Denver Broncos NFL Draft

If you are a football fan, you know that the draft is an extremely important event. A good draft will help your team succeed on the field and hopefully lead to that elusive championship. What is also true with the draft is the massive amount of speculation that goes along with it each year. As the teams are drafting, analysts will break down the picks and whether or not the team "hit" with that certain pick or if they are "reaching." I find this activity hilarious since no one knows how well a player is going to pan out. In fact, a lot of people make the argument that you wait at least 3 years, with some places like Football Outsiders going back 6 years to evaluate how good a team did in the draft.

Today however, we are going to look back not at just one year, but 26 years of Denver Broncos drafting. A team can have a bad year or a really good year, but by looking at the long-term trends, we can see if a team consistantly does well in the drafts or not. Why 26 years? In 1995, Mike Shannahan made his first selections in the draft and will mark his 14th year at the helm this weekend. While no coach has lasted that long at the helm in Denver, we will look at some of the successful picks that Denver made in the 13 yeas before the Shannahan era. Note: All stats have been pulled from the NFL's official website unless specifically noted.

I was thinking of breaking down each year per person, but that would turn into a master's thesis paper by the time we got done. What I will do though is point out the successes and failures over the span of two to three years.