We have scouts—some professional, some amateur—shouting from one echo chamber of Twitter to the other about the players they see certain “traits” in that could spell success for those players at the next level.

Prospects come in all shapes and sizes with all different types of skill sets. Some show up to the NFL Scouting Combine in March and put on a dazzling display of speed and explosiveness. Some get into arguments with hospital workers about how long it’s taking to get a physical. Some don’t help their draft stock when prospective employers get the chance to chat with them.

It’s a scout’s job to take all of the aforementioned information, add to it hours upon hours of a player’s game tape for measurement’s sake, throw all of that into a blender, hit a button and presto chango: A draft grade!

We see the absurdity in all of this, right?

When it boils down to it, the NFL Draft is seven rounds of almost complete and utter uncertainty. There is no formula out there to tell any anybody involved in this process just how successful a player will be in the National Football League. Heck, even that “successfulness” is a variance depending on what kind of situation the player is drafted into.

There are plenty of examples to show the shortcomings of player scouting—many that are covered in this article from The Atlantic—but maybe the most notable of all outliers is how the greatest quarterback in NFL history was a sixth-round compensatory selection.

Look at the deeply intellectual reasoning of Charlie Weis when he decided to select Tom Brady 199 overall in the 2000 NFL Draft:

I asked then-New England quarterback offensive coordinator Charlie Weis why he was so adamant about drafting Brady. I expected some deep-dish analysis. Weis said, "I don't know, call it a gut feeling. To me he had the look of a bulldog."

Yes, very profound indeed.

During that 2000 NFL Draft, a young Bob Quinn was fresh out of the University of Connecticut and a lowly player personnel assistant; the bottom of the scouting food chain. Through the course of his tenure with the Patriots, Quinn rose up through the ranks and eventually became the Director of Pro Scouting in 2012. After spending over 15 years as a scout in some capacity, Quinn became the Lions GM just over a year ago, and the return on that investment for the Lions has been fruitful in terms of talent acquisition, both through free agency, and, more importantly, the draft.

The Lions sit at No. 21 in the first round of this this year’s draft, and the defense desperately is in need of upgrades. Should Detroit move back off that first-round pick and acquire more chances to improve what might have been the worst defense in the NFL last season? After all, Detroit was 32nd overall in team defense according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA statistic in 2016.

Each and every year, the draft is a crapshoot, and it’s full of teams looking to move up and take the player they are sure of in their independent evaluation. Cade Massey and Richard H. Thaler hypothesized that teams overvalue the right to choose and thus “... top draft picks are overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets” in their 2005 research:

Players taken in the first round are more likely to be successful (be on the roster, start games, make the all-star game) than players taken in later rounds. However, performance does not fall as steeply as the implicit price of draft picks. And, teams do show skill in selecting players—using any performance measure, the players taken at the top of the draft perform better than those taken later. In fact, performance declines steadily throughout the draft. Still, performance does not decline steeply enough to be consistent with the very high prices of top picks.

In what is “easily the best defensive draft in the last ten years” according to potential Washington GM NFL Network’s Mike Mayock, the Lions have a rare opportunity perchance to improve the weakness of their team—their defense—to a point of respectability over the course of a long weekend.

Detroit lacked playmaking on defense last season, generating only 14 turnovers and finishing with the fourth fewest turnovers among all teams in 2016. Of the five teams that finished with a double-digit turnover differential in 2016, four of those teams made the playoffs, two of them went to the Super Bowl and the New England Patriots—with a +12 differential—finished the season as champions.

It’s impossible to ignore the relationship between Bob Quinn’s prior job experience and how it’s prepared him for his job as Lions GM. In this year’s draft, that experience could come in extremely handy.

As Bill Barnwell not so surprisingly pointed out, the head of the NFL’s longest, most successful dynasty is a master in taking advantage of other teams inability to properly value draft picks. Barnwell outlines the two strategies that Bill Belichick uses when making trades on draft day:

Belichick basically makes two sorts of trades: He trades you a pick now for a pick that’s guaranteed to be better later, like when he dealt a third-rounder to the Panthers in 2010 for a second-rounder the following year. Failing that, the Patriots trade down and deal one pick for several selections...

The second example would be the one Quinn could best exploit to bolster Detroit’s defense in a draft that’s loaded with talent. Barnwell alludes to a 2013 trade in which Belichick traded the 29th pick in the first round to the Minnesota Vikings—which ended up being Cordarrelle Patterson—for Minnesota’s second, third and fourth round selections in the same draft. With those extra picks, Belichick landed Pro Bowl selection Jamie Collins with No. 52 overall, and recently wealthy to the tune of three years, $30 million Logan Ryan with the third-round pick. Look at what Belichick has accomplished in his first 15 years when it comes to making trades for draft picks:

Strictly in terms of the draft-pick deals he has made, Belichick has acquired 80.6 points of Approximate Value. That’s like Belichick getting the first overall pick, the second overall pick, and the 19th overall pick for nothing. Or if you prefer, it’s like he’s been handed the 99th overall pick in each of his 15 drafts just for showing up and saying yes to overanxious teams.

If the player the Lions want is sitting at No. 21, they should undoubtedly take him, whomever that player may be. However, if the player they covet lies on the outskirts of the first round, Quinn should seriously consider trading down to capitalize on these impatient teams, especially those interested in re-entering the first round to nab one of the quarterbacks that will inevitably slide.

This franchise isn’t save of draft day trades that saw the Lions move back and fumble the chance to maximize their return. Fans of recent memory will flashback to 2015 when Martin Mayhew and Co. were in a similar position as the one the Lions find themselves in heading into this upcoming draft. The front office and evaluators overvalued Laken Tomlinson enough to move back a few spots from 23 to 28 just to add Manny Ramirez and a pair of fifth round selections in consecutive drafts—a reach and an admittedly low return.

It’s not as easy as it sounds to move back, and it’s not simply about accumulating as many picks as possible, either. Just because a team gets more chances doesn’t mean they’re apt or capable of turning those extra chances into contributing players. But with Quinn comes his experience in New England, and after his first 14 months with Detroit, he deserves the benefit of the doubt to make a decision like trading on draft day without it being slapped with the “Patriot way” label. Along with Jim Caldwell and his staff, who definitely deserve credit for getting the most out of last year’s rookie class, the Lions have a GM and head coaching tandem that could be opportunistic, maximize their chance at getting their hands on as many quality defensive players as they can get, and in the end, get the most value they can out of the 2017 NFL Draft.