Jimmy Johnson's draft formula for success
Jimmy Johnson / FOX Sports
Posted: 208 days ago
Editor's Note: In researching the Dallas Cowboys between 1989 and 1993 when FOX NFL Sunday analyst Jimmy Johnson coached the team and controlled the draft room, Johnson made 51 draft-day related trades.
Prior to his second NFL season, Johnson and then-club executive Mike McCoy devised an evaluation chart, one that placed a numerical value on every draft selection taken. For example, Johnson's chart said the first overall choice was worth 3000 points. The last choice, New England's, in the first round was worth 700.
Current Cowboys coach Bill Parcells uses a variation of the Johnson system to this day, as do dozens of other NFL franchises.
That chart is now the bible in the NFL and I bet 90 percent of people using it don't even know where it came from. Before I went to Dallas (from the U. of Miami), there wasn't a whole lot of trading done in the NFL Draft. I believe I made more trades in a five-year period than the rest of the league put together.
I can remember my first draft room, my first draft. You know the saying, 'Take the best player available.' Well, that's what the NFL was all about. But my first draft, I asked what if I don't want the best player available? After we picked Troy Aikman with the first pick, I wanted Daryl Johnston to be my fullback, but I thought we could get him later in the draft. So I made a trade with Al Davis. We traded down in second round and picked up three more draft picks.
I looked at Gil Brandt and Tex Schramm. They were both cringing. They felt like Davis was the arch enemy. But I didn't want to pick there and Al was the only person willing to trade. Back then there were teams that wouldn't even talk to us about making a trade. They wouldn't even discuss it with us.
Well, we got center Mark Stepnoski in the third round and defensive end Tony Tolbert in the fourth round. All four of those players became Pro Bowl players. After that draft, McCoy devised a value chart to put a number with a pick and what everything was worth.
I can remember that Bill Walsh and the 49ers had pretty much the same idea on the value of picks when making draft deals, but they did it by a feel for it. They didn't have a chart, but they were always so close to what ours said. Some teams had no idea of what to do.
Researching the Draft
When I first got into the NFL, I had an edge I felt with the college coaches I knew around the country. I had enough friends that I felt would give me an honest appraisal of their draft-eligible players. We did a tremendous amount of research prior to the draft because we wanted to know what other teams wanted and what players we liked. We used all kinds of methods.
I had my assistant coaches, all of whom once worked in the college game, to phone their friends. Their buddies were all college coaches and we could really get some great inside information. I had my trainers and strength coaches call their peers in the college game. One thing you will discover is that some of these guys will ***** the truth if you're talking to them, but they will be straight with their friends one-on-one. Through the years, I rarely found a strength coach embellishing a kid to my strength coach.
We even talked to all the beat writers around the country. Coaches like to talk and they often would tell the beat writer covering their team who they kind of liked. You look at some writer's mock drafts and a lot them were pretty accurate because they had a good idea of what some coaches really liked. We put all this information together with what our scouts and coaches thought and we all went on the road to check out players we really liked.
Every team knows how tall and how fast a player is, but I always wanted to know what kind of person he was. I think you have to know a kid's background, how he will react to adversity. Let me tell you, by Draft Day I knew what players I wanted to draft and then we would take them based on the value we had for them.
I mean, I recruited Emmitt Smith when he was in high school. We played against him when he played at Florida. I knew a lot about him. And that was true of a lot of players we drafted in my first couple of seasons in Dallas.
Picking the right players
Everybody wanted to write that the Herschel Walker trade turned the Cowboys around. Well, the Rams did a similar trade with Eric Dickerson and didn't turn it around. The whole key to the draft is picking good players. The Rams didn't and in the end probably wished they had kept Dickerson. Had we picked poor players with the picks for Walker, the Cowboys might not have won that deal.
The key for us is that we picked good players and used some of the picks to parlay into other picks down the road. We built a very young team. When we won our first Super Bowl, we were one of the youngest teams in the league and one of the lowest-paid because we didn't have a lot of old veterans. And we kept parlaying the picks for more picks. That's why Dallas stayed so good for so long in the 1990s.
Russell Maryland
The 1991 draft was a poor one. Rocket Ismail was considered the first pick in the draft, but he was planning to play in Canada. My old athletic director, Sam Jankovich, was running the Patriots and he didn't want the first pick. I wanted Russell Maryland, but we didn't want to pay him first-pick money, either. So, we sold Russell and his agent, Leigh Steinberg, on taking less money for being the first overall pick. That was unusual in those days.
So, we moved from the fifth spot in the first round to the top and took Maryland. The Patriots were happy with that. And I was, too, because Maryland wanted to play for me and he was also the player I wanted.
Quarterback Value
A lot of teams don't understand the pure value of drafting a quarterback. When I was in Dallas, the only other guy was Ron Wolf in Green Bay. I can remember in 1990 because we were a bad team with had the first pick in the supplemental draft. So, we took U. of Miami quarterback Steve Walsh.
Jerry Jones was saying, 'We don't need another quarterback.' I knew that we didn't need two rookie quarterbacks growing old together. But I knew that Walsh had value. We had to be guarded about our opinion of Walsh. I had to walk a tightrope with the media and with Troy. We couldn't downplay Walsh's ability, but I knew Aikman was my quarterback.
We got one year out of him as a backup and then we got a three draft choices from New Orleans for Walsh. I gave up a first rounder and got back a one, two and a three. Now that's value. If a team can, they should consider drafting a quarterback every year because if they hit on somebody, they have value. So many teams make it hard on themselves. They often research a guy so much; they research themselves out of taking someone they really want.
Best Picks
Well, I've got to think Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman will be Hall of Famers. But those weren't difficult decisions. I think taking someone like Leon Lett in the seventh round would count as a best pick. For a couple years, he was the best defensive tackle in the NFL. If he could have stayed straight, there's no telling how great Leon would have been.
Jason Taylor is a first-round talent, but I picked him in the third round. Erik Williams was a stud offensive tackle for 10 years and we took him in the third round. And how about Larry Brown? He was a Super Bowl MVP. Not bad for a 12th-rounder.
Every draft I had my own little list that I kept under my notebook of the players I wanted and what rounds I had them pegged for. I'd whittle it down as I did my research. This is how I was able to get a player like Sam Madison or a Patrick Surtain in the second round. I knew they had first-round talent, but that there was a good chance they would be available.
