It's the NFL Draft! Oh my God, it's here! Everyone put your entire life on hold and obsess over it for the next 36 hours or you're not a real NFL fan. This is more important than a million Yankees/Red Sox games, a million UNC/Duke games, and a million fake Kobe Bryant trade requests put together. It's not like, you know, 75% of these players will be out of the league in five years or anything. (Check out the first three rounds of the 2003 draft.)
Seriously, ESPN, tone it down a little bit.
I always love reading your work, larry, but I disagree. I absolutely adore the two-day party known as the draft; sure, most of these guys never pan out, but it's a great time nonetheless. This is one of the few times I don't blame ESPN for bringing tons of hype to the forefront.
ReplyDeleteIt's always embarrassing to admit you live in NE Ohio...but even more so when you realize that the football team here (I'm actually not a big browns fan) spent a 5th round pick in 2003 on a long snapper.
ReplyDeleteThe draft weekend is shit in my opinion. And, adding to the comment above, as Joe Buck pointed out to us today on FOX Saturday baseball, Cleveland wasn't picking until the 3rd or 4th round, or whatever it was,... just great stuff for the city of Cleveland. It's the city known for its river catching on fire... what an awesome place
ReplyDeleteHey, the Browns made their bed. They traded a first for Brady Quinn and second- and third-round picks for Corey Williams and Shaun Rogers, respectively.
ReplyDeleteYeah, CB, I can see how people find it enjoyable in the moment. The post is really a result of all the weeks/months of unnecessary buildup. If I didn't hear anything about the draft until a week before it happened, I'd be much more able to enjoy it. But noooooooo, we have to be assaulted with draft coverage beginning the day after the Super Bowl. Fuck mock drafts with a telephone pole. There is nothing stupider than mock drafts that are released any more than three days before the actual draft happens.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess what it comes down to is that just as with a Yankees/Red Sox or Duke/UNC game, my complaints aren't based on the actual event itself. It's about the hype. If I could just separate the two, or just flat out avoid the latter, I'd be a lot less angry and this blog probably wouldn't exist. Then I'd have a lot more free time, and could get around to writing the great American novel. See what you've done, ESPN? You're destroying culture. Just shitting all over it.
Larry, I agree with you on the hype aspect - but picking the 2003 draft? One of the best first rounds of the decade? 10 Pro Bowlers, not to mention big ticket players like Pace, Barnett, and Gross? Look again through the first three rounds of that draft - it's more like 75% of those players are still IN the league, and at least half of them are starters, not to mention the 18 Pro Bowlers among the first 70 picks.
ReplyDeleteC'mon - you can do better than this.
Andrew- disagree. The 75% is not an exaggeration. Even a draft as successful and heralded as that is still full of disappointments. By my count, 12 first round picks are either out of football or on their second team and not starting, at which point I think you can fairly say they are busts. That's nearly 40%. The second round isn't any better, and as for the third, I count only eight guys out of 33 who have done anything in the league.
ReplyDelete2004 was probably better, actually. But once you get out of the second round, it gets thin pretty quickly.
Players from 2003 NFL Draft NOT currently on an active NFL roster.
ReplyDelete1st Round - 5
2nd Round - 7
3rd round - 10
so, 22 of 97, or 22.7%.
They may not all be All Pros, they may not all even be starters, and many of them have switched teams. You can't change the rules after the fact though - I was just calling out your Simmonsesque exaggeration that 75 percent of guys are out of the league (aka not playing NFL football) within five years. That's all fine and good. Fact is, 75 guys drafted in the first three rounds in 2003 (77 percent) contributed to NFL teams in some way outside of the practice squad in 2007.
I don't really care that much, but I've been reading comments like yours all week, even in the mainstream press, so I decided to do some digging on my own, and your comment gave me a forum to show off my boredom.
Your research is appreciated, and I do have to admit I was being hyperbolic (when it comes to guys drafted in the first 3 rounds, anyways; 75% of guys taken in the whole draft in 2003 are probably out of the league, and yes, I know that's not initially what I said). Still, does the fact that guys like Jimmy Kennedy, Kyle Boller, and Bryant Johnson are still desperately clinging to a roster spot somewhere justify the hype they got as top 20 picks? By all realistic measures, guys like them (and dozens of others from those first three rounds that aren't yet out of the league, not to mention the guys like Charles Rogers and Jerome McDougle) have been failures. My general point about excessive hype still stands, I think. I'm more than comfortable saying the NFL/NBA drafts are probably the most overhyped events in all of sports.
ReplyDeleteLarry, I think you're missing the point. Jacobs got drafted in the sixth round (if I remember correctly, too lazy to check) and became the Giants' catalyst to a Super Bowl run. EVERY PICK MATTERS. And take it easy on your titles, I've never seen such filthy content on the internet in my life. Isn't this a family site?
ReplyDeleteLarry, like I said - I agree with you on the hype - just was really looking to kind of find out exactly what the failure rate was.
ReplyDeleteWhile they are hyped, I do believe they are extremely important. The teams that draft well are the teams that become dynasties. Think of Walsh "reaching" for Montana in the 3rd round, then trading up to shock everyone by taking a WR who ran a 4.7 40. Or the Cowboys using a 1st round pick on a RB who was too small and too slow to repeat the success he had in Florida, the overplayed Brady story, etc.... These are franchise changing picks, and I think that for fans of perpetually losing franchises like me (Jets), the draft gives us a glimmer of hope that maybe this will finally be the year that we make one of those history altering picks. Lame, but true.
As for the NBA draft, now THAT is a joke.
Yeah, the NBA draft sucks. It is finished in three hours. Only ONE day?!?! Come on NBA, expand the draft to 13 rounds and the rosters to 27 so we can have more of the draft! I hate when top picks make immidiate impacts on the teams that selected them. Stupid NBA. I want to see my top QB pick sit around for 2 years while my aging star QB holds my orginization hostage...but I digress.
ReplyDeleteGelo- You are incorrect. The catalyst for the Giants' Super Bowl run was Tom Brady. Brady was responsible for everything that happened in the NFL last season. All of it. (Except the bad stuff.) Did you hear he's dating a supermodel?
ReplyDeleteAndrew- Yeah, we're basically on the same page, and obviously I'm more than willing to acknowledge that every draft contains a handful of what turn out to be historically important moments. From my perspective, however, those moments are unfortunately overshadowed by hours and hours of watching Mel Kiper talk with his sphincter. (Both leading up to and during.) I also find it hilarious that you're defending the draft as a Jets fan. BOOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Josh- Bam, facial! On... Favre? I guess?
Josh - love your smartass reply.
ReplyDeleteSo let's look at the 2003 NBA Draft instead.
First round - 6 of the 29 players (21 percent) already out of the league.
Second Round - 19 of the 29 players (66 percent) out of the league.
Total - 25 of 58 players (43 players) out of the league, if they ever even made it in the first place, within 5 years. For reference, only 12 of 64 players (19 percent) drafted in the first two rounds of the 2003 NFL draft are out of the league.
Good point though. Especially about how top picks only make an immediate impact in the NBA. I'm pretty sure fans of their respective teams are sick of waiting for Adrian Peterson, Joe Thomas, Patrick Willis, Marshawn Lynch, Darrelle Revis, Dwayne Bowe, and LaRon Landry (to name a few from last year) to make an impact.
Thanks for playing.
Andrew (nice name btw)...
ReplyDeleteThe NBA/NFL argument is kinda apples and oranges when you consider the fact that an active NBA roster contains 12 players, whereas in football, you have 11 on the field at one time, plus at least 2 reserves for each position. There's about 4 times the space on NFL rosters.
andrew-- clearly, I was overstating my case for effect. You left us with "The NBA draft is lame" which was funny considering I can watch it in the same time I can watch an actual professional game. Clearly, the influx of HS players and early declarations from college have made the draft a crapshoot, directly affecting the % of players staying on rosters.
ReplyDeleteThe point stands...if you watch day 2 of the NFL draft, you probably haven't bene laid in a while. Meanwhile, I could watch the entire NBA draft, call my friends, go out, meet a girl, and when I take her to brunch the next day, the NFL draft would be in the 5th round and Mel Kiper would be screaming how the latest pick by the Jaguars is a huge upside pick.
Disclaimer-- I'm not really this much of a prick, but it's fun.