The Draft (NFL, that is)

One thing I love about the NFL is the way the long, slow offseason is punctuated at about the halfway point by the annual College Draft, when teams select their "players of the future", and hope for, say, a second-rounder who will become a Hall-of-Famer (Thurman Thomas) while avoiding a first-rounder who flops horribly (Ryan Leaf). The Draft is split over two days, with the first three rounds on Saturday and the last four rounds on Sunday. The Draft gives fans the first inkling of what their team is up to and how things might shape up in the season to come.

First thing's first, though: Eli Manning.

I can't stand it when young athletes enter the draft of some professional sport but then whine when they don't like who drafts them. I never really liked John Elway because he started his career with this kind of crap (the Colts – then of Baltimore – drafted him, but he pitched a fit and got himself traded to Denver), and so did Eric Lindros when he entered the NHL. My belief is that if you do something like enter the NFL draft, you take your chances. It's no secret at all that the bad teams get the first picks, so if you're one of the very best college players in the draft, you know you're going to play for someone who's rebuilding. And these days, if you really don't want to play for them, just put in your four initial years and then exercise free agency.

So Eli Manning, who pitched a fit about not going to the Chargers, got his wish and was traded to the Giants about an hour after he was drafted by San Diego. Fine. I don't blame Manning, really, for not wanting to go to San Diego, seeing as how that team's front office is only marginally better managed than that of the Arizona Cardinals, but still -- they had the first pick, and Manning's the guy. By pitching a fit, he's already shown without ever so much as putting on shoulder pads in the NFL that he places himself ahead of the team. So I hope he tears his ACL in his first game and never plays again. Seriously.

(And for some reason, I've never been too wild about Eli's older brother Peyton either, but I don't know why. I mean, he's a very good quarterback, but he just bugs me, somehow. Maybe it's my suspicion that he was named after a soap opera?)

Now for the really important stuff from yesterday's first three rounds of the NFL Draft (with rounds 4-7 happening today): how did the Buffalo Bills do?

Well, I dunno.

I mean, there's that metaphysical sense in which I don't know: you obviously can't predict the future. Back in 1991 or thereabouts the Indianapolis Colts had the first and second picks in the draft overall, which they used to take defensive end Steve Emtman and linebacker Quentin Coryatt. Those picks, everyone thought, would lay the cornerstone for the Colts to build a defense that would dominate for years. Instead, both guys suffered through short, injury-riddled careers before leaving the game. And then there's the whole San Diego Chargers' Ryan Leaf fiasco, which put the Chargers this year into the position of using a top five pick to take a franchise quarterback twice in five years. Ouch. So, I don't know how the Bills' picks will pan out, obviously. (And I've always had this sneaking suspicion that Mel Kiper has somehow managed to craft a career out of not really knowing anything.)

But in general, I think they did pretty well yesterday, but I was hoping for something slightly different. My belief, before the draft, was that the Bills had to get the following in the first couple of rounds, and hopefully in this order:

1. Defensive Back
2. Quarterback
3. Wide Receiver

What the Bills actually did was to make a trade with Dallas to end up with two first-round picks (and no second round pick), which they used thusly:

1. Wide Receiver (Lee Evans, Wisconsin, 13th pick in the 1st round)
2. Quarterback (J.P. Losman, Tulane, 22nd pick in the 1st round)
3. Defensive Tackle (Tim Anderson, Ohio State, 11th pick in the 3rd round)

So the Bills apparently got the speedy wide receiver they were looking for. I wouldn't have gone with a first-round pick at this position, since this draft is supposedly rich in WRs, and the Bills aren't exactly desperate at that position, no matter how the fans might whine. A local sports-radio personality used to maintain that receivers grow on trees, and while I don't think good ones are quite that common, I don't think they're so uncommon that a team with other deficiencies needed to spend its high draft pick on one. But maybe Tom Donahoe was thinking in terms of Eric Moulds's longevity, after Moulds's injury-prone 2003 season. I'm also not sure what message this sends to third-year man Josh Reed, who's a guy who has taken a lot of abuse from fans for what they perceive to be his lackluster second year, even though that second year saw much more production that either Eric Moulds or Peerless Price displayed in their respective second years.

I wanted to see a defensive back drafted this year, badly. The Bills' secondary is usually pretty decent at tackling, but they haven't had a real interception threat since Kurt Schulz left the team years ago. They need someone who can pick off the ball once in a while. Maybe they're thinking that since they signed Troy Vincent, they're fine in this aspect, but I'm not sure yet. All I know is that the Bills filled out their Draft Day One selections with a defensive tackle. This probably isn't that bad an idea, since I've been harping on their inconsistent pass rush for about two years now. I seriously doubt this guy will step in and start, but well, there it is.

And finally, they needed a quarterback, and they got one in Losman, who is apparently an even better athlete than the guys taken in the draft's top eleven (according to Len Pasquarelli, an ESPN football writer). This pick is obviously a warning shot across Drew Bledsoe's bow, but it's also necessary: nobody really expects the Bills to still have Bledsoe around in a couple of years, so they needed to get their quarterback of the future now, when he could sit on the bench and absorb the game a bit before being anointed the starter. To get Losman, the Bills traded next year's first-round pick to the Cowboys (along with a second and a fifth-round pick this year), which means that for the second time in three years, the Bills have traded a future first-round pick to get a quarterback. Losman will also be the third "quarterback of the future" for the Bills since Jim Kelly's retirement (Todd Collins and Rob Johnson were the first two), so here's hoping Losman's the third-time charm. I actually don't mind the Bills trading a bit to get him, since this draft is deep in quarterback prospects, and had they waited another year, the pressure to deliver on a QB would have been that much higher.

So, the Bills ended up addressing two of the three main areas in which I was concerned, and they seem to have done so fairly prudently – i.e., they didn't give up the farm like the Vikings did when they decided that Herschel Walker was an important enough guy to get that they unloaded enough draft picks on Dallas for the Cowboys to build a dynasty team. As for the rest, I dunno. I can't predict the future, and anyway, I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the college game to begin with.

My readers are, as always, welcome to opine in comments about their teams' successes or failures in the draft (even fans of the Stupid Patriots are welcome, although my only interest in the StuPats draft would be if they "drafted" a letter withdrawing from the NFL). And thanks to Sean for tipping me off about the Pasquarelli article linked above.