So if we continue off of this from part 1, we have a GM in place with the authority to captain his own ship.  The GM list I had was not comprehensive, but it certainly had a player personnel/scouting theme.  This is because of where you need to succeed to be competitive in the NFL, and where by and large the Raiders have failed.  The draft.

Free agency as an avenue to build a team is the poorest choice a leam has available to them.  At best a player is in his 5th year, which is about the prime of most careers.  What do you have the player do with the prime of their career?  Learn a new system of course.  Most likely though you’re getting a player who has been in the league longer than that, either coming out of the prime or already on the decline.  Most teams will find themselves paying for what a player has done, not what they will do, when they make big free agent splashes.  It’s an inefficient, expensive way to build an aging team. 

                So what about the draft?  A bunch of young kids who have to learn the NFL and it’s really just a crap shoot anyways, right?  Not so much.  For as much attention as the Tom Brady’s of the world get, there are far more talented players that come out of the first day of the draft than the second day.   Sure there are a fair amount of first day busts but it most cases you can trace a systematic flaw in a team’s drafting strategy.

                Look around the league at the great teams of the recent past.  The Colts have been built nearly completely through the draft.  Indy has bled talent over the years, losing Edge and Rhodes, their starting corners from their super bowl years, Mike Peterson and Cato June, Jake Scott and Tarik Glenn (all of whom they originally drafted too).  They’ve been able to deal with these losses through several years of really smart drafting, they’re almost like a shark replacing one row of teeth with another each year.  Other teams that have built themselves this way are the Chargers, Jaguars, Steelers, Eagles, Cowboys, and Packers.  Good GMs are able to consistently get good players out of the draft.

                Through the draft you’re able to get cheap (unless you’re in the top ten) productive players whose best years are ahead of them instead of expensive, aging players on the decline.  Compare Zach Miller’s production at 4 years, 1.75 million to Alge Crumpler’s production at 2 years 5.25 million.  Darrell Jackson will make nearly as much in one year as Brandon Marshall will in 4.  Thomas Jones will make 7 times as much as Maurice Jones Drew over the course of their contracts.

                The key here is not just keeping draft picks on your roster (although the cheap depth is one of the most appealing parts of the draft), but finding starters through the draft.  This is where the Raiders have been bitten.  Kwame Harris, Hall, Griffith, Edwards, Walker,Wilson, Lelie, Wakefield, and Burgess are each starters from a different team.  This isn’t as bad as it was in years past, most of these are actually bargain players who shouldn’t be starting but would provide nice depth, and then there is Burgess who’s awesome.  But we don’t have to go too far back to find the Sapps, Culpeppers and Rhodes and see what big money free agents get you.

                The Raiders problems in the draft are two fold.  The first is Al’s over reliance on S-E-C speeeeeeeed!!!  Actually that’s only half true.  Al is certainly a fan of the 40 time, but he’s no fan of the major BCS conferences.   Here are the schools that this years draft class came out of: Arkansas, Connecticut, Richmond, Buffalo, and San Diego State.  Last year was better (and not surprisingly one of the better draft classes) but he still went to the dregs of college football, drafting players out of UTEP, Cincinnati, WSU, Arkansas State and Louisiana Tech. 2006 included UTEP, Weber State, Cornell, and Maine. 

Now, it’s certainly possible to get good players out of small schools.  Michael Roos is a hell of a tackle for the Titans and he’s out of Eastern Washington.  I live in Washington and didn’t know they had a football program until he was drafted.  But is it likely?  Absolutely not.  99.9% of the players that end up at San Diego State are there for a reason, they’re not as talented.  The average SEC player is far and away better than your average UTEP player.  The team has consistently tried to hit a home run in the later rounds of the draft and not surprisingly has consistently struck out.  The draft strategy on day two needs to be consistency and depth, not speed and… well….. more speed.

Part 3 will be a continuation of the draft theme a bit, we'll talk about building depth and how it can relate to the Raiders 4th quarter woes.