As I mentioned in Part 1 (HERE), the draft class of 2004 is far and away the best class ever, and yesterday’s Super Bowl only added to their accolades. Looking back the Patriots (’04 Super Bowl winners) took a Pro Bowler, Vince Wilfork, with their first-round pick. The Colts (’06 Super Bowl winners) didn’t have a first rounder but they used their first pick (in the middle of the second round) on Pro Bowler Bob Sanders. The Giants (’07 winners) took Eli with theirs. And the Steelers (’05 and ’08 Super Bowl winners) took Big Ben with theirs. Think about that– the last 5 Super Bowl winners all took a Pro Bowler with their first pick in the ’04 draft. That is why these teams are Super Bowl champions: they draft the right players. This is something Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder don’t seem to understand when they try to buy a championship every offseason. Finding great players in the draft is what separates great teams from…well, from teams like the Texans. Here are the final five best picks in the best draft class ever:
5. Bob Sanders, Ind (44th overall) Durability is obviously a problem for Sanders, so putting him as the 5th best player from this class might be a stretch. But while he has missed 35 regular season games in five years, he has not missed a single playoff game. In those five years, he has played in nine postseason games, recording 61 tackles and 2 interceptions. Anyone that has seen the Colts’ defense play without Bob Sanders can immediately spot the difference when he is on the field. I complained in Part 1 that DL and OL players are hard to quantify, but even as a safety Bob Sanders is impossible to quantify. He is the MVP of a defense that stepped up when it had to in 2006. And since these rankings are asking “who would you want to build a franchise around,” how about a two-time Pro Bowler, a Defensive Player of the Year, and a Champion…and just about every team out there wishes they hadn’t passed him over in the draft.
4. Michael Turner, Atl (154th overall by SD) Obviously rankings like these can change constantly. When Turner was taken at the end of the 5th round in ’04 no one even fathomed that he could be a replacement for LT. Now Chargers fans have to wish they still had Turner (or, ya know, that they had used him better while they had him), Again using the “build a franchise” question, Turner is a powerful back who is also incredibly fast. He has already proven that with him in the backfield you could even go get a rookie QB and be set on offense. But of course RBs do have short shelf-lives and later on we might decide that having 10 years of a good O-lineman is better than five years of Michael Turner; but for right now Turner looks All-World, looks like a real possibility for the rushing title next year, and looks like the kind of back that every team wishes they had.
3. Willie Parker, Pit (undrafted) Antonio Gates and Tony Romo both went undrafted in ’03, so having good players go undrafted isn’t unprecedented; but the ’04 set of Peters, Welker, and Parker all going undrafted is still pretty amazing. After five seasons, Parker is far and away the best of the three undrafted players. He is also the best running back in a deep draft– if only because he has put up five solid years whereas Turner has only one starting season. Parker has shown he can produce and he can win; after five years he has nearly 5000 yards rushing and two championships. As with most running backs, durability is an issue. But this past season, even though he missed five regular season games, he was outstanding in the postseason– including a 27-carry, 146 yard, 2 touchdown performance in the Steeler postseason opener against the Chargers. When you are building a franchise, you need to build around guys who know how to win: Willie Parker has two rings in five years. ‘Nuff said.
2. Larry Fitzgerald, Ari (3rd overall) This past postseason has ended the debate about who is the best WR today. There can be no doubt that Fitzgerald is the premier WR in the NFL. I personally believe that Jerry Rice was the best NFL player of all-time, but frankly if we were talking about building a franchise around a guy, I don’t know that he’d crack my Top-5. I point this out because Larry Fitzgerald is a guy I would build around. Jerry was remarkable for his hard work, which is obviously important for a team, but Fitzgerald is just a physical freak. In five years he has 46 touchdowns and 5,975 yards; but his best work has been in this past postseason. In fact, he set the all-time postseason record before his outstanding Super Bowl– he ended this postseason with 550 yards, 7 TDs in 4 games. I think so highly of Fitzgerald that if Super Bowl 43 had gone the other way, so would my rankings. Also, did you hear his dad’s a sportswriter?
1. Ben Roethlisberger, Pit (11th overall) No matter what the result of Super Bowl 43 was, the class of 2004 was still going to be better than ‘83; but this Super Bowl locked it up. The 2004 QBs are now 3-0 in the Super Bowl (remember that the vaunted class of ’83 went 2-8 in the Championship). And obviously Big Ben leads the way. In fact, think about Roethlisberger and building a franchise: If you are building a franchise around a guy, you need him to come in and win right away. Check. If you are building a franchise you need a big, strong QB that can make plays with his legs while always looking downfield. Check. If you are building a franchise you need a QB that throws an excellent deep ball but has no trouble dumping it off. Check. Ben Roethlisberger is the proto-typical QB; a pocket-passer that is just a big dude making smart decisions.
If you listened to yesterday’s Super Bowl podcast (HERE) then you heard Shar make a great point as to why Ben is the best: while Rivers and Eli are good, young QBs, Ben doesn’t even feel like a young QB anymore; he won as a rookie, he won the Super Bowl in his 2nd year, and now in his 5th year he is such a veteran player that he is in a class of his own. If you listened to the podcast you also heard a table full of football fans agree that, with the game on the line, Ben is who they’d want as their QB. You also heard me say that Ben is the only active QB besides Tom Brady to have won multiple Super Bowls; of course you also heard me make a prediction that the MVP would be an ‘04er (meaning Parker, Fitzgerald, Big Ben or the dark horse Dockett) but obviously that did not happen. Instead 2006-pick Santonio Holmes got the award; and with good reason, Holmes’ stats were incredible. Of the 43 MVPs in Super Bowl history, only six have been Wide-Receivers, yet Holmes won yesterday and, in the last Steeler Super Bowl, Hines Ward won MVP too. In fact Ben’s best quality may be that his best plays are ones that never show up in the stat-sheet, never getting awarded, but making everybody else look good. I guess what I’m saying is: if I had to choose one player to build a franchise around it would definitely be a guy who makes the plays and then gives all the credit to his teammates.