Owning the first pick in the NFL Draft as part of a franchise recovery effort is like being a granted a one-time $60 million stimulus package by the federal government, with a couple requirements:
1) You have to pay the money back starting immediately.
2) It has to be spent by throwing a dart at the S&P 500, hoping you hit a solid stock.
In other words, even though you assume some amount of return—most stocks will rise enough to sell over the long haul—it's a deal that in the blighted short term, no fool would take.
Ask Jim Schwartz, the new coach of the Detroit Lions what he thinks about it. At the NFL Combine he told us the first pick in the draft felt like playing $5,000 blackjack. You lose and you end up walking home, he said. "I hope it's the last time I ever have it."
No kidding.
Consider that Detroit would love to figure out a way to trade for Jay Cutler, and from a raw value standpoint, one might think that with a pair of first-round picks, they'd have something Denver would want. Well, if Denver, a team ready to compete now, wants to pay out the nose for a non-guarantee of success. Right now Cutler plays under a deal he signed in 2006 that pays him up to $48 million over 6 years. Last year, the first pick in the NFL Draft, Jake Long out of Michigan, signed a 5-year, $57.75 million deal with Miami that included over $30 million in guaranteed cash and made him the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL. That deal was done on April 22nd, even before the draft had taken place.
In essence, if Detroit drafted a quarterback like Matthew Stafford, the junior out of Georia who while blessed with a good arm is by no means some kind of a certainty for performance—ask other recent top pick junior quarterbacks Tim Couch and Alex Smith if you need a reference—they'd be required to guarantee him more money than they'd be on the hook to pay Cutler if he landed in Detroit via a trade. The NFL and its player's association, in all their collective bargaining brilliance, have created a system where you can't even trade a Pro Bowl quarterback for the first pick in the draft because one team simply can't deal with the contract … and we're not talking about the Pro Bowl player. We're talking about the rookie, who, if he's a quarterback, will likely take a year-plus to marinate on the bench, soaking up as much of the playbook as he can, the rare instances like Matt Ryan aside.
In the end, a situation that seems like it could make a lot of sense might make very little. In a league where there is no statistic that can prove the top player taken in Aprils' draft will be truly superior over a certain number of years than the 5th, 10th or even the 20th pick—especially when the inane concept of value is considered—the top pick in the draft can look ever more like a misplaced punishment for poor play than a kind act of stimulus.
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