Engel's Angles: Two rounds of insight

Thursday, August 19, 2004

The most pressing question on everyone mind's this year, after 'Who do I take in the first round", is 'How does that affect my second-round strategy?". This season, it seems, more than past years, the first two rounds of your draft are more challenging than ever.
In recent years, the advice dished out was to simply get two standout running backs in the first two rounds if you can. Last year, you could make a case for the entire first round consisting of running backs only, and some projected standouts were still available in the second round. But this year, there are only eight clear "stud" backs, and one of them (Jamal Lewis) has questions surrounding his availability for a few weeks. Then there is a clear dropoff to the second "tier" of backs, and many of them are questionable second-rounders.
Last season at this time, I was recommending 12 running backs as my first-round picks, and I recommended 19 of the first 22 picks to be running backs. What a difference a year makes. Marshall Faulk, Travis Henry and Ricky Williams are gone from my possible first-rounders. Tiki Barber, Stephen Davis, Charlie Garner, Curtis Martin, William Green and Eddie George have all slipped greatly in value, and only Barber remains worthy of being considered in the second round, while all the aforementioned other backs were being viewed as quality second-round selections a year ago.