FiveThirtyEight continues to be brilliant. Somewhere, John Madden is creaming his pants. A really good year for wide receivers, as it turns out; not so good for kickers or punters. Any time somebody mentions the stupidest draft choices, I am always stunned that Sebastian Janikowski is not immediately the first name on the list. That was a fun draft (even though Courtney Brown was a huge bust.)

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3 thoughts on “A fun little article on draft value

  1. Looking at that 2000 draft, Buffalo’s best choice was a fullback. A fullback who was never really even that good at his position.

    Looking at the first round, I see 11 guys whom I would consider successful NFL players, including Janikowski. This seems like a pretty low number for the first round.

    1. Only eleven? We’ll call the first two outright busts. Arrington a little less so than Brown. Samuels (who I didn’t know before I looked him up) played for ten years and went to six Pro Bowls. Call that a success. Peter Warrick is a bust, only in the sense that the #4 pick really ought to be outstanding, or at least competent for a long time, and he was neither. Jamal Lewis, Corey Simon, Thomas Jones are all successes. Lewis and Jones borderline HOF, Simon a solid guy for eight years. Plaxico Burress was a pretty solid football player, if a numbskull. I’d call him a success too. Brian Urlacher, for my money, is the best linebacker of our generation; Urlacher was better all around than Ray Lewis and killed fewer people. Taylor and Dayne were decidedly meh. Everybody from Ellis to Alexander is varying degrees of successful. That already puts me at 14. Bulluck and Hovan also qualify as successful. So, 16 in a first round of 31 (according to my reckoning), with an all time great at linebacker and some other HOFers.

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