Brilliant!
Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert hit a home run in their first draft with the Browns. From filling major holes in the secondary with the picks of Joe Haden and T.J. Ward, to playing the waiting game perfectly and landing Colt McCoy at the exact right time, this has been one of the best draft days since the team returned in 1999.
It’s heartwarming for Browns fans everywhere to finally have credible, knowledgeable, NFL-caliber people in charge of the team. With their years of combined NFL experience working in harmony to rebuild the team, the Browns are finally on the road out of the NFL’s wasteland.
The team formulated a plan and stuck to it, rejecting the urge to over trade or overrate players and take them too high. Holmgren and Heckert also made a point to select players in the first two rounds who can step on the field in September and play – not in a couple of years but now – and who will not be inexplicably placed on the inactive list on a weekly basis.
In fact, Tony Grossi of the Plain Dealer reported that “all the Browns’ draft picks so far are considered by the team to be serious contenders for starting jobs as rookies.”
What a novel approach, not redshirting your draft picks but actually allowing them to play.
Finally, Holmgren and Heckert saw the late-season win streak of last year as the smoke-and-mirror show it was, so they wisely determined that the team can’t have any long-term success with the QB play it was receiving. So they waited patiently for McCoy – accepting the possibility that they would miss out on him – again showing that not only do they have a plan, but that they understand the reality of quarterback play in the today’s NFL.
“I wasn’t going to force-feed it that much,” Holmgren said of the waiting game for McCoy. “Sometimes it just kind of falls to you. If it was going to happen, that’s kind of the way I wanted it to happen.”
And they know that if you can give a rookie QB a few years to mature the odds increase dramatically that he will succeed. So there will be ridiculous quarterback competition this summer in Berea and no chance that McCoy will be named the starting QB this fall. Jake Delhomme and/or Seneca Wallace will handle the position this year and possibly even next. McCoy will be given the time to mature and the opportunity to succeed that is vital in the NFL today.
And Brett Ratcliff can start working on his resume.
Red Right 88 