The 2006 NFL Redraft: Who's Your Pick?

With the upcoming Texans-Saints game matching Mario Williams versus Reggie Bush, Houston Chronicle columnist Jerome Solomon did a do-over of the 2006 draft. Here it is:

#1 Houston Texans - Joseph Addai, RB
#2 New Orleans Saints - Maurice Jones-Drew, RB
#3 Tennessee Titans - Vince Young, QB
#4 New York Jets - Jay Cutler, QB
#5 Green Bay Packers - Laurence Maroney, RB
#6 San Francisco 49ers - A.J. Hawk, LB
#7 Oakland Raiders - Reggie Bush, RB
#8 Buffalo Bills, Donte Whitner, SS
#9 Detroit Lions, Ernie Sims, LB
#10 Arizona Cardinals, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, T

Hmmm. Redrafts are always hard because of what you should consider. Marketing? The failures or injuries of other players on the team yet to happen? And whether these players would have the same success for the redrafted team as they do on their current team.

For example, if the Texans knew for a fact that even after working with Gary Kubiak, David Carr was going to struggle as much as he did, they wouldn't have renewed his contract in February 2006 for three years. With no David Carr in the picture, the Texans would have had significantly more fan pressure to pick quarterback, and specifically Vince Young with the first pick in that draft. Nationally, NFL fans thought that the Texans should have picked Reggie Bush, but in Texas the sentiment was mostly behind Young.

In addition, with the Titans picking Young, it's allowed Bud Adams to make significant marketing inroads in Texas. There's a group of Texans fans in Austin who are at war with the Austin CBS affiliate, forming a website called KEYE42Sucks.com for choosing to show Titans games instead of Texans games when there is a timing conflict.

Reliant Stadium would have been burnt to the ground had a quarterback-less Texans taken Joseph Addai over Vince Young, even looking at this in retrospect, and with the struggles Young has had this season. Could Addai live up to the pressure of being not-VY? You also have to ask the question of whether Addai could have thrived with David Carr as the quarterback of his team versus Peyton Manning.

Sometimes when analyzing drafts, we fail to take into account what situations guys are put in. In my mind, in the NFL especially, there are very few players who would thrive no matter what the situation and fit.

In a redraft, the Texans certainly wouldn't have been in the running to chose 2006 Defensive Rookie of the Year, middle linebacker DeMeco Ryans. With the struggles the Texans defense has had with having few defensive playmakers, it is hard to envision how catastrophic it would have been without a Ryans running the show.

I have a hard time believe that Reggie Bush still wouldn't go into the second spot. Even with some of the difficulties he has had so far, he brought such energy and enthusiasm to a franchise that needed to sell some tickets under a difficult situation.

Looking at the 2006 redraft list as a whole, you wonder where a DROY Ryans is or perhaps Marcus McNeill, the Chargers' left tackle. Arguably if you are looking and this year and last together, McNeill has had a better two years than D'Brickashaw Ferguson.

Truly, for a draft which was considered as talented as any in recent years, both the top 10 and the top 10 redraft is not particularly great as a group. Of course, it is still pretty early in their careers, and many of these players are obviously on rebuilding teams.

For example it would be interesting to see Texans defensive end Mario Williams' play if he played on a team that had other experienced talented linemen, and played for a defensive coordinator with a track record of success. Even with his play this season, I think he would have been a top ten pick in retrospect. Or to see if it made any difference at all if Vince Young was on a team that had a more talented set of receivers.

Marketing considerations aside and based only on football, if I held the first pick of last year's draft, I would want to trade down. It's just hard for any rookie to be worth that much money. However, as I've explained before, a trade down in the 2006 draft would have been difficult to accomplish.

So do you have any further comments on this particular redraft? Or would you like to offer your own redraft?

Previously at FanHouse:
2005 NFL Draft First Round: From Alex Smith to Logan Mankins, GMs Got It Wrong
Mario Williams, Reggie Bush, Vince Young: Evaluating the Top of the 2006 NFL Draft