A Year-By-Year Look at Reggie McKenzie’s Worst Draft Picks

Reggie McKenzie has rebuilt the Oakland Raiders largely thanks to the draft, but not all of his picks have panned out. Here’s a look back at each year’s biggest blunder.

I’m old enough to remember when it was trendy to call for the firing of Reginald McKenzie. He’s only held the title of Oakland Raiders general manager for five years, and yet has faced heavy criticism since his very first day on the job, from all directions — uninformed fans, glorified rodeo clowns disguised as uninformed fans, and even some people who are inexplicably paid to write about and discuss football on the the league’s flagship television network. Every transaction, every hire, every decision McKenzie has made since January 5th, 2012 has been dissected and examined under the largest of microscopes.

In those five years, all he’s done in response is take a franchise mired in salary cap issues and barren of draft picks, that’d already spent the last fourteen years as THE laughingstock of the NFL (during a time in which even the damn Browns somehow managed to put together a winning season bouncing between Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson at quarterback), and returned it to it’s rightful place as one of the most respected and feared organizations in the league with zen-like patience. For his troubles, at the end of the 2016 season, McKenzie was named NFL Executive Of The Year.

Obviously, 2014 did a tremendous amount for McKenzie’s standing with not only the Raiders’ own fans, but for his league-wide reputation. Landing a future Defensive Player Of the Year, an MVP-caliber franchise quarterback AND an All-Pro offensive guard in the first three rounds is the type of player evaluation that makes people take notice.

Of course, you can’t get ‘em all right. Like any other great GM, McKenzie has had his misses, and people tend to have very strong opinions about those particular misses. But in judging them, we have to take into consideration the inexact science that is the NFL Draft. The delineation between drafting for positional needs and taking the best player available is incredibly fluid, regardless to what anybody (including Reggie himself) tells you.

For example, on a basic level, it may look like McKenzie passed on guys like Kawaan Short, Jamie Collins and Le’Veon Bell to take Menelik Watson at the top of the second round in 2013. But if his top priority personnel-wise was to build his offensive line (and he’s openly stated his philosophy behind establishing the offensive trenches), then how fair is it really to say that he “passed” on those guys?

Instead, I’ve always felt that the best way to critique Reggie’s past work is against players of the same position that were selected afterwards. In my opinion, that tells a better story. We’ll likely never know the intricate details or rationale behind any of these selections, and judging the players that were chosen against their position as opposed to their talent assumes the least about Reggie’s or any coach’s thought process in the war room at that time. In short, if you want to hold the Menelik pick against Reggie, do it because he took Watson over guys like Terron Armstead and David Bahktiari.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at who the worst selection from that particular class using the aforementioned criteria.

2012: Miles Burris, LB, 4th Round

2012 was McKenzie’s first draft class, and easily, by far and away, his worst overall. That’s incredibly easy to state as fact when you consider the circumstances:

A) Upon being hired for the job in January of that year, Reggie had roughly three months to put together a personnel staff, hire a coaching staff and begin laying the foundation for his organization, all while scouting players for the upcoming draft.

B) He didn’t have a pick until a third round compensatory pick, as Hue Jackson had dealt that year’s first-round pick in the much maligned Carson Palmer trade that fall, and Al Davis spent the team’s true third-rounder some guy in the league’s supplemental draft earlier that summer.

Reggie’s first ever draft selection as GM of the Raiders was Tony Bergstrom, an offensive guard who remained on the roster up until 2015, and spent 2016 with the Houston Texans (he was just cut last week). Many fans loathe Bergstrom for whatever reason, but the real miss of this class was chosen with Reggie’s second selection.

Miles Burris was taken in the compensatory section of the 4th round, at 129th overall. He started immediately as a rookie, playing 15 games in the 2012 season and finishing the year 62 tackles, and 1.5 sacks.

Burris was a #tough, #gritty, #scrappy player; a #bluecollarworker who was often the #firstoneinthebuilding, and the #lastonetoleave. But when you consider that the hated Denver Broncos were able to score not one, but two starters at inside linebacker in Danny Trevathan and Brandon Marshall in the fifth and sixth rounds respectively, it makes the Burris pick look really, really bad. Both Trevathan and Marshall have played into their second contracts and landed big time extensions; Burris was released in 2015 and hasn’t played for a regular-season down since.