Revisiting the 2000 NFL Draft

The third in my series of NFL draft posts looks back at the 2000 event. For those that are not familiar with that draft, Tom Brady was selected with the 199th pick, making him the greatest sleeper pick in sports history. Not only has he led the Patriots to six Super Bowls, Brady is the only member of that draft class still active, albeit with the Buccaneers now. The most recent retirees were both kickers drafted by Oakland: Sebastian Janikowski who retired after the 2018 season, and Shane Lechler, who officially hung up his boots in 2019, but last played two years prior.

As before, I am using Pro Football Reference's Approximate Value (AV) metric to rate the career performance of each player. In the past two posts, I used the weighted version of this statistic, but this time, I am using the total Career Approximate Value. To highlight the difference between the two, Brady's total CAV (tCAV) is 280, the highest of all-time (Peyton Manning is second at 271) while his weighted CAV (wCAV) is 176, one behind Manning. The longer a player remains active, the larger the variance between his tCAV and wCAV. For the 2000 draft as a whole, tCAV averages 20.16, wCAV is 17.89. Note that playoffs are not included in these calculations.

Obviously, New England "won" the 2000 draft, even though the rest of their picks were pretty lousy. Excluding Brady, the other nine Patriot picks averaged 8.44 tCAV. That would put them 30th out of the 31 teams that drafted that year, in front of only Dallas, whose 5 picks averaged 6.8 tCAV. With Brady, the Patriots averaged 33.6 tCAV, good for third. So yeah, grabbing the GOAT makes a bit of a difference.

The two teams that bettered them: the Jets, who had four first-round picks and topped the leaderboard at 46.38 tCAV, while Baltimore was second at 36.83, thanks to Jamal Lewis (who ran for 102 yards in their Super Bowl win that season) and Adalius Thomas.

The top 15 players selected in that draft, according to tCav:

Rnd   Pick    Team     Player             Pos  LastYr   G     tCAV
6      199    NWE      Tom Brady           QB   2019   285     280
1        9    CHI      Brian Urlacher*     LB   2012   182     150
1       13    NYJ      John Abraham        DE   2014   192     117
2       60    JAX      Brad Meester         C   2013   209     100
1       12    NYJ      Shaun Ellis         DE   2011   184      95
2       44    GNB      Chad Clifton         T   2011   165      92
1       16    SFO      Julian Peterson     LB   2010   158      90
1       30    TEN      Keith Bulluck       LB   2010   170      88
1        5    BAL      Jamal Lewis         RB   2009   131      83
1        8    PIT      Plaxico Burress     WR   2012   148      83
3       78    NYJ      Laveranues Coles    WR   2009   153      80
1       19    SEA      Shaun Alexander     RB   2008   123      79
1        7    ARI      Thomas Jones        RB   2011   180      78
1        3    WAS      Chris Samuels        T   2009   141      77
6      186    BAL      Adalius Thomas      LB   2009   135      77
* Hall of Fame

Note that the Jets did quite well with Ellis and Abraham in the first round and Coles in the third (Chad Pennington was another first rounder for Gang Green, but his tCav was 62).  They made the playoffs six times between 2001-10, but with Brady in the same division, they were never quite able to get over the hump.

The biggest bust is probably R. Jay Soward, drafted 29th by the Jaguars. Soward had a serious drinking problem and was out of the league after the 2000 season (though somehow the Jaguars still retain his NFL rights 20 years later). Soward did win a Grey Cup with the Argos in 2004, so all was not lost. The first overall pick was Courtney Brown, drafted by the Browns, but he only lasted four seasons there before finishing his career with a final campaign in Denver, so there is an argument that he was the biggest bust.

I could go on, but have a look at the PFR draft page yourself and play around. You can do it for every draft, and it is fun to look back and see who really "won" that draft, rather than rely on grades that are given out before any player has even started training camp.

Best,

Sean