The NFL Draft has obviously changed a lot – a whole lot! – over the years.
It has gone from an event in which teams carried Street and Smith’s college football guides into the proceedings so they would know all the players, to one in which clubs now put together elaborate spreadsheets on prospects that would make any tech geek proud.
But even with that, there are s till some things about the draft that have not changed one bit. In fact, they’ve become even more pronounced than they ever were back in the day.
And probably the most important of them is the cardinal rule that teams should never, ever reach for a player. It’s bad football, just like it is bad table manners.
Browns Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown addressed that issue recently at the annual spring meeting of NFL owners in Phoenix. And, Browns fans will be thrilled to hear, he gets the importance of not reaching, especially when it comes to the most crucial position in team sports, quarterback.
“We’ve shown we want to be aggressive, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that something’s going to get done,’’ Brown said. “We don’t want to force things just to have things happen, but we are going to stay aggressive at quarterback as we will at all positions.”
What happens when teams reach, almost in every case to fill needs?
They pass over higher-rated players at other positions to get lower-rated ones at the positions they’re targeting.
Yes, it’s vital to fill needs, but not at the expense of doing so with players they can draft later. It just doesn’t make sense. Higher is better.
A mistake in today’s big-money NFL, particularly when it occurs in taking a quarterback near the top of the draft, can be devastating. It can set a team back three to five years.
Just ask the Browns, who thought they had their franchise quarterback three different times when they reached to choose the likes of Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden and Johnny Manziel. They’re still trying to recover from that trifecta of errors.
Perhaps – perhaps, if you listen to Sashi Brown – this current regime will not repeat those errors. That would be a major step in the right direction.
