I hate to keep stealing stuff from coldhardfootballfacts.    Actually, that's not entirely true; I just wish there were more places worth stealing from so it wouldn't look like I'm stealing their stuff exclusively.

Anyway, today's insight is that despite the fact that teams talk the talk about building teams from the trenches out, the reality is that they spend more resources on the players on the edge than they do in the middle.    Players who can  "play in space", so to speak.    So here's today nugget of football wisdom.   Enjoy.

Actions speak louder than words

Cold, Hard Football Facts for April 18, 2007

By Kerry J. Byrne Cold, Hard Football Facts publisher   Most sports fans know that baseball teams are built from the inside out, as major-league organizations seek proverbial “strength up the middle” of the diamond: pitchers and catchers are paramount, followed by center fielders and middle infielders.   You might expect NFL organizations to do the same thing: devote the most resources to the heart of the team and build their offensive and defensive units around a strong inner core.   But they do not.   In fact, quite the opposite: NFL teams are built for combat on the edges of the gridiron, with the inner heart of offensive and defensive units sacrificed everywhere but at quarterback.   It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense on the surface, but this is exactly the way teams are constructed in the modern NFL – at least if Draught-Day behavior is any indication. Teams covet cornerbacks over safeties; offensive tackles over centers; outside linebackers over middle linebackers; wide receivers over running backs; defensive ends over defensive tackles.   For the third year in a row, we’ve looked at the first-round habits of NFL teams over the past 10 drafts. This simple exercise offers incredible insight into what NFL organizations deem important. What we find, as we so often do when we look only at the Cold, Hard Football Facts, flies in the face of conventional gridiron wisdom.   Here’s a look at the raw numbers of the past 10 drafts, followed by what these numbers tell us.   FIRST-ROUND SELECTIONS (1997-2006) Position No. 1 Picks Cornerback 43 Wide receiver 41 Defensive end 39 Linebacker 35 Running back 30 Defensive tackle* 29 Offensive tackle 27 Quarterback 27 Tight end 14 Safety 13 Guard 11 Center 3 Kicker 1 * includes four nose tackles   Teams are built from the outside-in Notice something about the most frequently drafted positions? They have words in them like “wide,” “corner” and “end” – players who perform on the outer edges of the gridiron.   Even within individual positions, we notice an unfailing trend: edge players are drafted far more frequently than interior players. On the offensive line, tackles are taken more often than guards, who are taken more than centers. First-round tackles outnumber first-round centers 9 to 1. In the secondary, cornerbacks are taken at better than a 3-to-1 rate over safeties. On the defensive line, ends are taken 34 percent more often than tackles and nose tackles We also find that ...  Middle linebackers are dinosaurs The image of the domineering middle linebacker ruling over the football field – the Huff, the Butkus, the Nitschke, the Lambert, the Urlacher – is burnished into the memory of pigskin romantics. But teams in the modern NFL are far more interested in flashy outside linebackers than they are interior linebackers.   We grouped together all linebackers for this exercise, because historic draft data clouds the position: players are pegged as outside linebackers, middle linebackers or inside linebackers, while others are simply listed as linebackers.   But if you look into each individual draft, it’s pretty obvious that outside linebackers are far more coveted than the romanticized middle linebacker – or even its less heralded 3-4 off-shoot, the inside linebacker. Here’s a breakdown of the 35 linebackers taken in the first-round over the past 10 years. OLB – 21 MLB – 11 ILB – 2 LB – 1 Coaches and conventional wisdom lie Nobody takes more glee in skewering conventional wisdom than the Cold, Hard Football Facts. And it's pretty obvious that our little exercise here slices up conventional wisdom like a gridiron Ginsu.   Ask a coach at any level and they’ll tell you that “games are won in the trenches” and that strength on the offensive and defensive lines are the foundation of success.   But actions speak louder than words, and these actions roundly refute the words that come out of the mouths of coaches.   Wide receivers, as the Cold, Hard Football Facts have proven, have only a secondary effect on the outcome of a game. And, as first-round draft picks, they have an extraordinarily high rate of failure at the NFL level.   But coaches and GMs just can’t keep their grubby hands off these pigskin prima donnas. They’ve drafted 41 wideouts over the past 10 drafts, more than any other offensive position. (Wide receivers led our list last year, with 45 taken in the 10 drafts from 1996-2005.)   Compare those 41 wideouts taken to the 42 offensive linemen drafted over the same period.   The number of picks devoted to wide receivers and offensive linemen may look even, but they’re wildly distorted: a team generally fields two wide receivers, adding more on a given play as necessary. But a team always fields five offensive linemen. If offensive linemen were given equal billing in the hearts and minds of NFL teams, they’d be selected roughly twice as often as wide receivers.   Bottom line: coaches love to trumpet the importance of building a team to battle in the trenches. But more often than not, their Draught Day actions tell a different story.