I know, I know...a 6th round draft choice on a punter that never made it is low on the list of busts. I do not expect this one to finish higher than 9th or 10th when we vote on the top ten busts. Yet, Durant Brooks was symbolic of an attitude that destroyed draft after draft in D.C. You can sum up that attitude in two words: Cerrato Hubris. You see, one way to make yourself look like a genius in the draft is if all your draft picks make the team. When you are essentially in charge of who makes the team, you have the ability to make yourself look like a genius. If you are the chief determining factor in whether you come off as a genius or not, guess what decisions get made?
In the 2008 NFL Draft, I was not at all against using a late round pick on a punter. I wasn't. In fact, I kind of liked it. Durant Brooks seemed like the punter to get, being the reigning Ray Guy Award winner. And Derrick Frost, the veteran punter at the time, was not in the middle of a Hall of Fame career here in town (though his wife was very hot.) Depending on who you believe, Frost had the better preseason that summer. When the time came to pick a punter to enter the regular season with, we took the guy we drafted. By week 6, we had the worst punter in terms of both net and gross punting average in the entire NFL. And I am just guessing, but I am betting we were punting...a lot. So the problem was kind of pronounced.
We are not out of bad draft picks to label as "busts" by a long shot. But this pick will always go down for me as a big one because it kind of summed up the Cerrato Hubris of the time. "If you pick him, he will make the team."
I probably rightfully deserve a few shots for putting Durant on this list, but I just had to. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but we didn't draft Adam Archuleta, so I had a spot to fill.
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