Are the Commanders hiring from the right front offices?
In the lead up to this draft season, I compared the Commanders roster, left over from Ron Rivera, to those of conference championship contenders over the past five seasons. It should have come as little surprise that rosters of championship contenders are packed with above average to elite players, while teams that barely ever see the playoffs, like Dan Snyder’s Commanders, had very few.
There has been some grumbling over the supposed failure of the new regime’s first draft to adequately address the roster’s biggest needs. But the biggest difference between the roster that new GM Adam Peters inherited and that of the Conference Champion that he came from is the shortage of game-changing talents.
The idea for this article came to me when I was doing research on the 49ers’ draft success during Adam Peters’ tenure as Vice President of Player Personnel and Assistant GM. I noticed that the 49ers had drafted five first team All-Pros in seven drafts from 2017 through 2023. That seemed like a lot. Some searching around revealed that the 49ers were tied with the Ravens for the most first team All-Pros drafted in that period.
I knew that the last time that Washington had drafted a first team All-Pro was when Scot McLoughan selected OT Brandon Scherff fifth overall in 2015. They haven’t drafted a lot in the last two decades. That made me wonder how far back I’d have to go to find five first team All-Pros drafted by the Redskins. This is what I found:
The fifth most recent first team All-Pro drafted by Redskins was Barry Wilburn, selected 219th overall in the 8th round of the 1985 draft. Wilburn was named to the All-Pro team when he led the NFL with 9 interceptions in the strike shortened 1987 season. He picked off John Elway twice in Washington’s Super Bowl XXII victory. He also set the current franchise record for the longest interception return with a 100 yard pick six against the Vikings in 1987. After playing six seasons with the Redskins and Browns, he moved to the CFL, where he became one of only 10 players to win a Super Bowl and a Grey Cup.
Wilburn was a part of some great Redskins’ memories. But he was drafted 38 years ago! What the 49ers and Ravens did in 6 years took Washington 38 years. Now I had to know, how abnormal is that?
Also, the 49ers’ and Ravens’ front offices seem like good places to recruit for the Commanders’ new personnel team. Are there other teams we should be looking at?
To answer those questions, I looked across the whole league.
Defining Elite Players
Photo by Jeff Speer/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
There are many different ways to define elite player. You can rank players at some positions by production stats, productivity or efficiency metrics. You can look at years leading the league, PFF grades, or one-size-fits-all metrics like Approximate Value.
Some might insist that only valid way to grade players is by detailed film study. But that’s not really a practical solution to find the last five elite players drafted by each NFL team, which in some cases might take you back more than a decade.
Another approach is to ask a large panel of experts to pick the best player(s) at each position in each NFL season. That essentially describes the All-Pro and Pro Bowl teams.
The term “All-Pro” can actually have more than one meaning. Each season, All-Pro teams are voted on by large expert panels assembled by the Associated Press (AP), Sporting News (SN), and Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). The AP and PFWA use voting panels of writers and broadcasters. The Sporting News All-Pro team is voted on by NFL players and executives. The AP names first and second teams, whereas the others name a single team. There is usually a high level of agreement on the players chosen at most positions. None of the three All-Pro teams has official status with the NFL.
In this article, I have chosen first team AP All-Pro (AP1) as one criterion for elite status, for purely practical reasons. AP1 status is listed in the Pro Football Reference database, which I use to write articles. If I had been aware of any searchable database that lists SN and PWFA All-Pro status of players by draft class, I would have included them as well.
AP1 is a very selective measure of elite status, since it based on selecting the best player at each position each season. The main issue with using it as a criterion for drafting elite players is that it might be too selective.
To broaden the pool, I also included Pro Bowl selection as an alternative indicator of elite status. Pro Bowl nomination is an official NFL honor. Separate AFC and NFC rosters are voted on by fans, players and coaches, with each group’s votes counting equally. Around 20 additional players are added after the initial roster selections to replace players who were unable to attend the Pro Bowl Games. As a result, there are more than three times as many players voted to a Pro Bowl roster each season than the All-Pro teams.
Annual Pro Bowl nominations are more debatable than All-Pro listings. However, there is less debate about players who get nominated more than once. Therefore, my alternative criterion for elite status was two or more Pro Bowl nominations.
How long did it take teams to draft their last five elite players?
Time to draft the last five elite players was calculated as the difference between the draft year of the fifth most recent elite player and 2023. That might be considered as deflating all the times by 1 year, or treating 2023 as year 0. No team drafted five AP1s or 2x Pro Bowlers in 2023, so it’s not really an issue. The main point is all teams were measure in exactly the same way.
First Team All-Pros
To kick things off, let’s have a look at how long it took for each NFL team to draft their last five AP1s. Were the Washington Redskins particularly bad at drafting the elite of the elite, or are there other teams with similar draft histories? Which teams have been the best at drafting elite players in recent years?
Time to draft five first team All-Pros might seem like a fairly contrived metric. But, as you can see, it does a pretty good job of separating championship contenders and non-competitive franchises from the rest of the pack.
Starting at the top of the rankings, the top five includes all four teams which played in the 2023 conference championships. The other team ranked in the top five are the Dallas Cowboys. As I have written previously, the Cowboys have been one of the best teams in the league at accumulating All-Pro level talent. They are often competitive in the regular season. But something about that organization keeps them from getting past the divisional round of the playoffs.
The top five teams all managed to draft five AP1s in the past eight drafts or fewer.
At the other end of the ranking table, the bottom seven teams took 20 or more years to draft their last five AP1s. Only three of these teams have won a playoff game in the past five years. The Bengals are the only of the bottom seven to win a playoff game after the Wild Card round in that time.
As we might have suspected, Washington is ranked in a distant 31st place, taking 11 more years to draft their fifth AP1 than the Jaguars, ranked one place ahead of them. The Redskins, as the team was known 38 years ago, might only have avoided ranking last on a technicality. The team currently known as the Cleveland Browns is an expansion team, which began playing in 1999. The original Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens in 1996. The new Cleveland Browns have only drafted four firstteam All-Pros in their 25 year franchise history.
Washington has never been one of the better teams at drafting elite talent. But perhaps the overly stringent AP1 criterion gives a distorted a view.
Multiple Pro Bowlers
To provide a more inclusive view of premium talents, I also ranked teams based on the time it took them to draft their last five players who earned two or more Pro Bowl nominations.
Washington gets a boost up to 18th place in the rankings, nearly cracking the top half of the league, by virtue of drafting the following multiple Pro Bowlers in the past 12 seasons:
2017 DT Jonathan Allen, 2x PB
2015 G Brandon Scherff, 5x PB
2012 QB Kirk Cousins, 4x PB
2012 RB Alfred Morris, 2x PB
2011 DE Ryan Kerrigan, 4x PB
Scherff is the only Washington draftee to make first team All-Pro and Pro Bowl rosters since Trent Williams, drafted in 2010. More recently drafted Pro Bowlers in Washington have only had one nomination thus far: Chase Young, Montez Sweat, Terry McLaurin, Daron Payne.
Two teams that join the top five of the rankings, when this criterion is used, are the Buffalo Bills and the New Orleans Saints. The Bills have posted post-season wins in each of the past four seasons, and made it to the Conference Championship round in 2020. The Saints haven’t won a playoff game since Drew Brees retired in 2020. But they have also only had one losing season in the past seven years.
The team that dropped the furthest in the rankings using this criterion are the 49ers. Most teams draft multiple Pro Bowlers at a faster rate than AP1s. The 49ers are one of four teams that countered that trend by drafting their fifth AP1 more recently than their fifth multiple Pro Bowler. The others were Cowboys, Rams and Patriots. The Buccaneers and Chiefs drafted them at equal rates. I’m not sure if that is significant.
The teams that remained in the bottom tier of the rankings (this time bottom 8 instead of 7), regardless of “elite” criterion were the Browns, Jaguars, and Bengals. Washington only escaped staying in the bottom tier by one Pro Bowl player-year.
Drafting First Team All-Pros and Multiple Pro Bowlers
Using different criteria for drafting “elite” players resulted in some reshuffling of the rankings. A few teams stayed in the top tier regardless of which criterion was used and a few stayed in the bottom bracket. Washington has been the worst team at drafting first team All-Pros, and was in the bottom half of the league at drafting multiple Pro-Bowlers.
It might be splitting hairs to differentiate the two, so to wrap this up I ranked the teams by time to draft their most recent five elite players by either criterion.
No matter which criterion I chose, the Ravens come out on top. They edge out everyone else to claim the title as the best team at drafting elite talent in the NFL in recent years.
The eight teams ranked first through fifth, include all four teams that played in the 2023 Conference Championship playoff round. Every team ranked in the top-5 has made the playoffs in the past five seasons. Five of the top eight have made deep playoff runs. Two of the three “underachievers” in the top drafting group (Saints and Titans) have been without a top tier QB during the last five years. The other is Dallas. While the Cowboys can’t seem to capitalize on their star-studded roster in the playoffs, they have at least made it to the post-season in each of the last three seasons.
The bottom half of the ranking table includes a mixed bag of teams that have chronically underperformed, as well as some teams which have experienced recent success, despite not being the best at drafting elite players, as measured by these criteria. Obviously there is more to contending for championships than just drafting All-Pros and Pro Bowlers. There are also probably some elite players who were snubbed by the definitions I used in this article, including many budding stars drafted in 2023. There were probably not enough of those to chance any team’s ranking, with the possible exception of Detroit.
It should come as little surprise that the Commanders have been among the bottom of the league at drafting elite talents over a very long period.
Recruiting from the Right Teams
The good news for Commanders’ fans is that the team’s fortunes could be about to change. Since the end of the 2023 season, the new team ownership and management have embarked on a rapid and deep overhaul of the front office and personnel teams.
The first hire in the front office “recalibration” was the aforementioned GM Adam Peters. He was recruited from the 49ers, who were tied for second place in my final rankings. Peters was recruited by John Lynch when he took over as GM to undertake a rebuild of the 2-14 49ers in 2017. He was initially hired as Vice President of Player Personnel. Lynch credits him with having played an integral role in establishing the team’s highly successful draft operation. He was recently promoted to Assistant GM. In the third year of Lynch’s rebuild, the 49ers were competing in Super Bowl.
Commanders’ Assistant GM Lance Newmark was recruited from the Detroit Lions, where he was Senior Director of Player Personnel. The Lions are also tied in second place in these rankings. They don’t seem to get the recognition they deserve as one of the best drafting NFL teams in recent years. Even before the hiring of EVP/GM Brad Holmes, they have been regularly hitting on premium players in the draft. Since Holmes joined in 2021 they have stepped it up. If they have a few more drafts like 2023, the secret will be out. Newmark had been with the organization for 26 years, through several front offices and its transition from the worst, to one of the best teams in the league.
Last of all, the other franchise that the Commanders have been looking to for personnel talent is the first placed Baltimore Ravens. Last week it was announced that the Commanders had hired Ravens Director of College Scouting David Blackburn to be the new Director of Player Personnel. With the Ravens, Blackburn learned from two of the best personnel minds in the business, Ozzie Newsome and Eric DeCosta.
It was also announced that the Commanders had hired Dwuane Jones, as their new National Scout. Jones most recently worked as the Atlanta Falcons’ Assistant Director of College Scouting. Prior to that, he was a scout with the Ravens from 2017 through 2020. His biggest claim to fame is being the scout who first brought Lamar Jackson to the Ravens’ attention and championed him through the draft process.
Of course, recruiting talent from the best draft operations is no guarantee of future draft success. But with the expertise that the Commanders’ new regime is stockpiling, it would be surprising if we don’t see the team heading to places it has not been in a long time.
