At various points over the past two decades of NFL play, we have heard successful general managers rattle off terse responses to reporters who ask about their draft record, which, despite the team’s overall performance, doesn’t yield the font of talent that other clubs seem to find.
The frustration from the personnel side is obvious: If they are putting together a winning roster—by virtue of NFL economics and the (supposed) quest for parity—they will be punished when it comes to the draft system. The better you are, the worse the player you are supposed to get the following year.
This mechanism has yielded its own branch of roster-building theory. Teams such as the Rams, Seahawks and Patriots have all, to some degree, abandoned the idea of even picking in the bottom half of the first round, choosing to swap those picks for maturing talent ready to perform at the NFL level. But maybe the best roster-building plan is to not really have one, or to at least be flexible. As we saw with the Rams, and certainly the Patriots now, every avenue has its boundaries and limits.
