How important is the draft?

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

It's important. It's just not as important as folks make it out to be. It's an important part of building a good TEAM and the best are good at the draft and use it effectively. H9owever, my sense is that particularly under the salary cap attracting the best FAs at an affodable salary, making good FA investments in seemingly marginal players who become difference makers and making good UDFA signings are more important aspects to building a winning team than the draft.

 

As teams begin to get the hang of the cap, making good trades has moved up from an impossibility to the point where it does not yet rival the draft in importance but making the right trades at the right time is also important.

 

I have seen a nymber of pieces posted as though they were truisms that simply don't strike me as being the truth anymore. For example:

 

1. It's been said that you build a winning team through the draft (this usaully accompanies handwringing about us giving up our #1 to trade up for Losman)- one need only look at the method BB has used to build the best team in football, the Pats to see that the draft has played a supporting role in their efforts, but the acquisition of 14 or so players after June of 2001 was a key to building their first SB winnner and the acquisition of FA leaders like Rodney Harrison were critical to having the leadership on the current team. Again where the draft was critical to this team it has not been the widely focused upon high picks but actually a 6th round developmental pick of Tom Brady and their luck ogf having their 1st round selected QB go down has provided the greatest draft value to this team.

 

2. We're in desperate shape because we are without a 1st next year- Perhaps, but mostly I miss having a 1st that we could trade for a proven vet. Some of the most interesesting acquisitions I have seen in recent drafts were the use of a #2 by NE to get Dillon who may well be the missing link for this offense, the use of a future #1 by the Bills to get Bledsoe who successgully replaced RJ in his Peo Bowl year before going down the toilet his second year. However, this lost #1 was replaced by some fancy footwork by TD who then continued to be fancy using the new 1st rounder on a developmental pick of WM which seems to be paying off.

 

As far as next year goes, if JP pays off like we hope he does this will be a pick well spent by the Bills. We now sit on a Travis Henry whom NFL pundits seem to judge as a tradeable commodity for a high pick if not a replacement #1 assuming WM continues to survive.

 

At any rate, the lowering value of the draft is a feeing I jave which I will try to back up with some research as time allows, nut I'd be ovrjoyed if someone has a link to research that has a;ready been done on this or wish to do their own assessment on how winning teams were built.

 

In the ned, I guess I am moved by really big bucks (and thus cap room) being allocated for very good players who were high picks like Manning and McNabb only to see these players team repeatedly fail to get to the big Dance only to see lower round picks like Brady and off the rack guys like Delhomme and Warner lead their teams to glory.

 

Just a thought supported by some initial interesting findings.