro bowler, Spoon looking like a shut down corner, Taylor like Wes Welker, Colbert like Dashon Goldson, Breida and Bourne looking very good, DJ Jones with a lot of potential and Kittle showing very good things. Really the biggest question mark was Solly and everyone was still excited about his growth.
Now that class lost a LOT of shine.
However as it comes to our draft class this year...obviously as we've seen it's hard to say how guys go as their career moves along but I think we've got some great players out of this group.
As it looks right now we have 3 true starters in Bosa, Deebo and Wish.
Bosa is an elite player who makes others better around him.
It remains to be seen if Deebo can be a #1 WR but he's showing big growth and at the very least will be a great #2 for us. We've been a drop off from a promising rookie campaign with Pettis but I think we can all agree Deebo won't have the same issues.
Wish plays a position that isn't sexy so nobody is going to get hard over a punter but fact is he's a plug and play starter.
The other guys who started games
Greenlaw - putting him for now although he probably can be considered a starter since he was starting at Sam before Kwon's injury. He's a great kid who played his best game on Sunday and hopefully keeps growing from it.
Skule - definitely didn't look great Sunday but overall hard to complain about him filling in for Joe as a rookie. Maybe not the long term answer at LT but I think it's fair to say he exceeded all of our expectations.
IR guys
Hurd - I think we were all super excited to see his game in preseason and wanted to see him on the field. Damn shame that we may not get to see him out there this year because his size would definitely be a nice addition
Harris - not sure if he's going to be anything special but he's a 7th rounder so anything from him is a win.
We had 8 picks in this draft. We got one elite starter. 2 quality starters with potential to be pretty darn good and two guys who have started games and played well.
Our 3rd rounder was on IR and could not show what he can do in non preseason games.
Even if Skule doesn't end up being a starter I'd say getting 4 starters out of a single draft with one guy being elite is pretty damn good.
