Charting success

Analysis of past decade of drafts reveals Ravens used picks most wisely

The Ravens selected Jamal Lewis with the No. 5 pick in the 2000 draft. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

I've always wanted to do a team-by-team draft retrospective for a set period of time, in this case a decade.

The idea for this chart has been bubbling around in my head for years, but it took the dog days of one of the dullest offseasons in memory to finally bring it about.

How do the teams stack up, overall? The problem is that if you include the entire draft, the thing becomes too unwieldy, plus it will give a skewed picture. The all-important statistic of how many regulars came from those 10 drafts will always end up in an overload in favor of the bad teams, because they're more in need of help. There are more spots available for rookies.

So I tried to level the field by using only the top three rounds of the draft, the elite. Good and bad teams alike need a steady influx of these high choices, the lifeblood of their future.

So here is a capsule record of every team's 10-year draft, Rounds 1 to 3, 1994 through 2003 (2004 not included, naturally, since no one knows how these players will do). Well, almost every team's. I didn't list Houston, which had only two drafts before this last one. Cleveland's total will reflect five years, 1999 through 2003. I'm referring to the new, reorganized Cleveland franchise, since the old one was the same one that became the Baltimore organization in 1996. In other words, Baltimore's 10-year span includes the Cleveland years of '94 and '95. Are you still with me?

In putting this together, the thing that surprised me was that the number of regulars emerging from these 10 years of first-three-round choices (and there are supplementary picks involved, which makes the overall total kind of uneven) wasn't more wildly divergent. The weaker teams should have a higher number, since, as I pointed out, they needed more help, so when I see a better team that still found a good representation of regulars in its high drafts, I give the personnel department a lot of credit.

I'm using the term "regulars," rather than "starters" deliberately, and this is where it got tricky. What qualifies a player as a regular? Number of starts? I talked to the Jets' director of pro personnel, Mike Tannenbaum, and he felt, as I did, that 30 starts would be a good qualifying number, except in the case of someone who was drafted recently. Then I started thinking it through.

Should the criterion really be starts? Well, possibly to a certain extent, but someone can be a valuable member of the team without getting the technical start. And what good are starts if the team is simply stuck with a guy, waiting to find someone to replace him? Thus a Ryan Leaf, for instance, who was San Diego's starting quarterback for the better part of two seasons, was not considered a regular by yours truly for charting purposes, whereas valuable, non-starting role players such as the Steelers' Antwaan Randle El and Baltimore's great pass-rushing rookie last year, Terrell Suggs (12 sacks), were regulars in my book.

Free agency complicates things, too. What do we do about a player such as Redskins' wideout Laveranues Coles, for instance, who was just beginning to make his mark with the Jets when he opted for free agency? Is he considered a Jets regular, even though he defected? Absolutely, because this chart reflects drafting prowess, not the ability to control cap expenses. And Coles did everything the club hoped he'd do when it drafted him.

Hardest to handle were emerging regulars who gave way to other emerging regulars after a few years, such as some teams' flavor-of-the-month wideouts. I was pinned. Solid contributions for a number of years put a player in the category of regular, even if he was later replaced. So why doesn't Leaf get the same consideration? you ask. Because I think they were looking to replace him pretty soon after they saw him in action, but they were trapped by his high draft status.

I also don't bestow regular status on someone just because the coaches say, "He's our starter." I'm talking about quarterbacks such as the Bears' Rex Grossman and Cincy's Carson Palmer, who haven't made a mark yet but are expected to. Go do something first, then you'll find a place on my chart.

The abbreviations for the categories are as follows:

REM/TOT -- Players still with the club, from the total number drafted in the first three rounds of 1994 through 2003.

REG -- Regulars who developed from that group.

1sts/REG (REM) -- First-round choices who became regulars, followed by the number of all first-rounders still remaining with the club.

PB -- Pro Bowl players (no letters, please, about Pro Bowlers who were drafted lower. This covers only the first three rounds).

F -- Flunks. Guys who lasted one year or less. That's right, less, such as defensive end Dimitrius Underwood, a first-round Vikings' selection who never played for them.

Oh yes, teams' 10-year record -- nine in the case of Jacksonville and Carolina, five for New Cleveland -- are in parentheses.

I think the star of the chart is Baltimore. Ozzie Newsome began to run the Ravens' draft in 1996. He had 11 first-round choices. Seven of them went to the Pro Bowl, including such showy names as Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis (twin first-rounders in Ozzie's first draft), Peter Boulware, Todd Heap, Chris McAlister, Jamal Lewis and Ed Reed. The only one of his first-rounders whom I didn't classify as a regular is QB Kyle Boller, who lost his job to Anthony Wright last year but is supposed to be the starter this season.

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The Buccaneers are pretty impressive, too, with their eight Pro Bowlers and nine for nine first-rounders who became starters. You might argue about DE Marcus Jones, who was considered something of a disappointment, but he did become a regular for two years, and he logged 39 starts over a six-year career.

Atlanta's numbers aren't a misprint. The Falcons mortgaged their draft for Michael Vick and then, to a lesser extent, Peerless Price. They had only seven choices, total, in the first three rounds of the four-year period, 2000 to 2003. And only two players remain from the six pre-2000 drafts, LB Keith Brooking and DE Patrick Kerney.

San Diego also comes up with a case of the shorts on this chart. Of the 21 players picked in the first three rounds during the seven-year stretch of 1994 through 2000, only DT Jamal Williams, a second-round supplemental choice in 1998, remains. Detroit isn't much better over the same span. Only two players, DE Jared DeVries and T Stockar McDougle, are still around, out of the 20 selections. The Lions' 11 of 12 overall first-round choices who became starters is a good-looking statistic, but only four of those 11 are still with the club.

Jacksonville gets the prize for total regulars amassed, 22, but this was an expansion team that plugged the young guys in right away. Of the eight draftees in the club's first two years of existence (1995-96) seven became starters, or regulars, or whatever you want to call them.

One more statistic that interested me: Seven high-draft Broncos made the Pro Bowl. But only two, DE Trevor Pryce and MLB Al Wilson, remain with the team.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and SI.com. His Power Rankings, "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on SI.com.