The swapping of draft picks is baffling. Just absolutely baffling. It defies common sense. Teams are trading away valuable commodities to get the best picks. And we are deliberately giving away 4 spots at the best end of the draft to gain 12 spots at the lottery part of the draft.
This is turning into some Oakland Raiders type shit.
My problem with swapping the picks is that the club is assuming the player order is fairly set and we're not going to have access to the consensus top talent regardless of whether we pick at 10 or 14.
But sporting drafts are so hilariously volatile that you won't really know what's going to happen until the draft actually takes place. In the lead up, certain players will be hyped on potential and come from nowhere to be considered top 5 picks, others will fall away, some will be rumoured to have attitude problems. On the actual day, some teams will be drafting based on needs whilst others go purely on best available, some teams will make reach picks and muck themselves up, another team might be set on one player but then end up going for a slider who unexpectedly slipped down to their pick.
I mean, you can say (and no matter what, the crows will say) that we're going to get the same guy at pick 14 as we would at pick 10. But at this point, we have no idea how the draft will actually shake out and a pick downgrade could turn out to be pretty meaningful.