Friday, April 20, 2012

Drafting For Need: One Of The Main Things That Sets A Franchise Back



Your team is picking in the top ten consistently and you want to know why. Well one of the reason is that your team is probably drafting for need except for  best player available. However at the same time you have to be smart about this. If you have young franchise players at the position you shouldn't be looking at that position Here is one example to show the results of reaching.

We will examine the 2007 NFL draft, and more specifically the Raiders, Lions, and Browns picks. For the 1st overall pick the Raiders needed any help to score points, as they were one of the worst in scoring points in recent history at the time. They had to choose between the need Jamarcus Russell or the best player available in Calvin Johnson. With the quarterbacks that Al Davis had passed in the the previous drafts, he felt he had to take a quarterback. As we can tell that was Al and the Raider's biggest mistake in their entire franchise's history. Then we have the Lions who had the best player available to them, but they also could have traded down and grab either Joe Thomas, or Levi Brown and address their offensive tackle need. However they felt they couldn't let a talent like Calvin pass them by. It was a great decision by as he has helped the development of Matthew Stafford and he has become arguably the NFL's best receiver. Now on to the Browns. It was either Joe Thomas or Brady Quinn. At the time they were both big areas of need, but Joe Thomas's talent was much better then Quinn's at the time. They decided to go with Thomas, and they were able to get Quinn, getting both guys. Quinn has become a bust and Joe Thomas is arguably the best OT in the NFL. If they took Quinn at #3 overall the Browns would have been an even bigger mess.

As you can see in this sample taking need over talent will never lead you to success. Taking need isn't going to guarantee you a big bust, but you are taking a bigger risk then if you were going to go after best available player. However as this league slowly moves into as a quarterback driven league quarterbacks will be taken higher then should. More specifically how last year a 2nd round quarterback in Christian Ponder was selected in the top 15. Overall the draft isn't a thing that is always certain, you will never know how this players will become.

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