Best draft picks by Round - Round 1

[Rain Man]

I'll switch this up a little. Before posting my top 10 list, I'll start from the bottom, revealing in reverse order all 56 of the Chiefs' 1st round picks over the years. Then I'll put the top ten in this OP and put up the poll.

Feel free to share your memories, happiness, or disgust at each pick. I'll post one whenever I'm slightly bored.

#1 Buck Buchanan, DT
#2 Tony Gonzalez, TE
#3 Derrick Thomas, ROLB
#4 Ed Budde, LG
#5 Eric Berry, SS
#6 Gary Green, CB
#7 Derrick Johnson, ILB, OLB
#8 Art Still, DE
#9 E.J. Holub, OLB/C
#10 Tamba Hali, OLB/DE

[Rain Man]

#34. Ryan Sims, DT, 2002. 6th pick.

Where to start?

First off, we've gone through 22 picks on our way up the list, and the odds say that we should have listed seven draft picks from 2000 or later. However, we've only listed two. Why is that?

My theory is that in simpler times a first-round bust never played. They didn't cost that much money so you'd put the best people on the field regardless of when they were drafted. In the post Y2K era, first round picks are so expensive that they're likely given every chance to succeed, which means more playing opportunities even if they haven't earned it. A 2000-era bust will likely be given a couple of years to prove himself, which make me think that Jonathan Baldwin must have stunk far more than we even thought possible.

Anyway, Ryan Sims is one of those guys who was given a chance to succeed, albeit under Greg Robinson's infamous "spinner" defense. (Shudder.) Who can forget the sight of Eric Hicks being the lone pass rusher against five linemen while Ryan Sims dropped back into coverage?

Anyway, we may remember this story. Dick Vermeil had an old linebacker from the Eagles named John Bunting. Bunting was then coaching at North Carolina and talked up Sims like he was the second coming of Bob Lilly. Sims played next to Julius Peppers, and questions arose about whether Peppers was all that and a bag of chips, or whether Sims' work inside made Peppers look good. (Spoiler: Peppers was all that and a bag of chips.)

Closer to home, debates on Chiefsplanet raged about whether we should take Ryan Sims, John Henderson, Albert Haynesworth, or Wendell Bryant, and as I recall it was mostly a Sims/Henderson debate. (Spoiler alert: the correct answer was Haynesworth.) I was in the Bryant camp, which was a small minority and rightfully so.

When the time came, the Chiefs thought the Vikings wanted Sims, so they traded up from #8 to #6 with the Cowboys, giving up a second-round pick and a 2003 third-round pick to do so. However, the Cowboys forgot to call the league office to let them know about the trade, and the draft clock ran out. The Vikings tried to run up to the stage with their Ryan Sims card, and the Chiefs ran up with their Ryan Sims card, and the NFL ruled that the Chiefs won the race.

And that was the last time that Ryan Sims was ever double-teamed.

Seriously, screw Greg Robinson and that spinner defense. We all talked about how it didn't make use of Sims' strengths, but we also began wondering just what Sims' strengths were. He had a big holdout his rookie year, signing after training camp had ended, and he only started two games his rookie year. His season ended with a dislocated elbow, which sounds like an injury that would really hurt.

He came back and was a regular starter in 2003 and 2004, playing mostly free safety or some such thing in Greg Robinson's stupid defense. He showed promise in 2003, regressed in 2004, and then hurt his foot in 2005 and missed a majority of the season.

In a telling anecdote, he was then traded to the Buccaneers for a conditional seventh-round draft choice, but apparently he didn't meet the conditions, so the Chiefs got nothing in the trade. Sims ended his Chiefs career with 36 starts and 64 tackles. He actually stayed with the Buccaneers for four more years in which absolutely nothing of interest happened.

He must have the least flattering football card photo ever made:



Here's a better picture of him dancing with Boomer Grigsby in one of the rare moments where Robinson's defense didn't yield points.

[rico]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

#35 - Woody Green, RB, 1974. #16 pick.

One might argue that Woody could be rated lower, but he's a case study in bad luck, at least in his football career. It appears there were some judgment errors off the field that didn't help.

Podolak was winding down, and as we saw earlier Jeff Kinney wasn't panning out as an earlier first-round pick. So the Chiefs took a surefire pick with Woody Green, a two-time all-American who had come in 8th for the Heisman his senior year.

Woody took over the starting job in Week 4 for a declining Chiefs team, with mixed but promising results. He had two 100 yard game, including 146 yards in San Diego, but he also had a 30-carry game against the Giants that produced 66 yards. He got hit a lot, and finished his season in Week 12 with a collarbone injury. His first year produced 509 yards rushing.

He then spent his offseason in court facing charges (along with a Buffalo Bills player) of raping a 16 year-old girl. Lamar pulled out all the stops to help him, going to court in Oregon with him and convincing several Chiefs players (Lanier, Stenerud, Podolak) to provide character references for him even though Lanier acknowledged that he didn't really know Woody very well. Woody was found innocent roughly three weeks before the season started.

He came back as the Week 1 starter in 1975, but had a disappointing year. He posted two 100-yard games, but averaged 4+ ypc in only five of the 14 games and was part of a big platoon of running backs. He then came back in Year 3, and was looking good even though he was still splitting carries. In Week 6, though, he left a knee on the field and never played again.

The final tally was three years as the starter, mostly amidst a running back committee, and two of those years ended early in injury. There are references to him having "multiple knee injuries" in his NFL career, so maybe he was playing hurt a bit. He ended up producing just over 2,000 total yards from scrimmage.

Interesting trivia - Woody's three years in the NFL ended with 5-9 records every year.

After the NFL, he got himself in some trouble, doing time for burglary, but is apparently out and living amongst us again. Makes you wonder a little bit about that rape charge.

Here he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated before the whole collarbone/ rape/ knee/ burglary thing.

Was he kind of Trent Richardson-ish?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by rico

Was he kind of Trent Richardson-ish?

Yeah, maybe so. However, I did find a "season preview" newspaper article from 1975 that said that the Chiefs' weak link going into the year was the offensive line, so it's possible that he just didn't have running room. The OL that year was LT Charlie Getty, LG Ed Budde, C Jack Rudnay, RG Tom Condon, and RT Jim Nicholson. Getty, Nicholson, and Condon were all second year players, Budde apparently got hurt in Week 1 and missed the rest of the season, while Condon missed half the season. Rudnay was a pro bowler, but it seems like they weren't very established as a line.

Here's the excerpt from the article. It's scanned, so there are lots of typos: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/31284113/ Wiggin doesn't sound very motivational in this interview at all.

The Kansas City Chiefs are definitely a question mark starting the new National Football League season. I;Only one thing is really certain: Hank Stram, the dapper coach who guided the Chiefs through all of their previous years, won't be pacing the sidelines with a program rolled up in his hand. The Stram era is over. Stram was fired last winter after a dismal 5-9 season, the worst in the Chiefs' history.

Paul Wiggin, plucked from the coaching Staff of the San Francisco 49ers, is the new boss. The Chiefs hired the energetic, personable, 40-year-old Wiggin to try to return the team to respectability on the field and to restore the club's public image which sagged to rock-bottom in the waning years of Stram's regime.

Wiggin says the new coaching staff and the players are "trying to adapt to one another. There's still a lot of Apprehension. We need some success now. Our big area of concern is our offensive line."

Wiggin figures the Chiefs n'ave no place to go but up. How fast they can accomplish this, He won't predict. "I won't say we'll finish8-6," Wiggin said. "I won't say we'll Have it in three years. We've going to struggle and fight to be a winner."

Wiggin doesn't relish the thought of building his team around 40 - year-old Len Dawson, who quarterbacked the Chiefs to a Super Bowl victory as the climax to the 1969 season and since has watched the team gradually decline.

"I hope somebody beats Dawson out of the quarterback spot," says Wiggin.

If anybody beats Dawson out, and that isn't likely, it wilt have to be Mike Livingston, his understudy; Greg Cook, a rookie star with Cincinnati in 1969 but since plagued by shoulder problems, and Tony Adams, who led the World Football League in passing last season with the Southern California Sun.

No m a t t e r who plays quarterback, he's certain to have problems. The offensive line of the Chiefs simply isn't adequate despite the presence of veterans Jack Rudnay at center and guard Ed Budde and the likes of tackles Charlie Getty and Jim Nicholson and guard Tom Condon. The Chiefs' fullback outlook has been bolstered by the acquisition of MacArthur Lane from the Green Bay Packers.

Wiggin has a trio of fine running backs in Woody Green. Ed Podolak and Cleophus Miller. Green's status isn't certain, he is facing a rape charge in Portland, Ore. Wiggin is at least slightly optimistic about his offensive line. "I look for us to show a more dramatic improvement there than anywhere else on our team," says Wiggin. "We've got some good, young guys like Nicholson and Getty." About the running backs, Wiggin says, "I think we are the haves . . . not; the have- nots." And our fullback situation has turned around completely with the addition of Lane . . . and there's Jeff Kinney and Morris LaGrand."

The Chiefs figure they are pretty well set defensively. Wiggin lured premier linebacker Willie Lanier out of retirement. Lanier is joined by two old standbys, Jim Lynch and Bobby Bell. The rest of the defense is loaded with veterans Wilbur Young and John Matuszak at end, Buck Buchanan and Marvin Upshaw at the tackles, Emmitt Thomas and Jim Marsalis at the cornerbacks and Mike Sensibaugh and Jim Kearney at safety.

"It would be a mistake to come into a team like this and decide to clean house," Wiggin says. "There are some excellent older players on this team capable of helping us. "I think we'll be better than last year." predicts Wiggin.

As a side note, Woody was the last first-round pick of Hank Stram. Paul Wiggin took over from there, and man oh man, he and Tom Bettis were bitter about being fired as the subsequent head coaches. If you want to read the most whiny article ever, check this out: https://www.si.com/vault/1978/03/13/...-but-wiggin-a#

[Halfcan]

Sims was such a lazy fatass, what a horrible pick.

[jjchieffan]

RainMan, I just wanted to tell you, this is the best thread on CP in a long time. I make it a point to get on CP and look for the latest additions to thread by you. Well done.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

Sims was such a lazy fatass, what a horrible pick.

This football card just slays me. He must have insulted the photographer or something. Can you imagine becoming a pro football player and getting your own football card, and it looks like this?

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

#34. Ryan Sims, DT, 2002. 6th pick.

Where to start?

First off, we've gone through 22 picks on our way up the list, and the odds say that we should have listed seven draft picks from 2000 or later. However, we've only listed two. Why is that?

My theory is that in simpler times a first-round bust never played. They didn't cost that much money so you'd put the best people on the field regardless of when they were drafted. In the post Y2K era, first round picks are so expensive that they're likely given every chance to succeed, which means more playing opportunities even if they haven't earned it. A 2000-era bust will likely be given a couple of years to prove himself, which make me think that Jonathan Baldwin must have stunk far more than we even thought possible.

Anyway, Ryan Sims is one of those guys who was given a chance to succeed, albeit under Greg Robinson's infamous "spinner" defense. (Shudder.) Who can forget the sight of Eric Hicks being the lone pass rusher against five linemen while Ryan Sims dropped back into coverage?

Anyway, we may remember this story. Dick Vermeil had an old linebacker from the Eagles named John Bunting. Bunting was then coaching at North Carolina and talked up Sims like he was the second coming of Bob Lilly. Sims played next to Julius Peppers, and questions arose about whether Peppers was all that and a bag of chips, or whether Sims' work inside made Peppers look good. (Spoiler: Peppers was all that and a bag of chips.)

Closer to home, debates on Chiefsplanet raged about whether we should take Ryan Sims, John Henderson, Albert Haynesworth, or Wendell Bryant, and as I recall it was mostly a Sims/Henderson debate. (Spoiler alert: the correct answer was Haynesworth.) I was in the Bryant camp, which was a small minority and rightfully so.

When the time came, the Chiefs thought the Vikings wanted Sims, so they traded up from #8 to #6 with the Cowboys, giving up a second-round pick and a 2003 third-round pick to do so. However, the Cowboys forgot to call the league office to let them know about the trade, and the draft clock ran out. The Vikings tried to run up to the stage with their Ryan Sims card, and the Chiefs ran up with their Ryan Sims card, and the NFL ruled that the Chiefs won the race.

And that was the last time that Ryan Sims was ever double-teamed.

Seriously, screw Greg Robinson and that spinner defense. We all talked about how it didn't make use of Sims' strengths, but we also began wondering just what Sims' strengths were. He had a big holdout his rookie year, signing after training camp had ended, and he only started two games his rookie year. His season ended with a dislocated elbow, which sounds like an injury that would really hurt.

He came back and was a regular starter in 2003 and 2004, playing mostly free safety or some such thing in Greg Robinson's stupid defense. He showed promise in 2003, regressed in 2004, and then hurt his foot in 2005 and missed a majority of the season.

In a telling anecdote, he was then traded to the Buccaneers for a conditional seventh-round draft choice, but apparently he didn't meet the conditions, so the Chiefs got nothing in the trade. Sims ended his Chiefs career with 36 starts and 64 tackles. He actually stayed with the Buccaneers for four more years in which absolutely nothing of interest happened.

He must have the least flattering football card photo ever made:



Here's a better picture of him dancing with Boomer Grigsby in one of the rare moments where Robinson's defense didn't yield points.

It's a bootleg

[stumppy]

More football.....more more more.

[patteeu]

I don't even know how the photographer could be comfortable with Ryan Sims' rookie card. What a terrible picture.

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This football card just slays me. He must have insulted the photographer or something. Can you imagine becoming a pro football player and getting your own football card, and it looks like this?

Yep, this picture sums up his whole career. Worthless fat slug. I can't even think of one big play he ever made. Worst Chief's pick ever considering the compensation he got.

[KC_Lee]

Sims and Kendrell Bell....Madden All Stars....real life Chief turds...

[sedated]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

YepI can't even think of one big play he ever made.

I believe he blew up a Broncos play on 4th and 1 to win a game (?)

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by sedated

I believe he blew up a Broncos play on 4th and 1 to win a game (?)

The only thing I remember seeing him blow up- was a plate of Zarda ribs.

[rico]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This football card just slays me. He must have insulted the photographer or something. Can you imagine becoming a pro football player and getting your own football card, and it looks like this?

He looks like a sack of shit slowly tumbling out of a truck.

[rico]

"And that's the last time Sims was ever double-teamed."