In response to Kirk's '05 Draft Entry from the other day I thought I'd post some thoughts I had on the subject in case anyone cares.  Feel free to call me an idiot if you so choose...

I did a Bengals Draft Analysis prior to the '09 Draft (I will also post) and upon doing that decided to go back and grade all players picked by all 32 teams during the first two rounds of 2005.  I graded each player individually as to how their career has panned out.  I then concluded which teams have had the best success, and adversely, which teams have had the least.  Below is the summary.  I think most will be surprised at the outcome. 

Total '05 1st Rd. Picks:     32


”Failures”                            10        (31%)

”Average”                            8          (25%)

”Good”                                 10        (31%)

”Excellent”                          4          (13%)

** Interesting that more than half the players chosen in the 1st round do not pan out.  Even more interesting is that almost a third of all players chosen in the 1st round will be busts essentially.  On the other hand, it’s almost a “50/50” chance that the player will be either good to great as opposed to the type of player that a team will always be looking to replace (average to failure type).

Teams that had multiple picks in the first 2 rounds that were either “Good” or “Excellent” are as follows:

Dallas:                        (DeMarcus Ware, Marcus Spears)
San Diego:                (Shawn Merriman, Luis Castillo, Vincent Jackson)
Green Bay:                 (Aaron Rodgers, Nick Collins)

Teams that had ZERO picks in the first 2 rounds that were either “Good” or “Excellent” are as follows:

San Francisco:          (Alex Smith, David Baas)
Chicago:                    (Cedric Benson, Mark Bradley)
Minnesota:                 (Troy Williamson, Marcus Johnson)
Detroit:                       (Mike Williams, Shaun Cody)
Cincinnati:                  (David Pollack, O’Dell Thurman)
Jacksonville:              (Matt Jones, Khalif Barnes)
Oakland:                     (Fabian Washington, Stanford Routt)

FINAL SYNOPIS:

It is awfully fitting that San Fran, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Oakland are either amongst the worst teams in the league right now ar have had serious struggles recently.  Jacksonville, Chicago and Minnesota aren’t far behind them either.

Adversely, San Diego, Dallas and Green Bay have all been flirting with success.