The NFL Draft: Still A Crapshoot

Just before the 1983 draft, rumors broke that Dan Marino of the Univ. of Pittsburgh had smoked pot. Projected to be among the top five to ten picks, team after team got gun shy and passed on him on draft day (as his agent likely cringed, subtracting dollars in his head from an anticipated contract as each pick went flashing on by). That year, John Elway was selected 1st, and the ensuing QB's picked were Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, and Ken O'Brien, until Don Shula said the heck with it and ended up with one of the most prolific passers in the history of the game with the 27th pick. Had Shula managed to assemble a real defense down in Miami the following decade, Marino would have gotten a much deserved ring or two (the Killer Bees had more in common with Swarming Gnats). Heresy, innuendo, and last minute high anxiety can dramatically affect draft selections and alter fates in the NFL. The draft has been around since 1936. It used to be thought of primarily as a repository of college players from which teams could train and replenish their rosters over the longer haul. Sure, there were the "can't miss" 1st round prospects who were expected to step right in and contribute, but they were the exception, not the norm. His first year in the league, O.J. Simpson was actually considered being converted into a wide receiver. There is no such thing as rebuilding in today's NFL, only reloading. The pressure to win now, or at least appear to be on a path to doing so, has adjusted teams into thinking in terms of plugging holes right away to shoot for the playoffs that season (unless of course it's the Detroit Lions). It is very much a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league, much like the society in which we live. The advent of free agency contributed to this mindset, with rookies now tied to their teams for only 4 years before becoming eligible to go get a better contract elsewhere. Thus, teams seek to maximize the utility of draft picks as soon as they get off the plane. Background checks on college players by their prospective employers are likely more thorough than for the top graduates of the best business, medical and law schools in the country. Scouts mill around prospects' homes, schools, and police departments all year, grilling anyone who might know something about the kid's habits and character to fully formulate what they have seen of the prospect on film, which is typically all of their college career games and in some cases, all their high school games. Tens of seven figured signing contracts, much of it guaranteed, for the unproven rookies have scouts acting like private investigators in protecting their team's substantial investments (and their own jobs). Were this not done under the aegis of upward mobility, it could be construed as an invasion of privacy. There is a plethora of physical tests given to the prospects in Indianapolis at the annual combine in February. Sprints, cone shuttle drills, vertical leaps, 225 lb. bench presses, etc., are performed by a herd of prospects and scientifically scored by the scouts. The combine testing is so thorough that top prospects have been increasingly avoiding it, leery of a sub-par day, as that could move them down in the estimated pecking order quickly, opting instead for "pro day" workouts within the comfortable confines of their own respective colleges in the spring. The attention paid to the drills can get comical. You see a video of two dozen scouts huddled around and on top of one another at the finish line of a top prospect's highly esteemed 40 yard dash, staring at their stopwatches as if they are in an operating room for open heart surgery. What, Joe from the Seahawks times him in 4.478 seconds and Red from the Bills catches him in a 4.485? Wow - what an edge! And there is the Wonderlik (sp) "intelligence and aptitude" multiple choice test, which has some questions not unlike, if there is a carton of a dozen eggs in the refrigerator and you eat four a day, how many days will the carton last? Or, you went out to see a movie a week for 3 months. How many movies did you see over a 12 week period? There are some fundamental problems with the weight of evaluation given to the drills. The prospects do them in shorts and tees, without the 10-25 pounds of pads and equipment that are uniforms on game days, making them much more indicative of overall athleticism than how good a football player a kid really is. Also, all drills are non-contact, and they don't play in shorts (or skirts, though some contend quarterbacks and kickers do) on Sundays. A linebacker prospect may look and clock great in the shuttle, running squares around the cones in simulated pursuit against the wind, but how does he look with a 6'5, 350 lb. pro bowl offensive lineman who knows all the tricks arm wrestling him and snorting in his face while he tries to look over or around the behemoth to locate the ball carrier? Or more importantly, does the kid have that sixth sense of where the ball carrier is as the play develops? A quarterback prospect may have a rifle of an arm in the drills, trotting back with no rush and making "all the throws" with velocity and accuracy on deep sideline routes, as scouts and coaches drool in anticipation. But how does he look some miserable cold, wet December evening while on the visiting team up in Foxboro or Three Rivers, his team down by 10 with only about 4 minutes left, it's 3rd and 13, doesn't like the call that gets transmitted into his helmet (what he can hear of it), and has had a belly full of some wide eyed multi-million dollar sack specialist yelling in his ear hole after every pass rush as if on crack about how good it was being with his mother was last night? As much as they may try, scouts simply can't quantify the intangibles - feel for the game, focus, and heart. They're quite aware of them, but teams ultimately bank mostly on tangibles with their selections, and over the years clubs have made and will continue to commit major league blunders. Essentially, that's why Tom Brady lasted until Round 6, Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning were considered about equal coming out of college and why Joe Montana was not selected until the bottom of the 3rd round. In the Golden Era, John Unitas was drafted in Round 9 before being cut by the Steelers, and Bart Starr was picked in the last round, 17. The Olympics were once considered a hotbed for obtaining fleet, game breaking wide receivers. Problem was, the sprinters could not harness their straight away speed into pass routes that fooled anybody, nor could most of them catch anything. Bob Hayes in Dallas was the exception. Willie Gault was a useful but one dimensional receiver in Chicago, and hardly a star. The Saints drafted Larry Burton out of Purdue in 1975 but he wasn't around very long, and was on the field even less. Perhaps Jimmy Johnson said it best on Fox last year when he intimated teams should not worry about who everybody else likes or where everybody thinks the player should go - but to just go ahead and select who they want, when they have the opportunity to take them. The Cowboys had smashing success doing precisely that during most of the Tom Landry era, unexpectedly selecting obscure players from small schools with top picks such as RB Duane Thomas, LB Thomas Henderson, and DE Ed Jones, to name a few. Trivia note: WR Michael Irvin is associated with the Jimmy Johnson tenure in Dallas but it was actually Landry who drafted Irvin his last year at the helm. Irvin didn't play much as a rookie, the head coach preferring to bring him along semi-slowly. Also, Landry said he would likely take Troy Aikman with his top pick that spring, just before being dismissed. The late, great, Tom Landry...... There is plenty of mock draft conjecture out there as to whom the Saints may take with their top picks and that will not be added onto here, noting only a hope that there is a linebacker in the mix. Jonathan Vilma and to a lesser extent, Scott Fujita, look like the Saints' only cogs at LB at this point, though 2nd year player Jo-Lonn Dunbar flashed some ability last season and potentially could be a starter. This position on the team is thin. If you watch it on TV Saturday, it starts later this year (4 PM EST, 3 PM CST), so as to attract more prime time viewers (NFL trend). If tuning in to ESPN, turning down the volume below normal so Chris Berman's hyperbole does not cause premature nausea is suggested. There is still too much time between selections (personnel departments spend 50 something weeks a year working on this stuff and should have their minds made up). Take a close look at the ebullient draft guru, Mel Kiper, Jr., who has worked hard at it and made a good living off the draft for a long time. With that pompadour of his, he might also make a pretty good Elvis impersonator and would definitely make a great car salesman. Enjoy the draft for what it's worth. It has effectively become not unlike an American reality TV show with all the media hoopla, high priced flesh peddling, consumerism, hot air, intrigue, and suspense one can expect from a production of this scale. Unlike Survivor or Lost, however, it is considered to have more meaningful and long term implications - at least for pro football fans. Inherently though, the draft still manages to come out as a rite of spring laced with some optimism about tomorrow - it's most enduring tradition.