You don't need to have 1st rd picks to have good drafts. He inheirted the #1 pick overall in the draft.
Farrior is a good player but we traded down from the #1 overall pick. Farrior had one good year for us in 5 years then became really good in Pitt but he was never worth orlando Pace.
We lucked into ferguson, he failed a drug test and dropped to the 7th or we never get him.
Randy thomas was really good.
Leon ws good before the injuries.
Fabini was a solid tackle.
But look at the rest of his drafts:
1997:
1997 1 1 8 8 James Farrior LB Virginia
2 2 1 31 Rick Terry DT North Carolina
3 3 28 88 Dedric Ward WR Northern Iowa
4 4 6 102 Terry Day DE Mississippi State
5 4 8 104 Leon Johnson RB North Carolina
6 5 1 131 Lamont Burns G East Carolina
7 5 15 145 Raymond Austin DB Tennessee
8 6 1 164 Tim Scharf LB Northwestern
9 6 28 191 Chuck Clements QB Houston
10 7 1 202 Steve Rosga DB Colorado
11 7 28 229 Jason Ferguson DT Georgia
Rick terry was our 2nd rd pick and only played 1 year for us and 3 years in the NFL
Terry day played 1 year in the NFL
Lamont Burns 1 year in the NFL
Raymond Auston, 1 year for us, 3 years in the NFL
Tim Scharf never played a down in the NFL
Chuck Clements was w/ us for one year
Steve Rosga never played a down in the NFL
Of our 11 draft picks7 of them were out of the NFL w/in 3 years.
1998:
1998 1 2 26 56 Dorian Boose DT Washington State
2 3 6 67 Scott Frost DB Nebraska
3 3 26 87 Kevin Williams DB Oklahoma State
4 4 19 111 Jason Fabini T Cincinnati
5 5 11 134 Casey Dailey LB Northwestern
6 5 18 141 Doug Karczewski T Virginia
7 5 23 146 Blake Spence TE Oregon
8 5 26 149 Eric Bateman T Brigham Young
9 6 10 163 Eric Ogbogu DT Maryland
10 6 21 174 Chris Brazzell WR Angelo State
11 6 30 183 Dustin Johnson RB Brigham Young
12 7 6 195 Lawrence Hart TE Southern
Boose was our 1st pick of thhat draft(rd 2), never started a game for us. Played 4 years in the NFL
Frost started 1 game for us in 3 years
Kevin williams played 4 years in the NFL
Casey dailey played 1 year
Doug Karczewski never played a down
Blake Spence had 4 recs in 3 years in the NFL
Eric Bateman never played a down
Ogbogu started 4 games(w/ dallas0 in his 7 yr career)
Chris Brazzell never played a down for us, lasted 2 years in the NFL
Dustin Johnson never played a down for us, played 1 year in the NFL
Same for lawrence Hart
12 picks in 1998 and 9 of the picks were out of the league w/in 4 years.
1999:
1999 1 2 26 57 Randy Thomas G Mississippi State
2 3 29 90 David Loverne G San Jose State
3 4 28 123 Jason Wiltz DT Nebraska
4 5 29 162 Jermaine Jones DB Northwestern State (LA)
5 6 14 183 Marc Megna LB Richmond
6 6 28 197 J.P. Machado G Illinois
7 7 17 223 Ryan Young T Kansas State
8 7 29 235 J.J. Syvrud DE Jamestown
Loverne played 2 years for us, never started a game.
Wiltz started 2 games in his 2 year NFL career
Jones played 1 year for us and 2 in the NFL
Megna never played a down for us, his NFL career lasted one season.
Syvrud lasted one year in the NFL
We had 8 picks, 5 of them were out of the league w/in 2 years.
as for Dallas, they had a much better cpach than Wade and he couldn't win a playoff game- his name was Bill parcells.
SD in the last 3 postseasons has been in the div rd twice and in the title game once. That's a little different than Dallas. They have 3 postseason wins the last 3 years compared to one for Dallas since 1997.