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Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes something more difficult to define happens: You don’t get what you want, but you end up better off for it. Or maybe not.
This is often called luck, unless it happens during the NFL draft. Then it’s called good planning. Or maybe not, depending upon how things work out later on.
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New Ravens QB Joe Flacco
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Time will tell exactly what happened to Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome on Draft Day, but in these recessionary times, he at least got his money’s worth out of the many first-round machinations he engaged in on his way to landing QB Joe Flacco with the draft’s 18th pick. That assumes Flacco is what Newsome hopes he is, which, of course, is the great unknown.
Flacco is the University of Delaware quarterback with the big arm, long legs and considerable promise. To get him, the Ravens participated in two trades involving three teams and nine draft choices, an odyssey that began when they traded out of the No. 8 slot to move down 18 places while adding two third-round picks and a fourth-rounder from Jacksonville. Knowing he desperately needed a quarterback of the not-too-distant future, Newsome then traded back up to No. 18 with the Texans in a deal that cost him third- and sixth-round choices. In the end, the moves netted Flacco, extra third- and fourth-round picks and a little more than $17 million in savings when one factors in what was spent on the No. 8 and No. 18 picks a year ago. All that effort convinced young Flacco how much the Ravens loved him.
“It lets me know that they wanted me,” Flacco said during Baltimore’s post-draft conference call. “I don’t know what’s more important than that. It’s pretty darn important to me that it just lets me know how much a team actually wanted me and will be glad to have me down there, and I can’t wait to get down there and work hard and prove to them that they made the right decision that they moved up to get me.”
Perhaps they did, but truth be told, if Newsome had his way, he would have pulled off a far different and far more expensive move to go up and get the third pick away from the Falcons, who seemed split between advocates of Boston College QB Matt Ryan and LSU DT Glenn Dorsey.
Newsome admitted he had conversations about moving up in search of a way to draft Ryan, but his efforts failed. Instead, he would end up portrayed as not only a drafting genius, but a frugal one, by landing the second-rated quarterback for a fraction of what Ryan will cost the Falcons.
A few years back, Newsome and the Ravens did something similar and ended up drafting a guy named Kyle Boller. He was the first quarterback they ever had taken in the first round. He was their future. Now Boller is 26 and yesterday’s news.
“We decided it was time to pull the trigger on the quarterback that we felt like was the guy to lead our football team into the future,’’ Newsome said after drafting Flacco.
In other words, the Boller pick turned out to be a mistake, so now we try again with a kid who played most of his college career throwing from the shotgun against Football Championship Subdivision competition. That doesn’t mean Joe Flacco may not be the answer, but if Newsome had his way, he would have been saying those words about Ryan instead. So it goes on Draft Day.
In the end, that’s what the draft is all about. It’s about guesswork and hoping for the best. It’s also about empty words, because in the end, it’s not what you say about your draftees on Draft Day, it’s what they do the rest of the days that decide it all.
While Newsome was anointing Flacco as the future in Baltimore, new Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was saying what coaches have to say when their veteran starter — in this case, Steve McNair — retires, and they’re left with a bust named Boller, a young kid named Troy Smith and a new No. 1 draft choice.
“The quarterback job is going to be an open competition,’’ Harbaugh said, acting as if he hadn’t heard a word Newsome said. “The best quarterback is going to be the guy who plays. We’re not going to rule anything out.’’
In one sense that’s true, as a No. 1 pick of a year ago, Brady Quinn, found out in Cleveland when the job many believed would be handed to him ended up in the hands of a former late-round Ravens pick named Derek Anderson. Anderson played so well when his chance came that he signed a big-money extension that derailed Quinn’s coronation and reminded the Ravens that if they had held on to Anderson, perhaps they wouldn’t have had to draft Flacco.
Such are the vagaries of the draft, a crapshoot designed as a scientific exercise, a guess masquerading as mathematical computation. Five years ago, Boller was taken with the 19th pick. That day, Newsome was elated. He had gotten his man, the one who would lead the Ravens into the future.
Boller got his chances but never delivered, and so last week, in a sense, he led them to Flacco, who is now the highest-drafted quarterback in Ravens history. Newsome says he’s the future, but who knows for how long?
Much praise was heaped upon Newsome for the sly way he landed the guy he wanted at a bargain price by picking him 18th rather than eighth. Time will tell about that because the only thing Newsome knows for sure is that Joe Flacco is only a bargain if he turns out to be what Kyle Boller was not — which is worth the price Newsome paid for him.
If he isn’t, he’s no bargain at any price.
Longtime Boston Globe football columnist Ron Borges now writes for Pro Football Weekly, ESPN.com and on his own Web site, www.ronborges.com.
Related Links:
Index of all Draft Day coverage
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