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Draft Section

This section is home to all our material related to the NFL Draft and more specifically, the selections made in it over the years by the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders.

In the menu pane which is displayed in the site's default frames design, the links for various years' draft pages appear in the grouping for that respective offseason. Thus, to find, e.g., a table of the Raiders' draft selections in 2005, you'd look in the menu grouping for "2005 Offseason." (If you're browsing the site without using frames—by starting at http://www.vertgame.com/index3.html—the menu contents are found on the Table of Contents page.)

For convenience, however, all of the draft-related links, collectively, are also shown here on this one page. So, if you're hopping back and forth between various years' data, comparing, you can use either "landing page": the menu pane (or Table of Contents page) or this page (the "draft home" page).

Contents:
  1. History
  2. Resources
  3. Predicted Oakland First-round Pick(s) (current year's draft)
  4. Current Articles (current year's draft)

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A. History

Raiders first-round draft picks

Past Raiders drafts (since returning to Oakland, i.e., beginning in 1996)

From this site's pages:

From ANG writer Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune (series in progress as of 4/12/07):


Past NFL drafts


Past Raiders drafts


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B. Resources

Note (1/23/08):  Last year's note, immediately below, still applies. Many of the best ones repeat annually at the same URL, or with only the digits of the year changing in the URL from one season to the next.

Note (4/2/07):  Most of the material in this section ("B, Resources") was collected in 2006 and has not yet been updated for 2007. Notable exceptions are the first few links under the subsection "Other Resources," which are 2007 listings. In particular, the NFL.com draft tracker has been finalized (barring further trades, obviously) and is authoritative. Even many of the 2006 resource links will still be useful as they are sites which cover the draft year after year. As we get closer toward the end of April this section will be overhauled and—time permitting—each link will be checked for its current accuracy. In the meantime the 2006 links should provide a good starting point for enterprising web jockeys who don't mind nosing around sites for different years' material.

General, but 'official' news dealing with player eligibility and/or selection order (2008)


Raiders.com draft coverage


NFL Trade Value Chart (also sometimes called the "draft value chart")


Other Resources


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C. Predictions for Oakland's First-Round Pick
What the Mock Drafts Have to Say (in no particular order)

Site or Publication Player
Sports Illustrated (Don Banks) Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
(Previous pick: Darren McFadden)
Scout.com (Chris Steuber) Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
(Previous pick: Glenn Dorsey)
Pro Football Weekly (Nolan Nawrocki) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
NFL.com (Vic Carucci) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
About.com ("About Football") Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
(Previous pick: Glenn Dorsey)
NFL.com (Pat Kirwan, who projects an Oakland-NY Jets trade): NY JETS at No. 4: Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
RAIDERS at No. 6: Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
FOXSports (Peter Schrager) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
USA Today (8 different writers) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas (5 votes)
Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State (1)
Jake Long, T, Michigan (1)
Chris Long, DE, Virginia (1)
CBS Sports (Pete Prisco) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
CBS Sports (Clark Judge) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
SportingNews.com (anonymous)
(this is actually the AP mock draft by Dave Goldberg)		 Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
(Previous pick: Sedrick Ellis)
SportingNews.com (War Room/Russ Lande) Ryan Clady, T, Boise State
SportingNews.com (Steve Corkran) Ryan Clady, T, Boise State (round 1)
Earl Bennett, WR, Vanderbilt (round 4)
Dorian Smith, DE, Oregon State (round 6)
Henry Smith, DT, Texas A&M (round 7)
Los Angeles Times (Sam Farmer) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
(Previous pick: Sedrick Ellis)
CBS Sports (anonymous, in Oakland Raiders section) Jeff Otah, T, Pittsburgh
Listed as "other possibilities:"
Chris Williams, T, Vanderbilt
Sedrick Ellis, DT, USC; and
Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
Rivals.com (Frank Coyle of DraftInsiders.com) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
Sports Xchange (Rob Rang) Glenn Dorsey, DT, LSU
Sports Illustrated (Peter King) Glenn Dorsey, DT, LSU
ESPN.com (Todd McShay) Chris Long, DE, Virginia
San Francisco Chronicle (Nancy Gay) Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
Bay Area News Group (Jerry McDonald) Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
Associated Press (Yahoo! Sports) "Possibles" (in this order):
Chris Long, DE, Virginia
Glenn Dorsey, DT, LSU
Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State
Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
SportingNews.com (Clifton Brown) Vernon Gholston, DE/OLB, Ohio State

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D. Current Articles

Disclaimer:  The focus of this site is not the draft. After all the noise and hoopla, most of those picked in the draft in any given year will play one or two years in the NFL—if they make it at all—then they'll be gone. So . . .  the coverage here isn't exhaustive. That said, you will find the major developments or stories covered here.