I don't see Essendon as the new anybody right now. They're in a unique situation and it's not all that great, in spite of the HS's frequent urgings. Their significant contingent of 28yo+ players can't carry the day, and their young talent (Daniher aside) isn't yet ready to step up and win games. Might be best suited to dropping back for a year.
Essendon is not in a window and are rebuilding. The older players are not significantly important going forward. Most of them will be gone by the time we are in our window. What is promising about the Bombers is the core of young to mid aged players going forward. It doesn't matter that the older players 'can't carry the day'. It is far more important that our younger players develop as a unit. And what encourages me is that it was the young to mid aged guys who were our best players this season, for the most part.
Kelly 34 next year retired
Watson 33 retired
Goddard 32/33
Stanton 31/32 retired
Baguley 30/31
Hocking 30
Leuenberger 29/30
Hooker 29
Howlett 29
Bird 29
Myers 28/29
Bellchambers 28/29
The point is that you can't rely on them. Most clubs vying for a high finish have a strong senior core. More pressure will fall on Heppell/Hurley/Merrett/Daniher and they will be doing well to hold their ground. Next bracket:
Brown 27
McKernan 27
Colyer 26
Dea 26
McNiece 26
Green 25
Jerrett 25
There is a lot of potential dead wood to be cleared out.
What pick does Essendon start at this year? #12? They're in mid-table limbo.
You are right that a lot of deadwood needs to be cleared. This is happening as we speak. Post suspensions we needed to figure out who was still up to it. It was hard to know exactly where we were at at the start of this year. We have a clear idea now. We decided to play the older guys and try to make finals. But we are clearly significantly behind the best teams, so now we keep rebuilding.
I am optimistic because I believe our core players going forward are quite good. Still plenty of holes, but what we do have is promising.
Hooker, Hurley, Heppell, Zaharakis, Daniher, Merrett will be the core players over the next few seasons. They will all be 100+ gamers at some point next year. Young guys like Parish, McGrath, Mckenna, Fantasia, Begley, Tippa, Gleeson, Stewart etc. will be best 22 (imo) and are developing nicely. Then you have a bunch of other kids developing such as Francis, Ridley, Langford, Laverde, Mutch, Draper, Redman etc. Some of those will make it too.
Still some work to do but the future looks promising to me.
I am not worried about our first pick being 11 this year. With draft sanctions we picked up Merrett and Fantasia in 2013. There is plenty of talent available in the first round this year.
As for being stuck in a 'mid-table limbo' - I think our kids are good enough to get us out of that in due time. We need to be patient and keep rebuilding for now.