Gabriel: NFL Draft Day Misconceptions
By Greg Gabriel--
(CBS) As I write this, many of the 32 NFL clubs are in pre-draft meetings making final preparations for the 2015 NFL Draft that will be held in Chicago from April 30-May 2. What many people believe go on in draft rooms and what actually goes on are two different things.
Having sat in such draft rooms as NFL talent evaluator, there are a few misconceptions that I'll clear up.
Not every team calls their draft room the "war room"
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that I didn't use the term "war room." I refuse to use that phrase as it relates to the NFL Draft.
Eleven years ago, former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman lost his life while serving as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. A good friend of Tillman's was Ted Monago, as both played football at Arizona State, Monago a few years before Tillman.
After college while Tillman was playing in the NFL, Monago was climbing the coaching ladder. Tillman and Monago remained close friends and regularly stayed in touch. Monago left coaching in 2001 to enter scouting, and I hired him in June of that year when I worked for the Chicago Bears.
In April 2004 during out pre-draft meetings, Robyn Wilkey, who was Bears general manager Jerry Angelo's assistant, came into our meeting room and told Monago that he had an important phone call from his mother. Monago went out to take the call and a few minutes later came back into the meeting room with tears in his eyes. He was pale and could hardly talk, so I asked him what was wrong. He could barely reply and just said, "Pat's dead."
At that moment, I didn't know who he was referring to, so I asked who Pat was. He said his mom just told him that news broke about Pat Tillman being killed in action.
Needless to say, we ended out meetings that very minute and adjourned for the day. A short time later, I sent an email to all football operations staff that the draft room was no longer to be referred to as the war room. We are involved in the game of football, not in fighting a war. From that day on, the Chicago Bears have always referred to that room as the "draft room."
How do trade charts come into play?
In talking to NFL Draft fans, I get the impression that many feel that lots of decisions that are are of the last-minute variety. While that can be true when deciding on whom to select between two players, most teams have a draft plan that was set in place during the meetings leading up to the draft.
When the idea of trading up or down comes into play on the big day, it's almost always already been thoroughly discussed during the meetings. If a team is after one particular player and it feels it must move up in a round to get that player, then the cost of moving up is discussed beforehand.
When I started my career in scouting in the early 1980s, there was no such thing as a trade chart. You would make or receive a call, and terms were discussed. If you felt the terms were fair, the trade was made.
That changed when Jimmy Johnson was coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Johnson didn't like that there was no formal formula for making draft day trades. Because of that, he devised a chart that gave every pick in the draft a number value. If a team wanted to trade up, it had to have the picks that equaled the point value of the higher pick.
While every team in the league now has a similar value chart, not every chart is the same. They have changed considerably form the original charts because with the latest collective bargaining agreement, money values have changed.
Clubs don't strictly adhere to the value chart, either. It's used more so as a guide. The real value of picks, especially at the top of the draft, can change from year to year, depending on on the positional strengths of the draft and how talented the top picks are. When there are some "cant-miss" talents at the top of the draft, the trade value can go up. In short, each draft has its own market value.
That said, when a club is thinking about making a trade, what it wants to do and what it's able to do are sometimes two different things. Regardless, what they're able to do is determined in the days leading up to the draft.
To move up, especially in the first round, a club needs plenty of ammunition. If a team is happy drafting any of three or four different players who are rated highly on its board, it can always make the case to trade down. By moving down, the club obviously acquires more draft picks. Teams that are short on picks in a given year are usually receptive to moving down.
Making a trade is a highly vetted process. What are the advantages of moving up? What are the advantages of moving down? Can a team still get a coveted player or players by moving down? If you can't answer yes to the last question, don't make the trade!
Who makes the decision on who to draft?
By league rule, there's one person and one person only who has final say in draft day selections. In most cases, that's the general manager, but there are clubs in which the head coach has final say on who gets drafted.
In my 26 years with the Giants and Bears, while the GM always had the final say, it was always a collective decision in which the GM, scouts, head coach and scouting director had agreement on -- or at least had their say in the decision. There was never a pick made that wasn't discussed thoroughly.
Going into a draft, many teams have certain players that they want to target in each round. If everything goes as planned, it becomes easy to make those selections come draft day. If a club has its heart set on one particular player, chances are it will be heartbroken.
While that certain coveted player may be there sometimes, he won't be there all the time. That's why a club has to have a list of several names for each round. They prioritize the list, and if the top player isn't there, they go to No. 2.
You have to have discussion to get the players ranked properly. Anyone who had seen the player and written a report was allowed to enter in the discussion. Not only was the player's talent talked about, but so too was his character and his fit within the scheme.
If we reached a consensus that he was a player, we wanted he was put on the list. If we couldn't reach a consensus, that player was eliminated. That said, the room in which meetings and draft day drama unfolded wasn't exactly a democracy. The GM and head coach obviously had more weight with their votes.
If a final decision had to be made, the person in charge of the 53-man roster had final say.
Do clubs take the "best player available"?
While drafting the best player available sounds good, it seldom really happens. Most clubs take the best available player at a position of need.
Teams seldom go into a draft with just one need. They have several, but some needs are more important than others. During the ranking process, prospects at positions of need always seem to find their way to the top of lists.
That's not to say that a team will turn down a player at a non-need position. If that player is clearly better than the other players left on the board, consideration has to be given to drafting the better player. The other factor that comes into consideration when a player like that is available is the discussion to trade down. Passing on a highly rated player can come back to haunt you, but if you trade down and gets extra picks, that can offset passing on him.
The whole idea is to make the club stronger.
Analyst draft boards aren't comparable to teams draft boards
When watching the draft, the television analysts will often say after a team picks that they had another player at the same position ranked higher. This often happens because analysts do their work with the entire NFL in mind, while teams create a board uniquely to most help themselves. In addition, no two teams have the same draft board.
Each team rates prospects based on a player profile for each position. Teams want a certain type of player for each and every position on their squad. For instance, if a team plays a four-man defensive front, it has each of the two end positions defined as well as the two tackle positions. When scouts are on the road, they look closely at players that fit the profile wanted.
Because of that, scouts from Team A will look at players much differently than scouts from Team B.
What the Bears are looking for this year in defensive linemen is entirely different from what they have looked for in the last 10 or 11 years, because the defensive scheme is so much different now under new defensive coordinator Vic Fangio. Players who were fits in a one-gap 4-3 scheme seldom are fits to play in a two-gap 3-4 scheme. The same can be said about the linebackers. The Bears now are looking for players with different traits than they were before.
The analysts often try to be right at what area of the draft a player will be drafted. They really aren't looking at team fits, and they seldom know exactly what each team is looking for. So when they criticize a pick, they often can be off-base. The other factor that analysts don't typically know about are the results of medical exams (unless they were publicly leaked). On draft day, a player usually drops for one of two reasons -- a medical concern or poor character.
While teams boards won't differ that much as to who the top 50 players are in a draft, once you get past the second round, the difference can be huge. It's not odd to see a player who one club may rate as a fifth-round pick get selected in the third round by another club.
That's not to say one club is right and the other is wrong; it's just a difference in opinion in how they evaluated the player. Scheme fit also enters into that equation. Don't look for a 4-3 team to draft a 6-foot-3, 340-pound nose tackle -- he won't fare well in many 4-3 schemes. At the same time, don't look for a 3-4 team to draft a 275-pound defensive tackle.
Greg Gabriel is a former NFL talent evaluator who has been an on-air contributor for 670 The Score. Follow him on Twitter @greggabe.
