http://www.ninersnation.com/2015/4/1/832...-nfl-draft
Interesting. Apparently he would have taken somebody like Woodson or Wadsworth in the first round, then he would have drafted Brian Griese in the second round. Do you guys think that even the great Bill Walsh was way over his head at the time? or do you think he could have gotten a lot more out of guys like Griese and Wadsworth?
Quote:http://www.ninersnation.com/2015/4/1/832...-nfl-draft
Interesting. Apparently he would have taken somebody like Woodson or Wadsworth in the first round, then he would have drafted Brian Griese in the second round. Do you guys think that even the great Bill Walsh was way over his head at the time? or do you think he could have gotten a lot more out of guys like Griese and Wadsworth?
Polian is an egomaniac. It was an easy choice he made. His best work was in Buffalo, where he actually helped pick a lot of good players. In Indy, he made the easy choice on Manning and then got lazy and installed his less-talented son as defacto GM.
It's very unfortunate that Andre Wadsworth's career was derailed because of injury.
As great of a player future HOFer Charles Woodson was, it's hard to imagine anyone taking a player other than Peyton Manning at the top of the 1998 Draft if a draft redo took place.
Quote:It's very unfortunate that Andre Wadsworth's career was derailed because of injury.
As great of a player future HOFer Charles Woodson was, it's hard to imagine anyone taking a player other than Peyton Manning at the top of the 1998 Draft if a draft redo took place.
Wadsworth was being compared by some as the best DE prospect to come out since Bruce Smith.
He had just about everything you'd want in a DE prospect.
But his knees weren't willing at the end of the day.
Might not be entirely untrue. IIRC (but I haven't bothered to do research on this), Walsh never drafted a QB in the first round. Jim Druckenmiller wasn't his call.
If Walsh had drafted a QB in the first round in '98, I wonder if it wouldn't have been Leaf instead of Manning. Peyton was and is a statue, but Leaf had more of the mobility that Walsh preferred in his QB. How different might history be if Walsh and the 49ers had drafted Leaf instead of the hapless Chargers?
Walsh would have picked Manning and won more than one Superbowl with him. Polian, despite all of his crafty selections only has one ring to show for it all does he not? Walsh had it man. He knew how to put a team together. Period. Polian doesn't compare at all...
Well, technically it was Peter King that said Walsh told him he'd have picked Wadsworth or Woodson, then add Griese. King's story, not Polian's.
Guess he really liked Michigan.
That being said, I really liked Griese coming out of college too. Walsh's plan would not have come to fruition, though, even if he would have had the first pick.
I am not a Polian fan. The whining to the competition committee and working for rules changes after every Patriots defeat losses points from me.
Watch the Brady six. Even the great ones have a hard time picking the right qb.
Quote:Polian is an egomaniac. It was an easy choice he made. His best work was in Buffalo, where he actually helped pick a lot of good players. In Indy, he made the easy choice on Manning and then got lazy and installed his less-talented son as defacto GM.
Manning was the easy choice in hindsight.
What's easy to forget, is that all the GMs/scouts/errbody were 50\50 on the two.
Hard to believe now, but it was true.
Quote:Watch the Brady six. Even the great ones have a hard time picking the right qb.
The Patriots have missed on quite a few players over the years, other than Brady
Quote:Manning was the easy choice in hindsight.
What's easy to forget, is that all the GMs/scouts/errbody were 50\50 on the two.
Hard to believe now, but it was true.
I don't think they were 50/50, although the pundits at the time might have made that claim. Polian made the right choice, but it seemed to me the obvious choice at the time. OTOH, Bobby Beatherd made one of the worst blunders in NFL history.