Some of the NFL Draft’s best moments don’t become Best Moments until much later, after it’s established how good/bad the players are and how well/poorly teams evaluated them. That’s what this post is about: those instances when two guys at the same position are picked back to back, and it turns out there’s a gigantic gap between them. Basically, the first guy has a forgettable career (if he has one at all), and the second goes on to the Hall of Fame (or close to it).

Here are a dozen examples I dug up, just for the sake of conversation. Call them . . .

THE ALL-TIME WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA TEAM

[table]

Year,Team,Drafted (Pick),Could Have Had\,Team (Pick)

2003,Lions,WR Charles Rogers (2),WR Andre Johnson\, Texans (3)

1999,Browns,QB Tim Couch (1),QB Donovan McNabb\, Eagles (2)

1985,Vikings,WR Buster Rhymes (85),WR Andre Reed*\, Bills (86)

1974,Chargers,WR Harrison Davis (81),WR John Stallworth*\, Steelers (82)

1967,49ers,QB Steve Spurrier (3),QB Bob Griese*\, Dolphins (4)

1967,Chargers,DT Ron Billingsley (14),DT Alan Page*\, Vikings (15)

1967,Bills,OT George Gaiser (181),OT Rayfield Wright*\, Cowboys (182)

1961,Vikings,OG Ken Peterson (183),OG Billy Shaw*\, Cowboys (184)

1958,Lions,RB Ralph Pfeifer (83),RB Bobby Mitchell*\, Browns (84)

1956,Packers,RB Jack Losch (8),RB Lenny Moore*\, Colts (9)

1945,Yanks,E Ben Jones (102),E Tom Fears*\, Rams (103)

1936,Lions,B Chuck Cheshire (17),B Tuffy Leemans*\, Giants (18)

[/table]

*Hall of Fame

(Note: Shaw signed with the Bills of the rival AFL.)

Talk about screwing the pooch. After deciding to draft a particular player at a particular position, the teams on the left took The Wrong Guy — a mistake which became infinitely worse when the next club on the clock took The Right Guy. You can click on the names to look at their stats . . . and see how huge a gap there was in each case. It ain’t pretty. Cheshire, Jones and Pfeifer never played in the league, and Rogers, for one, was a drug-plagued disaster (36 catches and 4 touchdowns, compared to Reed’s 1,012 and 64 — and counting).

Would the first decade of the expansion Browns have been a little less miserable if they’d opted for McNabb over Couch? You’d think so. You’ve also gotta believe the ’70s (pre-Coryell) Chargers would have won a lot more games if they’d had Stallworth catching passes and Page chasing down quarterbacks — or am I underestimating how lousy the Bolts were in those days?

This kind of puts it all in perspective, though: Spurrier wound up quarterbacking the only 0-14 team in NFL history (the ’76 Bucs), and Griese wound up quarterbacking the only 17-0 team (the ’72 Dolphins).

Source: pro-football-reference.com