2000 NFL draft day coverage
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The Raiders did what?!!!!!!!!
By Ron Pollack, Editor-in-chief
April 15, 2000
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| You've got to be kidding!!!!!!! I can't believe that the Raiders took
Sebastian Janikowski with the 17th pick in the first round. That is way too early. If you
consider how many kickers have busted out as high draft choices, I would never take a
kicker in the first round. Maybe if you are the defending Super Bowl champion Rams with
the last pick in the first round since you don't have major needs. Maybe.
Probably not if you ask me.
But if you are the Raiders at No. 17, you cannot afford this luxury.
Don't get me wrong, I think Janikowski may very well become a kicking star in the NFL.
But the key to that sentence is kicking star. I know that kickers can win or lose games,
but given that you can find elite kickers at a much cheaper price, you don't take a kicker
with the No. 17 pick. Especially a team like the Raiders that still needed so much help
elsewhere to become an elite team.
Personally, I don't think they should have taken a kicker anywhere in the first round,
but if that is what they felt they had to do they should have at least traded down in the
first round and added extra draft picks.
And if that led to them losing out on Janikowski because someone else decided to make
this risky pick ahead of them? Then so be it.
Even if Janikowski becomes a Pro Bowler, this strikes me as a luxury the
Raiders weren't talented enough and deep enough and successful enough to go for. This move
gets them attention. It may get them a difference-making kicker. But it also gets them a
kicker way earlier than it makes sense to take a kicker.
Personally, I would have taken a wide receiver or linebacker. Or at least traded down
first.
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