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Advice rolls in for Rams on No. 1 pick
By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/28/2010
INDIANAPOLIS —Now that the center of the pro football universe has descended on this place for the NFL scouting combine, it's hard to find anyone within a six-block radius of Lucas Oil Stadium who isn't eager, willing or able to offer the Rams a little helpful or slightly misguided advice about how to use that rather valuable No.1 overall pick in the NFL draft.
In coffee shops and hotel lobbies, greasy-spoon diners and five-star steak houses, on windy street corners and comfy stadium luxury boxes and just about every other place where more than one NFL executive, coach, TV talking head or ink-stained sportswriter might gather to dish rumors and dispense information, it doesn't take long to gather an opinion about who the Rams will, or should, draft.
In a nutshell, it is a two-man race to the Radio City Music Hall center stage with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on April 22nd. It's either Nebraska's all-world defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh or Oklahoma's strong-armed, but surgically uncertain quarterback Sam Bradford, and it is a furious and intriguing debate that won't be decided before the Rams football trinity of team vice president Kevin Demoff, general manager Billy Devaney and head coach Steve Spagnuolo return to St. Louis on Tuesday evening.
There's a lot of late momentum building here for the Rams to take Bradford instead of Suh, but it's for all the wrong reasons.
I keep hearing some very smart football people swear that the Rams have no choice but to draft Bradford because they failed to take Matt Ryan and Mark Sanchez the last two seasons.
Really?
That scares me because that sort of misguided logic violates one of the most sacred rules of smart drafting. As Giants general manager Jerry Reece said Saturday, "You should always try to avoid reaching for your needs in the draft."
If after exhaustive research, scouring through a million miles of game footage, a half-million miles of practice footage, a thousand interviews with everyone from the kid's high school shop teacher to the assistant locker-room attendant, Spags, Devaney and Demoff come away convinced by reports from their scouting department that Bradford is the smarter pick than Suh, then they ought to go for him.
But please don't do this because it's a matter of need, or worse yet, it's a business decision based on some silliness that you can't invest $12 million on a defensive tackle. It has to be because everyone is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Bradford is in fact a better player than Suh.
Here's what I rarely heard from the NFL folks who touted Bradford over the past few days: I never heard one of them say they were absolutely, positively certain that you draft Bradford because he's a can't-miss stud passer who will become the next Dan Marino, Joe Montana or Peyton Manning. Most of them said he was going to be a "good" quarterback. Some of them said he was going to be a "very good" quarterback.
Well, I don't want "good" or even "very good" with the first overall pick in the draft.
That's what they said about Alex Smith, and it's taken him how long to develop into a starting quarterback that might amount to something for the San Francisco *****?
Do the Rams have three, four or five seasons to wait on the first overall pick to become a star?
No, they don't, because if that happens, Spags, Devaney and Demoff won't be around when he does.
When it comes to first-round picks, I want great almost immediately, or at the very least a strong beacon of potential greatness in that first season. And in a year when the NFL draft class is particularly strong at so many other positions, I don't understand why it is a smart move to draft a quarterback who barely played at all last season and is coming off of surgery and hasn't been cleared by anyone's medical staff or played in a pro-style offense in two years of college ball when the alternative is a monster defensive tackle who every NFL personnel department has listed as a once-in-a-generation beast (Suh).
The Bradford supporters are basing most of their love of him on game tapes from two seasons ago. They said the Rams need a quarterback in the worst way, so draft Bradford. Well, that, boys and girls, is exactly how you draft a quarterback in the worst way, reaching for need instead of taking the best player available regardless of position.
The Rams haven't made a decision yet on their first-round choice because they don't have all the information they need in front of them. They already have completed more than 90 percent of their evaluations of the defensive linemen and it's clear that Suh and Oklahoma's Gerald McCoy are at the top of their draft board. Now comes the harder work of evaluating the top QBs, both of whom are coming off major injuries and won't be able to throw for anyone for a month.
Let's face it, the draft is a grandly inexact science, and it can get some men raises and others fired. Let's just look at how hard it is to pick a passer in the first round.
"Knowing the history of it, it isn't any better than 50-50," Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said. "There is a lot of risk taking any player in the top 5 or top 10 because you have to pay them so much. I don't know of any team that can really afford their first-round pick to not be successful, whether it's a quarterback or an offensive tackle. You need that guy to be successful for you. ... It's high risk, no doubt."
Going back to 1998, 33 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round, and based on nothing more substantial than good, old-fashioned common sense, the best you can come up with are 10 or 12 of those draft picks who have turned out to be — or are pointing towards being — franchise-type quarterbacks.
Here are the can't miss franchise types who have been picked since '98:
Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, Carson Palmer, Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers.
Everyone else falls into various categories that make you understand how dicey the process is and why Sam Bradford is not an automatic savior. Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Matthew Stafford, Mark Sanchez and Josh Freeman are the best of the rest. Put them in the category of fascinating kids with ascending careers. In the showing-flashes-of-potential category, we have Vince Young and Jay Cutler. In the enigma category we have Michael Vick. And then there is this large collection of QBs, who at the very best can be classified as ordinary, and on the far end, are out and out flops.
JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, Alex Smith, Jason Campbell, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Matt Leinart, J.P. Losman, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey, Chad Pennington, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Daunte Culpepper, Cade McNown, Ryan Leaf.
You could say the same thing about any position in the first round, particularly defensive tackle, too. But for me, it's way too early in the process to be proclaiming anything with certainty about Sam Bradford just yet. Way too early.
By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/28/2010
INDIANAPOLIS —Now that the center of the pro football universe has descended on this place for the NFL scouting combine, it's hard to find anyone within a six-block radius of Lucas Oil Stadium who isn't eager, willing or able to offer the Rams a little helpful or slightly misguided advice about how to use that rather valuable No.1 overall pick in the NFL draft.
In coffee shops and hotel lobbies, greasy-spoon diners and five-star steak houses, on windy street corners and comfy stadium luxury boxes and just about every other place where more than one NFL executive, coach, TV talking head or ink-stained sportswriter might gather to dish rumors and dispense information, it doesn't take long to gather an opinion about who the Rams will, or should, draft.
In a nutshell, it is a two-man race to the Radio City Music Hall center stage with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on April 22nd. It's either Nebraska's all-world defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh or Oklahoma's strong-armed, but surgically uncertain quarterback Sam Bradford, and it is a furious and intriguing debate that won't be decided before the Rams football trinity of team vice president Kevin Demoff, general manager Billy Devaney and head coach Steve Spagnuolo return to St. Louis on Tuesday evening.
There's a lot of late momentum building here for the Rams to take Bradford instead of Suh, but it's for all the wrong reasons.
I keep hearing some very smart football people swear that the Rams have no choice but to draft Bradford because they failed to take Matt Ryan and Mark Sanchez the last two seasons.
Really?
That scares me because that sort of misguided logic violates one of the most sacred rules of smart drafting. As Giants general manager Jerry Reece said Saturday, "You should always try to avoid reaching for your needs in the draft."
If after exhaustive research, scouring through a million miles of game footage, a half-million miles of practice footage, a thousand interviews with everyone from the kid's high school shop teacher to the assistant locker-room attendant, Spags, Devaney and Demoff come away convinced by reports from their scouting department that Bradford is the smarter pick than Suh, then they ought to go for him.
But please don't do this because it's a matter of need, or worse yet, it's a business decision based on some silliness that you can't invest $12 million on a defensive tackle. It has to be because everyone is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Bradford is in fact a better player than Suh.
Here's what I rarely heard from the NFL folks who touted Bradford over the past few days: I never heard one of them say they were absolutely, positively certain that you draft Bradford because he's a can't-miss stud passer who will become the next Dan Marino, Joe Montana or Peyton Manning. Most of them said he was going to be a "good" quarterback. Some of them said he was going to be a "very good" quarterback.
Well, I don't want "good" or even "very good" with the first overall pick in the draft.
That's what they said about Alex Smith, and it's taken him how long to develop into a starting quarterback that might amount to something for the San Francisco *****?
Do the Rams have three, four or five seasons to wait on the first overall pick to become a star?
No, they don't, because if that happens, Spags, Devaney and Demoff won't be around when he does.
When it comes to first-round picks, I want great almost immediately, or at the very least a strong beacon of potential greatness in that first season. And in a year when the NFL draft class is particularly strong at so many other positions, I don't understand why it is a smart move to draft a quarterback who barely played at all last season and is coming off of surgery and hasn't been cleared by anyone's medical staff or played in a pro-style offense in two years of college ball when the alternative is a monster defensive tackle who every NFL personnel department has listed as a once-in-a-generation beast (Suh).
The Bradford supporters are basing most of their love of him on game tapes from two seasons ago. They said the Rams need a quarterback in the worst way, so draft Bradford. Well, that, boys and girls, is exactly how you draft a quarterback in the worst way, reaching for need instead of taking the best player available regardless of position.
The Rams haven't made a decision yet on their first-round choice because they don't have all the information they need in front of them. They already have completed more than 90 percent of their evaluations of the defensive linemen and it's clear that Suh and Oklahoma's Gerald McCoy are at the top of their draft board. Now comes the harder work of evaluating the top QBs, both of whom are coming off major injuries and won't be able to throw for anyone for a month.
Let's face it, the draft is a grandly inexact science, and it can get some men raises and others fired. Let's just look at how hard it is to pick a passer in the first round.
"Knowing the history of it, it isn't any better than 50-50," Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said. "There is a lot of risk taking any player in the top 5 or top 10 because you have to pay them so much. I don't know of any team that can really afford their first-round pick to not be successful, whether it's a quarterback or an offensive tackle. You need that guy to be successful for you. ... It's high risk, no doubt."
Going back to 1998, 33 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round, and based on nothing more substantial than good, old-fashioned common sense, the best you can come up with are 10 or 12 of those draft picks who have turned out to be — or are pointing towards being — franchise-type quarterbacks.
Here are the can't miss franchise types who have been picked since '98:
Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, Carson Palmer, Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers.
Everyone else falls into various categories that make you understand how dicey the process is and why Sam Bradford is not an automatic savior. Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Matthew Stafford, Mark Sanchez and Josh Freeman are the best of the rest. Put them in the category of fascinating kids with ascending careers. In the showing-flashes-of-potential category, we have Vince Young and Jay Cutler. In the enigma category we have Michael Vick. And then there is this large collection of QBs, who at the very best can be classified as ordinary, and on the far end, are out and out flops.
JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, Alex Smith, Jason Campbell, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Matt Leinart, J.P. Losman, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey, Chad Pennington, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Daunte Culpepper, Cade McNown, Ryan Leaf.
You could say the same thing about any position in the first round, particularly defensive tackle, too. But for me, it's way too early in the process to be proclaiming anything with certainty about Sam Bradford just yet. Way too early.
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