Jim Saccomano

It can be very fashionable to make an absolute determination–as if there are any absolutes–that a given year’s National Football League draft is a “good” or “bad” draft, as if there is any choice in the matter.

Every year you play a schedule, and you have a team composed of players.  So every year, every team needs players.

Each season as well, there is a new crop of aspiring young players waiting to be drafted.

It is a given that some will succeed and others will fail, but some will always succeed.

If a draft is bad, but a certain team gets a great player, was it a bad one for that team?

In 1983 the Denver Broncos wound up with John Elway.  Try telling any Bronco fan that 1983 was a bad draft.  From where I sit, it looks like a pretty good one.

And just for the heck of it, let’s take a look at some Broncos and where they were selected in their respective drafts.  This should serve to remind us all that anything can happen at any time.

Karl Mecklenburg was taken in the 12th round (the 310th overall selection), which no longer even exists.

Tyrone Braxton was taken in the 12th round and was just one pick away from being the last player taken, the fellow dubbed “Mr. Irrelevant” each year.  He was the 334th player chosen; too small, too slow.  Of course, he played on three national championship teams in college, so he must have made a tackle or knocked down a pass now and then.

Terrell Davis was a sixth round dhoice, the 196th player selected–so 195 guys were projected as better than Terrell Davis that year.

Shannon Sharpe, who becomes eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame next January, was chosen in the seventh round, pick number 192.

Longtime starting safety Steev Foley was an eighth round pick, the 199th overall, in 1975, and he did not even play safety in college.  Foley was a quarterback, and the first time he ever played safety was for the Broncos.

Keith Bishop was the 157th player chosen in 1980.

Gary Kubiak was regarded by many as the best backup quarterback of his generation, and he was the 197th player chosen back in that 1983 draft.

Steve Watson, one of the favorite receivers of Elway and Kubiak, was not even drafted at all.

Much more recently, Rod Smith was never drafted.  Not late, not by anybody.  And in the entire history of the NFL, among undrafted wide received he is the all-time leader in reception, reception yards, and touchdown catches.  And he was a key leader on two world championship teams.

Every team has names like this, success stories to go along with the misses that the media love to talk about.

There is still no way to measure heart, and it can be very difficult to project development with absolute certainty.

So when somebody says it is a good draft or a bad one, that statement is completely correct–except for the times when it is wrong.

When you are only taking one player at a time, it only takes one to equal that number.

The 2008 National Football League schedule was announced today, and that officially gives every fan the information he or she needs to plan the fall football schedule, including whether that favorite team has a big home prime time game.

But you cannot play without a schedule, so this is the moment that starts it all.

As far as our Denver Broncos schedule is concerned, I personally like it a lot.

I once got a very cogent opinion from Mike Shanahan when I asked him how he liked our schedule compared to a rival’s.

He looked at both on paper, and said, “Looks like we each have eight at home and eight away.”

In other words, it always comes down to how you prepare and how you play, not when you play, where you play, or what the weather is.

But I like the idea that this year our fans do not have to sit in sub-freezing temperatures for a late saeason Sunday or Monday night game (unless we get flexed, of course, which would be a positive thing).

We all enjoy the exposure of Sunday and Monday night football, and we are not being overlooked in that regard, with three prime time games, but all on the road–the opener on Monday night at Oakland, a subsequent Monday nighter at New England, and a Thursday night NFL Network matchup at Cleveland.

There’s a lot of home-away, home-away to our schedule, and I have always liked the rhythm whcih that allows a team and its fans to get into, in addition to our season ticket holders and the televisoion networks being able to enjoy our spectacular Sunday afternoons.

As to the results?

You plan hard in the off-season, plan your program, work your plan, try to stay injury free and pack your lunchbox every day.

It is not rocket science, but it is hard work, and our staff and veteran players have a track record of putting in the effort and the hours.

It is easier to put in that work when you have something tangible on paper on which you can focus, and we all have that starting today.

I have just returned for the annual NFL Business Seminar, at which I attended the public relations sessions with my counterparts from the other 31 teams, and a week earlier I was able to attend the NFL’s annual meeting of owners, coaches, and high level football personnel people.

You take a lot of notes at meeting like that, some involving new thoughts and projects, others that just remind oneself of perhaps a better way to do something.  When you stop taking notes, you slip up.  You have to try to stay sharp.

 I saw a sign in a weight room once that said, “strength is not permanent.  You have to keep working on it.”  The same is true of being effective at whatever you are doing.

Now that I am back in the office, there are a varied number of tasks, projects and issues to be started, continued, or finished, and it is like that for everyone in the NFL right now.

We get the chance to share ideas, borrowing and stealing the best ones from our friends and associates, and now is the time when all these thoughts are being translated into action elements by the various departments, football and administrative.

What that points up to me is something that the average fan often is anaware of–the fact that a lot of the work is just a matter of grinding it out, every day, taking the day at its start, usually around seven a.m., and just working the work that has to be done.

There is an old saying that you should plan your work, and then work your plan.  Working your plan is the part that would seem completely boring to anyone on the outside, but which is the most fundamental part of giving yourself an opportunity to succeed in the coming year.

Doing all the organizational work during the week is what gives you the chance to win on Sunday, and in some cases can make it the simplest day of the week–after all, if the student is prepared, he should not be afraid to take the test.

Our player personnal people–like those of all the other theams–are hard at it right now getting ready for the draft at the end of the month. And that is a great example of just grinding it out. 

They have all the reports, as well as all the video you can imagine, but eventually a complete analysis has to be made that ranks all these players in an order–and different teams have differnt ideas of how they choose to do that–but regardless, it involves hours, days, weeks, and untimately, months of organized work that all comes together in the last few weeks.

It takes meeting after meeting, comment after comment by the scouts who have seen each player, along the input from coaches, all making a final deretmination as to how someone fits into an organization.

The rest of our departments are not doing anything as exciting as the draft, but marketing is estalishing its sponsors and promotional initiatives, the ticket office is getting all the tickets renewed and making plans to sell those which remain available, and PR is planning and organizing media policy and access for every remaining day of the year that involves the coming together of team functions and the press–and the press will assuredly be at any team activity that they are allowed to attend, most notably practices and interview sessions.

There are specific NFL rules as to the access which we must allow, but each team still has to determine how best to tailor that to its own needs, eventually matching press requirements and mandates with the most important team goal of making sure that all distractions are minimized as the players and coaches go about their work.

And all of this is a matter of grinding, just taking one task at a time and doing it, like a big puzzle that you put together one tiny piece at a time.

Sometimes when people ask me how we won back-to-back Super Bowls–and of course superb talent is always a preeminent factor in that type of success–but I have answered that by saying we did it 40 seconds at a time.

That is, just like a team emphasizing maximum effort, focus, and performance on each play, one at a time, so too do those of us behind the scenes just keep laying bricks, one at a time, but not drifting from the task at hand.

You can’t take yourself away from the task, or the mortar will dry up. 

And any bricklayer knows that is not a good thing.