Forgive me for a quick rant, but with the release of Ras-I Dowling we’re getting an outpouring of tweets like this:
#Patriots had a lot more invested in Ras-I Dowling, whom they cut today, than they do Tim Tebow. Big swing and miss seldom talked about.
— Eric Edholm (@Eric_Edholm) August 28, 2013
We’ll leave the “seldom talked about” part alone and focus more on the criticism of ANY team being bad drafters.
The draft is one mode of team-building. Free agency is another. There are no extra points or wins awarded if you hit on more draft prospects than you miss on.
There will always be first-rounders (or second-rounders in Ras-I’s case) who are out of the league in a matter of years, if not months. And there will be sixth rounders who end up being the best ever to play the game.
Really, that’s what makes the draft such an interesting process. Players are studied, poked and prodded, questioned, examined, and in the end none of it can matter.
So let’s talk about the team that everyone is compared to. You know, the team that hits on all their high picks, never makes a poor trade or decision. You know who I’m talking about? Of course not, because that team doesn’t exist.
What matters most is building a good team and winning games. It doesn’t matter if your whole team is free agents or drafted or manifested in someone’s basement.
You can go right down the line for every team in the NFL and cherry pick horrible draft misfires. Are some teams better than others at it? Sure. But every time a high-round pick gets cut or traded there’s so much surprise and criticism. Like this doesn’t happen CONSTANTLY. TO EVERY TEAM.
I’m at the point now where it’s comical to me. How do people still expect the order players were drafted in to be the order of how good they end up being?
Look, I really enjoy the draft, but it’s time to stop acting like there’s really a hard science to it that anyone has figured out. Can smart football analysts look at tape and tell you who’s good, who will fit into a scheme? Sure.
But for every one of those guys there’s another one who fell through the cracks, or just wasn’t elite in college yet flourishes in the pro game that NO ONE can account for.
In the end they all cross eachother out along with the free agency misses and hits, and what we’re left with is the good teams winning games and the bad teams losing games.
So just remember, the draft is but one way to add players to your team, and really, it’s a crapshoot for everyone.