Draft: Need vs. Best Player

Matter of minutes

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So then, if there were no suitors for trading down, you would still take Adrian Peterson or Brady Quinn, even though we have invested so much in Jason Campbell and Clinton Portis?

That makes absolutely no sense.

I would rely on judgment about the players value. The names you mention might not be rated by the team as being that different from other players available who are not as visible in media reports. If they were much better than the players otherwise available then I would draft them.

Well I agree that you have to be practical. I would take a player with smaller wattage if he is not much smaller and he fit a position of need. I'm not talking about Brady Quinn right now; I don't get the sense he is standing out above the other players in a big way.

If there was a Dan Marino type there, and he was head and shoulders above other players available at that spot, I would try to trade out of that spot for a team that is willing to offer a fair deal to draft him. If there wasn't such a deal, I would consider drafting him anyway, knowing that he can be traded when the time is right later on. If I thought it wouldn't work out in the long run and we wouldn't get the value, then I wouldn't draft him.

It's not the most talented player necessarily, but to me it's the one who can give my team the most wattage in the long run by drafting him - whether he gets traded later, or other players do, etc.


But in our case, taking the next Dan Marino might only provide a minor upgrade to Campbell. Remember, Campbell is 2 years ahead of any QB we take this year in experience. Also, his college production suggests that, barring serious injury, he will be a top 10, maybe 5 QB in this league by 2008. Sure, if Brady Quinn was the next Dan Marino (he's not going to be as good Marino, but its a decent loose comparision considering hes the best thing in this draft), he's going to end up being better than Campbell when he gets close to his prime 4 years down the road, but we are talking about 2010 now. Generally, you don't make a top 10 selection at the QB position who doesn't project to be the best QB on your roster until 2010. Brady Quinn is going to be a great pickup for somebody, but for us he would essentially be a waste of a pick unless Campbell were to get critically injured.

And just because Brady Quinn or Laron Landry falls to us does not mean that Amobi Okoye is 1/4 the player. A more accurate comparision would be that Quinn or Landry are worth 1000 Watts, and Okoye is worth 850. And then when you factor in need and some of the special things about Okoye, it becomes very clear who the best pick for the Washington Redskins is.

I understand what you are saying about maximizing your value, but for us to take a quarterback would be about the farthest thing from maximizing our value. You have to look at needs down the road as the player you take hits his prime.

Will defensive line be a need down the road? Yes, an absolutely critical one? Will middle linebacker? Yes. Will outside linebacker? Not really.

Cornerback? Somewhat. A lot of that depends on Rogers taking his game to the next level.
Safety? Only if Sean Taylor continues to be a giant liability in coverage (to the point where we need to replace him to stop opponents).
Offensive Line? Yes.
Tight End? If we keep Cooley around, we won't need to use a day 1 pick on a TE for many years.
Wide Receiver? In a year or two, we might need to bring in another proven, competant body. This will not be a critical need until Moss gets too old to produce.
Running Back? Not in the forseeable future.

Using this method of discovering our true needs, Quarterback actually appears to be the most secure position for the forseeable future. Only a career threatening or development threatening injury to Campbell would make this a need. Since it's illogical to bank on something of that nature, picking a QB would be minimizing draft value.

The new Dan Marino/Brady Quinn example would not have any trade value until we let him play enough to prove he can play in this league. It's not reasonable to take him under these circumstances.

Trading down is the most logical option to deal with the value discrepency. Value is relative to team. This also makes trading down difficult. So sometimes, trading down is impossible, and you just have to let that "can't miss" prospect fall past you. We did this with Mike Williams in 2005 and while Carlos Rogers might not turn out to be a good pick, it still was a good decision to pass on Williams.

I can agree with that in the sense that you are wanting a player for a team. It isn't fantasy football. I would measure the value of the player that I ultimately get to play on my team as to how much he helps my team. A player like Rich Gannon didn't help the Redskins much but he sure helped the Oakland Raiders. So Gannon's value was much more for them than for us.

Still I would want to maximize the value of the spot I am trading at, then make adjustments until I got the best players - for our particular team, with its unique character.Remember to subtract the value of the player that is being replaced down the road by the draft pick. Replacing Joe Salevea is much different than replacing Jason Campbell or Clinton Portis.

Rich Gannon was one of the wackiest instances you possibly could have brought up. Personally, I love the guy. He was the sole reason I wore #12 in high school. But he was a really bizarre case.

First of all, theres only about 1-3 prospects in a modern draft that scouts unianimously agree that will be good NFL QBs (that doesn't always make them sure fire QBs, but there are ways to check scouting logic). After that there are about 30-40 college competant draftable QBs. Out of those 30-40, 1-2 will be better than competent NFL players if given the chance. It's realtively impossible to predict who those two are. Tom Brady was a good example. Gannon fell into this category.

Where Gannon was so unique is that statistically speaking, for the first 7 years of his career, he essentially played like a rookie. His numbers went up, they went down, they went up, they went down and they pretty much never improved signifcantly. It was in this era that he was a Redskin.

After sitting out a year, he was signed by Kansas City, and seemed to resume a predictible statistical career path of a GREAT quarterback (which is exactly what he became). He improved every year he was in Kansas City finally reaching the prime of his career at age 31. That was 1998, his tenth season in the NFL. He probably would have been a probowler that year, but he was unable to shake the starting role free from the incomprable Elvis Grbac (good call, Marty) and filed for Free Agency after the season.

His success in Oakland came instateously because: 1) despite his age (32) he was a great QB entering the prime of his career and 2) Jon Gruden's high completion QB friendly system gave him a decisive advantage that he had lacked in the past. He went to the pro bowl each of his first 4 years in Oakland and won the MVP in 2002.

His career ended did not end because he couldn't play anymore. If he was still playing, he would still be the best QB on the Raiders at age 41. His career ended because his age meant that his body would heal much slower from injuries then it would have if he was 31. He likely would have taken Oakland to the playoffs in 2004 had he stayed healthy, but alas, Kerry Collins sucks balls.

The point of this anecdote is that we had Rich Gannon 5 years before he reached the prime of his career. Usually, that is enough time for a rookie to develop. In Gannon's case, he was already a 5 year vet when he got here. He just, for whatever reason, took a substancially long time to begin his devolopment. Had he begun earlier, he likely would have won the job here and went on to have a hall of fame career. We just got unlikely that we let him go, because he was a great talent who developed late. The Raiders' just happened to buy low and got great output.

Rich Gannon was a mutation in the generally predictable gene pool of NFL QBs.

Well I agree that you have to be practical. I would take a player with smaller wattage if he is not much smaller and he fit a position of need. I'm not talking about Brady Quinn right now; I don't get the sense he is standing out above the other players in a big way.

If there was a Dan Marino type there, and he was head and shoulders above other players available at that spot, I would try to trade out of that spot for a team that is willing to offer a fair deal to draft him. If there wasn't such a deal, I would consider drafting him anyway, knowing that he can be traded when the time is right later on. If I thought it wouldn't work out in the long run and we wouldn't get the value, then I wouldn't draft him.

It's not the most talented player necessarily, but to me it's the one who can give my team the most wattage in the long run by drafting him - whether he gets traded later, or other players do, etc.Taking players with the idea of trading them later simply doesn't work solely because draft value does not correlate to NFL player value. Draft position loses its meaning after the draft. For a player to have trade value, he's going to have to show promise on the field.

I don't know how good Brady Quinn will be in a historical sense. Dan Marino was by all accounts one of the three best QBs ever to play. No statistical projection could possibly put Quinn or any other QB at that level. Peyton Manning, for example, had a wonderful statistical projection, but not significantly higher than Carson Palmer's or Philip Rivers' or Ben Roethlisbergers.

What I'm saying here is that it is absolutely impossible to predict a player to be as good as Dan Marino. Peyton Manning may very well retire as the greatest QB ever to play. But the Colts did not pick Manning with the expectation that he would be on Marino's level, much less potentially better.

The point is that "the next Dan Marino" is nothing if not an ideal. For draft purposes, such a player doesn't exist. Neither does the next Jerry Rice, or the next LaDainian Tomlinson. Pre draft research can seperate the good from the bad. It can NOT seperate the historically great from the very good.

On that defense, I think Quinn is as good of a comparision as you are reasonably going to get with your arguement. I think he does stand out above all the rest, at least in this draft. I mean, there will probably be a QB or two taken in the later rounds of this draft that will be very good NFL QBs, but there is no guarentee that they ever get their chance to play. With Russell expected to be somewhere between the levels of David Carr (low end) and Rex Grossman (high end), I don't see him being a starting QB in this league 6 years from now. Teams are too impatient to let guys like Russell completely develop.

It's been said before, but the Lions ignored need, and drafted the "best player available" with Charles Rogers, Roy Williams and Mike Williams.

You cannot ignore your needs.
yeah, and we see how well that worked out:)

drafting a player based on a need works well in a perfect world....i say you draft the best player available when you pick. Regardless of position.

And as we know how this world is. Far from PERFECT.
Draft what you NEED, pick up WANTS if anything is left over. Which we all know there won't be much of anything left over in DC.

drafting a player based on a need works well in a perfect world....i say you draft the best player available when you pick. Regardless of position.

I'd say it is the other way around.

The problem with a question like this is that it is posed as an "either/or" choice and sometimes that just isn't the way a decision needs to be made.

Can we agree that the Redskins need not consider drafting a running back with the #6 pick? Fine. So it would not be smart to take Adrian Peterson at #6 even if he were the best available player on the board at the time. But that assumes that there ARE other players out there who play positions that the Skins need help with. And it assumes that the Skins FO does not have inside info that some other team is salivating to have Peterson on their roster and would be willing to give up a lot of assets to get him. (Think Champ + a second round pick for Portis here...) So, in some circumstances, you might want to draft in opposition to "need"...

Can we all agree that the Skins need DL help? Fine. Suppose that the top 4 DL prospects are all gone by the time they pick - - not likely but not impossible either. Now what should they do? Pass up on a Charles Johnson or on a Joe Thomas because they need a DL more than a WR or an OT? I don't think so...

The genius of drafting is not going through mock drafts until the cows come home. The genius of drafting is knowing what you want to do under the "most likely scenarios" AND to have contingency plans in place in case something really strange happens in front of you.

If what I am reading in articles about Calvin Johnson is true- that he is the Reggie Bush of this draft - if he drops to #6, I think the redskins should pick him up. Regardless of need and the skins' current talent at wide receiver.

Say what you will about talent, X's and O's, and filling holes - but if you have Reggie Bush type of impact player on a team - I feel that it automatically bumps you up a level. But that's only if reports are true.