The NFL Draft…WTF

Wife (pronounced WEE-fea), my native American friend, is out of town, and to celebrate I fired up the charcoal brickets, popped open a tall boy of PBR, dialed up Yellow Man on I-Tunes, and got my blog on. I love being over 30.



So anyway, Hash and I were talking after the spring game; and Jonathan Dwyer. What the fuck!?

The NFL advisory board projected him as a first or second rounder. Yet on draft weekend he fell all the way to the sixth, with nary a peep from the darkest trashiest corners of the media world (talk radio and bloggers like ourselves). We went over all the rumors, and stats, but for every reason we found for Dwyer to drop we found another player in the same situation who’s draft status wasn’t effected, or didn’t drop nearly as much.

The only conceivable answer is that NFL teams have no idea what they are doing in the draft. I love BayBay Thomas, but in what world does one team take a wide receiver who only runs three routes and a quarterback with Dizzy Dean's delivery five rounds before they take a player than ran for over 2,600 yards in two seasons in the ACC?

So Dwyer dropped because, “shit happens” and he didn’t do enough to insure against “shit happening”. So what could he have done differently? Well you’ll have to answer that for yourself, but if Jonathan Dwyer is a worse pro than Tashard Choice, who went in the fourth round, I’ll eat my straw hat, and I love Tashard, and straw hats.

(totally hitting old man ramble mode)

What’s this crap about you can’t judge a draft the day after? Of course you can. You can’t predict how the players will do in the NFL, but you can judge how sound each teams decision making was. Watching the draft this year was like playing penny poker with my brother's kids.

Denver trading away picks to get into the first round to pick Tim Tebow is the equivilant of his four year old going all in with “all red cards”. Also, did anyone else see Jacksonville’s war room freak the hell out when CJ Spiller was drafted by Buffalo? Seriously, no one said, “okay, so who do we pick if someone takes CJ?”. That conversation never happened? Did some one just scream out the name “Tyson Alualu”? Lesser point, but Chan, whose going to block for CJ Spiller?

No one in the draft is systematic. Its all odds. No prospect is a sure thing, even the sure-things. Teams are making decisions based on partial information. Its just like poker. Know the pot odds, have a plan, and stick with it.

Don’t fall in love with specific players, remember they are all prospects.

Draft offensive line and defensive line heavily. I guarantee you'll never finish worse than eight and eight.

Game performance means more than work outs.

More draft picks are better than less; only trade up under very specific circumstances, like you need one player to go from average team to Super Bowl contender, and that player better be Calvin Johnson or Tony Boselli.

Players, show up for the combine in shape.

Agents, if your guy shows up out of shape, lie and tell everyone he can’t run because he strained his groin