Jim Donaldson: Upcoming draft doesn’t excite Belichick
Most years, any NFL team would be thrilled to have the first pick in the draft.
Not this year.
“I think this is a draft where there doesn’t appear to be a clear-cut, No. 1 player,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. “To me, it’s a little bit like the ’91 draft, when I was in Cleveland.”
Ah, yes, the NFL Draft of 1991. Not exactly a vintage year.
“The Patriots,” Belichick recalled, “traded out of that [top pick] to Dallas. Dallas traded up and, the first few picks there were, I don’t think there was any consensus on the order of those players, and Russell Maryland was a little bit of a surprise choice at No. 1.
“That was a draft,” said Belichick, who was coaching in Cleveland then, “that, as it turned out, there were a lot of players in the second round — the Brett Favres, the Roman Phifers, guys like that — that probably had better careers than a lot of guys in the first round of that draft. There was probably about a third of that first round that I don’t know if they lasted three years in the league.”
projo.com/sports
4/20/08
