My friend brought up a hypothetical the other day. In a 2011 redraft, with all the knowledge about how player’s careers turned out, who would go earlier in the draft - JJ Watt, or Patrick Peterson?
Obviously, I said “that’s not even close. JJ Watt. The man got MVP votes, what are we even talking about?”
He argued that a lockdown CB is ‘more valuable’ than an elite edge/DL and that DL is ‘more replaceable’ than a good corner. I tried to use logic and listed out the AAV on highest paid edge defenders vs highest paid corners (edge = $40-50m, CB = $24-31m, if you were curious), but he stuck to his guns - AND claimed that the internet agreed with him!
So, internet, what do you think?
EDIT: another argument of his that I just remembered is “the patriots made the Super Bowl without any elite players on the DL, but did have Christian Gonzalez”