McDaniels: Definition of “Best Player” Changes by Team

I’ve recently talked a lot about the Las Vegas Raiders drafting the “best player available” during this year’s draft.

But what exactly did that look like for the Silver and Black?

Raiders Coach Josh McDaniels broke it down during the post-draft press conference.

“I think once you make the decision to do that -- I think really it starts a long time prior to the draft beginning and understanding what it is your -- when you say that, what does it mean when we take the quote-unquote, best player,” McDaniels said. “Each organization is going to evaluate these players differently, and we're not all going to have the same grades on the same players. We understand that.

“We try to do the best we can of evaluating what the player would be for the Raiders. It doesn't really matter what they would be for any other team. It's in our system, the way we saw the players, the way we scouted them, the way we evaluated them, the way we would use them.”

The Raiders stuck with their evaluation for each individual player. This essentially means when the Silver and Black made their draft picks, they chose the best player available through their grading system and only their grading system.

“This is the grade that was on that player, and there is a lot of work that goes into each grade,” McDaniels said. “So when you trust the work and then you get to the draft and you say, 'Listen, the best thing to do for us is to add the best players we can.'

“If you understand that from the beginning the process itself is kind of simplistic,” McDaniels said. “I'm not saying that there are not guys with the same grade and you have to make a choice, but when you really follow it and you say, listen, 'Let's take the best players who we graded that we've thought all year long gave us the best opportunity to improve our football team.'”

Every draft choice was made with the grade the Raiders gave them and how that player would improve the Silver and Black as a whole.

“That's what we tried to do each step of the way, and I think we're happy with -- look, every spot on our team is going to have competition,” McDaniels said. “Whether we drafted somebody or didn't draft somebody, there's competition at every spot on the team.

“I don't care what the spot is. That's what we've tried to do at each spot that we could, free agency, draft. We'll continue to try to do that.”

As for the next step, McDaniels says General Manager Dave Ziegler and his staff are already hard at work with college-free agents.

“Dave and his staff are going to comb the college free agent thing,” McDaniels said. “We're going to go into the summer and we're still going to try to do that. So that won't ever stop.”

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