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History lesson Teams may be destined to relive '98 draft all over againPosted: Wednesday April 02, 2003 6:19 PM
As April dawns and the anticipation of the 2003 NFL Draft starts to build, here's a sobering reminder to those fans and draftniks who can't wait to see their favorite teams infused with another fresh crop of can't-miss talent: There are no sure things on draft day. Say it, learn it, live it. Some of those names that sound so tempting today undoubtedly will be tomorrow's busts. It's the only certainty we have. For proof of how quickly perspectives change in the NFL, just take a glance back to the 1998 draft. Five years isn't that long ago in the real world. But you'd never know it by looking at the first round in '98, which was as hit-or-miss as any in recent NFL history. Just five years down the road, here's how the 1998 draft shakes out:
What will we be saying about the 2003 draft in 2008? It could sound a lot like 1998 does to us now -- a combination of shocking misses, solid foresight and out and out misfortune. Some personnel evaluators within the league say this year's first round, which lacks a consensus elite class in the top five or even 10 picks, could be as volatile to predict as '98 appears in hindsight. But in today's NFL, that doesn't necessarily make 1998 an aberration, league executives said. "Maybe some of the difficulty that teams are having now is that there are a lot of good players in this draft, but it's really difficult to say here are the top five or 10 guys," said Buffalo general manager Tom Donahoe, who selected Faneca as Pittsburgh's top personnel man in 1998. "There just doesn't seem to be that kind of consensus, or that strong of a feeling about guys. "Still, it's not real surprising to me to hear the percentages from the 1998 draft. It's probably pretty normal if you went and researched any recent year. It's not unlikely that you'd find about the same results. It speaks to the fact that there's nothing in football more overrated than a first-round draft pick." With free agency and the high cost of signing a productive veteran to his second contract, turning over half of a first round's picks within five years isn't an exorbitant rate of change, Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi said. The reality is that a good number of 1998 first-rounders -- Duane Starks, Kyle Turley, Takeo Spikes and Kevin Dyson among them -- have switched teams in the past two years, not because they were failed picks, but because their team opted not to award them huge second contracts. Jones and Packers free agent Vonnie Holliday might soon join that group. "I don't think '98 was an aberration," Accorsi said. "It could be repeated this year for all we know. I think that turnover rate is going to be the norm. There are always going to be guys now who are hard to keep past four or five years. And there are always going to be guys who have just not lived up to the pick. "But you could probably go back to 1955 and find about the same ratio. That's just the normal way it works. The difference now is you're going to lose some players to free agency after four years." Everybody remembers 1998's first round for the tightly contested Manning-Leaf debate at the top. But the failure of both Wadsworth and Enis to play up to their top-of-the-class billing also taints 1998's five-year report card. "There was a lot of misevaluation in that draft," said one veteran AFC personnel man. "There were some good players, but there were also some bad ones. I remember we took a poll in our scouting department on who would be the bust of the draft and Curtis Enis won hands down. We had him projected in the third round. It was not a very good draft." Baltimore general manager Ozzie Newsome recalls 1998 as a particularly senior-laden draft, which he believes served to weaken the first round in a way that has not transpired since. But among the notable juniors that year were Leaf, Woodson, Moss, Enis, Spikes, Anthony Simmons, Mo Collins and R.W. McQuarters. "I don't think that was a very good draft or a deep draft," Newsome said. "The influx of juniors coming into our draft has really started to impact the first round more and more. If it wasn't for the juniors this year, where would this draft be? Without Charles Rogers, Andre Johnson and Dewayne Robertson? The thing I remember about '98 was that from Nos. 5-20, everybody's board had basically the same names in slightly different order. It became a need draft. What do you need?" After the top five picks were out of the way in 1998, there were the controversial Jason Peter (Carolina, No. 14) and Moss (Minnesota, No. 21) selections in the middle of the round, and the clear-cut mistakes of taking John Avery (Miami, No. 29) and Marcus Nash (Denver, No. 30) at the bottom of the stanza. Bad luck in the injury department took a huge toll on the young career of Robert Edwards (New England, No. 18). Still, 1998 had its moments, with Manning leading off the action and star players such as Woodson (Oakland, No. 4), Fred Taylor (Jacksonville, No. 9), Brooking (Atlanta, No. 12) and Spikes (Cincinnati, No. 13) helping fill out the top half of the first round. Moss, of course, turned in a monster season in '98 and helped the Vikings to the cusp of the Super Bowl. Quality first-round value was also found in Turley (New Orleans, No. 7), Thomas (Philadelphia, No. 11), Jones (New England, No. 22), Shaun Williams (Giants, No. 24) and Faneca (Pittsburgh, No. 26). Splitting the first round into thirds, teams have held onto their 1998 picks in almost equal proportion. Five of the draft's top 10 players are still with the team that selected them. Four of the selections from 11-20 remain in place, and the stability factor rises to six of 10 players who went in slots 21-30. "The turnover rate after four or five years is going to stay high," the AFC personnel man said. "It's free agency, and it's changing coaching staffs at the clip of about six or seven a year. You change systems, you change coaches, you change everything. A lot of times that means changing a bunch of players as well." This much hasn't changed: can't-miss players sometimes do. They did in 1998. And they will again in 2003. That you can count on. "I don't care if they're first-round guys, seventh-round guys or collegiate free agents, they're projections," Donahoe said. "You're trying to project how they'll do at the pro level having never seen them play against this quality of opponent. It's easy to forget that." Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.
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