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This is a bit old, but I don't remember whether it was posted...
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11:34 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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As we head into May and I head off on vacation, let me do some final clean-up work on the NFL draft.
When The Dallas Morning News asked me to grade drafts back in 1992 as part of my responsibilities as the NFL writer, I figured I owed it to the teams to know what I was talking about if I was going to praise or condemn someone's draft.
So, over the years I've come to research 500-plus players for each draft. About half of them get drafted. But I'm a writer, not a talent evaluator. I don't know the difference between Matt Ryan and Chad Henne, so I talk to the people who do know the difference.
I annually solicit the opinions of scouts, assistant coaches, personnel directors, college head coaches, NFL head coaches, general managers, team presidents, owners and a few player agents in compiling my personal draft board.
I assign point values to each of the 500 players on my board. I had 10 blue-chippers on my 2008 board. They were worth 17 points apiece. The next tier of players received 16 points apiece and so on down. I had about 200 players at the bottom of my board who I considered free agents, and they were worth one point apiece.
Assigning values to each player simplifies my grading process. After a draft, I add up the point values of the players selected by each team and then divide by the number of its draft picks.
Historically, teams that average 12 points or better per pick get an A. Eleven points or better get the B's and teams that average in the 8s, 9s and 10s get C's. I have such a wide range for the C grade because the overwhelming number of drafts in the history of the NFL have been just that – average. Teams that average in the 7s and 6s get the D's and anything 5 or below merits an F on my grade card.
A C grade means you did your job. You got the expected value for your picks. You achieved. A B means you overachieved, a D means you underachieved. An A means you hit a home run. An F means you reached too often and regularly took players who were less than the value of your picks.
I annually give out one A-plus to the team I believe had the best draft. I usually give out a smattering of A's and B's, a couple of D's and, on the rare occasion, an F. I've only given out three F's this decade.
Collectively, I thought the NFL did the best job of drafting in 2008 in the 17 years I've been assigning grades. Every single team averaged at least 8.0 points per pick. That's never happened before. So for the first time, I did not give out any D's on my grade card.
Kansas City got the A-plus in 2008. Based on my board, the Chiefs reached for a player only once in their 12 picks. And it was a minor reach. They took a player in the fifth round who I had rated as a sixth-rounder on my board.
It's the first time I've given Kansas City an A in the 17 years I've been grading drafts. Congratulations, Chiefs.
On the clock
Some of the clubs were grousing about the changes in the drafting format. The time for each pick was reduced from 15 minutes to 10 in the first round, from 10 minutes to seven in the second round and five minutes every round thereafter. That shortened the overall draft by almost four hours.
The largest chunk of time savings came in the first round. Under the 15-minute format in 2007, the first-round lasted six hours, eight minutes. Under the 10-minute format in 2008, it lasted 3:30. What does that mean? It means the NFL could be inching toward prime-time television for the first round.
"We've talked about it," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "You might be able to do that now that we know we can do this in a tighter window."
The goal would be a three-hour first-round. That would fit television's prime-time 7-10 p.m. CST slot on a Friday night. The NFL will continue to tweak the process and review its options.
The league could hold the first round on Friday night and the next six rounds on Saturday. Or it could hold Rounds 2-4 on Saturday and 5-7 on Sunday. If the NFL keeps the first round on Saturday, it might return to the three-round format on Saturday and four on Sunday. This year, the NFL conducted only two rounds on Saturday and five on Sunday.
There are plenty of options – and television will dictate the best options for the NFL.
"There's no rush to make this decision," Goodell said. "It appears the things we tried to do this year had the desired effect. People realize the draft is faster now, that I can go sit and watch the first round in 3-3½ hours rather than six.
"That may produce a quicker-paced, higher-quality, more entertaining experience in a shorter window."
The front-burner issue for the NFL is where to conduct the draft in 2009. The 2008 draft marked the final year of the contract with Radio City Music Hall.
"I think it's a great venue, a great site," Goodell said. "New York is obviously a great place for it. But there is a lot of interest from other cities and we'll have to explore that."
If the NFL does move the draft in 2009, the three front-runners would be Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Sliding values
University of Hawaii wide receivers Davone Bess and Ryan Grice-Mullen decided they were ready for the NFL in 2008. But apparently the NFL wasn't ready for them.
Bess and Grice-Mullen were two of the 54 underclassmen who chose to skip their senior seasons and apply for the 2008 draft. Bess was Hawaii's all-time leading receiver and finished fifth in the NCAA with 108 catches in 2007. Grice-Mullen finished sixth with 106. Bess was a three-time All-WAC selection and Grice Mullen a 2008 choice.
But Bess and Grice-Mullen were two of the 15 players from that list of underclassmen who went undrafted. Bess wound up signing a rookie free-agent contract with the Miami Dolphins and Grice-Mullen with the Houston Texans.
Bess and Grice-Mullen also were just two of the seven underclassmen invited to the NFL scouting combine who went undrafted. Other notable underclass omissions from the draft were All-ACC middle linebacker Erin Henderson of Maryland, wide receiver Darius Reynaud of West Virginia and defensive end Jeremy Geathers of UNLV.
Here's a list of the top players at each position on my 2008 board who went undrafted and where they signed as rookie free agents. Most were seniors:
Pos., player School NFL team
QB T.C. Ostrander Stanford New Orleans
HB Dantrell Savage Oklahoma State Kansas City
FB Carl Stewart Auburn Tampa Bay
WR Ryan Grice-Mullen Hawaii Houston
TE Joe Jon Finley Oklahoma San Francisco
OT William Robinson San Diego State Seattle
G Drew Radovich Southern California Minnesota
C Eric Scott Kentucky Tennessee
DE Darrell Robertson Georgia Tech Dallas
DT Barry Booker Virginia Tech Tennessee
OLB Ali Highsmith LSU Arizona
MLB Erin Henderson Maryland Minnesota
CB Jonathan Zenon LSU Cleveland
S David Roach TCU New Orleans
K Connor Barth North Carolina Kansas City
P Jay Ottovegio Stanford Dallas
KR Louis Rankin Washington Oakland
ST Gerard Lawson Oregon State Cleveland
Maize & Blue
Tony Sparano is a long-time offensive line coach. As the new head coach of the Dolphins, Sparano was the second-happiest guy in Miami when the Fish selected offensive tackle Jake Long of Michigan with the first overall choice of the 2008 draft.
The happiest guy? New Dolphins part-owner Stephen Ross. He spent $550 million to buy 50 percent of the Dolphins this winter. When he's not spending millions on the Dolphins, he's spending it on his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
A real-estate billionaire in New York, Ross donated $100 million to Michigan's school of business in 2004. It was the largest gift ever to any business school in the United States. Ross also donated $5 million to his alma mater to build an athletic academic center, which bears his name.
Now the Wolverines have given a little something back to Ross – the best offensive lineman in the 2008 NFL draft.
Best fit
The steal of the draft could be Illinois running back Rashard Mendenhall sliding to the Pittsburgh Steelers at No. 23 in the first round. No one runs the football like the Steelers, and Mendenhall was an elite runner in this draft. His legs powered the Fighting Illini to the Rose Bowl last season with eight individual 100-yard rushing games.
Since 1992, when Bill Cowher arrived as head coach and rededicated the Steelers to the running game, Pittsburgh has posted a 93-16-1 record when a back rushes for 100 yards. When Mendenhall rushes for 100 in Pittsburgh, it'll be money in the bank for the Steelers.
If the Super Bowl were played tomorrow
Let's go with the Cowboys and Jaguars. The Cowboys improved in the draft on special teams, selecting elite college returnmen Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins, and the Jaguars improved their pass rush. I thought there were four elite edge rushers in this draft, and Jacksonville landed two of them in Derrick Harvey and Quentin Groves.
Shrinking rosters
Neither the NFL owners nor players seem particularly content with the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). There's a sentiment among the ownership that the players are receiving too large a share of the financial pie – and vice versa.
There is a window to renegotiate coming up. Either of the two sides can terminate the CBA in November 2008, which would make 2010 an uncapped year. If that happens, there figure to be some hardball negotiations from both sides.
The owners threw the first pitch at the league's annual spring meeting in March when they decided to freeze the training camp roster size at 80 players.
When NFL Europe was around, NFL teams would receive roster exemptions for players they shipped overseas to play in the spring league. So though the roster size was officially 80, some teams were taking as many as 90 to 92 players to training camp each summer. The league-wide average was 86 players in camp.
But the NFL pulled the plug on NFL Europe in 2008, so there will be no roster exemptions this summer. Each team will take only 80 players to camp. That means 198 fewer players will be reporting to training camp this summer than last. That translates into 198 fewer job opportunities for the NFL Players Association.
Canton-bound
The NFL adopted a suggestion by Michael Irvin and is requiring all 32 of its teams to send their rookies to Canton for a day this summer to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The purpose is to educate the newcomers on the NFL's glorious past and impress upon them the opportunity they have to contribute in a positive way to the game's legacy. A few of the teams plan to send one of its Hall of Famers along as an escort and tour guide for the rookies.
Gone but not forgotten
When punter Sean Landeta announced his retirement from the NFL last March, it was the end of an era.
Landeta was the last player still active from the USFL, which had a brief but distinguished run on football's landscape. The USFL was a spring league that operated from 1983 to '85 and attracted some of the college game's biggest stars, including Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Anthony Carter. Kelly, White and Young all graduated from the USFL to Hall of Fame NFL careers.
Linebacker Sam Mills used the USFL as a stepping stone to a Pro Bowl career, Bart Oates and Chris Godfrey won Super Bowl rings starting on the offensive line for the 1986 New York Giants, and Landeta etched his name in the record book as one of the most prolific punters in NFL history. His 1,401 career kicks rank second all-time.
I covered the first USFL title game in 1983 and still believe there's a place on the calendar for a spring league if it can attract the caliber of players the USFL did. The USFL's mistake was trying to shift from the spring to the fall to compete with the NFL.
With Landeta's retirement, you can now close the book on the USFL.
Panthers on the prowl
The University of Pittsburgh is building a coaching staff with some very familiar names. Start at the top with head coach Dave Wannstedt, who molded the Cowboys into the NFL's No. 1-ranked defense in 1992 on the way to the first Super Bowl of the Jerry Jones era.
Wannstedt enters his third season as the head coach of Pittsburgh and is coming off the biggest victory since his return to his alma mater – a season-ending 13-9 stunner of No. 2 West Virginia that cost the Mountaineers a berth in the national championship game.
Wannstedt has added Tony Wise, Phil Bennett and Scott Turner to his staff in 2008.
Wise also won a Super Bowl ring with the Cowboys, molding the offensive line into one of the best in the NFL in 1992. Bennett served as the head coach at SMU from 2002 to '07. Turner is the son of San Diego Chargers head coach Norv Turner, who served as the offensive coordinator of the Cowboys for their first two Super Bowl championship teams of the 1990s.
Wise will be the offensive line coach of the Panthers, Bennett the defensive coordinator, and Turner a graduate assistant on offense.
Final thought
Kansas City's superb 2008 draft was forged with the three premium selections (a first and two thirds) acquired from the Minnesota Vikings in the trade for NFL sack leader Jared Allen. We saw the Vikings accelerate the rebuilding of the Cowboys with the Herschel Walker deal. Have the Vikings done the Chiefs the same service in trading for Allen?
http://www.***BANNED-URL***/sharedc...nfl/stories/050608dnspoinsidenfl.1537e7f.html
--------------------
11:34 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
As we head into May and I head off on vacation, let me do some final clean-up work on the NFL draft.
When The Dallas Morning News asked me to grade drafts back in 1992 as part of my responsibilities as the NFL writer, I figured I owed it to the teams to know what I was talking about if I was going to praise or condemn someone's draft.
So, over the years I've come to research 500-plus players for each draft. About half of them get drafted. But I'm a writer, not a talent evaluator. I don't know the difference between Matt Ryan and Chad Henne, so I talk to the people who do know the difference.
I annually solicit the opinions of scouts, assistant coaches, personnel directors, college head coaches, NFL head coaches, general managers, team presidents, owners and a few player agents in compiling my personal draft board.
I assign point values to each of the 500 players on my board. I had 10 blue-chippers on my 2008 board. They were worth 17 points apiece. The next tier of players received 16 points apiece and so on down. I had about 200 players at the bottom of my board who I considered free agents, and they were worth one point apiece.
Assigning values to each player simplifies my grading process. After a draft, I add up the point values of the players selected by each team and then divide by the number of its draft picks.
Historically, teams that average 12 points or better per pick get an A. Eleven points or better get the B's and teams that average in the 8s, 9s and 10s get C's. I have such a wide range for the C grade because the overwhelming number of drafts in the history of the NFL have been just that – average. Teams that average in the 7s and 6s get the D's and anything 5 or below merits an F on my grade card.
A C grade means you did your job. You got the expected value for your picks. You achieved. A B means you overachieved, a D means you underachieved. An A means you hit a home run. An F means you reached too often and regularly took players who were less than the value of your picks.
I annually give out one A-plus to the team I believe had the best draft. I usually give out a smattering of A's and B's, a couple of D's and, on the rare occasion, an F. I've only given out three F's this decade.
Collectively, I thought the NFL did the best job of drafting in 2008 in the 17 years I've been assigning grades. Every single team averaged at least 8.0 points per pick. That's never happened before. So for the first time, I did not give out any D's on my grade card.
Kansas City got the A-plus in 2008. Based on my board, the Chiefs reached for a player only once in their 12 picks. And it was a minor reach. They took a player in the fifth round who I had rated as a sixth-rounder on my board.
It's the first time I've given Kansas City an A in the 17 years I've been grading drafts. Congratulations, Chiefs.
On the clock
Some of the clubs were grousing about the changes in the drafting format. The time for each pick was reduced from 15 minutes to 10 in the first round, from 10 minutes to seven in the second round and five minutes every round thereafter. That shortened the overall draft by almost four hours.
The largest chunk of time savings came in the first round. Under the 15-minute format in 2007, the first-round lasted six hours, eight minutes. Under the 10-minute format in 2008, it lasted 3:30. What does that mean? It means the NFL could be inching toward prime-time television for the first round.
"We've talked about it," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "You might be able to do that now that we know we can do this in a tighter window."
The goal would be a three-hour first-round. That would fit television's prime-time 7-10 p.m. CST slot on a Friday night. The NFL will continue to tweak the process and review its options.
The league could hold the first round on Friday night and the next six rounds on Saturday. Or it could hold Rounds 2-4 on Saturday and 5-7 on Sunday. If the NFL keeps the first round on Saturday, it might return to the three-round format on Saturday and four on Sunday. This year, the NFL conducted only two rounds on Saturday and five on Sunday.
There are plenty of options – and television will dictate the best options for the NFL.
"There's no rush to make this decision," Goodell said. "It appears the things we tried to do this year had the desired effect. People realize the draft is faster now, that I can go sit and watch the first round in 3-3½ hours rather than six.
"That may produce a quicker-paced, higher-quality, more entertaining experience in a shorter window."
The front-burner issue for the NFL is where to conduct the draft in 2009. The 2008 draft marked the final year of the contract with Radio City Music Hall.
"I think it's a great venue, a great site," Goodell said. "New York is obviously a great place for it. But there is a lot of interest from other cities and we'll have to explore that."
If the NFL does move the draft in 2009, the three front-runners would be Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Sliding values
University of Hawaii wide receivers Davone Bess and Ryan Grice-Mullen decided they were ready for the NFL in 2008. But apparently the NFL wasn't ready for them.
Bess and Grice-Mullen were two of the 54 underclassmen who chose to skip their senior seasons and apply for the 2008 draft. Bess was Hawaii's all-time leading receiver and finished fifth in the NCAA with 108 catches in 2007. Grice-Mullen finished sixth with 106. Bess was a three-time All-WAC selection and Grice Mullen a 2008 choice.
But Bess and Grice-Mullen were two of the 15 players from that list of underclassmen who went undrafted. Bess wound up signing a rookie free-agent contract with the Miami Dolphins and Grice-Mullen with the Houston Texans.
Bess and Grice-Mullen also were just two of the seven underclassmen invited to the NFL scouting combine who went undrafted. Other notable underclass omissions from the draft were All-ACC middle linebacker Erin Henderson of Maryland, wide receiver Darius Reynaud of West Virginia and defensive end Jeremy Geathers of UNLV.
Here's a list of the top players at each position on my 2008 board who went undrafted and where they signed as rookie free agents. Most were seniors:
Pos., player School NFL team
QB T.C. Ostrander Stanford New Orleans
HB Dantrell Savage Oklahoma State Kansas City
FB Carl Stewart Auburn Tampa Bay
WR Ryan Grice-Mullen Hawaii Houston
TE Joe Jon Finley Oklahoma San Francisco
OT William Robinson San Diego State Seattle
G Drew Radovich Southern California Minnesota
C Eric Scott Kentucky Tennessee
DE Darrell Robertson Georgia Tech Dallas
DT Barry Booker Virginia Tech Tennessee
OLB Ali Highsmith LSU Arizona
MLB Erin Henderson Maryland Minnesota
CB Jonathan Zenon LSU Cleveland
S David Roach TCU New Orleans
K Connor Barth North Carolina Kansas City
P Jay Ottovegio Stanford Dallas
KR Louis Rankin Washington Oakland
ST Gerard Lawson Oregon State Cleveland
Maize & Blue
Tony Sparano is a long-time offensive line coach. As the new head coach of the Dolphins, Sparano was the second-happiest guy in Miami when the Fish selected offensive tackle Jake Long of Michigan with the first overall choice of the 2008 draft.
The happiest guy? New Dolphins part-owner Stephen Ross. He spent $550 million to buy 50 percent of the Dolphins this winter. When he's not spending millions on the Dolphins, he's spending it on his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
A real-estate billionaire in New York, Ross donated $100 million to Michigan's school of business in 2004. It was the largest gift ever to any business school in the United States. Ross also donated $5 million to his alma mater to build an athletic academic center, which bears his name.
Now the Wolverines have given a little something back to Ross – the best offensive lineman in the 2008 NFL draft.
Best fit
The steal of the draft could be Illinois running back Rashard Mendenhall sliding to the Pittsburgh Steelers at No. 23 in the first round. No one runs the football like the Steelers, and Mendenhall was an elite runner in this draft. His legs powered the Fighting Illini to the Rose Bowl last season with eight individual 100-yard rushing games.
Since 1992, when Bill Cowher arrived as head coach and rededicated the Steelers to the running game, Pittsburgh has posted a 93-16-1 record when a back rushes for 100 yards. When Mendenhall rushes for 100 in Pittsburgh, it'll be money in the bank for the Steelers.
If the Super Bowl were played tomorrow
Let's go with the Cowboys and Jaguars. The Cowboys improved in the draft on special teams, selecting elite college returnmen Felix Jones and Mike Jenkins, and the Jaguars improved their pass rush. I thought there were four elite edge rushers in this draft, and Jacksonville landed two of them in Derrick Harvey and Quentin Groves.
Shrinking rosters
Neither the NFL owners nor players seem particularly content with the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). There's a sentiment among the ownership that the players are receiving too large a share of the financial pie – and vice versa.
There is a window to renegotiate coming up. Either of the two sides can terminate the CBA in November 2008, which would make 2010 an uncapped year. If that happens, there figure to be some hardball negotiations from both sides.
The owners threw the first pitch at the league's annual spring meeting in March when they decided to freeze the training camp roster size at 80 players.
When NFL Europe was around, NFL teams would receive roster exemptions for players they shipped overseas to play in the spring league. So though the roster size was officially 80, some teams were taking as many as 90 to 92 players to training camp each summer. The league-wide average was 86 players in camp.
But the NFL pulled the plug on NFL Europe in 2008, so there will be no roster exemptions this summer. Each team will take only 80 players to camp. That means 198 fewer players will be reporting to training camp this summer than last. That translates into 198 fewer job opportunities for the NFL Players Association.
Canton-bound
The NFL adopted a suggestion by Michael Irvin and is requiring all 32 of its teams to send their rookies to Canton for a day this summer to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The purpose is to educate the newcomers on the NFL's glorious past and impress upon them the opportunity they have to contribute in a positive way to the game's legacy. A few of the teams plan to send one of its Hall of Famers along as an escort and tour guide for the rookies.
Gone but not forgotten
When punter Sean Landeta announced his retirement from the NFL last March, it was the end of an era.
Landeta was the last player still active from the USFL, which had a brief but distinguished run on football's landscape. The USFL was a spring league that operated from 1983 to '85 and attracted some of the college game's biggest stars, including Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Anthony Carter. Kelly, White and Young all graduated from the USFL to Hall of Fame NFL careers.
Linebacker Sam Mills used the USFL as a stepping stone to a Pro Bowl career, Bart Oates and Chris Godfrey won Super Bowl rings starting on the offensive line for the 1986 New York Giants, and Landeta etched his name in the record book as one of the most prolific punters in NFL history. His 1,401 career kicks rank second all-time.
I covered the first USFL title game in 1983 and still believe there's a place on the calendar for a spring league if it can attract the caliber of players the USFL did. The USFL's mistake was trying to shift from the spring to the fall to compete with the NFL.
With Landeta's retirement, you can now close the book on the USFL.
Panthers on the prowl
The University of Pittsburgh is building a coaching staff with some very familiar names. Start at the top with head coach Dave Wannstedt, who molded the Cowboys into the NFL's No. 1-ranked defense in 1992 on the way to the first Super Bowl of the Jerry Jones era.
Wannstedt enters his third season as the head coach of Pittsburgh and is coming off the biggest victory since his return to his alma mater – a season-ending 13-9 stunner of No. 2 West Virginia that cost the Mountaineers a berth in the national championship game.
Wannstedt has added Tony Wise, Phil Bennett and Scott Turner to his staff in 2008.
Wise also won a Super Bowl ring with the Cowboys, molding the offensive line into one of the best in the NFL in 1992. Bennett served as the head coach at SMU from 2002 to '07. Turner is the son of San Diego Chargers head coach Norv Turner, who served as the offensive coordinator of the Cowboys for their first two Super Bowl championship teams of the 1990s.
Wise will be the offensive line coach of the Panthers, Bennett the defensive coordinator, and Turner a graduate assistant on offense.
Final thought
Kansas City's superb 2008 draft was forged with the three premium selections (a first and two thirds) acquired from the Minnesota Vikings in the trade for NFL sack leader Jared Allen. We saw the Vikings accelerate the rebuilding of the Cowboys with the Herschel Walker deal. Have the Vikings done the Chiefs the same service in trading for Allen?
http://www.***BANNED-URL***/sharedc...nfl/stories/050608dnspoinsidenfl.1537e7f.html