You Can’t Count on the Draft to Save Your Team

By Adam Greene

Before modern day free agency, the only way to build an NFL team was through the draft. It’s why those old drafts had so many rounds. Before unrestricted free agency hit the NFL in 1993 there were 12 rounds to the NFL draft from 1977 to 1992. Before 77, there were 17 rounds and that was down from 20 rounds in 1960.

Every draft from the decades before that had either 30 or 25 rounds. I can’t even imagine how many sweaters Roger Goodell would have burned through spitting out those names. He would have been wearing a stringer tank and board shorts by the end of it with Tiger King playing on his TV in the background.

But every year teams that pick atop the draft have high hopes that this will be the Annual National Football League Selection meeting that will change the face of its franchise. And, make no mistake, it can happen. Just look at that 2017 NFL Draft that will likely define the next decade of professional football.

But for every 2017, 2016 or 2014 draft, there’s a complete stinker. One where there were very few great picks because, for whatever reason, there were very few great players. But we all went into each hyping up every guy, seeing potential in every pick and watched most of them, for the most part, completely disappoint.

Take a look at the 2015 draft. Only seven of the 32 picks in the first round were still on the team that drafted them five years later and one of those guys, New Orleans Saints linebacker Stephone Anthony, had been on three other teams in between.

The big picks, the “franchise quarterbacks” in Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota both bottomed out. Mariota is backing up Derek Carr with the Las Vegas Raiders right now. Winston is toting a Microsoft Surface tablet behind Drew Brees in New Orleans.

It was a weak draft from top to bottom and shows exactly how much important working free agency, hiring the right coaching staff and having ownership not afraid to spend cash is to building a good team. The draft is a tool, part of the process. But maybe not even the most important part.

If you look at the NFL expansion teams before free agency, you will see a timeline of abject failure. The NFL added the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976. From 76 to 1993, the Seahawks put together a t total of eight winning seasons, four playoff appearances and three postseason victories. The Bucs had three winning seasons, three playoff appearances and one playoff win total.

But that’s how hard it was to build a team out of just the draft and cast-offs. Those eight Seahawks winning seasons? Six of them were 9-7 or 9-6 (in 1987). Only one of Tampa Bay’s winning seasons was more than a game over .500 and that was the year they made it to the NFC Championship in 1979.

Post free agency? Both the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonvile Jaguars entered the league in 1995. Both made it to their respective conference title games in 1997.

And they did it with the right coaching hires and working free agency, with the draft as a boost, not the key.

The New England Patriots’ two decade dynasty wasn’t built in the draft. Of the Kansas City Chiefs starting 22 last season, 10 came from other teams as free agents or trades. And that’s from a team that has consistently nailed the draft for years.  

Drafting well (and lucky) is just part of the process, but if you can’t evaluate other teams’ talent and competently coach them, you’re no better than those old 70s and 80s Bucs and Seahawks teams.

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