The NFL draft gives fans such hope. Its like the sweet, fresh air of spring, a little blast of warm sunshine, a bath in the warm, incoming tide of optimism.
The draft offers up a sense that good times will get better or bad times now abate. That a talented roster can find depth and a thinner one can find, well, anybody.
It is now a three-day affair, this NFL draft. It begins April 28 with the first round alone and it is the stuff of prime-time TV on that initial night.
The draft. The way to a successful future. The accepted and time-honored method of building.
In the next column in this series, we will look back at recent Redskins drafts and see what went right and what did not for a team absent from the playoffs the last three years. We will try to find the foundations of the future among those drafts and understand why there simply arent more players who fit that description.
Every way of acquiring talented players fits into the construction of a roster. No argument there. Yet time and testing continually proves that it is the draft that best points the way toward the ultimate goal.
Consider the Green Bay Packers, Super Bowl winners just seven weeks ago. Their opening-day lineup featured 10 drafted players on offense and six on defense. Only one of their 22 starters, cornerback Charles Woodson, had been signed as an unrestricted free agent.
Now, the Redskins and their opening-day lineup. Two drafted starters on offense, six on defense. The Packers offense had one starter picked up in a trade, the Redskins five. The Redskins drafted six players in 2010 and two made the opening-day roster.
Some teams are getting seven, eight nine guys out of it (the draft) and youre getting one or two and thats not enough, said Mel Kiper Jr., the ESPN draft analyst. The numbers will catch up to you unless you are drafting players in big numbers.
The Redskins pick in the first and second rounds this year. The third- and fourth-round choices were traded last year (the former for offensive tackle Jammal Brown, the latter as part of the package for quarterback Donovan McNabb). The Redskins also have two fifth-round choices, one in the sixth round and two in the seventh. The first selection is 10th overall and could be used to collect more picks.
You can always trade back, coach Mike Shanahan said. Thats a possibility.
Drafted players are cheaper than free agents. Younger, too. They learn one style of play. They come into a culture and either contribute or vanish.
Packers general manager Ted Thompson took his share of criticism over the years for not chasing free agents. Remember how angry Brett Favre grew when the Packers wouldnt pursue Randy Moss? Not Thompsons style. Thompson attributes his belief in the draft to one of his predecessors.
His philosophy, he said at the Indianapolis scouting combine, derives from Ron Wolf, first and foremost. Hes who I went to work for in 92 (with the Packers) and he was a strong believer that you build the core of your team around the draft. Certainly free agency is another avenue but you do that a little more selectively. Thats just the way we were taught.
Thompson took over the Packers front office in 2005. He made it his business to accumulate more draft choices. In his first four seasons, the Packers selected 43 players in the draft, against 27 in the preceding four years. The 2007 team reached the NFC championship game and the 2010 team won the NFL title.
Ironically enough, Thompson played 10 years in the NFL with the Houston Oilers, having signed as an undrafted free agent.
The team the Packers defeated in the Super Bowl, the Pittsburgh Steelers, was also assembled via the draft. Ten of the 11 offensive starters in Week One and seven of the defensive starters were draftees.
So maybe a Packers-Steelers Super Bowl wasnt a surprise.
Is that awesome? I think both teams had maybe four starters that they got through free agency, St. Louis Rams general manager Billy Devaney said at the combine. The vast majority were draft picks, a couple of street free agents here and there but those two organizations, theyve done it the way everyone else aspires to.
Redskins.com wrote: