whowatches

Great point about the draft, Lummox. If you look at the number one and number two picks of the draft over the last decade even, you see that the impact isn\'t always significant. Most of the time the team that drafts the high pick gets held hostage by a huge contract. Other times, the player\'s a bust. Rare exceptions exist (P.Manning, M.Vick), but think of the ones that don\'t help his team. What if we get a high pick and waste it on the next Ryan Leaf, Courtney Brown, Kijana Carter...? We don\'t know how big the window is for the talent we have right now to be successful, right? Do we squander that talent by waiting for a high draft pick to develop? Do we place all our hopes (and a large portion of cap space) on one, young player? Look how well the Falcons have done this year as opposed to last.

I think when you have a team as talented as this one, you need motivation more than anything. I still believe that we\'ve used the draft very well since Haslett / Mueller came to town. Lummox hit the nail on the head with what we need to see for the rest of this season: the ability of Haslett to motivate the team after a very disappointing start. I would much rather see a late season surge (even if we don\'t make the playoffs) that instills some confidence in this group. I would be more than happy then to see Haslett return for another year.