Today, I think, was the first time I appreciated how much pressure there is in making decisions in the NFL draft. For starters, there is the sheer amount of decisions to be made. Do we keep the pick? Do we trade it? Do we draft this guy, that guy, or this other guy? Do we go for offense or defense? Can we afford his likely contract demands? If we trade this for a pick next year, where do we think that pick will fall? Do we draft based on need, or do we take the best player we think is available? (I do not think there is a universal right answer to that last question, by the way.)
More frighteningly, there are so many important factors which are basically unknown. I doubt I could do it. Personally, if I’m making a decision, I analyze it to death, find out everything I possibly can, and then try to avoid making it. But the quite simple fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to know, or even be all that sure about, how any individual decision will work out.
Take, for instance, a simple move the Broncos made today. They started today holding the Chicago Bears’ first-round pick in next year’s draft from the Jay Cutler trade. They moved it to Seattle for the fifth pick of this year’s draft, no. 37 overall. Now on the face of it, moving a pick down just five spots to get it a year early is a pretty stellar move. But if Alphonso Smith, a 5-9 cornerback from Wake Forest, gets hurt, or is too slow, or is lazy, or receives poor coaching (on this team? Ha!), or otherwise doesn’t pan out, then the move was the wrong move, and the team is that much closer to getting literally nothing, rather than a more figurative nothing, for Cutler. If he’s the next Champ Bailey, then it was a brilliant move. If he’s the next Terrell Buckley, then he’ll play for fifteen teams, and even play well for some of them, but maybe not for us so we didn’t really get “value” for the pick. The point is, you just can’t know.
However, you CAN know that drafting a running back with the no. 12 pick, on a team with a horrific defense, a new pass-minded head coach, and frankly the best RBs coach in the business, a guy who can make diamonds out of anything, is probably not that savvy of a move. Even if Moreno turns out all right, would we have really needed him to?
Let’s check in with the Boy Wonder:
‘We went through a lot of backs last year,’ McDaniels said. ‘We only had three healthy backs at the minicamp last weekend. Again, we still got the defensive football player at 18 that we were hoping to get at 18, and we got them.’
Did he really just suggest we spent a first-round pick on a position because we need more bodies for camps? And while I think you can never be too sure of your haul on draft day, coach seems pretty confident.
The Broncos could have taken Ayers or another coveted defensive end/outside linebacker, Brian Orakpo, at No. 12 and hoped Moreno would have been around at No. 18. But McDaniels said he was hearing too much inside information about teams picking between them — perhaps New Orleans at No. 14 or San Diego at No. 16 — who were considering Moreno.
‘The way that it fell it just made all the sense in the world for us to go ahead and take him at 12 and not deal with: ‘Well we'll hold our breath or try to move up from 18 into the middle, between 12 and 18 to get him,' ’ McDaniels said. ‘The two players we really valued right there at that spot were Ayers and Knowshon.’
Comments
It's nice to know from your tone that you're rooting for Shanahan.
I have to say that I called this: Orakpo still being on the board, and McDaniels drafting a running back at No. 12. I was literally sitting in front of the tv chanting "O-rak-po, O-rak-po," when I knew I would get screwed again. And we Gores may be bad at decisionmaking, but even my 16 month-old son was smart enough to yell "NOOOO!" when we picked Moreno. (Of course, he was just imitating his father.)
Tellingly, even Dan Snyder - the NFL's worst owner outside Oakland, and a double-whammy failure in both sports and business management - knew the pick was obvious. I have never seen a quicker pick than when the Redskins chose Orakpo in the ten seconds they were on the clock at pick 13.
Come to think of it, the Redskins may have been the luckiest team in the draft - they were unable to trade up to draft Sanchez, and then Orakpo fell into their lap at 13. Not bad for a team with only one first-day pick and historically incompetent management.
Of course a running back is a horrible pick in the first round for a team that turns retreads into Pro Bowlers as well as the Broncos. But a first-round running back pick makes no sense for any team (at least in the top 20 picks) due to the short shelf life and inclination to injury at the position.
And so what if someone else had taken Moreno? Was he appreciably better than whatever running back we could have gotten (i.e., any other in the draft) at pick 18?
Blaine: I don't know what kind of scheme the Broncos are really going to have next year, and I'm assuming the status of some of the coaches, such as Dennison, is still in limbo, but I don't know. I mean Dennison was Shanny's right-hand guy. If the Broncos can trade Moreno for the next Champ that would be fine by me.
John: The thought of Joseph going all Darth Vader on the TV cracks me up briefly before reality comes crashing back down. How sweet would it have been to come out of the draft with two No. 1 DEs to complement Elvis Dumervil? I don't know if it would have changed things in a hurry but it would have been a great foundation. Good Fisher DeBerry joke, though, assuming it was a joke and not another premonition.
I think some RBs make sense as No. 1s...Barry Sanders, Walter Payton...but they are few and far between. It's sort of like taking a high school baseball player that early...occasionally you'll have a Griffey available that everyone knows will be a long-term stud, but generally it's not a wise move.
I also am hoping the Fisher DeBerry thing is not a premonition . .