I was surprised to see his numbers after i read your comment.
How did he avg 120 supercoach points in the champs but only under 20 possessions. I dont get it. I looked and he only averaged 20 disposals in TAC. So he can fend off big deal. Why is he the number 1 pick?
As above. It's all about the impact of those disposals and how many of them are contested/from contested marks, and also probably his tackling and of course goals. He is a "match-winner" with serious weapons.
This fend-off stuff is laughable, as it is just one small part of an extremely extensive package of highly desirable attributes.
In the champs for instance he "only" averaged 19 disposals, but 11 of them were contested and from memory he also averaged two goals per game and spent considerable time forward in those games, possibly due to injury. (I read someone say a couple of months back that he kicked so much on his left in one of those champs games because he had an injured knee at the time).
Late in the year he was also reportedly playing with a broken thumb/hand (yet still had 11 tackles in one game in spite of that!), so I imagine that also didn't help.
If you think 19 disposals and two goals a game in the champs is nothing to get excited about, one Jack Billings averaged just 12 disposals per game in the champs in his draft year and was bloody lucky to make the AA team off the back of it. He went pick 3 in one of the strongest drafts ever in spite of that.
The queries on his endurance and possibly his unwillingness to go interstate (if those rumours are true) will probably mean he doesn't go no.1, but if he was exactly the same but with better endurance, I doubt there would be any doubt at all on him being the consensus no.1.
Even if he only ever had bursts in the midfield, if we got him he could give us an awful lot of what we get from Membrey (in terms of marks and goals), who is a similar size, but with more disposals and tackles and much better crumbing, x-factor and so-on, at ground level.
He's the type that would be bloody hard to match-up on and who I see becoming more and more desired as teams become less willing to play more than one or two "talls" up forward.
And if he does manage to get his endurance up to midfield standards you could genuinely be looking at another Danger/Dusty type as far as the impact he could have goes, IMO, as his CP numbers and general attributes would suggest.