Redskins: Breaking Down the Lines (Pt. 1)

I have been beating the drum recently about the woeful state of the Washington Redskins offensive and defensive lines.

More specifically, I have taken the front office to task over what I believe is the complete and ultimately disastrous failure to establish a functional pipeline of qualified young linemen to replace their rapidly aging (and based on the evidence in 2008, no longer adequate) starting corps.

Rather than basing that criticism solely on what I see with my own two eyes on game days, I have begun to research the nuts and bolts of how the Redskins have gone about constructing their lines over the past decade and how they arrived where they are today.

Over the coming days and weeks I will be posting the results of that research for reference, discussion and, depending on what we find, perhaps drawing supported conclusions as to whether the Redskins' current struggles to compete with solid opponents at the line of scrimmage are the result of a fundamentally flawed approach, or simply the vagaries of trying to stay competitive in the 21st century NFL.

Let's get to it.

To begin, I broke down the Redskins' college drafts over the past ten years. I limited it to ten years on the premise that beyond that period of time, the data has increasingly little practical relevance to the present, given the number of major external factors (ownership changes, front office changes, coaching changes, player aging and injury, etc.) that come into play.

Here are the raw numbers, broken down by year, total picks, number of linemen selected, player and round selected:

1999 – 6 overall picks, 2 linemen
OT Jon Jansen (2), OG Derek Smith (5)

2000 – 8 picks, 3 linemen
OT C. Samuels (1), OG M. Moore (4), DT D. Cowsette (7)

2001 – 5 picks, 1 lineman
DT Mario Monds (6)

2002 – 10 picks, 2 linemen
OT Reggie Coleman (6), DE Greg Scott (7)

2003 – 3 picks, 1 lineman
OG Derrick Dockery (3)

2004 – 4 picks, 2 linemen
OT Mark Wilson (5), OT Jim Molinaro (6)

2005 – 6 picks, 0 linemen

2006 – 6 picks, 3 linemen
DT A. Montgomery (5), DT K. Golston (6), OG K. Lefotu (7)

2007 – 5 picks, 0 linemen

2008 – 10 picks, 2 linemen
OG Chad Rinehart (3), DE Rob Jackson (7)

Total Picks 63, linemen 16 (25%)

... and broken down by round:

1st Round: 1 (’00)
2nd Round: 1 (’99)
3rd Round: 2 (’03, ’08)
4th Round: 1 (’00)
5th Round: 3 (’99, ’04, ’06)
6th Round: 4 (‘01, ’02, ’04, ’06)
7th Round: 4 (’00, ’02, ’07, ’08)

Of note:

- Over their past five drafts Washington selected 7 linemen (1 third, 2 fifths, 2 sixths, 2 sevenths).

- Dating back to 1992, when the NFL reduced the number of draft rounds from 12 to 7, in those six additional drafts the Redskins selected 12 linemen out of 45 total picks (1 first, 2 seconds, 3 thirds, 1 fourth, 4 fifths and 3sixths).

Moving on …

Recognizing that numbers in a vacuum are of little practical use, I went on to compare and contrast the Redskins’ last ten drafts against those of their primary opponents, the three other NFC East teams.

I chose to start with that comparison because,

1) the six games (37.5% of each regular season) the Redskins play against those three teams every year have such a significant impact on their success or failure, and

2) the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants have provided a baseline of consistently solid programs over that time against which to measure the Redskins’ success.

This is where it starts to get interesting.

Here are the past ten drafts for the NFCE by total picks, rounds in which linemen were selected and year:

Dallas Cowboys
76 total picks; 28 linemen (37%)
1st round: 3 - '99, ‘05 (2)
2nd round: 4 - '99, '02, '03, '04
3rd round: 4 - '01, '04, '06, '07
4th round: 3 - '99, '05, '07
5th round: 1 - '01
6th round: 5 - '01, '02, '05, '06, '08
7th round: 8 - '99, '01, '03, '05, '06 (2)

Philadelphia Eagles
84 picks, 33 linemen (39%)
1st round: 5 – '00, '03, '04, '05, '0

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