However, in basketball, where there are only 10 men on the court at a given time, as opposed to 22 in football, rookies make a far greater impact. In football it can be exceedingly difficult to gauge a rookie's impact. Mike Anderson, the 189th pick last year, had the impact of a first-rounder. Because football is a socialist enterprise where the poor get the first crack at the wealth of college talent, the best players usually land on bad teams.
Players taken by the better teams tend to fight for playing time.
Canidate, who was hurt for most of his rookie season, had the misfortune of sitting behind league MVP Marshall Faulk on St. Louis' depth chart. It is worth noting that each of the first six players taken in the 2000 draft started 11 or more games, but the reason those teams picked so high was that they had obvious needs those players filled. Eighteen of the first-round picks started eight or more games, meaning 13 started fewer. While 15 of the first 22 players taken started half their teams' games, six of the final nine did not. Occasionally, a good player will surface on a good team and make a splash.