Raider Draft Evaluation.... 'What could have been.."

It’s easy to go back and criticize picks when we know how things turned out after the fact. The only first-round selections I had qualms about would be Darrius Heyward-Bey and Fabian Washington. I was okay with everything else at the time.

Schweigert had a problem under Rob Ryan in the same position. Huff got benched and then took it upon himself to work w/ Nnamdi Asomugha to get better, and it’s shown.

I have a problem w/ McFadden. I didn’t want McFadden to begin with. All he’s been so far is injury-prone.

And well Russell, I tried to back him. And then I called for his head and the entire blog wanted to kill me. And then the following week everyone saw what I saw and all the Russell defenders have been strangely quiet.

Gallery was a good pick except wrong position. Once he got moved he became a solid player.

LIke RRS said, it’s easy to look back and see what should have been. But we now we have to live w/ what we picked.

You can look at many teams who make “suspect” picks and see what could have been. There will always be bright spots in a draft, but would each one of those picks we should have picked have been as effective with constant coaching changes among other things we’ve done while rebuilding.

You don’t see teams sitting there pondering why they didn’t select Tom Brady five times over.

The fact is that due to the amount of rounds in the draft, you draft for need, not talent a lot of the time. So when someone doesn’t pan out it’s either because you did a bad job scouting or he just couldn’t hack it in the big league. You can’t say, oh we drafted this DT but we shoulda gotten this diamond in the rough RB. No one can read minds.

Oaklands Personnel could not see the future. And Matt Lienhart is down right horrible.

behind Al’s or someone’s priority when they lock in on a guy.

Though I was also guilty of being enamored by Jamarcus’ physical gifts, the list of other qbs we didn’t take because we made that monumental mistake is ever growing, and that is inexcusable. True, it’s easy to look back and criticize or say what was good.

It’s interesting when you see guys like Fitzgerald, Boldin, Calvin Johnson. Ngata and Dorsey. When you look at the amount of dropped balls and lack of passing game, or inability to defend the run on the flip side. And somehow, still every year I’m fooled into believing we’ll actually take who most trusted GM types believe are the best picks for us, and over and over we take track stars.

I can’t help but be angry about not addressing those needs with our top picks when we could have. I am, however, thankful that we continue to have some shining starts with some of the picks, like Nnamdi, Huff, Murphy and Myers this year. In that aspect, the crapshoot that the draft is, we are fortunate to come out with some steals.

When looking at top picks, too, perecentage wise, around the league, how few actually immediately work out? It’s why guys like Belichick and Rich McKay, Scott Pioli, sometimes Parcells even—avoid the early picks these days.