Reviewing the Draft - 2002 Edition

He was taken the pick after Ashley.

.
.
.

Oops.

Never should have bought that Haygood jersey…

I kid, I kid..

J

Wow, people are tough graders here. I think we don’t have perspective of how drafts turn out for the average team. I saw this and thought this was a far better than average draft.

But he was never going to be a number 1 WR and didn’t deserve tons of money so I wasn’t upset when he left.

He did need to work on catching those deep balls though. It seemed like a 50/50 chance everytime he was targeted he would score a touchdown or drop the ball.

I call this the Ed Reed draft. We had a huge need for S and Reed went a few picks after Lelie. I was at Univ of Miami at the time and was totally crushed that Shanny was so dumb to pass a potential HOF player at a spot of need for some Hawaii gimmick player. One of Shanny’s biggest draft day mistakes ever.

That said, Portis was his best 2nd round pick and we turned that into Champ Bailey and a high #2, which Mike then wasted on Tatum Bell.

because I thought I was grading Lelie rather than the whole draft. For the whole draft I’d say C–: an instant star traded for an even bigger (and with a longer career) star, a pretty good but underperforming (and soft) first round pick, and two or three solid citizens in the mid to late rounds who helped the team but not for long.

I say this affectionately, but you folks that are grading this draft poorly are craaaaazy.

Here’s my favorite analysis on draft successes. A statistician over at the Dallas Cowboys sbnation site has a series of articles where he analyzes historical draft records. The whole system is fairly ingenious, here is a rough description.

First, think of a way to judge the overall worth of an NFL player’s career. Some people pick game appearances, some people pick starts, some people factor in pro bowl or all-pro appearances. By far the most advanced metric I’ve seen that tries to capture this is pro-football-reference’s “Career Approximate Value” (CAV). Every player is given a career number – the higher the number, the greater the value.

Then, you factor in the complete draft history of every draft, every team, every player, and look up each player’s CAV.

Then you can look at the average CAV for pick #1, pick #2, etc. And you can then compare the CAV of each player that a team actually took.

So, you figure that all together, make a big table, and you end up with one like at the bottom of this fanpost entry here.

The upshot? The Denver Broncos’ 2002 draft was the 6th best in the league that year.

Anything above a D is generous. lmao

Nice write up man.

Like most of our drafts in the early 2000s and later, who in the world are these guys. Damn we sucked at drafting.

If it wasn’t for drafting Portis who eventually got us Bailey in a trade, I would give this a BIG FAT F.

but Portis netted us Bailey and for that I gave it a B. Probably a little too generous, but this was a pretty good draft for Shanny standards. Lelie and Brandon were both serviceable and with Portis being the All Pro he was for us I think B is fair.

I have a question beacuse I wasn’t a draftnik back then and have no idea of how people looked at Reed back then.

Anyway my questions is…..

Is taking Lelie over Reed like taking Dareus / Fairley etc over Peterson?

Initially I really liked the draft, mainly because we got what I thought could be an elite WR, and an elite RB, I also thought Davis was a good pick. I think looking back on it, Lelie frame did not fit what Shanahan wanted from his WR, basically someone who could be physical in the run game and make tough grabs across the middle, Portis was obviously a terrific pick in the 2nd round, and we did decent with Brandon and Putzier being decent contibutiers for a time. I think the greatest failing of this draft, as with many of Shanahan’’s drafts was the lack of bringing in good defensive talent and having the number one pick become an elite player.

The only players worth anything are Lelie, Portis and Brandon (with brief mentions for Putz and Pope). Lelie was an okay deep threat with average hands and nothing else, drafted way too high. Portis is the bright spot, not only did he have 2 amazing years he netted us Champ and a 2nd round pick. Brandon was a great cover safety until his knee problem, he really could have been something special. Pope was decent rotational player – not bad for where he was drafted. Putz sucked as a blocker, but he could take a hit like no one else, decent depth for TE for a couple of years. One star, 2 average players, and 2 scrubs. And this is one of the better Shanahan drafts….