So, what grade would you give our draft?

Yusuf06 · Status: Offline

So, what grade would you give our draft?

Hog Fever · Status: Offline

I have to agree. It follows the pattern that our drafts from the past 5 years or so have followed. We don't make any horrible mistake with our first pick, at least according to the "experts", but we don't seem to make any great moves either.

Every once in a while we might get lucky with a guy like Horton, but for every Horton pick there are 3 or 4 real head scratches. The plan seems to be to just take one longshot flyer after another.

Do we have room on the roster for another TE? How about another WR? I don't think so. I guess I can see taking a shot at another CB since you can never have enough good corners. Still it couldn't have been at the top of the need list. There didn't seem to be a feeling that he was far and away the best player available or anything either.

Time will tell.

-- Edited by Hog Fever on Monday 27th of April 2009 07:11:17 AM

Jimster · Status: Offline

B.

Got a D-lineman and a 6' hard hitting CB that can play cover 2.

From the 4th round on, it's a roll of the dice anyway. Doesn't look like the team (wisely) was looking for a starting LB in the 5th or 6th round, but special teamers/depth players. It seems they have other things in mind for LB. - Zorn already mentioned Rocky will be working some at SSLB in camp.

The TE was taken as a FB. Sellers turns 34 in July.

The 6'4" WR (whose bio says he also has good hands)may be a flier, but may be someone who goes on the PS for a year and we develop into a player.

Maybe the scouting department thought the 13 offensive lineman already on the roster were better than anybody still on the board round 5 down.

...not to mention we still have the UDFA period coming.

Neophyte · Status: Offline

I gave it a C but that is only because I gave them extra credit for not doing anything stupid in the 1st round to get Sanchez and because they actually drafted a lineman there.

I will be shocked if any the rest of these guys are in the league in 3 years and with the exception of the CB taken in the 3rd stunned if any of them take a regular season snap for us.

I was over Vinny before this draft but am now well past that. The guy is totally lost. Maybe the fact that the only job he could get when Marty was fired was at ESPN should have told Dan something huh?

Jimster · Status: Offline

Neophyte wrote:

Maybe the fact that the only job he could get when Marty was fired was at ESPN should have told Dan something huh?

To his defense, teams already have their FO's in place in Febuary. Cerrato was fired at the end of January. Most teams that are replacing coaches and GM's, have those guys hired before January ends. ...And it was CNN, not ESPN.

BTW, I always thought it was an oxymoron that people always say it takes 3 years to grade a draft, yet everyone wants to grade the draft now, the next day, and start complaining.

People were probably complaining about Horton and Moore last year this time too. smile

-- Edited by Jimster on Monday 27th of April 2009 09:36:49 AM

Neophyte · Status: Offline

Not to be contrary Jimster but his official Bio in the team media guide lists ESPN, ESPN Radio and ESPN.com as his employers for the year he was away from the Skins.

I admit it...I am not a Vinny fan. This draft doesn't change that. The apparent success of Horton and Moore last year is nice but not a pattern. If anything, the pattern points to a lack of success in any round below the 3rd. I just don't think he is a Wolfe or Polian or Pioli or any number of other great FO guys of this particular time.

And if the talent evaluator/decision maker can't compete with the other teams in the league then the players on the field will likely have the same problem.

-- Edited by Neophyte on Monday 27th of April 2009 11:41:37 AM

Hog Fever · Status: Offline

I'm all about being fair and I'm hoping all of the guys we drafted make the team and become All-Pros. Let's look at the facts here because I dare you to tell me the recent track record fills you with confidence in our front office. Are you happy with one starter per draft class? I would like to see a better track record than that. I don't care if it was Vinny, Dan, Joe or whoever else made the calls here. Is it too much to ask for to expect better?

2008 - Washington Redskins
Rd     Sel #     Player     Position     School
2     34     Devin Thomas     WR     Michigan State
2     48     Fred Davis     TE     USC
2     51     Malcolm Kelly     WR     Oklahoma
3     96     Chad Rinehart     T     Northern Iowa
4     124     Justin Tryon     CB     Arizona State
6     168     Durant Brooks     P     Georgia Tech
6     180     Kareem Moore     DB     Nicholls State
6     186     Colt Brennan     QB     Hawaii
7     242     Rob Jackson     DE     Kansas State
7     249     Chris Horton     SS     UCLA

10 picks, 1 starter and a couple of other players who may or may not become more than special teams or spot contributors. I sure hope they do but at this point they just aren't. I'm willing to give this at least another year.

2007 - Washington Redskins
Rd     Sel #     Player     Position     School
1     6     LaRon Landry     SS     Louisiana State
5     143     Dallas Sartz     LB     USC
6     179     H.B. Blades     LB     Pittsburgh
6     205     Jordan Palmer     QB     Texas-El Paso
7     216     Tyler Ecker     TE     Michigan

5 picks, 1 starter and one Special Teams guy. The rest of this draft was traded away. They don't get a free pass just because they don't have many picks here. They traded them away frivolously.

2006 - Washington Redskins
Rd     Sel #     Player     Position     School
2     35     Rocky McIntosh     LB     Miami (Fla.)
5     153     Anthony Montgomery     DT     Minnesota
6     173     Reed Doughty     DB     Northern Colorado
6     196     Kedric Golston     DT     Georgia
7     230     Kili Lefotu     G     Arizona
7     250     Kevin Simon     LB     Tennessee

6 picks, 1 starter and 3 guys who are rotational players. Two misses late but this was not a bad job at all. Still no first rounder here, or third, or fourth , we traded them away of course.

2005 - Washington Redskins
Rd     Sel #     Player     Position     School
1     9     Carlos Rogers     DB     Auburn
1     25     Jason Campbell     QB     Auburn
4     120     Manuel White     RB     UCLA
5     154     Robert McCune     LB     Louisville
6     183     Jared Newberry     LB     Stanford
7     222     Nehemiah Broughton     RB     The Citadel

6 picks and two starters. They were both first round picks so they SHOULD be starters but I guess they could have done worse.

Yusuf06 · Status: Offline

That's a fair point about waiting to grade a draft Jimster. However as with the Raiders, there were so many mind boggling mistakes in our draft that it is all but impossible to avoid giving it a horrible grade, even this early in the game. It also settles the question once and for all of whether we can finally, officially declare Snyderatto morons. Absolutely yes.

I’m going to run through the issues I have with all our picks in detail. I apologize in advance for the length but hopefully it will illuminate the utter and complete incompetence that is Snyderatto.

In researching this year’s draft, I used the Ourlads.com draft guide. In some cases I’ll paraphrase their analysis but in an effort to keep Om from spending any time in the pokey, (pun richly intended ;) ) I’ll avoid directly quoting any of their copyrighted material. I’ll also provide their player grades to make my point. Their scale runs from a minimum range of 2.0-2.49 (emergency camp fodder) to a maximum range of 9.0-9.99 (first year starter).

Orakpo (Ourlads grade-9.58, top ranked DE) - I personally would have preferred we trade down to stockpile picks. As I mentioned earlier, he's a questionable fit for our scheme. However, this is admittedly nitpicking given our absolutely non-existent pass rush and Orakpo’s speed off the edge. In the long run that's probably not a problem since he'll eventually move over to the right side. What is a concern is that according to Ourlads and my observations of his clips, he simply doesn't have a whole lot of pass rush moves. Most of his sacks came by beating his man on the first step and running unabated to the QB. When that didn’t happen, he was a non-factor. I think that’s the primary reason for the inconsistency some draft pundits talked about. In his favor, he seems to have the work ethic to succeed and I believe he’ll learn some moves and improve his game. All in all, I wanted us to trade down to get more picks but given how we absolutely shat the bed later, it was probably the best thing to take the bird in the hand.

Barnes (Ourlads grade-6.31 #18 ranked CB, projected 4^th/5^th rounder) – Positives:Good physical ability, quick feet, good catch up speed. Negatives: Needs more upper/lower body strength, durability concerns due to slight frame. At the time, there were several other players with higher ratings at positions of need. On the OL, T. Kropog (7.39-#7 OT) and G. Cadogan (7.38-#8 OT) I don’t agree with it, but IF they were absolutely sold on improving the defensive backfield, why not improve a position of strength and take R. Johnson (7.37-#2 ranked FS) which would allow Landry to move back to his more natural SS spot and would likely result in even more turnovers? Unfortunately, this tendency to take lower rated players over higher rated ones continued.

Glenn/Henson-(Ourlads grade for both-3.49-unranked LBs) This was perhaps our dumbest move. We inexplicably passed on taking either of THREE players that would have likely made our starting roster, J. Meredith (8.65/2nd ranked OG-they felt he projected more as an OG than OT) Freeman (8.45/5^th ranked OLB) and Brinkley (7.55, 3^rd ranked ILB) the latter two of which were versatile enough to play multiple LB spots. Instead, we traded back and took two LBs that will probably never play a down for us. Even worse, the guys we picked have character issues. Glenn was suspended indefinitely from his team and Henson was academically ineligible for his final bowl game. Yeah, that bodes well. rolleyes Again, if we were picking higher ranked players with these types of issues one could justify it. However doing so with lower ranked players is just, well, stupid.

Eddie Williams-(Ourlads-no ranking or grade, Scout Inc.-#10 FB) This pick was stupefying. Shipley (Ourlads grade-3.99) was still on the board at this point and would have made for some much needed depth at C. Shipley is a guy who doesn’t have the measurables but is nonetheless a very effective player and would have been good depth to have on our PS. Williams is reportedly a good blocker/HB type and the thinking is that we want to convert him to FB. However, FBs are a dime a dozen in the NFL. Very good veteran FBs can be had for very little money and good rookie FBs often go undrafted. This guy would have been there as an undrafted F.A.

Mitchell-(Ourlads grade-3.49-unranked WRs) I wasn’t expecting much here. Heck, it’s the end of the 7^th round and everybody just wants to go home by this time. However, at this point G. Cadogan (7.38-#8 OT) is still available and we passed on him for a slowish WR with issues running routes and stone hands. Other than that, he’s a great prospect though. hmm Another pick wasted on an undrafted F.A.

Now many of you will ask "If these guys were so great, why weren’t they taken earlier.?" Well, in many cases the players I mentioned were taken close to our picks. Brinkley and Freeman are good examples of this. However, I’d say this is a non-issue. After all, Orakpo was the best DE on the board and I haven’t heard anyone question what was wrong with him to make other teams pass on him all the way to #13. Besides, this was a really odd draft where there were reaches all over the place and many higher ranked players fell seemingly without explanation. We should have used that to our advantage. Instead, we crapped the bed and missed a golden opportunity to improve our depth.

The overarching issues here are our complete incompetence and apparent lack of a draft strategy. We more often than not passed on viable, starting quality players at positions of need to pick players ranked much lower.

Now I understand that there are differences between draft grades. However, we took players that were ranked so far below the others, that I’m having a hard time believing we couldn’t have waited on most, if not all of them to be undrafted F.A.s. We clearly didn’t pick for need and even more troubling, as evidenced by the relative rankings of the players, we didn’t go with BPA either.

In short, Vinny and Dan are idiots and this draft reflected that in spades.

-- Edited by Yusuf06 on Monday 27th of April 2009 04:01:22 PM

-- Edited by Yusuf06 on Monday 27th of April 2009 04:06:14 PM

Om · Status: Offline

Impressive research, Yusuf. Personally, I just don't buy into Ourlads or any other scouting outfit being a baseline against which which we can measure whether NFL teams "got it right" or not.

The guys who write those publications aren't in the meeting and film rooms of the teams doing the drafting, don't work the players out in private checking specific skillsets, don't interview them one-on-one, don't project them into specific situations on specific teams running specific schemes ... and are working for magazines, not NFL teams. bandana

Not dismissing them out of hand, just not prepared to accept their judgments in a vaccuum over that of the people in the room.

I'll wait 3-4 years (as I do w/ any draft) before assigning a "grade" to the '09 class. So much will go into determining which players succeed and which don't--things we cannot even begin to foresee at this point--that to try to do so today would feel more like an emotional reaction than an intellectual one (given I don't buy into the publication-rating baselines).

All that said, based on said emotional criteria ...

Orakpo pick: A
Rest of Draft: ?*

* Good thing I've given myself 3-4 years.

-- Edited by Om on Monday 27th of April 2009 04:36:56 PM

Larry Brown #43 · Status: Offline

I too am willing to be patient and let things play out, although I must admit I had a flashback to the '05 draft when we took two fairly unknown later-round LBs.

In '05 we took Robert McCune and Jared Newberry-- neither of whom amounted to anything. So when we took Glenn and Henson I thought, "why does this sound familiar?"

Some other late-round LBs (Kevin Simon, '06; Dallas Sartz, '07) have been equally unimpressive, but of course Blades has been a pretty good find.

Hopefully we'll get something out of these guys.

Jimster · Status: Offline

I hear you Yusuf, and agree with Om as well. I realize the perception of a lot of players that get skipped over because of other peoples rankings on them, but at the same time, like Om said what matters is what our scouting department is ranking them as. I guess that's not very comforting to hear and I'm not defending Vinny necessarily, but guess I'm a little more optimistic now that Scott Campbell is back in the fold. Plus, I'm one of those who believes last year was truly Vinny's first draft that he made all the final calls in, and I think it wasn't a bad draft. We have a lot of vets ahead of most of the positions drafted last season. Many always complain we don't draft enough for depth or develop our own players, but that looks like most of what we did last year, minus the punter that didn't work out.

This year is too early to tell. I admit I've never heard of any of the guys from the 5th down, but assume there was at least one scout in that room that liked something about them.

Mayor · Status: Offline

I graded them at a "B" solely for the Orakpo pick, not knowing enough about the rest of the draft to make an informed decision. I scratched my head when they did not choose an OT in the 3rd round [or later, for that matter]. I can only presume that after the tons of tape the FO and coaches watched, they felt that they should stick to their BPA philosophy and not try to reach for an O-lineman. You can certainly disagree with their choices. After all, that's part of the reason we're here, to voice our opinions, especially when we think the team screwed-up. But I'll try to be patient and see what happens.

I hope all of the picks make significant contributions this year.

I hope JC throws 25+ TD's this year, some of them to guys named Thomas & Kelly.

Bob