MVN - Most Valuable Network

All Skins Draft Picks Signed Before Camp

Fred Davis signs.

Devin Thomas, too.

Though the 2008 version of the Redskins may look a little bit different on opening day than it does right now, the core of the team, it’s draft class, is signed sealed and delivered.

The Redskins got all of their 2nd rounders, along with 3rd rounder Chad Rinehart, signed for four years.  The logic in this deal is obvious:  to prevent the player from qualifying for restricted free agency after 2010.

Certainly, the uncertainty with the CBA had a hand in the Skins pushing for longer deals — though typically 2nd rounders do sign for 4 years, it’s not unheard of for a2nd rounder to do a three year deal.  By the time these contracts expire, a new CBA will be in place, or the contracts won’t be valid anyway, so it’s impossible to say right now how the free agent market will look when these four guys become eligible for it.

In return for the longer deal, the players will typically receive 33% more bonus money than if a shorter deal was done, simply because there is more time to prorate it.  Thomas got 2.75 million in bonus money, Davis got 1.8 million, and Rinehart got 600K.  The variance in the amount of bonus money is due entirely to draft slot and position on the field.

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A few predictions for the first three years of the deals for the rookies:

I feel strongly that Malcolm Kelly will be a more impressive pro receiver than Devin Thomas.  Draft position aside — the Redskins simply thought (correctly) that Kelly would last on the board longer than Thomas — Kelly’s body of work in college makes him an easier prospect to project than Thomas.  His skill set is a proven one at the pro level:  bigger possession receivers with great hands will find their niche in the NFL, although with varying degrees of success.  Kelly is by no means a surefire superstar, but it’s hard not to like the guy.

This is not to say of course that Thomas won’t be successful on the Redskins.  The reason that we rated him outside of the top ten receivers at MVN’s NFL Draft University is this:  had Thomas returned for his Senior year to be Michigan State’s number one receiver, the most likely outcome would have been a year that (if he stayed healthy), he might have produced yardage totals in the 600-700 range, or about half as much as last year.  With these type of totals, and in a stronger receiver class, Devin Thomas probably would have been a more polished day two selection in 2009.

The (debatable) error the Skins committed on Thomas was that they bought “high” (Devin was the second receiver taken in the draft).  People who work on the stock exchange can tell you that if you have inside information on a certain stock, that tells you it’s about to soar in value, you will still make a ton of return on investment even if you buy high:  just don’t make it a trend.  I think this is a good analogy for the Thomas selection:  there were a ton of safer stocks on the board, both at the receiver position and other position of critical need.  But the team clearly had scouts who thought Thomas was a can’t miss prospect, so they bought high.  Thomas will have to be one of the two best receivers in the class (or comparable to that) to justify the Skins optimism, and here’s hoping that they can convert their faith in him into a huge return on investment.

Fred Davis is at some point in the next few years, going to get some work as the number one Tight End.  Chris Cooley is a great player who has stayed remarkably healthy and improved his blocking each and every year, but as is the risk in football, one’s luck on injuries can turn at any play of the season.  Because Cooley is such a great player, it makes sense that any offense that Jim Zorn builds would feature the Tight End heavily.  Because of this, the Davis selection has the potential to look very, very good one day.  Even with Cooley in the lineup, the Redskins offense was in desperate need of two TE versatility.

As far as Davis as a prospect, I was lukewarm on him at draft time, but the team feels that his blocking ability was incredibly underrated.  If the draft analysts were wrong on Davis as a blocker, and the team was right, this has the potential to be a huge, huge steal.  If I was running the team, I would have taken Texas A&M’s Martellius Bennett with that selection (Bennett went to the Cowboys later on), but there’s no reason not to trust the Redskins’ college scouting department on this one:  they make far, far more than I do.

Chad Rinehart was taken in part because of his durability and versatility on the line.  I don’t think he’ll ever be anything more than a Guard in this league, but Guard was one of the team’s biggest needs, and they addressed it when the value was proper.  I see no reason why the team wouldn’t allow Pete Kendall to move on at the end of 2008 and just hand the starting LG job to Rinehart, who I predict will take it and never look back.  He’s got the potential to be better than Derrick Dockery was on the O Line.

Elsewhere, I’m pretty high on Colt Brennan as a third string QB.  He probably won’t touch the field his rookie year (which is for the best), but I think he can play about league average football early in his career when he is asked to play it.  If he can run up some good numbers in limited time in 2010, the Redskins may be able to parlay their 6th round investment in Brennan into a day one draft pick come 2011, and then it will really be a great pick.

He’s blocked in Washington by Jason Campbell, but Peyton Manning will be 35 in 2011, so maybe the Colts will be looking for a young, but promising QB prospect to learn under Manning and future Colts coach Jim Caldwell.  I’m just throwing that out there right now, but keep an eye on it.   Closer to home (for Brennan), time may be running down on the Alex Smith experiment in San Francisco, and Mike Martz was rumored to like Brennan around draft time, perhaps that’s a possible destination for Colt in the future.

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I need to clarify a few things from my last post on the Redskin defensive backs.  I should point out that I was less than clear regarding what Adjusted Yards Per Pass Attempt measures.  I led Hog Heaven readers to believe it was simply “targeted yards against”, divided by the number of targets, but thats only part of it:  the numbers are then adjusted for the strength of the offense.  The Redskins faced above average passing competition in 2007, so the numbers are much stronger and the rankings higher than just simple yards against per pass attempt.

My apologies on the confusion and I’ll take more time to throughly explain the metrics used when I evaluate the defensive line next week (spoiler:  Anthony Montgomery=stud).

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.