CHICAGO – You can blame the draft on the Chicago Bears. By playing in eight of the NFL’s first 12 championship games between 1932-43, the Bears were bullies.
In 1936, Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell sensed the rich teams were signing too many good players, so he convinced fellow owners to agree to a draft.
The idea was simple: the worst teams would get first shot at the best college players.
It was the great equalizer.
So why do the NFC champion Eagles have 13 picks Saturday and Sunday? Why do the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots have nine picks? And why do the 5-11 Bears have only six picks?
The rich aren’t supposed to get richer. The poor aren’t supposed to stay poor. Never mind.
Somewhere, Bert Bell is chuckling.
There are no rules yet against intelligence. The Eagles and Patriots are on top of the league because they have stayed on top of the draft, not with top picks but with more picks, not to mention good picks.
They have figured out that in the inexact science of drafting, quantity can be just as valuable as quality. They have traded down shrewdly and swapped players to accumulate picks.
The Eagles traded quarterback A.J. Feeley to the Miami Dolphins last year for this year’s second-round pick. Feeley was a fifth-round backup who had played in only seven games in three years. The Eagles probably were going to lose him in free agency anyway.
The Eagles also traded disgruntled guard John Welbourne to Kansas City for a third-round choice. In a draft that is supposed to have the most value in the 20-100 range, the Eagles have picks 31, 35, 63, 77 and 94.
“That’s a nice number,” said Andy Reid, Eagles coach and football operations chief. “I think if (we) just stayed without moving, (we would) get some pretty good players. Obviously, the percentages are lower the lower you move down.”
The Patriots used a compensatory sixth-round pick in 2000 to select quarterback Tom Brady. Everybody thinks the Patriots were so smart to tab Brady, but they had three sixth-round picks that year and just happened to make Brady their second one. Compensatory picks are awarded to teams that lose more free agents to other teams than they sign.
The Patriots earned three compensatory picks this year in rounds three, five and seven. The Eagles earned four in rounds five and six and two in seven. The Bears get none.
In the 10 drafts compensatory picks have been awarded, the Bears rank last in the league with only 10. General manager Jerry Angelo makes the valid point that the system is skewed because in some cases it rewards teams that mismanage their salary cap and thus lose more free agents than they are able to sign. But the Eagles and Patriots have discovered manipulating the system can pay off. They can’t help it if other teams keep signing players they deem extraneous.
In defiance of the NFL system that is supposed to level the playing field with the salary cap-free agency and the waiver wire in addition to the draft, the Eagles have played in four straight NFC title games and the Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls.
Eagles President Joe Banner, the team’s salary cap guru, explained the philosophy this way: “Five years ago, when Andy first came here, people believed the notion that in the salary-cap era, you can get good and stay good. The people up in Boston were having the same conversation at the same time.
“If you operate your team believing that, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go out figuring, “Hey listen, we got a shot this year so we better just go for it and then next year we’ll just have to retrench,’ then that’s what happens. But if you believe you can make decisions that allow you the opportunity year after year of being among the better teams … we both have proven you can be good and stay good.”
Sheer numbers are not the only secret to success. If the Patriots and Eagles use all their picks this weekend without trading any, the Patriots will have drafted 53 players since 2000 and the Eagles will have drafted 50. The Bears also will have drafted 50.
What has been the difference? Mainly, the Bears have come across no sixth-round Tom Bradys nor first-round Donovan McNabbs. Once teams have landed a few stars and established themselves like the Eagles and Patriots, the value of extra picks expands from convenience to luxury.
You still have to be either lucky or good no matter how many picks you have.
“You need to draft well to make the salary cap go,” Reid said.
The more picks you have, the better your chances.
“You use those picks to build,” said Dallas Cowboys owner-general manager Jerry Jones. “You can do some things with multiple picks. It creates so many options that it’s mind-boggling, from the standpoint of players who might be available at those picks, as well as the opportunity . . . in trades to move around and gain value.”
—
(c) 2005, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
—–
ARCHIVE PHOTOS on KRT Direct (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): superbowl or belichick
AP-NY-04-20-05 1435EDT
Comments are no longer available on this story