Forbes on the NFL draft

Forbes is considered one of the world's best business magazines. But when it comes to writing about the NFL draft, perhaps it should leave the analysis to Sports Illustrated.

In this article, the mag looks at what teams have been the best and worst drafting franchises in the NFL over the past three seasons. The author decides to base the findings by counting what teams have kept the most players on their rosters from their last three drafts.

This is probably the most unsubjective way of doing this. It might also be the worst way of determining which NFL teams have drafted well and which ones haven't.

Just because a team has kept the majority of its drafts picks of late doesn't mean those picks are good ones. You'd expect the bottom-feeders to keep more of their draft picks than the good teams because the good ones have fewer holes to fill.

For example, if Forbes were to write a similar piece two years from now, I suspect the Detroit Lions would be ranked the number one drafting team – or very close to it. The Lions went 0-16 last year and were a historically bad football team in just about every aspect. Other than Calvin Johnson, I can't imagine why management wouldn't keep the 14 or so college players it selects in the next two drafts over the players still on the roster that "helped" the Lions produce the first winless, tieless season in NFL history. But are those 14 draft picks really good picks? There are more factors that must be considered in assessing a successful draft than retention.

This is how the Houston Texans managed to snag the number one spot on this list and why elite NFL teams like New England and Pittsburgh ended being rated among the five worst drafting teams in the league. (The Vikings didn't make the top five or bottom five, which is all this article lays out.)

Basing the quality of a team's drafting on retention also ignores how significant an impact the draftees have had on the team. If a good draft class is judged solely on how many players from that draft are still on the team, then the Vikings 2006 draft class has to be considered one of the best in team history.

The 2006 draft has produced five starters for the Vikings out of the seven players drafted. But of those five starters, only two (Chad Greenway and Cedric Griffin) are guaranteed to be playing for Minnesota beyond 2009 and two of the other draftees' hold on a starting position is tenuous at best (Tarvaris Jackson and Ryan Cook). Of the five current starters from the Vikes draft class of '06, only Greenway looks like a potential star. Two others – Griffin and Ray Edwards – appear to have the potential to be solid players but nothing more.

Quality doesn't always mean quality when it comes to the NFL draft.