Ah, the NFL Draft. A brief stop at an oasis in the middle of the summer sports desert.

Did I just hear Jaws say that the one thing everyone always overlooks in a QB is accurate passing? Everyone overlooks accurate passing as a key quality of QBs??!?!?! Please someone smack that guy.

I don’t know a damn thing about sports. Only saw one NFL draft and it was bizarre. (Least I think it was an NFL draft; maybe NBA?) The men standing around in short shorts. Or was it their bottom-half skivvies? They would be better served on a centerfold, if you ask me.

Slightly OT. Well, no, really this is pretty OT. OK, OK, it’s actually threadjacking, but I just ran across a great post over at Jesus General. Not only is it a meaningful and beautifully written story (from his Inner Frenchman, natch) — but it points out something that I didn’t know — Congress is finally considering repealing that diabolically hideous provision in the Higher Education Act that prohibits students with drug convictions from getting financial aid. I’d encourage y’all to follow the link, read the General’s story, and then follow his link to a contact-your-congresscritter site . . .

OK. Back to football. Sorry for the interruption.

Ah, yes. Once again, ’tis the day when I get to watch in horror as Al Fucking Davis trades away any hope of future reconstruction for the rights to 4-5 geriatric has-been who are looking to retire to the coast. Dammit, and I’d just stopped weeping after last season, too.

Regime change in Oaktown! Faster, please…

As a former Detroit resident, everyone knows the reason for going ot Lions games is to drink beer and throw octopi onto field. And, oh… “Lions”?.. they play lacrosse or something?

Whatever the Jets do, now that Herm is gone, I have confidence that it will actually make some sense. (although, to be fair to Herm and co, Nugent actually had a pretty good season last year.) They need to get a defensive player in the first round, but apart from that the team doesn’t seem to have many glaring holes going in to next season (a game-breaking receiver would be nice, but they would also need a QB with a big arm and a higher pick to make that work, so I’m not holding my breath.)

I really can’t stand this wall-to-wall coverage of the draft though. I just tried to log on to espn.com and it nearly broke my computer, what with all the nonsense they have on there. And this year FAN is there live as well. Is it really this big a deal?

Brad, I know you must be happy that the Sox seem to have lowered in the coffin and are now heaping dirt on the hapless Skanks. I know it’s only April, but their follies have demonstrated their lack of organizational depth as well as the shoddiness of their pitching staff. One can only hope that it will be a long, painful summer in the Bronx.

Finally, sad news in real football, as Man United look to have clinched the Premiership with a 4-goal second half against Everton. They will still lose to AC Milan this week in the Champions league, but I hate to see them win anything at all…

The Pats could use a little help in the ol’ secondary, and a linebacker would be nice.

Lesley- you’re thinking of the NFL Draft Combine, which is the big group workout/ meat market for prospective players. It’s kind of, um, unsettling how excited draft observers get for that one.

Or as an Irish friend of mine put it, “you have grown men slobbering over students standing around in their jocks?”

The Lions picked Calvin Johnson. O. M. G. Wow. If they don’t trade him, that’s FOUR WIDEOUTS IN FIVE YEARS. MORONS.

I guess the Browns weren’t as in love with Brady Quinn as all those sports talk radio guys had led me to believe. Maybe he’ll still be available in the second round.

Yeah Brad, although you could argue that Mike Williams and Charles Rogers are complete sunk costs at this point.

A Roy Williams-Calvin Johnson tandem would be kickass. Provided there’s a guy to throw the ball and a line to cover, and…. aw hell, it’s the fricking Lions.

But the tackle was there for the safe pick. I’m very surprised.

Thomas is who they should have picked. Their o-line is godawful. Nice pick by the Browns, though I woulda picked Quinn if I were them.

Jeezus, talk about wall to wall coverage. You oughta be here, in the SF Bay Area, the epicenter of professional sports in America.

Sharks leading in the second round.

Warriors leading DALLAS in the first round.

Giants in first place with the best ERA in the league.

You most certainly don’t want to try to drive around here in the evenings for the next week or two. Sheesh…

mikey

The Ford family runs their football team just as well as they make cars.

They are an absolute embarrassment to both industries. Go Tigers, go Wings, go Pistons, go to hell Ford family.

And how about those Red Sox!

And how about those Red Sox!

It’s April. I’m always skeptical in April.

That said, I pick up a copy of the NY POST every time the Sox beat the Yanks just for the laughs.

Dolphins… why the hell did they pick Ted Ginn over Brady Quinn? WTF?

If Quinn falls to the Jets, do they take him? I can’t see any team taking him until (MAYBE) Green Bay, and then not until Kansas City at 23 or the Jets at 25. WOW. The poor guy looks humiliated.

So Quinn is the new Aaron Rodgers?

He was perfect for the Dolphins, but whatever….

The days of Patriot dominance in the AFC east are numbered. Mangenius, Mangenius, Mangenius.

And yes, the Jets would take Quinn but they won’t get the chance.

Frankly, I can think of no greater cry for help than an ordinary fan paying detailed attention to the draft. It’s 20 hours of my life I could spend doing something more productive, or for that matter, more fun.

I would prefer to light myself on fire rather than watch ESPN’s draft coverage. The Home Shopping Network is more entertaining.

I’ll read about who went where tonight, after the 10 hour NFL-ESPN pseudo-intellectual mutual masturbation fest is over, if you don’t mind.

And yes, the Jets would take Quinn but they won’t get the chance.

Who takes him, then? The Pack? The Chiefs? Those are the only ones I can see.

Also, the Jets are on the rise, but they’re another year away. That young o-line is sick.

I can’t say I know enough about each team’s needs to make a prediction but I imagine someone will trade up to take him. Hopefully the Jets. Chad is practically my neighbor and seems like a good dude but if I have to see him throw up one more wobbly airball in a playoff game I’ll fucking scream.

And NE has 2 first round picks? WTF? That’s just aggravating. I’m off to play stickball before the rain arrives.

Holy shit. I think the Jets are going to grab Brady Quinn.

Ooop, nope, it’s Revis. Wow. How far can he fall?

How about to the Cowboys at 24th overall? If he doesn’t go there or K.C., I wonder if Quinn will slip out of the first round.

Geronimoooooooooooo

How about to the Cowboys at 24th overall? If he doesn’t go there or K.C., I wonder if Quinn will slip out of the first round.

It’d be kinda cool if he ended up going to the Browns in the second round.

If you’re watching ESPN, the Browns are working on trading up. I’d like to see my Raiders trade up and get a lineman. Someone take Moss and Gallery, please!

Quinn doesn’t go to the Pack. Yikes.

The truly shocking thing, to me, about the Yanks this year is that Joe’s job is in trouble and for the first time ever I wonder if it should be.
He’s sorta like a lover who’s gotten routine in their affections; you know each move he’s gonna make before he makes it n it just doesn’t work the same anymore.
How many times is Joe gonna make Mo demonstrate the Bosox are the one team he doesn’t dominate?
Otherwise the pitching will be ok. The rotation is fine 1-4 with Hughes up now, and most pens are built over the course of the season. As for depth, well, I’d call a lineup with 8 all stars in it pretty deep, personally. It’s true they basically have no infield backups, even counting Cairo. But I’ll take the Yanks’ lineup over any other in baseball, unquestionably. Depth is more than having 28 year old Quad A players in AAA ready to call up.
That said, they desperately need a backup catcher who can hit.

The Yanks’ lineup is indeed the best in the bigs.

But they need Clemens desperately.

They need Mike Marshall a lot more than they need Clemens, unless Clemens wants to become a mostly relieving swingman. Of course he’d help a ton, but he wouldn’t help them find decent innings out of the pen, and he won’t finish games, meaning the pen is still taxed.

Chicago and Baltimore have to be burning up the phones by now.

Good Lord, is Quinn going to fall to my Chiefs?

That said, they desperately need a backup catcher who can hit.

I dunno, db. If this is the biggest hole a team has, they oughta be 162-0. Is there even such a thing as a backup catcher who can hit? Most teams are ecstatic if their backup catcher can call a decent game and hold his own defensively. The fact that he’s a .220 hitter is not a big deal.

mikey

Oh, if you can, take a minute and read greenwald today. If there is any reason for hope (and I think there is) you’ll feel it there…

Quinn’s going to Jacksonville. that’s why they traded down. the teams they dropped behind don’t need quarterbacks this year.

Fire Joe Morgan moment:
in fox’s pregame show before a montage sequence they had the following text; “ri*val*ry \’ri-val-re*\ n: one who competes or attempts to outdo another”.
Now they force me to listen to Tim McCarver.
Fuck fox.

*- tis a line i dunno how to get my keyboard to make above the e, which is a details that really, really matters.

One pitch into the game, and the Yanks have lost another starter,

4 hours into the draft, and we’ve only now gotten to pick 22.

Jeez.

And wrong on the Jags. I would make a definite prediction that he’s going to KC, but every one of those have been wrong here, so i won’t.

And I used my dvr to doublecheck that line. That’s what it said.

That’s not their biggest hole, mikey. Their biggest hole is at first and in the pen. They’re hurting for starters right now, but overall if they had a capable regular 1b they’d be damn near a shoo-in for 1000 runs on the season, which cures a lot of pitching woes.
I’ll go read Glen now.
Enjoy the Giants’ spring run. Barry has to be Barry all year for it to have a chance to last. I hope he is, I love Barry. Steroids don’t bother me. If jocks want to shorten their lifespans for my enjoyment, I have no problem with it. But Barry isn’t likely to keep it up, not at this level. Otherwise you need Cain and Zito to both be Cy-caliber, which isn’t likely either.

Karstens is fungible. Just means neither Igawa nor Rasner can get skipped until Moose comes back.

yeah, no Jags. well then. guess i’ll just go back to watching the cricket world cup final.

They’re doing the Drew Carey number in Cleveland now.

The Browns sweep in to grab Brady Quinn, ten seconds before my Chiefs can.

Part of me is mad that my team missed out on the Steal of the Draft, but a bigger part is convinced that if the Browns got him, he must be destined for suckitude.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Amazing draft job by the Browns. Incredible. They’ve secured an upgrade at quarterback AND a franchise left tackle. That’s a damn steal. Without a doubt, they’re the biggest winners in the draft this year.

The Browns are coming out of this first round looking like the Titans did last year. Interesting.

I think Quinn’s overrated. I don’t see him becoming a star in the NFL. I won’t go as far as say he’s the next Kyle Boller, but I doubt he’ll be in the Pro Bowl anytime soon.

I see Quinn as a Bledsoe/Kosar type. Good but not great. Having a good tackle protecting his blind side will be a help. God, though, he’s an upgrade over Charlie Frye.

I don’t get the Brady Quinn love. Here is a list of teams that finished in the top 25 that he beat.

That’s the list. None.

Now, if he were losing games against upper echelon teams 35-31, where he tossed four TDs, I’d be impressed. However, he put up some of his worst games against the best teams. Not to go all Gary Rupert on y’all, but the fact is that Brady Quinn is a mediocre QB who shouldn’t have gone on the first day at all.

I want the Pats to pick Beason here. Olsen’s good, but we already have three goddamn tight ends. Staley would be nice as a right tackle too.

Brandon Merriweather. Interesting.

I’d prefer a linebacker here but they just never, ever pick them in the first round.

I’m half-watching on the NFL Network – does anyone know of any way to slip something into Chris Berman’s drink that would make him spontaneously combust?

Also, to BChurch’s question at the top of the thread, the accuracy thing is something that baffles me. Eli Manning is simply not a very accurate QB, and I have to ask, how can you *not* notice that when you’re scouting a player? That should be glaringly obvious on the film, shouldn’t it?

Finally, a pet peeve about draft coverage on both ESPN & NFL Network: After the first 2-3 rounds, they completely stop covering the picks, and just endlessly rehash the first 2-3 rounds with an occasional perfunctory recap of the last 5 picks where they briefly talk about maybe two of them. Anyone who is enough of a draft junkie to be watching the fifth round already knows damn well what happened in the first three.

One more thought on Quinn if anyone thought I was trolling by saying he’s not even a first day pick, let alone a first round pick. Here are Quinn’s senior season stats:

CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
289 467 3426 61.9 7.34 62 37 7 31 146.6

Here are the senior season stats of Bruce Gradkowski:

CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
207 332 2469 62.3 7.44 70 29 12 9 146.4

Pretty similar, aren’t they? The difference is that Bruce went in the sixth round. Of course, he wasn’t the product of the Notre Dame/Charlie Weiss hype machine, so he went where his on-field production said he should.

In other words, Cleveland gave up a pick that will almost certainly be in the top five (unless anyone thinks a rookie left tackle will be worth another two wins), for a guy who is in a statistical tie with a sixth round scrub. How did the Browns have a great draft?

I would like to formally apologize to Brad and everyone else for my drunken Super Bowl night post – I’d had more than a few. As happy as I am to be out of Indy it was nice to see the team that had sucked since my childhood finally break through.

Prufrock, we saw the proof to validate your point every Saturday on NBC last fall. He’s a system QB, and I hope for his sake he’s not another Joey Harrington. Ugh!

I have some suggestions to liven up the whole process.

Next year, the teams should provide the league with a list of 10 players they want rounded up for the ‘The Draft’.

The League then assembles the 320 together in a large indoor stadium during ‘The Draft’. The League will of course feed them, give them some collectibles, and otherwise keep them occupied with sack races, horseshoes, and maybe a talent contest or some karaoke.

Now, to liven up the festivities after each pick, lineman from the choosing team will rush the field, gang tackle their new team mate, strip him down, stuff him into a team uniform and bungee cord him by his ankles from one of the goalposts until the next ‘Draftee’ is picked.

I think that would make the ‘Draft’ coverage a whole lot more entertaining.

to be fair to Brady Quinn for at least one moment, Prufrock, he did go to Notre Dame and not Toledo. if we want to go on stats alone, I’m sure there’s some D3 quarterback with similar numbers to both of them.

the point, obviously, is the competition. burning Buffalo for a few TDs is one thing; playing USC every year is a whole other world. i’m no huge Quinn apologist here, but he should at least be a quality starting NFL qb.

This thread is plenty entertaining and all, but could we please get back to the vaginas?

Why isn’t there a Vagina Draft?

Nobody better make a joke about drafty vaginas because we know what’s going to happen then.

Why isn’t there a Vagina Draft?

In spite of all their redeeming characteristics, vaginas are not noted for being team players…

mikey

Golfers aren’t noted for being team players, either.

Therefore, golfers are pussies?

Just askin…

mikey

I’m going to leave that question to Ace, mikey.

to be fair to Brady Quinn for at least one moment, Prufrock, he did go to Notre Dame and not Toledo. if we want to go on stats alone, I’m sure there’s some D3 quarterback with similar numbers to both of them.

Yes, and because he went to Notre Dame he gets waaaay more credit for piling up stats against teams that weren’t much (if any) better than Gradkowski’s MAC opposition (he played a lot of service academies). When he faced quality defenses, he mostly crapped the bed.

the point, obviously, is the competition. burning Buffalo for a few TDs is one thing; playing USC every year is a whole other world. i’m no huge Quinn apologist here, but he should at least be a quality starting NFL qb.

Not if he plays against NFL competition like he did against UCLA. Why do I pick that game? Follow me…

An argument can be made that his team started falling behind in the Michigan, LSU, and USC games, so he began to press and made mistakes. It’s not true, (he was screwing up continually in those games) but it might gain traction with those who don’t know better. What we need is a sample game against a team with a good defense who wasn’t able to blow out Notre Dame, rendering this argument moot. The game against UCLA provides this. The Bruins only managed seventeen points. Notre Dame’s entire playbook was open for virtually the entire contest. There was no serious pressure to score multiple times in order to catch up. What were the results?

Of fourteen Notre Dame drives, four ended in scores (two TDs two field goals). One was an eight play drive that ended in a turnover on downs. One was a two play drive that ended with a fumble. The other eight yielded twenty five total yards and eight punts. That’s some great quarterbacking!

The bottom line is that Brady Quinn is a mediocre quarterback against decent college defenses. That’s bad news for his future, as every NFL team fields a defense that makes the best college defenses look pedestrian. I don’t like his chances under those conditions.

There’s a “hole in one” joke here, but I’m not going to be the one to go after it.

I wouldn’t touch that joke with a ten foot pole, kingubu.

Hell, I’m not even gonna reach for my putter…

mikey

Wow, thunder, I had no idea people from Poland grew to be ten feet tall.

They don’t. Stanley Kowalski was six seven, tallest pole I ever met…

mikey

Close enough for gubbermint work, mikey.

prufrock, i don’t believe this, but you’re going to make me up and defend Quinn:

I thought your attack of Quinn’s performance was really vague, so i went and looked up last year’s game against UCLA, and lo and behold, look what i found. In that game, ND rushed the ball 35 times for 41 yards; if you throw out the 5 sacks (why the NCAA still counts sacks as rush yards, i’ll never know), they rushed 30 times for 74 yards, a pathetic 2.5 yards per carry. Quinn had no help from the rest of the offense in the game. Despite that, Quinn was 27-45 for 304 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no picks. Oh, and he threw the game-winning touchdown with less than 30 seconds to go. Yeah, he had a mediocre day before the last drive, but still…bad example.

Stick to the three losses against teams in the top 25. Those were bad enough, especially the Michigan game: Quinn was 1-6 for 1 yard, 1 ND touchdown (set up by a 50-yard interception return), and 1 Michigan touchdown in the first quarter.

(Yes, that was pedantic, but i was responding to a specific example…)

Close enough for gubbermint work,

I don’t wanna scare anybody, especially anybody in central texas, but in the mid seventies I worked for about a year on a Nuclear Power generation plant under construction, called Comanche Peak Steam Electric Station in Glen Rose, Texas, and that was probably the most POPULAR phrase in the quality control department…

mikey

Close enough for gubbermint work,

Oh hell.

Wow, that didn’t come close to working…let’s try again…

“Close enough for gubbermint work,”

mikey

Oh hell.

I think my 9er’s got great position players, this Willis looks to be a LB version of Ronnie Lott. Defense looks better than average.

And one can never have too many solid OL position players.

So far so good.

I say 9-7 this year, maybe a playoff slot.

Oaklnad, hmmm. What’s with this trade with Detroit? Maybe JaMarcus sits the first 5 or 7 games, with McCown starting? And, will they get good value for Moss?

Could be a quick turnaround with Oakland. But can they beat KC, Denver and SD? No. figure 2-4 or 1-5 in those games.

I hate to have to actually say it, but if you pitch to bonds you are a certified idiot.

mikey

Despite what most of you guys think, I thought the Lions actually made a smart move picking Johnson. While Brady Quinn would’ve been a nicer pick, he really dosen’t justify the being the #2 pick, for reasons already mentioned above me.

Re: the Yankees: As a Tigers fan, I only got one thing to say: Who the F**k cares!?

Who the F**k cares!?

Personally, it is my belief that the 230 million dollar annual salary cost, plus the luxury tax, and the lack of world series championships, tends to result in a certain amount of schadenfreude amongst the rest of us. Just a thought…

mikey

that’s FOUR WIDEOUTS IN FIVE YEARS

Isn’t there some saying about doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result?

This year the Tigers could win the world series, the Pistons could win the NBA title, the Red Wings could win the Stanley Cup, and the Lions could (if everything falls into place) win four games.

The Ford family runs their football team just as well as they make cars.

Hard to believe Toyota has passed the US automakers to be #1 in the world, isn’t it?

I can’t say how my Raiders will do, but I’m happy they finally got a couple of quarterbacks because this freaking guy will be available in next year’s draft.

“Personally, it is my belief that the 230 million dollar annual salary cost, plus the luxury tax, and the lack of world series championships, tends to result in a certain amount of schadenfreude amongst the rest of us. Just a thought…”

I actually worded that wrong. I meant to say that I don’t care about the Yankees. And the $230 million salary cost without any result makes me laugh…until I remember that the Red Wings are basically guilty of doing the same thing.

“and the Lions could (if everything falls into place) win four games.”

Come on man, have some optimism. They’re going to win at least FIVE games this year…

For the #28 pick the Patriots got the Niners’ 2008 first-round pick, a seventh-round pick today, and Randy Moss.

Meanwhile, Matt Millen managed to sharpen five pencils in his pencil box, and he only broke two in the process.

until I remember that the Red Wings are basically guilty of doing the same thing.

Not so much this year; the players making the most impact are the ones the Wings developed themselves (Zetterberg, Datsyuk, etc.).

Brad, your Pats got Randy Moss for a fourth round draft pick? That’s frickin’ ridiculous!

Brad, your Pats got Randy Moss for a fourth round draft pick? That’s frickin’ ridiculous!

honestly. Could the Raiders be stupider?

My Vikings had an awesome draft! The top RB, two very good WR, a top CB, a DE with speed, and a good LB. Plus they picked up an extra third round pick in 2008.

Go Vikes!

Not so much this year; the players making the most impact are the ones the Wings developed themselves

That’s the way it’s *always* been. A lot of people have this misapprehension of the Wings as a kind of Yankees on ice, which they aren’t. Not the least reason being, they aren’t evil.

For the #28 pick the Patriots got the Niners’ 2008 first-round pick, a seventh-round pick today, and Randy Moss.

No, they didn’t. They got Moss for a fourth-round pick to Oakland. The Niners had nothing to do with that.

My Bengals, Jets, and Bills did well. Yeah, I know I have too many teams; it’s a long story.

I just wanted to post this one again, after yesterday’s events:

Lawnguylander said,
April 28, 2007 at 20:06

The days of Patriot dominance in the AFC east are numbered. Mangenius, Mangenius, Mangenius.

Irrational exuberance, no?

The Pats gave up next to nothing this year and have completely upgraded the two positions where they were the weakest (and only WR were truly pathetic).

In exchange for pick #28, a second rounder and fourth rounder, they have gotten yet another first round pick (and a few more) next year and have fillled all of the gaps on an already very very good team that was one quarter away from the Super Bowl last year.

Let’s look at the pluses: They have a young and best-in-the-game D line, a great secondary coach (with already good corners and now a stud safety who will be tutored by the very savvy Rodney Harrison), AND they’ve significantly upgraded their already-solid rush with Adelius Thomas (bracketed by the very good Rosie Colvin on the other side).

On the offensive side, last year, the Pats went 12-4 with the worst WR corps in the NFL (The Chargers’ sucked too, but since Rechee Caldwell was basically let go by San Diego and was the best WR on the Pats last year, they get the nod) — now, they have the one of the two or three best. They significantly upgraded with Donte Stallworth, Welker and Washington. They could have stopped there. With Moss, they rival the Colts corps of receivers. Add to that the Brady factor, an electric Laurence Maroney and a solid line, it’s really, really hard to find flaws. Not only because they ‘look good on paper” but because they have proven performers who are in their prime.

But at least the Jets got an unproven “shutdown corner”. And a RB that ended up splitting time with Cedric Benson last year.

While the Jets made nice picks and slight upgrades, the Pats just went to loaded Super Bowl favorites with tons of picks stockpiled for NEXT year. An astonishing draft for Pioli, Belichick (his swan song, I’m betting) and the Pats.

The caveats are chemistry (which will be a non-factor here, I think. They hate Belicheck anyway and the leaders on the team, Seymour, Brady, Bruschi, Harrison and possibly Troy Brown are impeccable) and any Brady injury.

wow legalize, the bengals are my team too! You wouldn’t happen to live in cincy?