Teams, experts can’t seem to figure out draft
QUESTION: How many NFL teams look back over the past, oh, 15 years, and regret players they selected in the first or second round of the draft? Answer: All of them. Still, it’s NFL mock draft time!
This year’s Super Bowl was played between the Patriots and Eagles, two pretty good teams, perhaps the NFL’s best, right?
Know how many drafts the 44 starters represented? A lot. We can start with
Tom Brady, chosen in the sixth round, 199th in the 2000 draft, then move to
James Harrison, who has played and starred — five Pro Bowl selections — since he went undrafted in 2002.
Or we can skip ahead to 2016, when starting Pats linebacker Elandon Rob
erts, now just 23, was selected in the sixth round, 214th overall.
So this year’s Super Bowl included starters drafted over many drafts. Yet just 11 were first-round picks.
On the other hand, 16 of the starters were drafted in the third round or beyond and another 11 went undrafted. There were as many undrafted Super Bowl starters as there were first-round starters.
And 27 of this year’s 44 Super Bowl starters were draft day poke-and-hopes or afterthoughts — not one among the first 64 picks over many drafts — or just plain rejects.
Not sure that spreading such info would be in the best career interests of ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr., among other draft touts, or, for that matter, many NFL general managers, past and current.
Still, after this year’s draft, the usual: We’ll be told in expert-certain terms which teams did well and which did poorly.
➤ More college basketball scandals! Who knows, the next thing we know we might learn that in 1994 Allen Iverson didn’t have the grades to be admitted to Georgetown!
“It’s a cesspool,” explained former top Nike college operative, Sonny
Vaccaro, who later brought his inside knowhow to Adidas, “and we start the process.” And he said that 30 years ago.
But with so many bigtime college programs now caught in the FBI and/or NCAA blender, ESPN may soon have a fresh batch of disgraced big-name coaches to choose from.