1 hour ago, A F said:

Disagree. Cripps is a better player than Kelly for mine, who was taken outside the top 10.

That's a different discussion, I guess you could interpret the sentence that way if you wish, but it's not my line of thought.

They overrated the players that they were considering at pick 9. You would think that they thought there would be little difference between the player picked at pick 9 and the player picked at 2. I remember at the time of the draft, Kevin Sheehan talking about how he thought this could be the best top 10 in the history of the draft.

Undoubtebly Cripps is an elite talent and would have been a steal at pick 9. Zach Merrett is another one if you are going down that path of players taken after pick 9. The difference is Kelly was widely considered to be a future star by multiple clubs and was being labelled a future Brownlow medalist prior to being drafted by recruiters. 

1 hour ago, Watts the matter said:

That's a different discussion, I guess you could interpret the sentence that way if you wish, but it's not my line of thought.

They overrated the players that they were considering at pick 9. You would think that they thought there would be little difference between the player picked at pick 9 and the player picked at 2. I remember at the time of the draft, Kevin Sheehan talking about how he thought this could be the best top 10 in the history of the draft.

Undoubtebly Cripps is an elite talent and would have been a steal at pick 9. Zach Merrett is another one if you are going down that path of players taken after pick 9. The difference is Kelly was widely considered to be a future star by multiple clubs and was being labelled a future Brownlow medalist prior to being drafted by recruiters. 

I agree with the sentiment that they overrated Billings and perhaps Salem, but we have no idea whether Cripps, Merrett etc were also in our top 3-5 players.

Just now, A F said:

I agree with the sentiment that they overrated Billings and perhaps Salem, but we have no idea whether Cripps, Merrett etc were also in our top 3-5 players.

Well I know they weren't 2nd in line after Salem. We had Lewis Taylor on standby as our back up for pick 9.