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Avoiding Dumb Mistakes at the NFL Draft
By Bill Barnwell on April 18, 2013 11:55 AM ET http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=...pg&w=640&h=360Jamie Sabau/Getty Images

What do smart NFL teams do in and around draft day that naive, stupid teams don't do? They draft better players, of course, but it's not that simple. They don't "want it more" and will themselves into picking better players. The dregs of the league don't just forget what winning football teams look like and come away from the draft with three punters and a kicking tee. Matt Millen drafted Calvin Johnson. The Browns took Joe Thomas at the top of the first round. Dumb teams do brilliant things sometimes. And likewise, the teams we perceive to be among the league's smartest make plenty of mistakes on draft day. The Ravens traded up to grab Kyle Boller. The 49ers took Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers. Bill Belichick has drafted dozens of useless defensive backs over the past few years. This stuff happens.

Because they occasionally screw up, we know that it's not that the league's wise teams are privy to some super-secret scouting technique that the dumb ones can't pick up on. They don't see some tiny hitch on tape or have some perfect interview question that reveals everything about a player's future. And players don't come fully developed out of the college womb, either; they continue the growth and maturation process at the professional level, and it would be naive to pretend that the organization they end up in doesn't have a huge say in that. It's no accident that linebackers for the Steelers and defensive linemen on the Giants seem to develop more reliably than if those same players lined up for the Chargers or the Jaguars.

So, there's no foolproof plan for executing well during the NFL draft. That's a bummer. If you look at the teams that have been notably successful (or unsuccessful) in the draft over the past several years, though, certain best practices stand out and continue to reappear. Follow those best practices, and your organization will surely, with a quarterback and a bit of luck, be heading to the Super Bowl for years to come!

Oh, you want an actual list of those best practices? Well, just this once. Let's start with the worst trade in football:
• Benefit from 2-for-1 deals. No, the NFL 2-for-1 is not a coupon that grants you extra draft picks just when you dearly need them. Instead, it's a trade archetype that has helped push the 49ers into owning arguably the league's most talented roster. The 2-for-1 is the deal you make when you give a second-round pick to a team in need while acquiring a future first-round pick in the process. At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in March, this trade came up in discussion as possibly the most obviously egregious decision a team can make. I'm not here to disagree with them.
There are three recent examples of the 2-for-1 swap, and, well, they haven't turned out very well for the team giving away the future first-round pick. I'll also throw in a fourth deal that saw a very late first-round pick trade hands:

The Saints traded Shane Vereen and Chandler Jones to the Patriots for Mark Ingram.
The Broncos traded Earl Thomas to the Seahawks for Alphonso Smith.
The Panthers traded Mike Iupati to the 49ers for Everette Brown and Mike Goodson.
The Colts traded Kentwan Balmer and Dashon Goldson to the 49ers for Tony Ugoh.

Avoiding Dumb Mistakes at the NFL Draft - The Triangle Blog - Grantland

ok i stole this from inside a thread and thought it was worthy of the front page, go read the whole bit

rear view observations and all that put aside these are some solid points about the risk you take in any trade

thanks NuNu318