[|Zach|]

Part 2\2

1995
FIRST PICK: RB Ki-Jana Carter
BEST OFFENSIVE PICK: RB Terrell Davis, sixth round
BEST DEFENSIVE PICK: LB Derrick Brooks, 1st round and DL Warren Sapp, 1st round
BEST LATE-ROUND PICK: Davis

Tony Dungy turned around Tampa Bay football... but really, the key was this draft, when the Bucs got the heart of their defense with a couple of brilliant first-round picks.

I was in Cincinnati this year, too... and the Ki-Jana Carter experience was very different from the Dan Wilkinson experience, at least for me. The day before the draft, I wrote that the Bengals should find a way to get Ki-Jana Carter. I felt sure, absolutely sure, that Carter was going to be a big-time player, a playmaker, exactly what the Bengals needed. Of course, I don't know anything. But when the Bengals the next day actually traded up and got Ki-Jana Carter, I could not help but feel thrilled... they saw it the same way I did! I had been writing a column in Cincinnati for about a year, and I was finally in the flow, finally in the middle of things. The Bengals PR staff even clipped out a couple of paragraphs from my column and handed it out to the writers. I was at the heart of things.

When you're a sports columnist in a town, people tend to think (against most of the available evidence) you have some real power. I would get dozens and dozens of emails and letters every month from people who wondered why I had not yet fired Tony Muser or Dave Shula or Carl Peterson or Herm Edwards or Quin Snyder. I STILL get emails from people wondering when I will fire Trey Hillman.

Of course, you can respond by saying that you're just a silly sports columnist who has no power in such things... but that isn't 100% true. It's probably 95% true. But not 100%. People involved do read the paper. Talk radio sometimes amplifies what you write. Television sometimes builds off of talk radio amplifying what you write. I've written here before that when Kansas State hired Bob Huggins as basketball coach, I asked the athletic director why and he said, "Well, I'll be honest with you... your column about Huggins was really the big reason." No, I don't believe it was the BIG reason, but it's easy to forget that these are human being making sports decisions, and human beings are swayed by any number of things. Allard Baird, when he was GM of the Royals, used to tell me that he never read the paper -- and unlike every other person who said that... I believe him. I believe him because of his reasoning. When I asked why he did not read the paper, he said, "Because I know it would affect my decision-making." See, that makes sense.

My point is, I felt that in some way I had encouraged the Bengals to take Ki-Jana Carter. I was confident that it was a good move, exactly what the Bengals needed, the kind of move that turns around a franchise.

Ki-Jana Carter blew out his knee on his third carry of the preseason.


1996
FIRST PICK: WR Keyshawn Johnson
BEST OFFENSIVE PICK: OT Jonathan Ogden, 4th overall
BEST DEFENSIVE PICK: LB Ray Lewis, 1st round, 26th overall
BEST LATE-ROUND PICK: LB Zach Thomas, 5th round

And Baltimore, more or less, built its Super Bowl champ with this incredible draft -- Lewis and Ogden, a couple of first-ballot Hall of Famers in the same first round.

I don't think there should be any hard-and-fast rules in sports. Everything is up for debate. But I think it's probably a pretty good idea to never take a wide receiver with the No. 1 overall pick. Every draft, there are good receivers -- almost certainly BETTER receivers -- available later. This year's a perfect example. Keyshawn had a nice career -- 11 years as a starter, three Pro Bowls, four thousand-yard receiving seasons. A nice career.

Later in that first round, Indianapolis took Marvin Harrison, who is going to the Hall of Fame. Then, Buffalo took Eric Moulds, who basically had the same career as Keyshawn. In the second round, the Giants took Amani Toomer (9,497 career receiving yards) and Carolina took Muhsin Muhammad (11,438 yards). The very solid Bobby Engram also went in the second round.

Terrell Owens went in the third round. There's a whole other column out there to discuss whether he's a Hall of Famer, but he has certainly been one of the impact players in the NFL.

Joe Horn went in the fifth round -- he's a four-time Pro Bowler.

Don't take a receiver with the first pick. Just don't. There are receivers to be had later.

This, incidentally, was probably the worst quarterback draft ever. And, to the scouts' credit, they knew it. No quarterback went in the first round. The first quarterback taken was Tony Banks... and as bad as Banks was he was CLEARLY the best quarterback taken in this draft. The closest thing was Danny Kanell.

1997
FIRST PICK: OT Orlando Pace
BEST OFFENSIVE PICK: OT Walter Jones, 6th overall or TE Tony Gonzalez, 13th overall
BEST DEFENSIVE PICK: DE Jason Taylor, 3rd round
BEST LATE-ROUND PICK: DB Al Harris, 6th round

The year before the draft, an editor at The Sporting News called to ask me to write a story about how Orlando Pace was the best college football offensive lineman ever. I'm never entirely sure how stories like that get thought up, but I made a few calls to some college football analysts and pro scouts and, sure enough, found that a lot of people really did think Pace was the best ever.

The interesting thing is that Pace might not even have been the best left tackle taken IN THAT DRAFT. You could certainly argue that Jones, taken out of Florida State by Seattle, was at least his equal. Pace was a seven-time Pro Bowler and three-time first-team All-Pro. Jones was a nine-time Pro Bowler and a four-time first team All-Pro. With Jonathan Ogden going in the first round the year before, it's really pretty amazing... this was a golden age for left tackles. Someone should write a book about that, you know, the guys protecting the quarterback's Blind Side.

That year, Tiki Barber was taken in the second round and Ronde Barber was taken in the third. I think, all in all, Ronde has had the better career.

Quarterback update: Another rather dreadful year. The only quarterback to go in the first round was Jim Druckenmiller, who had no chance with that name. The only quarterback taken who became a regular starter was Jake Plummer, who for me had this Memento effect. That is to say, every year Plummer would be starting for the Broncos or Cardinals or whoever, and I would think: "Oh, Plummer's pretty good." And then I would watch him play again, and I would remember: "Oh yeah, he is NOT actually pretty good." And I would think that I should probably tattoo "Plummer is not good" on my arm somewhere.

1998
FIRST PICK: QB Peyton Manning
BEST OFFENSIVE PICK: Manning
BEST DEFENSIVE PICK: DB Charles Woodson, 4th overall
BEST LATE-ROUND PICK: C Matt Birk, 6th round

What a draft. Manning, Alan Faneca, Randy Moss and probably Woodson are all Hall of Famers. And then there are a bunch of really good players like Birk and Flozell Adams and Ahman Green and Hines Ward and Olin Kreutz -- 11 players in that draft have been starters for at least a decade, and a bunch of others like Fred Taylor and Patrick Surtain and Matt Hasselbeck were just good football players.

There is an NFL coach... I'm not sure if I've told this story before so to protect the guilty I'll leave his name blank for the moment. There's an NFL coach who I really like who told me the day before this draft that if he had the No. 1 overall pick, he would take Ryan Leaf. This was not an uncommon thought in 1998, by the way. A lot of people thought it was a real toss-up between the brainy Manning and the brawny Leaf. But this coach was particularly adamant. He said he liked the look in Leaf's eyes. That was the look of a winner. I don't suppose I have EVER heard more compelling testimony that football people should not scout a players' eyes.

Anyway, the point was not that he would have taken Leaf -- like I say, lots of people felt that way and anyway Leaf did go No. 2 in the draft, where he created much wreckage for the San Diego Chargers (it still astonishes me that in his rookie year, Leaf threw two touchdown passes... and FIFTEEN interceptions). No, the point was later when I went to bust the chops of this coach, he insisted that he had NEVER said that he would have taken Leaf first, and he would never have said that, and he did not think that, and he knew that Manning was going to be great and so on.

That stuff really annoys me.

1999
FIRST PICK: QB Tim Couch
BEST OFFENSIVE PICK: QB Donovan McNabb, 2nd overall or WR Torry Holt, 6th overall
BEST DEFENSIVE PICK: DB Champ Bailey, 7th overall
BEST LATE-ROUND PICK: WR Donald Driver, 7th round

OK, well, Couch was a disastrous pick. So that would make our tote-board look like this for first overall picks:

Great picks: 3 (Manning, Pace, Bledsoe)
Good picks: 2 (Maryland, K. Johnson)
Bad picks: 1 (Wilkinson, George)
Disasters: 4 (Emtman, Carter, Couch)

I originally had Wilkinson and George as disasters -- but I can't do it. Wilkinson did play 195 games in the NFL and started all four years for Bengals. George started 124 games in the NFL and led the league in passing yards one year.



The 2000s
I can't really break down the 2000s drafts the way I did the 1990s because, as we get closer to present day, it's harder to draw any real conclusions about the players. But while looking at the decade a little bit, I did find this jewel... in 2001 the St. Louis Rams had three picks in the first round. Remember, this was the Rams team about to go 14-2 and lose to the Patriots in the Super Bowl... pretty good. Three great picks there could have set them up for decade domination.

The Rams three picks that year were:

12th overall: Defensive tackle Damione Lewis
20th overall: Defensive back Adam Archuletta
29th overall: Defensive tackle Ryan Pickett

So what's the point? Pickett and Archuletta were starters for the most part, Lewis bounced in and out but got some playing time. So, eh, not great, but not tragic, either. What's interesting, though, is that each time the Rams picked that year, the player taken immediately AFTER their pick turned out to be a significantly better player.

• Right after Lewis, Jacksonville took three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Marcus Stroud.

• Right after Archuletta, Buffalo took Pro Bowler and nine-year starter DB Nate Clements.

• Right after the Rams took Pickett, Indianapolis took Pro Bowl receiver Reggie Wayne, Baltimore took Pro Bowl tight end Todd Heap and San Diego took Leader-In-The-Clubhouse-For-Sportsman-Of-The-Year Drew Brees.

I think you file this under the whole "NFL draft is a crapshoot" line that always comes out this time of year. Except... I'm not sure that the NFL draft SHOULD be this much of a crapshoot. In baseball, sure, it's easy to understand why the scouts miss so often. They're drafting very much on spec. They're drafting high school players that they hope will be good in five years. They're drafting college players that they hope will be good in three years. They're drafting hitters using aluminum bats who are facing suspect pitching. They're drafting pitchers with elbows... always a negative for pitchers.

But football... well, they're ONLY drafting college players. And they're college players who, for the most part, are playing at a pretty reasonable level... I don't know where big-time college football would rank compared to the NFL, but it's got to be Class AA or so, right? Baseball scouts take a lot of heat. But if they were drafting out of Class AA, I would bet they would get it right a whole lot more.

And yet, the NFL draft is very much a crapshoot. I would say that the 22 best players selected from, say, 2000 through 2005 might be as follows (in alphabetical order):

• Jared Allen, 4th round, 2004 draft
• Tom Brady, 6th round, 2000 draft
• Lance Briggs, 3rd round, 2003 draft
• Drew Brees, 2nd round, 2001 draft
• Larry Fitzgerald, 1st round (3rd pick), 2004 draft
• Dwight Freeney, 1st round (11th pick), 2002 draft
• Antonio Gates, undrafted, 2003 draft
• James Harrison, undrafted, 2002 draft
• Andre Johnson, 1st round (3rd pick), 2003 draft
• Chad Ochocinco, 2nd round, 2001 draft
• Shawne "roidman" Merriman, 1st round (12th pick), 2005 draft
• Julius Peppers, 1st round (2nd pick), 2002 draft
• Julian Peterson, 1st round (16th pick), 2000 draft
• Troy Polamalu, 1st round (16th pick), 2003 draft
• Ed Reed, 1st round (24th pick), 2002 draft
• Bob Sanders, 2nd round, 2004 draft
• Richard Seymour, 1st round (6th pick), 2001 draft
• Lofa Tatupu, 2nd round, 2005 draft
• LaDainian Tomlinson, 1st round (5th pick) 2001 draft
• Brian Urlacher, 1st round (9th pick) , 2000 draft
• DeMarcus Ware, 1st round (11th pick), 2005 draft
• Wes Welker, undrafted, 2003 draft

Now, admittedly, these are just my opinions. But you will notice... not one of them was chosen with the No. 1 overall pick. And frankly, I don't think there's a particularly compelling argument to be made for any of the No. 1 overall picks -- Courtney Brown, Michael Vick, David Carr, Carson Palmer, Eli Manning or Alex Smith -- to be on that list.

Look at the group of players again. There are as many players here taken in the second round (Brees, Ochocinco, Sanders, Tatupu) as taken in the top five(Fitzgerald, Johnson, Peppers, Tomlinson). And you can see there are some pretty special players taken after the third round -- heck, there are three undrafted players on the list (Gates, Harrison, Welker). This isn't surprising, if you want to look back over the draft. If you could only choose players third round or later from, say, 1995 to today you still could put together this team:

QB: Tom Brady
RB: Terrell Davis
RB: Priest Holmes*
WR: Steve Smith
WR: Wes Welker*
WR: Terrell Owens
TE: Jason Witten
TE Antonio Gates*
LT: Jon Runyan
LG: Marco Rivera
C: Jeff Saturday*
RG: Brian Waters*
RT: Jason Peters*

DE: Jason Taylor
DT: Pat Williams
DT: LaRoi Glover
DE: Jared Allen
LB: Lance Briggs
LB: James Harrison*
LB: Zach Thomas
CB: Ronde Barber
CB: Donnie Abraham
FS: Antoine Bethea
SS: Adrian Wilson

That's pretty good. Every player on that list is or was a Pro Bowler, some are all-time stars. None were taken in the first two rounds. You will notice those with asterisks... those players were not drafted at all.

So even as the NFL draft becomes more and more hyped, even as it soaks up more and more attention, even as more and more people do their own mock drafts, even as teams spend more and more resources on their scouting... there are just a whole lot of misses out there. I realize that the Oakland Raiders are not exactly the model franchise, but for them to take JaMarcus Russell with the first pick in 2007 and sign him to a $68 million contract with Adrian Peterson and Darrell Revis and Patrick Willis and Joe Thomas on the board, that tells you that they probably should probably shut down their scouting department and just buy a few draft magazines.

Look at the 2008 draft. Five running backs went in the first round. The first four were Darren McFadden, Jonathan Stewart, Felix Jones and Rashard Mendenhall. Stewart has been quite good, Jones and Mendenhall have contributed, McFadden has shown flashes of talent.

The fifth pick, however, was Chris Johnson. And, as you already know, Johnson last year ran for 2,006 yards and in just two seasons has scored 14 touchdowns that covered 20 yards or more -- these include runs and receptions of 52, 57, 58, 66, 66, 69, 85 and 91 yards. That's high school stuff. How could NFL scouts undervalue a talent that good, that fast, that special?

I think in the end they undervalue and overvalue players -- they take Tim Couches and Courtney Browns and miss James Harrisons and Wes Welkers -- because football is both more and less complicated than we generally think. It's more complicated in that there are countless talents that we still do not know how to scout, talents that probably involve vague-sounding things like work ethic and decision-making and motivation and sturdiness and consistency and so on.

At the same time, it's probably less complicated, too. And the less complicating factor is this -- in football, I think, players often tend to be about as good or as bad as the players around them. It's such a team game. I sometimes wonder if teams might not be better off doing just that -- spending less money and effort on scouting and more on coming up with better teaching and development techniques. Sure, James Harrison wasn't drafted -- people doubted his individual talents -- but he went to Pittsburgh, where they know exactly how to coach linebackers, where they know how to place linebackers in positions to make plays, where they know how to prepare linebackers to be their best in games.

Meanwhile, that same year, David Carr was the first overall pick -- scouts almost unanimously loved his ability -- and he went to a Houston team with no offensive line, and he got sacked 76 times his first year, and 49 times his third, and 68 times his fourth (all league-leading totals) and he played for a team that did not know how to develop a quarterback and a team that had no history with good quarterback play.

In other words, the New England Patriots seem likely to have a good draft no matter who they take because they will coach those players up and put them in a winning atmosphere. And the Detroit Lions seem likely to have a lousy draft no matter who they take because they are the Detroit Lions

Of course, things change. That's the fun part of sports. Maybe the Lions have it figured out now. Maybe the magic runs out on the Patriots. That's why we keep watching. This year the No. 1 overall pick was Oklahoma's Heisman-winning quarterback Sam Bradford. And while I like Bradford... I think that was a mistake. Ndamukong Suh, Nebraska's dominant defensive lineman, is a once-in-a-lifetime talent, a Warren Sapp-level disruptor who seems even more motivated to dominate. I think Suh should have been the first pick.

And the point of all this? I have as much chance being right or wrong as anybody else.