O-Line Edition: Free Agency and the Draft

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Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

2nd Round Picks:
1999: Jon Jansen
2001: Fred Smoot
2002: Ladell Betts
2003: Taylor Jacobs
2006: Rocky McIntosh
2008: Fred Davis, Malcolm Kelly, Devin Thomas
2011: Jarvis Jenkins

I would trade that entire list for an elite QB. On that list, who was a major contributor in years one and two? Davis? Jansen? Smoot?

Yes, the loss of the 2nd rounder hinders us. Okay. It's the old, you don't make an omellete without breaking some eggs.

In the same vein as the NFL letting us pick 6 guys with our 3rd rounder - Maybe we should have just asked them to give us a franchise QB of our choosing at no cost and then we would still have the 2nd round pick.

You take the good with the bad. If RGIII turns out to be a phenom, missing on getting a Jansen or a Davis will be forgotten. If he struggles as a rookie, the 2nd round player probably wasn't going to equate to more wins anyway. And, God forbid, RGIII is a bust - well, we are just up the sh**iest creek in the world without a paddle or a canoe.

If the recent history of the franchise were the be-all-end-all here, it'd be easy to temper expectations for RG3 this upcoming year. Out of the performance of the three first round QBs the Redskins have taken, Shuler was inadequate as a rookie, Ramsey was merely adequate, and Campbell didn't play a snap. Don't average that out: it's not great. Certainly not worth trading up for.

Here's the deal: the Redskins are in bad shape. They needed to solve their quarterback issue in the first round, and then needed to have a hell of a draft beyond the first round. Especially after the cap penalty threw a wrench into things.

My personal philosophy on things is that you always want to give yourself the best fighting chance to compete now and in the future. To me, that means instead of trading up (or even down), the Redskins needed to land three top level players in the first two days of this draft, including one quarterback.

They're going to get the quarterback. Have him. No one can jump them. They are still able to use that third round pick to bring in another top player, provided they are aggressive enough to target a guy who is falling due to high supply (such as CB or WR). But that's essentially their limitation. There's a virtual guarantee here that they'll come up short of what they needed to in order to improve the team to compete in a loaded NFC.

So while I think this can still be a pretty darn good offseason (fixed QB, fixed WR?, have another day two pick), not having that second round pick eliminates any irrational hope I might have had of this team getting back on the pace to compete in 2013 after it set itself back the last two years.

I understand fully if people see Griffin and are like "goddamnnit, I'll take it!" independant of any other failures of the offseason. I get that a lot of successful second round picks aren't with the team anymore. But mortgating the future makes a lot more sense if you have the resources to be relevant in the present. If you're giving up future picks to be better (but still inadequate) in the present, that's not good or bad so much as it's desperate.