Your Pre NFL draft Post-draft retrospective

To beat the rush I have decided to give my NFC North draft grades now.

Detroit: Had their typical poor draft. C-
Vikings: they totally blew it, what were they thinking? F
Bears: Not usually a well-run team, they did better than normal. B
Packers: Had a good draft to round out their solid roster. A-/B+

This may seem ludicrous to you, but it is hardly any more sensible to provide grades the day after teams pick. For all the money, time, and effort that goes into the NFL draft (the biggest offseason event of any sport) the “science” of predicting success in the NFL is exceedingly dubious. In some ways you are indeed better off trying to predict based on the track record of an individual General Manager (a GM is the person who picks players for teams). And even the best GMs will miss a fair number of their picks. The truth is the history is that littered with guys everyone thought would be studs that never made. In 1998 there was a huge debate about which quarterback should go first overall: Tennessee’s Peyton Manning or Washington State’s Ryan Leaf. Peyton Manning went first and went on to win 4 league Most Valuable Player awards in a Hall of Fame career. Ryan Leaf went second and is generally considered the biggest draft bust of all time. He was hated by his teammates and fans while with the San Diego Chargers, washed out of the league in three years while winning only four games. Afterwards he went on to coach college football at some tiny Division II school where he was fired for stealing painkillers from the players and eventually ended up in prison.

And this is far from the only case. In the 2003 draft the Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off the greatest draft trick of all time. They talked to the Minnesota Vikings about a trade so long that the Vikings 15 minute time limit to make their pick ran out. That Jags then snatched up their prize Marshall quarterback Byron Leftwich – who they unceremoniously cut a week before the 2007 season. The Vikings who were ridiculed for making one of the most boneheaded moves ever settled on Okie State defensive tackle Kevin Williams – who made six Pro Bowls and anchored the “Williams Wall” defense for years.

In 1982 the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – at that time arguably the most mismanaged franchise of all time – drafted someone they didn’t mean to in Penn State guard Sean Farrell. Realizing their blunder they traded for another pick to take their real target defensive end Booker Reese out of Bethune-Cookman. Turns out Reese had a little cocaine problem and the “Yucs” traded him away in less than three seasons. Farrell naturally went on to be a quality starter for eight years.

Perhaps the greatest story was legendary Cleveland Coach Paul Brown’s determination to get a quarterback with the sixth pick of the 1957 draft. He was devastated when the three QBs he was looking at were picked before his selection. So he settled on a running back from Syracuse.

Jim Brown led the NFL in rushing eight of the next nine seasons, never missed a Pro Bowl in his career, retired as the all time leading NFL rusher, and is arguably the greatest running back of all time.

To be fair the Paul Brown – all three of those QBs he wanted panned out. Paul Horning became a Hall of Famer – but at running back, Len Dawson became a Hall of Fame quarterback (although not for the Steelers who drafted him, nor in Cleveland where he played in 1960 and 1961, but the Kansas City Chiefs), and John Brodie was a quality starting QB for many years. Adding Jim Brown propelled returning QB Tommy O’Connell to the Pro Bowl that very season. After which he was replaced by Milt Plum, Cleveland’s second pick in 1957, who made two Pro Bowls. There is a reason I called Paul Brown legendary – and it isn’t just because the Cleveland Browns are named after him.

Have I convinced you?

As time passed and people started to realize how easy it is to bust a pick some have espoused the idea teams are better off taking offensive linemen. This isn’t true (last paragraph), but for a GM worried about losing his job it can make sense – a bust at tackle is not remembered as much as a bust at quarterback.

Anyway with regards to this year’s draft realistically it takes about three years to determine how good a draft pick was. And even then player’s careers are still evolving. Recent Lion addition Reggie Bush is an excellent case in point.

Trojan Bush was expected to be first the overall pick in the 2006 NFL draft, but the Houston Texans controversially passed on him for NC State defensive End Mario Williams (rumor has it that was in part because of his evasiveness about a house an agent had let his parents stay at rent free. Investigations into that eventually cost Bush his Heisman – the first player to lose one – and USC a National Championship). It was a strange draft for the Texans as it was an open secret they were going to get rid of their GM Charlie Casserly AFTER the draft. Five years later it looked to be brilliant a move – Williams made two Pro-Bowls for the Texans while becoming one of the more feared DEs in the league. Meanwhile Bush fell to the Saints at #2 and never took off in New Orleans and was traded to Miami for next to nothing.

But in the last two years Bush redeemed himself in South Florida with two solid seasons proving despite his small physical frame he could be the main running back on an NFL team. While he was doing that Williams suffered through injuries before signing a huge free agent deal with the Buffalo Bills last year where he did not make the impact many fans expected.

So that is why we should conclude the Packers had the best draft in the NFC North.

Stopping the Madness Merry-go-round

In the face of the unending cycle of conference realignment in college sports, the conferences have finally gotten smart. The Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and now the ACC have had their member schools sign a deal granting the conference all media rights for all the schools for the next X number of years regardless of if they are in the the conference or not. This doesn’t just remove the incentive to leave, it almost prohibits it: no one is going to exit a conference and receive no TV money for years. Maybe in the last year of the deal some conference that really wants a team might pay them for one season, but this I doubt:there will always be weak conferences to raid. So kudos – someone got smart.

I bet that at least one non-BCS conference will overplay it’s hand and try to do this only to have schools rebel and then see some schools leave. The MAC maybe? They’ve been relatively stable lately. If you are guessing the Big East American Athletic Conference (kinda dig the name by the way – AAC isn’t bad either), you’re guessing wrong. They’ve been beaten down enough lately that they won’t be that stupid. We also will eventually see the most powerful conference, the SEC, do this – I wonder if they are holding off because they are complacently thinking no one would ever want to leave. I can also see some team challenging this in court, but think the odds would be long – everyone knows what they are signing.

I’ll be happy to see the end of these annual realignments. Fourteen team conferences are too big (guys won’t play every team in their conference over a four year career). I like the title games – which under current NCAA rules require twelve teams. It could be changed to allow ten team leagues to have one too. Once the college playoff goes to 8 teams (which it will) there may be talk of ending title games as playoff teams will have 3 extra games already. I bet it won’t go away – but will cap the playoffs at 8 teams for a long while. When they go beyond – which I think will take many many years – they may end them then. Football is a little too brutal to ask guys to play a potential extra five games.

The Business of Amateur Sports

While they came up short, the Michigan Wolverines’ basketball team had a fantastic year - making the Final Four for the first time since 1993 when they had the legendary “Fab Five” (given the name because all five of their starters were freshman). Of course the wins in the Fab Five’s title run were all later vacated for National Collegian Athletic Association (NCAA) rules violations (in this case players taking money).

Michigan’s foibles were hardly the first or last college sports $candal – as fans are all too aware. A recent Marist poll found that two-thirds of fans think it is a routine practice for colleges to break NCAA rules when it comes to recruiting and training their players. My first reaction was how blind are a third of sports fans. My second was what happened in the last year to change so many minds – in 2012 barely more than half of fans felt cheating was prevalent. Penn State leaps to mind, but that wasn’t about players. Auburn is having some scandal about player drug use. The biggest current money scandal involves a guy in jail for a Ponzi scheme admitting to hiring hookers for players and recruits, but there have been splashier violations (even at Miami – after all you can’t spell “corruption” without the “U”).

It is not hard to figure out why these scandals happen. College sports is huge money and the players see none of it. Recently the National College Players Association and a Drexel University professor name Ellen Staurowsky studied NCAA sports revenue. They looked at the most prominent conferences; those of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). If kids in those conferences received shared revenue the way pro players get it (the professionals usually get between 50-60% of the pie) football players would earn an average of $178,500 a year. Basketball players would get $375,000 (while football makes buckets more money than basketball, but the cash would be spread over waaaay more guys). For the top teams the salaries would be even higher – the ten most profitable basketball teams would give their players $1.25 mill a year for example. And that would be on top of what they get now in terms of scholarships.

Those scholarships are worth $23,000 – but the study calculated that that average Division I scholarship is roughly $3,300 short of the actual cost of attending.

That doesn’t seem to matter much to fans – or at least the ones who spoke to Marist. 72% of them claimed that athletes should only receive that scholarship, while just 21% believed their sports heroes should get paid. Remarkably the tide against paying players is getting stronger – last year those numbers were 68% and 27% respectively.

This worry about keeping money out of “pure” [95% of those polled said players should focus on their studies, just 5% were able to see that college sports has become a big business] college sports doesn’t seem to carry to coaches the same way. 45% of those polled said college coaches – most of whom work for economically struggling state institutions – should be paid the same a pro coaches. That was an increase of 6% over last year. Possibly that is because college fans worry about losing their coaches to the pros?

Incidentally about 60% of Americans are some type of sports fan (which is why I harbor the silly hope of someday getting paid for all this wonderful writing I do). And to bring this entry back to its point of departure, as English 101 taught me, Marist reports that just under half of Americans follow college b-ball at some point, and almost four in five want the big dance to stay at the size it is.

Fantasy nugget of the day

Don't sleep on Larry Fitzgerald this year. His stats were down this past season, but Zona has added Carson Palmer.

Wait - did I just suggest Carson Palmer as a savior!?! Have I lost my mind? I don't think so, you need to read between the lines. Palmer isn't great, but he is an improvement over the dreck the Cards threw on the field last year. While he has never lived up to his first overall pick draft status, he is only 34 which isn't particularly old for a QB (Brees is 35, Brady is 36, Manning is 38) and threw for 4000 yards and 22 TDs in 15 games last year. The Cardinals enfeebled offense threw for 3,300 yards and just 11 TDs. After Kevin Kolb went down in Week 6 the Big Stiff White Guy of the Week they played at quarterback threw for 3 TDs in the remaining ten games. THREE!!! Now Kolb is no world beater (although I think he deserves a fair chance in a training camp for a starting QB - if he could stay healthy for once in his career - a story for another day*), but when he was playing Scary Larry was on pace for an 1,100+ yard 8 TD season. Assuming Carson is an upgrade then look for the best receiver in the NFL to return to form in 2013 (and remember he has last year's first round pick Micheal Floyd from Notre Dame playing opposite him - and now with a year under his belt).

With Kolb and Fordham University's proudest, John Skelton, splitting time in 2011 Larry rang up 1,400 yards. And Palmer has never thrown to this good of a receiver. You've been warned.

*Kolb was on course for 3,600 yards and 23 TDs he was lost for the season.

To the hype machine Batman!!

NFL free agency is about to start. You’ll see a bunch of splashy headlines about big names, but the truth is free agency is overhyped. NFL teams aren’t generally run by idiots, the very best players rarely hit free agency. Now some talent gets out because the salary cap prevents teams from keeping everyone for long – but the best players don’t walk. Lots of signees don’t pan out. Last year the hot QB commodity was Packers backup QB Matt Flynn who signed a three year $19.5 deal with the Seattle Seahawks. Last season Flynn threw 9 passes as he never won the starting job; which went to third round pick Russell Wilson. Often the best signings are relatively unknown figures whom someone recognizes as a raw talent they can develop – Wes Welker had played for two teams in three seasons and had one career touchdown catch when the Patriots signed him. Of course those diamonds in the rough aren’t easy to spot – too often teams get excited about players who have just a good outing or two. Flynn was that way (he had had two career starts), most infamously perhaps was Rob Johnson.

Better teams build through the draft (not that there aren’t a lot of hype and busts there as well). Here is a list of free agent pickups who started in that last Super Bowl:

Randy Moss
Jonathan Goodwin
Justin Smith
Ahmad Brooks
Carlos Rodgers
Donte Whitner

Vonta Leach
Matt Birk
Bryant McKinnie
Ma'ake Kemoeatu
Corey Graham
Bernard Pollard
Cary Williams

How many of those would you call stars? 1? 2? Free agency fills out a roster, but teams can’t use it to create the backbone of their squad. Well they can – but then you end up being the Washington Deadskins.

The hardest core of fans

Few sports translate worse to television than hockey (which is why it is easily the least popular of the four major) – the speed of the game just doesn’t come across the screen. Hockey is much faster in person – faster than any other sport. That and cheaper tickets (again: least popular) can make it a fun evening. Plus the atmosphere for a solid team is great – hockey doesn’t attract casual fans (well not usually – I am recalling Michael Jordan throwing on a Blackhawks sweater when they made a run in 2010).

To wit: I went to the 23rd game in the Blackhawks 24 game win streak. This was a day where a huge snow storm hit and shut down schools and businesses across the city. The United Center was still packed and proud. Fans were even in standing room sections and stool the whole game.

Added bonus: because hockey is low end, it often adopts promotional ideas from minor-league baseball. I can’t count the number of inter-period pee-wee hockey games I have seen (helps to build the next generation of players too, when most kids are thinking football, basketball, or baseball).

Welcome to the Midwest Mr. Smith

The Kansas City Chiefs have traded for former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith. Smith was the first overall pick in the 2005 NFL draft coming out of Utah. San Fran picked him over Cal’s Aaron Rodgers who fell all the way to pick 24 where the Packers took him. O0ps.

Smith didn’t have a pleasant ride in San Francisco for the majority of his time there. The team was mismanaged when he arrived and Smith was often hurt (he missed the entire 2008 season). Generally regarded as a bust, most Niner fans did not want the team to resign him in 2011 and questioned new coach Jim Harbaugh when he did. But Smith had a renaissance in 2011, winning a classic shootout vs. Drew Brees and the Saints in his first playoff start and but for a pair of moronic muffed punts by Kyle Williams would have beaten the Giants and been in the Super Bowl. Harbaugh flirted with Peyton Manning that offseason and would have let Smith walk for him. However Smith came back even stronger in 2012, only to lose his job to injury when Colin Kaepernick exploded onto the scene.

It is amazing that the Chiefs traded a 2nd and 3rd round pick for a guy that no one wanted two years ago. Even last year when he was free agent there was not much interest – mainly Miami, although that may have been in part because teams thought his first choice was San Fran. The truth is that Smith is not a top tier QB – while he didn’t lose that game to the Giants, he was hardly stellar: completing less that half his passes while the offense did not convert a single third down. While he has his moments, he can’t carry a team and isn’t likely to lead a huge comeback.

Still the Chiefs have landed a quarterback who has proven he can win in the NFL – something of which there is not an unlimited commodity. And even in his bad years he wasn’t a turnover machine. On an offense with Jamaal Charles, Dwayne Bowe (if KC resigns him), whomever the Chiefs take with the #1 overall pick, and new coach Andy Reid there is potential there.

*Smith follows a well-worn path from the Bay to the “Paris of the Plains.” He is the fifth QB to make that trip in the last twenty-five years – following Steve DeBerg (who went to other teams first), the immortal Joe Montana, Steve Bono, and Elvis Grbac (the last three were back to back to back starters for the Chiefs). The signs are good – all four made the playoffs at some point (3-6 combined record), three won the AFC West Division, and three made a Pro-Bowl in their time in Arrowhead.

*The Chiefs have had to pick up QBs from other teams for a while as they haven’t started one they drafted and developed themselves since the Bill Keeney era. The “Mr. Irrelevant” (the very last player taken) of the 1978 NFL draft, climbed his way to being a starter for seven years including a Pro-Bowl and a Wildcard postseason birth. To be fair Kansas City haven’t taken a QB in the first round since busting on Todd Blackledge – the forgotten 6th quarterback of the legendary Class of ’83. Todd can now be heard announcing college football (I think SEC games on CBS?).

Hockey realignment and Hawks making history

The National Hockey League is groping its way towards realignment, switching from six divisions to four. For Midwestern hockey fans Minnesota would now be grouped with Chicago and St. Louis (Nashville would also be in the division). However Detroit and Columbus are exiled out to two different divisions. Columbus somehow ends up in the “Atlantic” division (which doesn’t include Boston or a Florida Panthers team that plays in Miami). The biggest take away is this breaks up a natural Chicago-Detroit rivalry and splits up two Original Six teams*. If the NHL does ending up reshuffling I hope they bring named divisions (Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe) and conferences (Clarence Campbell and Prince of Wales) – which ended a couple of decades ago. As a Washington Capitals fan I like it as it gets the Caps out of a division full of teams I don’t care about.

Since we are talking hockey we should also take a moment to recognize the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks’ historic run. Nineteen games into their season they are yet to lose. Well they did lose three shoot-outs, but those are really ties (and would have been under old rules). Under current NHL rules if teams are tied after an overtime period they have five players from each team alternate uncontested shots at a goalie. I don’t like the idea of effectively changing the sport with a shoot-out, but I acknowledge it is exciting.

Incidentally nineteen games is only a record to start a season. The 1979-80 Philadelphia Flyers had a 35 game no loss streak row midseason - 35 games was 44% of the season in 1979 (thanks to a lockout shortened 48 game season, the Hawks are at 40% already). They lost the Stanley Cup the in New York Islanders in six games that year.

[*From 1942 to 1967 the NHL only had six teams. The term “Original” is actually misleading as there had been other teams before WWII, but they all folded - plus only two of the Six date to the NHL’s first season in 1917-18. This is why it is bogus that Habs fans (Montreal Canadians) talk up their 24 Cups. The NHL was corrupt by modern standards during this period – Red Wings owner James Norris (see names above) owned multiple teams. Anyway the Six are the Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Montreal Canadians. The two teams from North of the Border are the true originals. By the way this is not that unusual – the NFL has only two original teams: the Chicago Bears and the Arizona Cardinals (who came from Chicago by way of St. Louis).]

And yes - I added all this explanation because hockey is barely a mainstream sport anymore. Sad.