it comes down to the fact that analytics naturally (and logically) favor a process driven approach. they value those draft picks extremely highly, even with the inherent risk of missing on them built in to that value. whatever process they used to come to that conclusion obviously saw the two picks as more valuable than mack and the opportunity cost lost when tying up the salary cap space. the trade, in this case, is being judged by what was known at the time it was made and what the range of likely outcomes were. the outcome (and all that we already know about it) isn't relevant in their evaluation. in the real world, due to a ton of external variables that aren't necessarily properly accounted for, though, it's not always as simple as saying do what the math says. the real world isn't a poker game with easily defined probabilities on everything. and, either way, knowing what we know now, an entire season and several months later, who cares? both things can be true.