3D: What McDaniels Likes

Denver Broncos celebrates Brandon Stokley's touchdown against the New York Giants during their NFL football game in Denver, Colorado November 26, 2009. (REUTERS/Mark Leffingwell)

Decomposing Denver’s Draft (3D) Vol. 1, Ep. 1

Welcome to 3D, a new series that drills into the inner workings of how the Broncos draft.

What do the ACC, SEC have in common? Within the realm of college level achievements, not much. In comparison the ACC is about as competitive as organized jazzersize. The ACC hasn’t posted a national championship team since Miami in 2001. Whereas the SEC has claimed the past four national championship winners (5 out of the last 7).

This statistic may be staggering, but it has little to say about the NFL caliber talent that comes from the Atlantic. On a post-collegiate level, these two conferences have evolved into two of the biggest pools of talent to choose from.

In all, the ACC was third this year in draft picks. The SEC led all leagues with 49 followed by the Big Ten with 34, the ACC (31), The Big 12 (30), the Pac-10 (29), the Big East (18) and the Mountain West (13).

Since 2005, the ACC and the Southeastern Conference are the only two leagues in the nation to have had 30 selections in the NFL Draft in each of the past six years.

Over the past few years the ACC and SEC have been the most dominating conferences come late April, and Josh McDaniels has seriously contributed in the past two drafts.

A total amount of 16 ACC players have been drafted within the first two rounds since 2009. Three of these players are current Broncos Alphonso Smith, Richard Quinn, and Demaryius Thomas. Comparatively the SEC has had 25 players drafted in the first two rounds since 2009. Three of these players are current Broncos Knowshon Moreno, Robert Ayers, and Tim Tebow. Within the first two rounds these two conferences are ubiquitous for Denver.

Conference Percentage of Players Drafted in the First Two Rounds

• ACC: 35.7%
• SEC: 35.7%
• Other: 15%

With overwhelming stats like this one might think that the Broncos have severely limited their scouting locations. However, when taking all seven rounds into consideration the Broncos are fairly consistent. Withing the last two years the Broncos have taken 19 players from 8 different conferences, which all have recieved a fairly good amount of attention.

Considering that McDaniels usually picks players with great character and high production, predicting what he’s going to do on draft day just got a little bit easier. All you have to do is look for good guys with productive college careers within positions of need from the ACC or SEC. I used this approach last draft and I predicted Thomas and Tebow, but just not in the right round. I even was expecting Eric Olsen due to his size, good nature, and Notre Dame connection.

With all of this said, it may be plain to predict which players Denver will select; but it’s still just as hard as ever to pick the ones who will succeed. Here’s to hoping these early round picks pan out.