The Raiders have a top-five pick in the NFL draft, and three in tonight’s first round. That’s a lot of opportunity, and a significant amount of pressure to get it right and send the franchise off to Las Vegas in the right direction.
For inspiration, let’s take a look at the Raiders’ best and worst draft picks in history:
The 1981 draft
1: Marcus Allen (boon).
Raiders owner Al Davis was the walking, talking embodiment of the top-down management style. He was the final authority. Thus the irony surrounding arguably the best draft pick he ever spent.
The intrigue began during the 1981 season. Davis was attempting to move the Raiders to Los Angeles against the league’s wishes. He found himself spending an inordinate time in courtrooms. Meanwhile, the Raiders were in need of a running back and it just so happened that USC tailback Marcus Allen was putting together a Heisman Trophy season.
It seemed to be a match made in Hollywood. Davis had an affinity for USC, not to mention players with shiny trophies. According to the book “Al Davis: Behind the Raiders Shield” Raiders scouts were split. Davis liked Allen. Scout Ron Wolf liked Walter Abercrombie of Baylor. Last season 247Sports suggested there was still another faction in the room that was partial to Barry Redden of Richmond.
Who was minding the store? Per 247Sports: “As Tom Flores tells it, the Allen camp had to call Al Davis on a pay phone in Los Angeles, where he was in court, to sign off on the pick. Allen, upon receiving the phone call himself, threw up a newspaper in celebration exclaiming, ‘I’m an Oakland Raider!'”
Not only was Al Davis strangely uninvolved, you could say Marcus Allen, perhaps the best Raiders player ever, practically drafted himself.
The 1991 draft
2-3: Todd Marinovich (bust), Nick Bell (bust)
In 1990, the Raiders won 12 games for the first time in five years. They beat the Cincinnati Bengals in their first playoff game. But their 51-3 mauling at the hands of the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship game was a reality check. Quarterback Jay Schroeder was serviceable, but not surpassing. Of the team’s 13 interceptions, only four were snagged by cornerbacks.
According to “Al Davis: Behind the Raiders Shield” the team’s scouts prepared a bold plan, outlining “to Al Davis how (they) expected the first two rounds of the draft to play out and, based upon that projection, which players the Raiders could select if things went according to the plan. The draft played out perfectly for Raiders scouts.”
But instead of drafting quarterback Brett Favre and cornerback Aeneas Williams, Davis took USC quarterback Todd Marinovich in the first round and 255-pound Iowa running back Nick Bell in the second.
In this watershed draft, Davis passed on two future Hall of Famers, going instead with Marinovich whose troubles continue to this day, and Bell, who started just five games in three years with the Raiders. Instead of a new lease on life for the team, the Raiders entered an eight-year span in which they made just one postseason appearance.