2000 Draft Revisited

We all (OK, I) like to talk about how silly it is for the NFL pundits to grade the draft hours, or even minutes after teams have made their selections. We all (really, all of us!) know that you can't give a team an A- or a C+ or an F on its draft until several years have passed and those rookies have turned into All-Pros or unemployed free agents. Unfortunately, nobody ever really keeps track of what the draftniks of the world have had to say and hold them accountable for their predictions of draft success.

Yeah, I'm gonna go there.

Here is Peter King's draft report card from the 2000 NFL Draft. After 10 years, I think we can get a pretty good idea of how these teams actually did in the draft. To evaluate the draft, I'll be using Pro-Football-Reference's Approximate Value (AV) system to sum up the total value of a team's draft picks. AV is a decent measure of overall value of a player, whether he's a quarterback, offensive lineman, safety, tight end, whatever. It's not perfect, and, for purposes of tracking the draft, it doesn't account for players who leave a team via trade or free agency, but it's a reasonable way to measure draft success, and, since the draft was 10 years ago, most players taken in it have played the bulk -- if not all -- of their careers, giving us a good measuring point to determine their overall success.

Here's the draft list, sorted by AV, with Peter King's placement listed first and the team's top pick, as determined by AV:

King	Team	TotalAV	Top Player	AV
14	NY Jets	280	John Abraham	68
6	Green Bay	257	Chad Clifton	61
23	Chicago	235	Brian Urlacher	97
11	San Francisco	212	Julian Peterson	64
7	Pittsburgh	199	Plaxico Burress	66
19	Denver	196	Deltha O'Neal	47
16	Baltimore	188	Jamal Lewis	69
15	NY Giants	183	Cornelius Griffin	59
9	Tennessee	172	Keith Bulluck	68
2	Seattle	168	Shaun Alexander	68
8	New England	167	Tom Brady	104
17	Arizona	156	Thomas Jones	58
31	New Orleans	156	Marc Bulger	57
12	Jacksonville	153	Brad Meester	50
25	Minnesota	146	Chris Hovan	57
21	Carolina	131	Deon Grant	54
18	Cincinnati	131	Neil Rackers	45
1	Oakland	131	Sebastian Janikowski	50
24	Indianapolis	128	Marcus Washington	53
13	Philadelphia	111	Corey Simon	47
4	Washington	111	LaVar Arrington	61
10	Cleveland	110	Dennis Northcutt	41
22	Detroit	96	Reuben Droughns	27
20	Kansas City	96	Greg Wesley	38
28	St. Louis	94	Brian Young	42
27	San Diego	87	Damion McIntosh	39
29	Atlanta	66	Mark Simoneau	31
5	Buffalo	64	Sammy Morris	26
3	Tampa Bay	60	Cosey Coleman	27
26	Miami	59	Todd Wade	39
30	Dallas	34	Mario Edwards	24

The biggest issue with AV, IMO, is that it doesn't rate kickers (or punters), and there were three kickers and one punter who were drafted in 2000 -- first-rounder Sebastian Janikowski (Oakland), along with Neil Rackers (Cincinnati), Paul Edinger (Chicago), and Shane Lechler (Oakland again). I decided to go with a very simple rating of 1 AV per 20 points scored for each of these kickers. The very best players ever in the NFL have AVs around 150-200 for their careers (Jerry Rice is 250), and that would put the best kickers -- the ones around 2,000 career points at about 100 AV, which seems fair for kickers. As for Lechler, I semi-arbitrarily gave him an AV of 40 -- less than Jano, but still appropriate, I think, for a guy who's been probably the best punter of the last 10 years.

Some observations:

• It's not hard to rule the roost when you have four #1 draft picks, as the Jets did in 2000. None have gone on to truly spectacular, HOF-worthy careers, but the foursome of John Abraham, Chad Pennington, Shaun Ellis, and Anthony Becht have a total AV of 208, which would be enough for fourth place alone -- not bad for one round!
  
• Lechler and Jano save Oakland from having a truly abysmal draft; without my AV assignments to those two, the Raiders would have mustered just 41 total AV from their other picks, good for #30 (of 31) on the list. Still, they were probably a tad overrated by King.
• Meanwhile, King's worst draft grade went to New Orleans, and probably deservedly so. Marc Bulger never played a down for the Saints; without him, the team's total AV drops to a mediocre 99, with Darren Howard (42) as the only notable.
• Several of King's lowest grades -- St. Louis (28), San Diego (27), Atlanta (29), Miami (26), and Dallas (30) -- actually do rank among the worst drafts of 2000. Dallas' picks are especially putrid. Admittedly, they only had five picks, and #49 was their highest, but still... only sixth-rounder Mario Edwards made any kind of NFL impact.
• King doesn't think much of Chicago's draft. "Brian Urlacher had better be great," he said, and he is, at least when he's healthy.
• "he'll be a better pro than Ron Dayne" is what King said about Shaun Alexander. Uh, yeah.
• His opinions of Tampa Bay's and Buffalo's drafts, though, were a little overly optimistic. "Cosey Coleman's an eight-year starter after Randall McDaniel retires," he said. Not bad -- Coleman started for six years with the Bucs and Browns. Then he said, "Corey Moore, will be one of those classic Bills picks (they always get a very good player after the first round, every year), the kind of player GMs will regret passing on." Moore played two years in the NFL, one for Buffalo and one for Miami.
  
• One very good player can really skew a team's overall ranking. If not for Tom Brady, the Patriots would have had a total AV of 63, and their best player would have been Greg Randall (17).
• Tee Martin and Danny Farmer also get big props for Pittsburgh.
• The "uninspired" Vikings draft turns out OK. Unfortunately, Chris Hovan and Fred Robbins wind up playing much of their football outside of Minnesota, forcing the team to rely heavily on free agency for much of the decade, with mixed results.

Anyway, King's analysis of the draft is pretty much what you'd expect: some hits, some misses, overall reasonably good (as anyone can do just by observing draft position and possessing some football savvy) but generally uneven. And, like the Buffalo observation, a whole lot of "this guy is a hidden gem"-type commentary that's easy to ignore when the guy doesn't pan out (which happens 99% of the time) and is highly recounted when it's right. Shame he didn't get on the bandwagon of that Brady guy. Still, I suggest you read the full article if, for nothing else, a trip down nostalgia lane.