Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Dan Snyder Top-o'-tha-Draft Analysis


(you can actually order this at the awesome Mr. Irrelevant blog)
Because I like to torture myself, and because so many retarded ass Redskins fans are like, "This is all we needed was a good quarterback. Now we will win it all!" as if everything that is wrong with the Washington Redskins was Jason Campbell's fault. (Side note, I hope they trade Campbell to someone like the Raiders. I don't think he's been completely Patrick Ramseyed yet, and could still make a halfway decent career for himself, Jake Delhomme style.) But to me, it looks like we traded some draft picks for an older dude who ultimately is only marginally better than what we had, especially when you consider that marginal part might be the different offensive lines that Donovan McNabb and Jason Campbell were standing behind the past couple years.
So what I've done is gone back in time, way back, to every draft after Dan Snyder took over the team in the summer of 1999, to see what we did with our first and second round draft picks, and what other people did with them, and so on, mostly to prove my point that I know more about this than the Redskins do. Oddly enough, in doing this, I found out that other teams haven't exactly drafted diamond players with our old draft picks. But some rather obvious patterns emerge.
THE 2000 DRAFT
In assorted wheelings and dealings, we had both the 2nd and 3rd overall pick in the draft. I doubt anyone would even want that nowadays, what with rookie contracts going the way they're going. The Redskins took LB Lavar Arrington with the #2 pick, and T Chris Samuels with the #3 pick. Arrington, no matter how much he didn't live up to the overall initial hype, did concuss Troy Aikman out of football forever, so that has to be considered a winning pick. And Chris Samuels was a perennial Pro Bowler and career false starter who just recently had to retire because his neck is growing into his brain or something. I can't outright condemn those dudes, but we haven't exactly been led to multiple playoff victories, which is what you'd expect from two picks that high, at least at some point.
With our actual picks that year, in the first round, the 49ers ended taking CB Ahmed Plummer, who didn't amount to much and is retired himself due to injuries. In the second round, the Vikings drafted DE Michael Boireau. Yeah, I know. I never heard of him either.
THE 2001 DRAFT
The Redskins actually used their own draft picks this year, like normal people, as Dan Snyder hadn't really settled into his role as retarded hands-on owner yet. With the 15th overall pick in the first round, we took WR Rod Gardner, who never did anything in the NFL, although I think he was like a good second option receiver for a year or two in Carolina behind Steve Smith. I won about 12 Super Bowls with Rod Gardner in the Madden game with Marshall Faulk on the cover. The Redskins are always really good in Madden, until you download the roster updates.
In the second round, we drafted CB Fred Smoot, who has always been a fan favorite. When he was in Minnesota having the famous party boat scandal where hookers had sex with each other in front of the team, it made us sad because we knew it should've happened here. Fred Smoot will always be a favorite, because of the wacky shit he says. In fact, for as bad as the Redskins have been as a football team, we've had more than our fair share of wacky fuckers during the Snyder regime. I guess I should be happy with that at least.
THE 2002 DRAFT
This was where the Skins started trading around and tossing draft picks around here or there, positioning themselves. In the first round of this draft, we at one point or another had held but traded away the 18th and 21st draft picks. With that 18th pick, the Falcons took RB T.J. Duckett, who was a solid player but never really justified his first rounder status. And the Patriots took TE Daniel Graham with that 21st pick, who has had a pretty good career, both with the Patriots and now with the Denver Broncos. With the pick they ended up with, the 32nd and last one of the first round, the Redskins drafted QB of the future of the year Patrick Ramsey. Steve Spurrier's lack of offensive line care eventually concussed Ramsey into retardation. He currently works with Christian autistic children in Africa.
That year, the Redskins even swapped second round picks with the Ravens, who took DE Anthony Weaver with the 52nd overall pick that was originally the Redskins. Four spots later, the Skins got RB Ladell Betts. Six of one, half dozen of another. Ladell Betts was constantly hyped as the best back-up RB the game had to offer, until he actually had to play more often the past couple of years while Clinton Portis was hobbled by various injuries, and you realized that he was just a shittier and slower version of Clinton Portis who didn't wear wacky clothes.
THE 2003 DRAFT
Now we start to transition to the current Redskins modus operandi, as the Redskins traded away their first round pick for Lavernues Coles, who was an okay player, but not worth a first rounder. Actually, looking at the way teams horde their draft picks now (except for the Redskins, as will become obvious), trading a first round pick (the 13th overall) for a WR that's not even one of the league's main gamebreakers, it's pretty retarded. The Patriots ended up with that former Redskins first round pick, because I think the Patriots actually end up with half of everybody's draft picks somehow, and got DE Ty Warren. He was a solid contributor as part of their yearly influx of 19 first, second, and third round rookies.
The Redskins held onto their 2nd round pick and used it on WR Taylor Jacobs, who was meant to complement Lavernues Coles as the greatest WR tandem threat Patrick Ramsey (or whichever of 9 quarterbacks they were starting under Steve Spurrier that year) could ever have hoped to be seeing. He now works at DHL.
THE 2004 DRAFT
With the 5th overall pick in that year's draft, we got S Sean Taylor aka The Manimal. He was totally fucking awesome, and you could sense that he was almost too good for the Redskins and would probably end up somewhere else. Luckily for us Redskins fans, he died, so we can pretend that we would've won 9 Super Bowls had he not been so tragically taken from us far too early. Why must the good die young? Why? Is there no God up in Heaven who wanted to see Joe Gibbs win another Super Bowl, because if he did he would've preached about God and shit on camera to millions of people? No wonder we are such a Godless society, with such shortsighted thinking from above.
We hocked away our second round pick that year in what was at the time a nearly yearly fleecing of draft picks by the Denver Broncos, which is probably why Mike Shanahan came here to coach, because he knew he could get whatever he wanted from Dan Snyder if he said it the right way, kind of like when you are fucking with your dog, but you use your high-pitched excited voice to go, "You want to get shot in the face, boy? You want to get shot? You want me to kill you right now, boy?" and your dog is all bouncing around and wagging his tail like he's stoked to get blasted with a hollow point. I imagine that's how Shanahan deals with Dan Snyder. Anyways, with our pick, the Broncos got RB Tatum Bell, who, although not great, certainly turned out better than nothing.
The Skins did get Chris Cooley in the 3rd round that year, so between him and the pedestalled promise of the beastly Sean Taylor, I'll give them a thumb's up on that draft. It at least made me feel good overall, even if we didn't win shit from it.
THE 2005 DRAFT
This is the year Dan Snyder must've saw Mel Kiper talk about how amazing the Auburn Tigers team was and how they should've had a chance to play for the national championship that year, because we had two first round picks and got CB Carlos Rogers (9th overall) and QB Jason Campbell (with the 25th overall pick). Both of whom are decent dudes who show flashes of greatness but then bumble around mediocrely just as easily. It's hard at this point to figure out if this is bad draft day skills or bad coaching within the organization or a combination of both. You'd like to think it's just shitty dudes picking the players, so that you can replace that guy, like we supposedly did by getting rid of Vinny Cerrato, but really, it's hard to say that for sure.
We traded off our second round pick, which the Saints used on S Josh Bullocks. He now plays for the Bears and is no superstar by any means, but unlike Sean Taylor, he is not murdered. This means that regardless of promise and hype, Josh Bullocks made more tackles last year than Sean Taylor. The year before as well.
And setting a new trend for the Redskins that we have yet to shake, we had no other draft picks that year before the 4th round. Rogers and Campbell, that's it.
THE 2006 DRAFT
This year was even more amazing as we not only had gotten rid of our first round pick, but we'd gotten rid of all of them, except for an early 2nd round pick we somehow accidentally still had (the 35th overall). With what would've been our first round pick, the 49ers took LB Manny Lawson, who is no longer in football, so no big loss on that. With our pick, we got LB Rocky McIntosh, who still is in football, and sometimes even does halfway decent, though, like a majority of Redskins rostermakers from the draft, he's always been more potential than anything else.
And then we didn't have any more picks until the 5th round.
THE 2007 DRAFT
With the 6th overall pick, we got S LaRon Landry out of LSU, to tag team with Sean Taylor and create the scariest pair of headhunting black men the world has ever seen outside of professional wrestling. Unfortunately, it did not pan out that nicely. LaRon Landry has been such a raging success that the Redskins were reportedly attempting to send him to Philadelphia as part of the McNabb trade.
With what would've been our second round pick, that we didn't have anymore, th Chargers took S Eric Weddle, who has been as productive as Landry on the football field, and still starts for the Chargers at free safety. Oddly enough, Eric Weddle is a black Mormon. Black Mormon trumps Green Lamborghini.
And, of course, we had no other draft picks that year until the fifth round.
THE 2008 DRAFT
With what would've been our first round pick that year, the 21st overall, the Falcons got T Sam Baker, who last I checked, was pretty damned good. Also, last I checked, we have no competent tackles on our team anymore, and we need to draft like three of them, pronto.
This was the year though that Vinny Cerrato was to step out of Joe Gibbs' shadow and show what a draft day genius he was. So with three 2nd round picks, he nabbed WR Devin Thomas (34th overall, catches a few 8 yard quick slants a year and sometimes is allowed to fumble punt returns), TE Fred Davis (48th overall, very good at catching a pass, rumbling through four dudes for an additional 9 yards, and then fumbling), and WR Malcolm Kelly (51st overall, when not crippled by his recurring polio, can sometimes catch one in three passes thrown to him during actual regular season games).
This draft was an aberration though, as we still had a 3rd and 4th round pick, and actually had 10 picks overall, and even got an eventual starting safety in the 7th round in the form of Chris Horton. So even as shitty as the upper end of this draft turned out, if the mentality to stockpile picks and fill your roster with young dudes who are hungry to prove themselves and more willing to run through brick walls to do just that, as opposed to high-priced veterans who are more likely to lean on their fat knee and think about driving their speed boat around instead, then I could get behind this. Of course, this draft's philosophy is an exception to the team's ruling philosophy.
THE 2009 DRAFT
We kept our first round pick, the 13th overall, and got LB Brian Orakpo, who looked to be pretty goddamned awesome last year, and was a solid candidate for defensive rookie of the year, and made the Pro Bowl (although I think about one-quarter of the league makes the Pro Bowl nowadays). Of course, we had no 2nd round pick because we had traded that away to the Dolphins the year before for Jason Taylor, who proceeded to injurify himself, miss most of the season, and whine his way into getting released, without ever playing again for the Redskins. With that pick, the Dolphins took a shot on QB Pat White, who helps operate their wildcat offense and is like their Seneca Wallace style back-up QB multi-position athletic threat dude.
We also had no 4th rounder last year, but kept our 3rd rounder and drafted some CB that I vaguely remember playing last year when one of our seven more famous older players were broken in half.
THE 2010 DRAFT
We have the 4th pick overall, which all the draft nerdniks think we'll use on that offensive lineman dude from Oklahoma State. I am still not confident they won't end up drafting Jimmy Clausen, trading Jason Campbell for an 8th round draft pick to the Patriots before realizing that there is no 8th round, and then Belichick trades Campbell to Al Davis and the Raiders for a 2nd round draft pick.
Additionally, we traded our 2nd round pick to the Eagles (36th overall) for McNabb. Our 3rd rounder we lost by taking DE Jeremy Jarmon in the supplemental draft last year. And our 6th round pick belongs to the Dolphins, because of Jason Taylor. Yeah, that light-skinned dancing dude who hasn't worn a Redskins jersey since late in 2008. So we will draft the 4th player in the draft, then hang out until the 103rd overall pick and take a shot on somebody still left around. And then flesh our aging roster out with a couple of 5th and 7th round picks.
The good news is, at this point, we still have both our 1st and 2nd round picks for next year's draft, though either our 3rd or 4th will also go to the Eagles, depending on how well Donovan McNabb does this year. And there's still a long time before then. But when you are a couple weeks away from this year's draft, and you're already analyzing next year's draft and what you might be able to do, I think you might actually be more than just one player away. But by all means, go ahead and order your #5 McNabb burgundy and gold jersey. So you can be the first one on the block.

(look at this tool from the Washington Nationals opening day game yesterday; oddly enough, they played the Phillies, and there were more Phillies fans in attendance than Nationals ones)

3 comments:

el guapo said...

hey man

that was an informative enjoyable retrospective. i tend to forget draft picks like i do drunken evenings cleaning out the inlet to my septic tank.

Anonymous said...

Um...Eric Weddle isn't black. I don't even know if he's mormon.

Raven Mack said...

do you even know what black mormon means?