Draft Today Still a Mystery for Chargers
About all the Chargers know for sure regarding their position in today’s NFL supplemental draft is that they will have one of the first nine picks. The rest is speculation.
The guessing concerns the three top players available--running back Bobby Humphrey of Alabama and quarterbacks Timm Rosenbach of Washington State and Steve Walsh of Miami.
Those three are easily the best known of the 12 players the NFL has said are eligible to be selected. All could be taken in the first round, possibly before the Chargers have an opportunity to select.
The Chargers will not learn where they will pick until sometime shortly before the draft begins in New York at 10 a.m. PDT. Order will be determined by a weighted lottery.
The NFL has placed its 28 teams into three groups to determine the order. The Chargers, as one of nine teams with six or fewer victories last season, are in the first group of teams and assured of picking no later than ninth.
The second group is made up of the nine remaining non-playoff teams and will have the 10th through 18th selections. The final group consists of the 10 teams that made the playoffs and will be assigned the 19th through 28th picks.
Each team will, within its group, be assigned a number of lottery chances based on its finish. The team with the worst record, Dallas, will have 28 chances. Green Bay will receive 27, Detroit 26 and so on until Super Bowl champion San Francisco, which has one chance.
The Chargers, with the eighth worst record, will have 21 lottery chances. Because there will be 216 markers among the first nine teams, the Chargers odds of gaining the first pick in the draft are roughly one in 10.
The supplemental draft is used to disperse players not available during the regular draft April 23-24. Most are players who elected to give up their final year of college eligibility.
Much of the interest for the Chargers centers on Rosenbach and Walsh. Quarterback has been a weakness since the retirement of Dan Fouts, but the question is whether the Chargers, who traded with the New York Giants for an extra second-round pick to take Billy Joe Tolliver of Texas Tech in the regular draft, will want to spend another pick on that position.
A team choosing a player in the supplemental draft will forfeit its corresponding choice in the 1990 regular draft.
The Chargers also could trade their position in the draft--but any trade must be made before the lottery--or they could draft one of the top available players and trade him after the draft. Or they could simply pass.
Rosenbach is considered by scouts the best available player. At 6-feet-2 and 210 pounds, he led the nation in passing efficiency last season. In two years as a starter, he passed for 5,995 yards in Washington State’s quick-drop offense.
Walsh, 6-3, 195 pounds, is not considered to have as strong an arm, but he passed for 5,364 career yards and a school-record 48 touchdowns.
The Chargers, who have an abundance of running backs, might have less interest in Humphrey. He was expected to be one of the leading running backs in the country last season, but he played only two games before breaking a bone in his foot.
He rushed for 2,726 yards and 26 touchdowns in the previous two seasons.