Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/92992
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? 'Man, they didn't really develop like I thought they would. I'd have rather taken five others.' Now, if you do that over a four-year period, that's 20 kids — and then it makes you have to be really right on for all the others that you did get. "How many kids that develop their senior year do you miss out on? If you can replace those five kids with the five who really began to develop, how much better is your football team?" become the director of college scouting and later director of player personnel for the San Francisco 49ers, where he Cerrato left Notre Dame in 1991 to A NEW GIG won a Super Bowl ring in 1995. In 1999, he joined the Washington Redskins, where he had two separate tumultuous stints for a franchise that has struggled since 1993, although it did reach the playoffs in 1999, 2005 and 2007. As the vice president for football operations, Cerrato became a popular lightning rod, and eventually he and the Redskins parted ways in December 2009. "Like Lou always says: nothing is as great as it seems, nothing is as bad as it seems," Cerrato said. "Everything lies somewhere in between. … What hap- pens is you do become very guarded because you don't have a lot of true friends." Notre Dame's 1991-94 NFL Drafts Notre Dame's 1986 recruiting class and then the four consecutive No. 1-rated harvests from 1987-90 yielded two of the three longest winning streaks at Notre Dame since 1931: 23 from 1988-89 and 17 in 1992-93. Those five classes produced a total of 44 NFL selections. Two not among them were quarterbacks Tony Trophy runner-up Raghib "Rocket" Ismail, who departed to the Canadian Football League after his junior season. Here is the chronological order of Notre Dame alumni selected in the first or second rounds of the NFL Rice and Kevin McDougal. Rice finished fourth in the 1989 Heisman Trophy balloting, and McDougal still holds the highest career pass efficiency rating in Notre Dame history. Nineteen of those 44 selections were first- and second-round NFL picks, not including 1990 Heisman Drafts from 1991-94. First Round (9): Cornerback Todd Lyght (1991), tight end Derek Brown (1992), quarterback Rick Mirer (1993), fullback Jerome Bettis (1993), cornerback Tom Carter (1993), tight end Irv Smith (1993), defensive tackle Bryant Young (1994), offensive tackle Aaron Taylor (1994) and safety Jeff Burris (1994). Second Round (10): Fullback Anthony Johnson (1990), guard Tim Grunhard (1990), defensive tackle Jeff Alm (1990), safety Pat Terrell (1990), tailback Ricky Watters (1991), nose tackle Chris Zorich (1991), cornerback Rod Smith (1992), linebacker Demetrius DuBose (1992), tailback Reggie Brooks (1992) and center Tim Ruddy (1994). In the ensuing 18 recruiting classes from 1991-2008, Notre Dame had six first-round picks — most re- cently receiver Michael Floyd and safety Harrison Smith last spring — and 14 in the second, most recently tight end Kyle Rudolph in 2011. — Lou Somogyi