2012 NFL Draft: How Much Will It Cost the Redskins to Trade Up for RG3?

As we inch closer and closer to the NFL offseason, Washington Redskin fans await the decision on who their starting quarterback will be for 2012. While many eyes are locked on Indianapolis to see what they’ll do with Peyton Manning, even more are calculating how much it will take to obtain the services of Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III.

Here’s what we can almost put in concrete—Andrew Luck will be the first overall draft selection.

So that leaves many to believe the Colts will release Peyton Manning, leaving the Redskins the dilemma of either going after the veteran quarterback who has broken many records since his 1998 NFL debut or the young mobile signal-caller who has an entire career ahead of him.

For the sake of this piece, let’s concentrate on RG3.

While the St. Louis Rams hold the second draft choice, nobody thinks they’ll draft RG3 and bail on on their current starter Sam Bradford. Knowing that the Browns, who draft fourth, are also in need of a quarterback, it’s assumed that the Skins will have to trade up to the second position if they truly want the Baylor quarterback.

Former Skins general manager Charley Casserly’s latest mock draft has the Skins making such a trade with the Rams. It isn’t inconceivable to do so, but it may be costly.

According to the NFL draft-pick value chart (which may be outdated by now), the second overall pick would cost the Skins as much as their first four picks in this year’s draft. Yikes!

ESPN’s Todd McShay seems to think that the Skins may only have to give up their first, second and fourth-round selections to grab Griffin.Either way you look at it, Griffin will cost a few picks for anyone who wants to trade up for him.

The problem is that the Redskins have plenty of holes on the offense and you’d like to keep those picks if you could. In a league where you can’t bully receivers around, the Skins have aging ones. Today’s league also has emerging tight ends everywhere, but the Skins have one who has missed 21 games in three seasons and another who is one bad drug test away from being suspended for a year.

When Shanahan was hired in January 2010, he told Redskins owner Dan Snyder that it was going to take some time to right this ship. Although trading up and drafting RG3 seems like the popular choice, is it the right one considering the other holes on this team?

On the flip side, quarterbacks can win in their early parts of their career now. Gone are the years of Troy Aikman going 1-11 in his rookie year or Brett Favre needing an injury to get him off the bench to start his legacy.

Today we have players like Matt Stafford, Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan leading teams to the playoffs in their first few years as a starter. It's only a matter of time before we see if RG3 can have early success like them.