The draft is crucial to long-term NFL success (duh)

While lampooning the Broncos’ decision to trade a second-, third-, and fourth-round pick for the 25th overall pick

and subsequently select Tim Tebow with that pick is easier than running into a drunk person at late-night D-Hall, the problem with the move is more endemic than just Tebow-has-compromising-photos-of-Josh-McDaniels. While the Broncos have, as a whole, drafted well over the years, the trade is a bellwether of what might be the biggest truth in the NFL: if you don’t draft well, you suck. 

For all of the talk we hear about NFL parity these days, there are teams that are consistently elite and teams that get trod on more than Tyronn Lue. Over the past decade, there have been seven NFL teams that have won at least 56.25% of their games (including both the regular season and postseason). Why did I choose this arbitrary figure? A .5625 winning percentage equates to precisely nine wins over the course of a 16-game NFL season. On the other end of the spectrum, there are ten teams that averaged fewer than seven wins per 16 games in the 2000s. 

So let’s look at the drafting habits of the have-playoff-successes compared to those of the have-been-awfuls. The seven “good” teams, in descending order of winning percentage, are the Pats (who averaged a whopping 11.3 wins per 16), Colts, Steelers, Eagles, Packers, Ravens, and Broncos; the ten “bad” teams are the Redskins, Chiefs, 49ers, Bengals, Bills, Texans, Cardinals, Raiders, Browns, and Lions (who averaged just 4.2 wins per 16 games). 

Let’s look at the Colts as our first example. Since Bill Polian, one of the best front-office minds in the business, took over after the 1997 season, their first-round picks have gone like this: Peyton Manning, Edgerrin James, Rob Morris, Reggie Wayne, Dwight Freeney, Dallas Clark, no first-rounder (but they picked Bob Sanders in the second round), Marlin Jackson, Joseph Addai, Anthony Gonzalez, no first-rounder, Donald Brown. Virtually every one of those guys (Edge and Morris were integral before they played out their careers and Jackson has been a bit of a disappointment) has been  key in the Colts winning machine. 

Moving to the Ravens, where Ozzie Newsome is a master of the draft, I invite you to name the iconic Ravens that spring to mind. Did you think of Ray Lewis, Jonathon Ogden, Chris McAlister, Jamal Lewis, Todd Heap, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, and Joe Flacco? Every single one of those players was taken in the first round of the draft; like the linchpins of the Colts’ success, these guys have been the cornerstones of Baltimore football for over a decade. While the Ravens missed on first-rounders Kyle Boller and Travis Taylor, both of those picks were highly influenced by erstwhile Styrofoam-packing-peanuts-for-football-brains head coach Brian Billick. 

On the other end of the continuum lie the Lions, whose first-rounders since 1996 are Reggie Brown (not ex-Eagle great Brown, this Reggie was out of the league in two years), Bryant Westbrook, Terry Fair, Chris Claiborne and Aaron Gibson, Stockar McDougle, Jeff Backus, Joey Harrington, Charles Rogers, Roy Williams, Mike Williams, Ernie Sims, Calvin Johnson, Gosder Cherilus, and Matthew Stafford. Does that sound like a strong base around which to build your franchise? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Only Backus (middling tackle), Roy Williams (overpaid but decent WR), and Johnson (wunderkind extraordinaire) have had anything resembling useful NFL careers (it’s too early to make definitive calls on Cherilus and Stafford). 

The really mind-boggling part about the entire process is that the worst teams have better picks and, for the most part, passed up the guys who became stars elsewhere. It’s easy to look back and say it was obvious Ed Reed or Reggie Wayne would be a star, but they went 24th and 30th in their respective drafts. The Raiders, since picking on Al Davis is a requisite part of every NFL commentary, passed up Reed not once but twice in 2002, taking Philip Buchanon and Napoleon Harris over the Hall-of-Fame lock. Continuing with the Raiders, it’s likely that first overall pick Jamarcus Russell will be released soon after just three bust-tacular years. 

So while it seems obvious that drafting well would lead to success, it could be even more important than most people imagine. As teams like the Redskins continue to spend big money in free agency, the most important thing in the NFL seems to be not coaching or character or ticket sales but making the most of your picks.