The idea that you adjust your draft board (ranking players) based even in part on your own team needs means you are by definition, potentially drafting players you yourself have rated inferior to other players simply because they play a position where your current roster has holes. Sheer logic says this is how you end up with a balanced but mediocre roster, vs having a roster with more stud impact players.
There's plenty of truth in what you're saying, but there's so much oversimplification and hyperbole baked in that your point gets lost.
You're assuming that the player I draft based in part on need compared to the one I'd draft otherwise is drastically inferior. Mediocre versus stud, to use your words.
That's not how it goes most of the time. Yes, there are certainly examples (especially with the benefit of hindsight) of teams going way off the board, sometimes based on need. But that's pretty rare. Most of the time you're talking about miniscule differences in overall quality and -- if we're to be totally honest -- differences that can only be measured in theory because you're trying to compare between positions that are so different that the skillsets simply aren't comparable.
The key difference between someone you have ranked as a mid-third offensive tackle and a mid-third cornerback? Need. You can't weigh the importance of the positions because they're equally crucial, just in ridiculously different ways. The one weight that stands out is whether your team needs one position over the other.
Need is as important a factor as any other, and just like the others it needs to be weighed against all the others. If the point you're making is that a team shouldn't pick a fifth-round guard in the third round because they need one and like this one in particular, then congratulations! You've made an obvious point that everyone already agrees with.
But the far more common scenario is that you're on the clock, you've got 9 players pretty equally rated at that spot, they all play different positions, and it simply boils down to need.
So you choose the guy that's ranked 7th among those 9 guys on lists put together by amateurs, and the peanut gallery hangs you for drafting for need because "BPA, goddammit!" It's stucking fupid.
Of course need matters. It just shouldn't be the only thing that matters, which is another obvious point not worth making...
