Former Dallas Cowboys executive and football professor emeritus Gil Brandt likes to use a timeline, a virtual history of the NFL, when discussing the importance of the league draft.
In Lesson One, Brandt points out that in the first draft, 1936, with nine teams selecting 10 players, none of the Philadelphia Eagles’ picks played in the league, versus five of nine choices made by the Chicago Bears. As a result, over the next four seasons, Philadelphia won a total of nine games, while the Monsters of the Midway won 31.
In Lesson Two, Brandt offers up the Green Bay Packers. Between 1956-58, the Packers won only eight games, but during that period they picked nine key players, five of whom eventually made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Two years later, Green Bay was in the NFL championship game. In 1961, the team began its legendary run of five titles in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls.
If the tutorial is a bit too retro for your tastes, Brandt has an extra-credit rejoinder. There were 87 players on the AFC and NFC rosters in last season’s Pro Bowl. Of that total, only one – the Broncos’ Champ Bailey – was acquired via a trade, and only nine others played for a team other than the one that drafted him.
“I think teams look at those figures and say, ‘We’d better draft well,”‘ Brandt said.
The correlation between draft success and team success might be a big reason the NFL’s annual pick- fest, which begins Saturday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, has become one of the most anticipated events on the league calendar for fans. According to Nielsen media research, more than 3 million households tuned into ESPN last April for the two-day affair.
According to the network, last year’s first day of coverage, which includes the opening three rounds, peaked at a 5.2 rating. In comparison, the Stanley Cup Finals generated a 2.3, the NBA Finals drew an 8.5 and the World Series a 10.1 share. ESPN says the NFL draft is its second-highest-rated program of the year, next to “Monday Night Football.”
“You could draft twice a year and the fans would still want more,” said Brandt, who currently does analysis for NFL.com. “It’s something the football fan and the housewife can relate to. They see a guy play on Saturdays (in college) and then they see them coming to their team.
“They can understand that. They can’t relate to someone talking about the zone blitz or the cover-two defense. We started draft coverage on NFL.com in 1995 – no mock drafts, no evaluation of the players. We basically only took questions. The thinking was that if we took 25,000 inquiries over two days, that would be phenomenal. We got 100,000.”
Baseball’s long-winded way
The popularity of the draft is just another example of how the sport has supplanted baseball as the true national pastime. One reason the tale of a fireballing phenom can still resonate is because of the idea of someone arriving out of nowhere.
That rarely happens in the NFL, but is virtually an everyday thing in baseball, given the subterranean nature of the Major League Baseball draft.
The baseball draft essentially takes place in a conference room at the league offices. That might be a good thing. At a stifling 50 rounds, even the most ardent seamhead might find it hard to stay awake.
As in the actual games themselves, the NFL draft is an immediate, in-your-face proposition. The New Orleans Saints go 3-13 in 2005, take Reggie Bush with the second pick of the first round last April, and the following year they are playing for the NFC championship.
Things don’t quite work out the same way in baseball, where the process of discovering and nurturing talent to the major-league level occurs at a far more leisurely pace. And, where an NFL team’s war room draft board might have seven rounds of potential picks for 32 teams, that’s only about a fifth of the number of selections made in baseball.
“There are thousands of kids we scout and turn in reports on. It’s a huge process and it’s tough to keep track of everyone,” Oakland A’s assistant general manager David Forst said.
Compounding the issue for most teams is the fact that, even after a player is selected, there’s really no telling how long it will take for him to make the transition from draft pick to major-leaguer.
“Every player, every situation is unique; it’s impossible to categorize,” Forst said. “We took (relief pitcher) Huston Street and he was in the big leagues basically six months later. But (third baseman) Eric Chavez, who is a six-time Gold Glover, spent 3 1/2 years in the minors.
“There’s a difference between high school kids and college kids, kids who are raw versus those who have played a long time. You can’t pigeon-hole them. There’s no great way to say, ‘This kid will need one year and that kid will need three years of seasoning.”‘
Making the grade
The NFL also doesn’t have to worry about the international influence on its game, a factor that has become a crucial consideration in each of the other major sports. The Rockies have a diamond full of players from different nations on their 25-man roster. The NHL has long been a hotbed for international players and, some would argue, the NBA is on the verge of becoming overly enamored with players from overseas.
“It was sort of like being a car manufacturer: One company has success with a minivan, so then everybody else has to have a minivan, too,” former Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe said. “But you can’t have that many successful minivans.”
But that still doesn’t prevent teams from kicking the tires. Before Saturday’s NFL draft, Brandt said it wouldn’t be uncommon for a potential first-round pick to take 13 trips to interview with assorted teams. NFL.com listed 250 “pro days” this year for squads to take a gander at prospects, and they did everything but dip them in plum sauce.
“You go to one of those at Texas or Florida or Tennessee,” Brandt said, “and there’ll be 100 scouts and coaches there.”
All because, come Saturday, the only grade that matters is an A.
With the first selection …
A look at the drafts of the four major American professional sports.
NFL
When: Saturday-Sunday.
Where: Radio City Music Hall, New York.
Television: ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network.
Format: 224 players selected over seven rounds – rounds 1-3 on Saturday, 4-7 on Sunday.
Projected top picks: Calvin Johnson, WR, Georgia Tech; JaMarcus Russell, QB, Louisiana State; Joe Thomas, OT, Wisconsin.
NBA
When: Thursday, June 28.
Where: The Theater at Madison Square Garden, New York.
Television: ESPN.
Format: 60 players selected over two rounds.
Projected top picks: Greg Oden, C, Ohio State; Kevin Durant, F, Texas; Al Horford, F, Florida.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
When: Thursday-Friday, June 7-8.
Where: Major League Baseball offices, New York.
Television: None.
Format: Approximately 1,500 players selected over 50 rounds – rounds 1-18 on Thursday, 19-50 on Friday.
Projected top picks: Matt Wieters, C, Georgia Tech; David Price, LHP, Vanderbilt; Andrew Brackman, RHP, North Carolina State.
NHL
When: Friday-Saturday, June 22-23. Where: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio.
Television: Versus (first round only).
Format: 210 players selected over seven rounds – round 1 on Friday, 2-7 on Saturday.
Projected top picks: Angelo Esposito, C, Quebec Remparts; Alexei Cherepanov, RW, Omsk, Russia.
Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
