I do think we need to be cautious at this point of a trade for Hendrickson. We are approaching the point where we will be mortgaging our future with too many picks thrown at him.
Generally my view on picks is
1st/2nd round - immediate impact players ideally
3rd round - somewhere between impact and high probability developmental starters
4th round - high probability developmental starters.
5th onward mostly you have to choose physically imperfect technically sound individuals or physical specimens who have no idea how to actually play football who you hope you can teach how to play.
I don't sweat 5th-7th much at all. Sure it's fun to have 6 picks in 5-7 and when you hit it's awesome, but as a practical matter, it's throwing darts at increasing levels of blindness.
1st-4th tho, is a different story. Esp top 100 picks (so 1-3).
Jayden's cap hit is gonna smack us roughly around 2029ish, assuming we extend before '27 and it's a bit backloaded. Ideally at that point you have a nice conveyer belt of young talent on rookie deals that is taking on starting spots. Something like 3-4 starters from guys in each of years 3-4 of rookie deals, and something like 1-2 from guys in each og years 1-2, giving you between 8-12 starters (of the roughly 28 or so "starter" players you'll field) on rookie deals. You probably pay top dollar for an LT, WR1, Edge, CB1, and then maybe 1 or 2 of TE/RB/DT/MIKE/S but after that you're outta money.
To maintain that kind of conveyer belt of guys tho you need top 100 picks.
In fairness, 2025 picks won't be on rookie deals anymore once Jayden's hits are smacking us, and I think 2026 is the last year we can get away with sending picks away, since 2026 draft picks will be done with their rookie deals following 2029. They are kind of the "first" year where you'd want to hit on a bunch of guys if we assume 2029 Jayden cap hit is large, with them in their 4th year.
But every year after 2026 you really gotta stock up on picks and hit, hit, hit. 2027 guys on deals thru '30, and by that point we will be in cap...well at least purgatory.
The concern for moving picks this year and next year, is that the fewer picks we have now, the more we'll have to fill holes with FAs in 2027/28/29, which sort of is a self-fulfilling situation. You need talent to maintain, and FA is rarely gonna be enough in terms of talent, so you're either doing what we're doing this year, that is, trading for higher tier talent, or drafting, which takes time and is a gamble. And of course the higher tier FAs are gonna want larger and longer deals with more guaranteed money that could, once we hit 2027/28, extend cap hits and dead money into 2030/31.
So I'm good at the moment, but also wary. Moving a 2 and 4 in 26 for Tunsil is "fine" for the return, but could also have some longer term consequences 4-5 years down the road.
Now this does imo make a trade back from 29 a little more likely, maybe moving back and grabbing, say a 3rd this year and a 4th next year, and given some of the talent tiers, that may make sense for us (like if only say, 6 of the 12ish edge guys in the top 45 are gone, we can probably hop back a few spots and still get a great guy).
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