Early draft advice for the Washington Football Team

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 50+ years of rooting for the Washington Football Team, it’s that fans are always looking ahead. That’s why, in the middle of a two-game win streak that has put the team back into the playoff hunt, I am writing about next year.

I would never be presumptuous enough to call what follows “rules.” That sounds so authoritarian. Let’s just say these are three pieces of helpful advice that I am offering for next season. The team certainly doesn’t have to follow them. If they want to win, I’d suggest that they do, but, you know, if they are content to wallow in mediocrity, ignore my advice. I won’t take it personally in the least.

Early advice for Washington before 2022 Draft

1. Avoid receivers 6’2” and above

Sure, you can point to plenty of exceptions to this rule. (Oh – I forgot – these aren’t rules.) You can point to plenty of exceptions to this suggestion. Mike Evans and Adam Thielen.  Julio and Keenan. Tall receivers who have stayed healthy and produced.  Perhaps DK Metcalf will turn into one of them too.

Or maybe Metcalf will turn into Michael Thomas – the next big thing only yesterday, whose return to the football field has been in doubt for almost two seasons now.

Tall receivers get hurt. It’s usually a hamstring, but it’s always something. (Except when it isn’t – as I said, there are exceptions.) Give me Diggs and Hill, Hopkins and Jefferson, Brown and Brown (AJ and Antonio). Give me Davante. Give me Terry. All 6’1” and under.

And even if you personally fall in love with some tall, lanky giant with 4.4 speed and a catch radius of six miles, I can tell you that it is unlikely to work … for this particular team. Antonio Gandy-Golden is just the latest small-scale example of a tall receiver who can’t stay healthy for the Washington Football Team. Do I really need to remind you of Josh Doctson and Michael Westbrook? Mr. 50/50 Rod Gardner? The two-fer of Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly?

Sure, 40 years ago they found Art Monk. The glorious exception to the rule.

(BTW – for those of you who read and remember what I write, I will own up to the fact that I didn’t follow my own rule – I mean, suggestion – last season when I pushed for signing 6’4”, never-healthy Kenny Golladay. Some lessons need to be learned over and over.)

2. Look small – as in school

The Washington Football Team drafted six players from the University of Alabama in the five drafts between 2015 and 2019. I get it. Alabama has had the best program. (Sorry, Clemson fans.) It follows that they have the best players. There was about a 30-year stretch where every varsity basketball player who suited up for Morgan Wooten at DeMatha High got a college scholarship. Didn’t matter if he was the last guy on the bench. Colleges wanted well-coached players from winning programs.

When the Washington Football Team has drafted a blue-chip first-rounder – as in Jonathan Allen or Daron Payne – the results have been pretty good. But quick, name the four other Crimson Tiders who were not taken in the first round. I’ll wait.

Ryan Anderson, Shaun Dion Hamilton, Ross Pierschbacher, Arie Kouandjio. See a pattern? (Hint: none are still with the team.)

So, here’s my idea. Take a kid from a small school late in the draft. It’s not a sure thing, but neither is Alabama.

There were four players drafted from D2 and D3 programs last year. None have been particularly special, though three of the four – Quinn Meinerz in Denver, Mike Strachan in Indy and Chris Garrett in LA (Rams editions) – made their rosters, while the fourth – Zach Davidson – is on the Vikings practice squad.

I’ll admit that I don’t watch enough small school tape to have any kind of definitive ranking, but I have seen all of the following guys play, and they all deserve a look:

QB Aqeel Glass (Alabama A&M)

WR Xavier Smith (Florida A&M – and only 5’10”)

S Markqese Bell (who was in College Park ever so briefly before being suspended and leaving Maryland)

CBs Sam Webb (Missouri Western State) and Joshua Williams (Fayetteville State)

And finally – Central State does not have a good football team, but they have two very productive linebacker prospects in Kailen Abrams and Jamal Holloway. Abrams is more of 3-4 inside backer who may not be a great fit, but Holloway is an edge player who reminds me a lot of the 7th-rounders the Washington Football Team has been gobbling up in recent years.

3. Don’t rush your quarterback-of-the-future

This is the most important one.

You know what the most annoying question I hear over and over and over is? Why are teams so bad at picking a quarterback in the draft? There is no one answer to this, but I would humbly suggest that this is the biggest contributing factor:

NFL teams draft a 21-year old kid (or younger) and expect him to take over the most complex position in all professional sports immediately. Now, don’t get me wrong. Some can do it. But they are the exceptions. Most simply cannot. They need time.

But no one gives a highly-rated quarterback time these days. They are thrown to the wolves to sink or swim. If they play on a bad team, like this year’s “can’t miss” rookies Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson, they may be irreparably damaged by the experience.

You don’t need me to run through all the QBs who didn’t pan out in the past decade. You know them all by now. I think the Washington Football Team has even had a couple, though I have scrubbed them from my memory.

So, just for fun, let’s go back about thirty years and check on how top-tier QBs used to come into the league. There were 14 QBs between 1990 and 1992 who were selected play in the Pro Bowl. I’m going to leave three of them out at first, due to special circumstances that I will get to shortly.

Of the remaining eleven, guess how many started from Day 1?

Two of them – Troy Aikman and John Elway. (Elway started Day 1, but was quickly benched in favor of Steve DeBerg when it became clear he needed a little more time to adjust.)

Of the remaining nine, guess how many started in the first half of their rookie season?

One – Dan Marino, who took over from David Woodley six games into his rookie season.

That’s three Hall of Famers. As I said, there are exceptions.

Two others – Jim Everett and Chris Miller – got a few token starts toward the very end of their rookie seasons.

That means six of those Pro Bowl quarterbacks did not start during their rookie seasons. Some – Randall Cunningham, Ken O’Brien, Neil O’Donnell, and Washington’s own Mark Rypien – turned out to be pretty good QBs.

The other two – Joe Montana and Brett Favre – are in the Hall of Fame.

As are the other three mentioned above – Warren Moon, Jim Kelly, and Steve Young. What made them different is that each played professionally multiple years in other leagues (The CFL for Moon, and the USFL for Kelly and Young) before entering the NFL.

That means that of the 14 Pro Bowl QBs from 1990-1992, only three stepped directly off the college field into a starting role in the first half of their rookie season.

It’s a hard thing to do, and whoever the Washington Football Team drafts in 2022 to be the quarterback of the future, none of us should demand that he start immediately. Give him time. There’s a good chance it will pay off.

I don’t want to overload the front office with too much good advice at one time so I’ll stop there. We have plenty of time to offer more helpful suggestions down the road. As I write this, there are still 157 days until the 2022 draft.