The Washington Redskins on Friday completed a trade with the Seattle Seahawks, acquiring three additional draft picks in exchange for the 69th overall pick.*
Scot McCloughan started his week expressing his wishes to extend the Washington Redskins' total number of draft picks from seven to 10.
Check out these exclusive photos of the Washington Redskins' draft room during Day 2 of the 2015 NFL Draft at Redskins Park in Loudoun County, Va.
By week's end, the first-year Redskins' general manager's plan had come to fruition.
The Redskins on Friday executed a third-round trade with the Seattle Seahawks, acquiring the defending NFC Champions' 95th (third round), 112th (fourth round), 167th (fifth round) and 181st (sixth round) overall picks in exchange for Washington's 69th overall pick in the third round.
Redskins head coach Jay Gruden said late Friday, after the conclusion of the third round, that the team sees "there is a lot of merit in the later rounds of this draft."
"There are a lot of good football players to be had," Gruden said. "Like I said, the depth of this draft we feel like is pretty good and get a good guy in the fifth, sixth, seventh round, a couple of them that can help your football team."
On Monday, McCloughan – who helped construct extremely successful rosters in Green Bay, Seattle and San Francisco before taking the Washington job – told the gathered media at Redskins Park that "we'd love to get more picks in this draft."
"We have our seven originals right now," McCloughan said. "I'd love to get 10-plus out of this thing."
After getting that done on Friday, Gruden said the entire staff bought into the plan, and never thought of it as a "leap of faith" to drop 26 spots to gain three extra picks.
"These scouts put a lot of time in there," he said. "They're studying all these guys and graded all these guys that have not been picked. The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round grades that we have on some players, we realize that they're good football players and they can help our football team. I think that's the reason why we wanted a couple extra picks."
Gruden admitted that players picked in the later rounds don't necessarily have to be "immediate starters;" rather, they "can add to your depth," something the Redskins have lacked at times in recent seasons.
"They can help special teams," Gruden said. "But I think there is good quality there in the later rounds and to have a couple more is good."
The Redskins wrap up the 2015 NFL Draft with an extremely busy day on Saturday, welcoming seven new players to their roster. Adding to the already full day of picks will be the opportunity to pick twice over a seven-pick span in the fourth round, and back-to-back picks in the sixth round.
"We've got the board pretty much set the way we want it, and we'll have discussions [Saturday] morning before our pick comes and try to do our due diligence and figure it out," Gruden said. "We'll talk to the coaches and Scot, obviously. We'll go from there. But there' s still a lot of players left that can help us at a lot of different positions, and we'll take all that into consideration and make a good Redskins decision."
RELATED LINKS:-- 2015 Washington Redskins Draft Central
-- Wale To Perform & Announce Redskins’ Draft Pick!
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