Jason Drake goes maverick on the prevailing wisdom of his fellow stat geeks.
I recently penned an article about John Schneider's drafting strategy. In my opinion, the Seahawks got excellent value by picking up three running backs while most other teams settled for UDFA pickings. At least one respondent disagreed. He did not question the relative quality of these particular draftees, but the ultimate value of the running game itself:
"[The Seahawks] just spent an entire draft to get better at the one thing that is least likely to win them more games."
Strong words, but intelligently supported: Over the last 10 seasons, the relative ranking (1 to 32) of each team's top rusher has a correlation with team wins of -0.