Quote:Nice lecture, but yes - the vast majority of the work is done well in advance of the pick.  Yes, it is "rank 'em and pick 'em," but it's not like your Madden fantasy.  GMs are open about how they do rank players and that there's usually a nice gap between players at the top, or at least only very few players that are relatively equal to choose from.  Once you get to the fourth round or so, your pools of relatively equal value are bigger and bigger.  If you look at the draft failures both here and elsewhere, they're defined by going with players who weren't the best available.  Whether that was due to them straying from their own board or flat out poor ranking, the result is the same.  They guy they chose clearly wasn't the best available based on the results.

 

 

That's a simplistic analysis.

 

Sometimes players can be drafted into the wrong scheme and fail.  The Colts drafted Jerry Hughes in the first round a few years back and he did nothing for them.  He went to Buffalo last year and put up 10 sacks.

 

Sometimes players are immature.  Brett Favre was supposedly a party animal in Atlanta.  Glanville was so dismayed with his second rounder he traded him to Green Bay.  Under your rationale, Brett Favre was not the best available player when Atlanta picked him in the second round in 1991.  Vernon Davis didn't really start to thrive in San Francisco until Mike Singletary called him out, then Harbaugh put him in the right scheme.

 

Sometimes players get injured.  Steve Emtman was an unquestioned stud DT in 1992.  In his rookie year, he demonstrated many times he was worth that pick.  But two blown knees later, he was finished.

 

Players fail and succeed for many different reasons beyond simply not being the best available player.

---