Grade the Redskins Draft!

If you were to break the draft into First Day Grade, Second Day Grade, and Overall Grade, I think you might find a lot more agreement on the first two picks. For me, our first day was a win - Orakpo was a solid pick, good value and filling a need. Barnes appears to be a bit of a steal and bumps the first day to a B+. For me, and for the reasons I've stated, I think the second day was a D-. Did we address needs? maybe. Did we get good value? from everything I've read, the 5th round selection would have been available in the 7th round or as an UFA. In fact, the only player I saw with a draft expectation was the receiver. So... we took a scattershot approach to a position of lesser need than the OL (IMO), we picked players who would have been available later or as UFDA's, we ignored a position of need and, in the position of need, passed over players rated higher than the ones we chose. Why not take a couple of flyers on Meredith in the 5th and Murtha in the 7th?

I hope I am wrong, but I don't see anyone who helps us in the 2nd day in the short or long term. If Nelson turns out to be a find, great. Otherwise, we would have been better off trying to find more developmental lineman.

What sort of calendar are you on? Barnes was a second day pick

Let me start by saying I do not follow much College ball so this time of year its hard for me to comment either way. For the ones that say we should have picked up some OL in the later rounds I was wondering was there any real talent that could have come in this year and helped?
I asked this but no one answered.

An improved defense is going to help the offense. More turnovers = more offensive possessions = more scoring opportunities. Better field position = more scoring opportunities.

By improving the D, the O will benefit.

I thought that we had some good opportunities last year too. I think that our offense will be better, but it's still up to them to do something with these opportunities.

I asked this but no one answered.

Helped out this year? Probably not. You may have some guys say that Robinson or Meredith could, but I don't see how they're better than what we have at the moment.

Without making this post a quote-fest a few points:
-Football is the ultimate team sport. Improving the defense will improve the offense. We've added 3 key pieces to the "4th ranked defense" (which is meaningless really) which should make a significant difference. Haynesworth pushes the middle of the pocket, which has been needed for years. Hall is a playmaking CB with great ball skills. He will get beat occasionally but will make plays as well. Orapko provides pass rush which should increase turnovers and improve field position. By default, over the span of the season, will improve the offensive production. We were top 5 in the league in overall offense but bottom third in turnovers and sacks. I'd rather be the 12th ranked defense and be top 8 in sacks turnovers than top 5 with fewer changes of the ball.

-I know I am nearly alone in this but once we past our pick at #13 and we got Oprapko, which everyone is universally happy with, so what we didn't draft an o-lineman? Would you want us to 'mortgage our future' to trade back into the end of round one or round two for Oher, Britton or Loadholt? That would cost us our '10 1st round pick. Do you want us to reach for a player graded as a 5th or 6th rounder in the 3rd just for the sake of picking an OL? The fact that very few OL (and no tackles) were taken immediately or nearly after our 3rd round pick would have meant that we immensely reached. The other point is if most of you aren't patient enough to let Rinehart develop and are calling him a bust, what are your expectations for a 5th round G or T?

I don't know, maybe I am naive but I don't get the gloom and doom going around. Damn, cheer up, it's spring time and we're 0-0. Let the preseason (at least) play out before we start firing coaches and starting over in 2010. Would the '09 outlook be that dramatically different if we had gone with Oher (who lasted another 10 picks) or traded down to pick up an additional 4, 5 or 6 (what teams were paying to move up) later in the draft?

Why not take a couple of flyers on Meredith in the 5th and Murtha in the 7th?I think because the need we needed to fill was "special teams." A flyer at offensive line is one less player that can cover kicks for you next year.

But you never know. What did we have to lose by waiting? The only reason I can think of is to help make it appear as if he was our primary target all along… kind of like that nice Redskins Orakpo jersey they brought with them to the draft. Does anyone here doubt they had a Sanchez jersey as well? Along with any number of other players… PR gimmick.



Well if we had traded down, maybe picked up another 1st day pick and gotten a guy like Oher or Britton, we also would have gotten a great player at a great value. The Pats got 4 great players at great values in the 2nd round. You can take great players at great values all throughout the draft – its just the matter of what position youre in.

Its entirely possible that we could have traded down and ended up like we did last year – having other teams take the players we were targeting with the lower picks right before us – a very bad outcome.

All I’m saying is we have done NOTHING in this offseason to improve our offense. Yes, I’m glad we got Dockery back, but I don’t expect him to be any better on the field than Kendall was last year. We didn’t really upgrade in terms of skill – we just got a guy who’s younger and will last longer. But we didnt improve our offense. We have the 4th ranked defense and we feel we have to add all these players to improve it… but we have the 20something ranked offense and we just say, “oh, we’re counting on our own guys to get better.” That’s a copout because the defensive players from 2008 would get better too.

Snyder has made no efforts to hide the fact he doesn’t believe in Campbell. Zorn was something like our 5th favorite option to be HC last year and the only reason he’s HC is because our primary options didn’t want to work here or would have been a PR nightmare. Why didn’t Snyder fire Zorn after this season? Well, we know he was going to before we beat the Eagles near the end of the season. Then we hear reports that Snyder had met with Shanahan and was possibly planning to hire him if he had successfully landed Cutler. Snyder is a shrewed businessman and he would have been a fool to fire Zorn or trade Campbell before having another option solidly in place. What happened this offseason is none of Snyders preferred choices panned out, so he’s been forced to stick with what he’s got.

As many of you have pointed out, the Zorn hire could very well have always been as a stop-gap coach. Snyder knows right now that Shanahan, Cowher, Holmgren, and Gruden will all be available in 2010 and he would probably like any one of them in DC. 3 of those guys are offensive minded coaches who really don’t like to be bothered with defense. What better way to attract them than to present them with a Super Bowl caliber defense and a full complement of draft picks to use on the offensive players of their choice?

Nothing Snyder has done has shown any commitment to the offense. Snyder obviously doesn’t like Campbell and Zorn is officially on the list of “hot seat” coaches for 2010. They’re “on their own” and that’s why I say it will take a “miracle” for either of them to be here beyond 2009. The odds are stacked against them and they know it.

Some of the guys you mention like Shanahan, Holmgren and Cowher will probably never work for an owner like Snyder. They're not stupid.

By the way...the Jets have cut Marcus Mason. We're going to need a dozen new threads on him now

I still think alot of this comes to trusting your scouts. I don't know if we should or not, but listening to Vinny it sounds like a scout made a compelling case for a player he watched throughout the year, and that took priority over national rankings. Also, it seemed like Vinny or Zorn were able to give a personal story behind several of the picks. e.g. on Barnes, Zorn spoke of a Seattle player with a similar injury and how he came back without distraction. What this tells me is that VC and JZ did have alot of input, and by extension - our "football guys" did. So now, after screaming "Listen to football guys" and "Don't mortgage the future", our FO does just that, but doesn't do what exactly we fans want. So do we really mean it when we say "build through the draft" and are we willing to wait and see if our OL from the last two years can step up.

What sort of calendar are you on? Barnes was a second day pick

Last year's calendar (or was it the year before), when the third round was day one.

Okay, day one was an B+ and day 2 was a C- (Barnes raises it a grade). lol