Coming up empty

Since Vince Lombardi arrived in 1969, no team has valued first round draft picks less than the Redskins. In 38 drafts, they’ve traded out of the first round 22 times, more than double the nearest team.

At first glance, the Washington Redskins and Pittsburgh Steelers were similar franchises in the spring of 1974. Coaches George Allen and Chuck Noll had led their teams to the playoffs the previous two seasons — three in a row for the Redskins — to end decades of dismal records.

But while the emotional Allen lived his “The Future Is Now” philosophy by stacking his roster with reliable veterans on the wrong side of age 30, the low-key Noll was building long-term.

Take, for example, the 1974 NFL Draft. Noll selected receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, linebacker Jack Lambert and center Mike Webster before Allen — who had traded his first five picks — finally made a selection.

The Steelers won the first of four Super Bowl titles in six years that season while the Redskins would reach the postseason just twice in that span and did not win a playoff game. And all four of those 1974 Steelers rookies are enshrined in the Hall of Fame with Allen and Noll.

Those contrasting approaches to building a winning team have defined the Redskins and Steelers for more than three decades. Pittsburgh began plucking Hall of Fame players who helped form their dynastic 1970s run before their current coach, Mike Tomlin, was born. Washington was dealing picks for players before Dan Snyder watched his first game.

The Redskins have traded out of the first round in 22 of 38 drafts since the legendary Vince Lombardi’s arrival in 1969. No other team has gone without a first-round selection in more than nine of those drafts.

Meanwhile, the Steelers have taken a player in the first round every spring since Noll came to Pittsburgh in 1969. In addition to the aforementioned Hall of Famers, the Steelers’ first-rounders have included enshrinees Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris, likely Hall of Famer Rod Woodson, perennial Pro Bowl guard Alan Faneca and superb safety Troy Polamalu. The Steelers selected all of those players in years the Redskins traded away their first-round selection.

While the Redskins — 30 years after Allen’s last draft — have talked for weeks about trading this year’s first-round pick (the sixth overall, and their only selection in the first four rounds), the Steelers — 15 years after Noll’s departure — are expected to stand pat at No. 15.

“There are teams that will hang onto picks no matter what,” said Bobby Beathard, the Redskins’ general manager from 1978 to 1989. “They won’t try to trade for multiple picks. They won’t trade down or up. They stick with the hand they’re dealt. They’re not even worth calling. We were certainly a team willing to deal so we got a lot of calls.”

That has been the case for nearly four decades in Washington.

Lombardi didn’t use a first-rounder in either of his two Redskins drafts. Allen chose only two players before the fifth round in his seven drafts.

“Mark Murphy [who made Allen’s last Redskins team as an undrafted rookie safety] once told me that George’s playbook started on page 50,” said Charley Casserly, who worked for Allen and Beathard before serving as Washington’s general manager from 1989 to 1999. “You had to learn the first 49 pages by yourself.”

That doomed most rookies, which was just fine with Allen, who trusted them about as much as he did the media. Just five of Allen’s draft choices started a game as a rookie during his 1971-77 Washington tenure.

Beathard inherited an aging roster from Allen in 1978 but didn’t truly restock it until the 1981 draft, when he chose four Pro Bowl players: offensive linemen Mark May and Russ Grimm, defensive end Dexter Manley and receiver Charlie Brown. Beathard made four trades en route to winding up with the then-normal complement of 12 picks.

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