Are the Skins as bad at building through the draft as many think?

Posted on by

July 22, 2019

by Alex Zeese

Last week, Warren Sharp from SharpFootballAnalysis.com published a tweet that seemed to catch the attention of a few of our regular readers:

It’s an issue we’ve discussed before. Not too surprising.  The fact that the Redskins don’t seem to have a great track record of building through the draft has been a somewhat constant fan gripe for the last twenty years.  But one of our readers asked a question that I thought was worth diving into – how bad are the Redskins when you compare them to other NFL teams? I’ll be honest, I actually do have a life so I’m not going to spend a whole day looking at 31 NFL teams draft picks and trying to figure out an exact ranking league-wide, but I am willing to take an hour or so and at least check out other teams in the NFC East and give you some numbers.  So, a few quick notes before we look at how Washington compares to our rivals.

I’m not going to waste space posting every other team’s draft class. You can go find them yourselves on Pro Football Reference here:
Cowboys draft history
Eagles draft history
Giants draft history

For this project, I manually counted every contract extension for each NFC East team between 2010 and 2015. I didn’t count the exercise of a 5th-year options or franchise tag as an extension because it appears as though Sharp didn’t count those in his initial post. Secondly, both the Eagles and Cowboys drafted a few guys who went to other teams for a season or two and then came back, the most notable example being Nick Foles who left Philly for the Rams. I didn’t count that as a re-signing either.  Sorry Mr. Nick.  There are a number of players who aren’t officially retired from the NFL but are still technically free agents, such as players like WR Terrance Williams from Dallas or Bennie Logan from Philly.  For my purposes, I didn’t count them as active players.

Lastly, I did track the “contracts after initial contract” as they were mentioned in Sharp’s tweet, or as I will simply call them, 3rd contracts. Where a player got through his rookie deal, was given his 2nd contract, and has been re-signed again by his team after that first big payday. It’s really not that relevant when you think about it. Generally a players in the early part of the 2010 to 2015 span would be at a point where they would get to their 3rd contract, it’s basic math, four years on your rookie contract, but that payday a good player gets after their rookie contract can easily be another four to six seasons. The only players who have played through their rookie contract and second contract were mostly drafted in 2010 or they only had a short extension on their second contract.

Let’s get to it.

Eagles
The Eagles have been the most successful team in the NFC East for the last few seasons and have some hardware to show for it.

For all the success that Philly had in 2018, their draft success between 2010 and 2015 really doesn’t look all that different from the Redskins.  Philadelphia had fifty-four picks in that span and signed seven of those fifty-four to a contract extension, two of which are on a 3rd contract right now. Of those fifty-four picks, twenty are still in the NFL today.  We have to give the Eagles some credit.  Some of the seven they hit on in those years have been stars, borderline hall of fame types. Fletcher Cox and Zach Ertz are both star players.  Lane Johnson, Brandon Graham, and Jason Kelce are also still with the Eagles and are darn good players.  Two of the seven guys they signed from that span, defensive back Nate Allen and famous drunken jerk Riley Cooper, are no longer in the NFL.

Overall, in that five-year span, the Eagles are not very different from Washington. Eagles fans would argue that Cox and Ertz are bigger successes than the likes of Trent Williams and Ryan Kerrigan, but I’m not sure they are that far apart.

Cowboys
I will tell you right now that sadly the Cowboys probably had the most draft success of any team in the NFC East over this five-year span we are looking at, at least in terms of the raw numbers.  Dallas had forty-five picks from 2010 to 2015. Of those picks, ten received contracts after their rookie year, one is on a 3rd contract, and twenty one are still in the league.  Dallas has had a lot of success when it comes to drafting star-level talent.  The oft-injured Sean Lee is the only guy on his 3rd deal, and they also drafted three pro-bowl caliber offensive linemen in Tyron Smith, Travis Frederick, and Zack Martin in that span.  Demarcus Lawrence always seems to give our O-line problems here in D.C.

Two notable names who they extended that are no longer with their team are Dez Bryant and Morris Claiborne.

So, Skins fans, let’s wash that bad taste out of our mouths for a minute, take a sip of your beer, or your orange soda if you’re named Steve, and get ready to feel a bit better about ourselves.

Giants
HELLO NEW YORK!
This team did amazingly terrible draft work. The Giants give new meaning to the words “incompetent drafting”. From 2010-15, they had just 42 picks, fewest in the NFC East. NONE, yes zero, are still Giants at this point.  Only two, Jason Pierre-Paul and Odell Beckham, Jr., were given post-rookie contracts. Both were shipped out of the big apple just one year after a contract was signed; i.e., both were bad re-signings because of their off the field issues.  The best part is that their best draft pick from that span, Landon Collins, is now a Redskin.  Yes, one of their worst picks Ereck Flowers is too, but let’s stay positive. We got Collins, their all-pro stud of a strong safety. Oh, and only 11 of the 42 picks are still in the NFL.

The final numbers:
I put the success percentage in parentheses.

Cowboys Redskins Eagles Giants
Total number of draft picks 45 52 54 42
Re-signed after rookie contract 10(22.2.%) 7(13.5%) 7(13%)  2(4.7%)
Players who got a 3rd contract with their team 1(2.2%) 1(1.9%) 2(3.7%) 0(0.0%)
Number of draft picks still in the NFL 21 (46.7%) 18(34.5%) 20(37%) 11(26.2%)

In conclusion, are the Redskins the worst team in the NFC East when it comes to their draft success and building via the draft? Clearly not.  They certainly could they have been better – obviously, teams all strive to draft well and keep any and all talent they can find, but despite that, not a single team in the NFC East ever once re-signed more than a quarter of their picks.  The “chew them up and spit them out mentality” isn’t just the case here in Washington but is likely a league-wide norm.