I think in the moment #1 looks good and you immediately run with it because it appeals to looking smart and definitely coming out on top. We can claim there was intel there but it was a risky move. Of course you won’t come out and say “yeah, there were a couple guys we wanted and thought maybe we’d have one if we moved back” rather than saying “this was our guy all along.” If he was your guy all along, you don’t trust the “intel.” If you did, it’s stupid. But then when you drafted your guy and he’s upset about being burned by so many teams (among them you), then you may start seeing it from another angle and play the facts of how it went down a little different. My belief is that there may have been a couple other reasons we wanted to move back, and we try to spin favorable narratives on why that was done.
But if we’re thinking this is overly cynical, why has the FO pumped out two completely different narratives? That’s not on us — it’s on them. And I’m not necessarily even being very critical about it. Nothing is super black and white. But when you’re pushing these different narratives out into the public sphere, don’t be surprised when eyebrows raise on completely conflicting stories.
And yes, trading at 22 makes them look worse, but that’s only to us that follow this stuff. Most people would just assume that’s how it’s done. If you can get a win by saying that “hey, we would have totally kept the pick if we knew Butler would be there,” it allows you to correct for perhaps some of the unanticipated consequences of the first narrative all at the expense of some online people who know that they didn’t trade a pick 7-8 picks before.