A lot of things we talk about here are utterly pointless, but I think this particular exercise is the most inconsequential and worthless of them all: draft grades. In five years, sure, grade the hell out of them. Get out the red pen, get some gold stars, and make smiley faces all over the place. But for right now, it’s just masturbation.
I get the appeal of the draft… and I was as thrilled to watch it as anyone. You want your team to fill needs, you have your favorite college players, you have opinions on guys, and that’s fine… grades on just the first round might be doable, which is alright with me, since Antonio Cromartie is going to be the greatest cornerback ever. But putting any kind of an accurate grade on a team’s entire draft… well, that’s just not possible until your 3rd rounder gets arrested for pulling a gun on a cafeteria worker and your 6th rounder becomes the first guard to ever win the league’s MVP. You can’t project anything. No one alive could grade these things accurately… not even if Mel Kiper Jr. and Dr. Z had a lovechild, named it Mel Z. Jr., and that child was raised by the guy with the stopwatch at the NFL combine.
So I’m giving every team an A+ just for showing up and trying so hard. Congratulations to all you guys, you deserve it.
Pacifist Viking
This year I swore off reading draft grades. I’ve read plenty of good grades for the Vikings in recent years, so far it’s all meant 1 playoff win in 5 seasons. Yippee!
I figure the experts are giving the Vikes low grades for reaching on Cook and Jackson. How the hell do they know? I don’t know if Tarvaris Jackson will become the greatest QB ever, and I’ll never know if he would have been there if the Vikes had waited until the 3rd round.
And who decided on the grading gimmick? There are numerous ways to rank and score things, but for some reason every media outlet gives drafts grades. Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
May 1, 2006 at 1:58 pm
nirwin
I agree with you on draft grades, but I still just don’t understand the appeal of the draft as a whole. I mean, since when did sitting around all afternoon watching a bunch of ESPN blowhards speculate about things that they don’t have a clue about, and every now and then a name comes up. I mean, I understand being interested in who your team picks and in who gets picked off your college team. I must admit I was as interested in this as everyone else, but there’s nothing really innately thrilling about it. Is there a reason people can’t just look it up on the Internet later that night or, for all you old people out there, read about it in the morning paper the next day? I really just do not get the appeal of wasting an entire afternoon watching names go by on a screen. I mean what’s wrong? Was the paint-drying convention not in town this week? Was it raining too hard for you to go outside and watch your grass grow? Was the Weather Channel not broadcasting this weekend? Somebody please help me understand the appeal of this crap when the NHL and NBA PLAYOFFS are going on and there’s countless baseball games, as well. And while you’re at it, please help me understand why it’s necessary for the NFL Draft to hijack every single waking hour of ESPN coverage from the end of the season all the way through April when all this other stuff is going on, too. I mean there were people calling the NFL Draft the most exciting event in all of sports. Could someone please explain to me why these people shouldn’t be thrown off of a cliff?
May 1, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Mr. Bojangles
Chill, Winston. ESPN devotes time (and hype) to this event because it pulls in the viewer share, probably moreso than any one NHL and NBA Playoff game combined, though I have nothing to back that statement up.
So ESPN shows the NFL Draft, thus, ESPN hypes the shit out of it, because every .01+ viewer share allows them to charge that much more for advertising next year for that same event, assuming NFL Network doesn’t steal it away from them like it should. It’s not a simple hard-on – it’s all business.
By this same principle, I’m hoping we can guarantee that fuck Chris Berman never does coverage of the draft again, because people turn off ESPN when he spoils every fucking pick with his stupid comments. So business ain’t all bad.
May 1, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Cox
Did you just give the Raiders an A+?
May 1, 2006 at 3:30 pm
unc_samurai
A+ to everyone that did NOT draft Hank Bosnia. Oh, wait, that’s the same thing.
May 1, 2006 at 5:09 pm
jeff
I like reading the grades so I can figure out which guys I’m not reading during the season. I’ve often wondered about guys like Prisco on CBS, and his draft grades have convinced me I’d rather listen to the drunk Raiders fan (and I’m a Broncos guy) at the end of the bar before wasting my time on his columns.
That being said, I’d like to learn more about how each team conducted the draft. In all of this Mario Williams vs Bush question, I never saw Kubiak. I mean, where the hell is the freaking coach when the team makes the most impactful draft pick since David Carr? I like Kubiak, but maybe this was a way to protect him from what was obviously going to be a controversial move.
May 1, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Andy
Word, nirwin. I checked the ticker later in the day to see who the Colts drafted, saw it was some RB like everyone predicted it would be, and went on with my business. I’ll get around to learning his name once I can say “New RB is going to be as good as/not as good as Edge with some time.”
Then, I’ve always assumed that the reason I don’t get into the draft is because I don’t follow NCAA football outside of D3. I might check out the Arena League and NFL Europe drafts.
May 1, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Sandy Mac
‘…and that child was raised by the guy with the stopwatch at the NFL combine.’
LMAO, nice!
May 3, 2006 at 8:04 pm