FanPost

Was Mike Shanahan that bad of a drafter, lets look at the crap shoot that is the NFL Draft

Many of us at MHR (myself included) have lamented Mike Shanahan and the GM's for poor drafts that did his in, that his scouting was suspect and that was the ultimate demise of coach Shanahan.  But lets take a closer look and see if he really was doing such a bad job.  Looking back at the drafts from 1995 through 2006 it is interesting to do some statiscial analysis based on rounds.  Assuming that each round has 32 picks (which will actually shift the numbers higher since this analysis did not include supplemental picks), on average the following would be a team's percentage of drafting a "pro-bowl" player per round over that time frame:

1st Round: 134 pro-bowl players 35%

2nd Round: 59 pro-bowl players 15%

3rd round: 36 pro-bowl players 9.3%

4th round: 20 pro-bowl players 5.2 %

5th round: 20 pro-bowl players 5.2%

6th round: 20 pro-bowl players 5.2 %

7th round: 10 pro-bowl players 2.3%

Now lets look at Mike's success rate during that same period of time:

1st round: 5 pro-bowl players 42%

2nd round: 3 pro-bowl players 25%

3rd round: 2 pro-bowl players 16%

4th round: 1 pro-bowl player 8%

5th round: 0 pro-bowl players 0%

6th round: 2 pro-bowl players 16%

7th round: 0 pro-bowl players 0%

As we can see, Mike Shanahan the GM beat the NFL average on almost every round.  I understand that there will be grumblings that his recent lack of success 2001-05 may have spelled his doom, but what we sometimes fail to realize is that even with the best scouting in the world, most of the time the draft comes down to a crap shoot and sometimes you roll 7 and sometimes you roll snake eyes, but Mike Shanahan was beating the house.  Especially when you consider that the overall success percenatges are higher because I did not include all the flame out supplemental picks.  Another thing that this illustrates is that the 2008 draft class may be extradonary beyond compare when you may generate at least 2 pro-bowlers and possiblly 3 to 4 when it is all said and done from the Broncos end.  And as much as we can hope that the 2009 draft class is as successful as the 2008, the numbers are against it. 

This is a Fan-Created Comment on MileHighReport.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff of MHR.