It's that time of year when we all make bold predictions as though we are experts, attempting to display our knowledge like we know something our friends don't. We promote dark horses and eschew the highly rated. But mostly, we are talking out of a different orifice than our mouth, and half of what we predict is little more than an uneducated guess.
Bracketology? Yeah, right. Forecasting the NCAA tournament is a cakewalk by comparison. Trying to figure out who the true future stars are in the NFL draft is to exact science what McDonald's is to exquisite dining. You are more likely to pick a trifecta at the track, get struck by lightning, and score a date with Jessica Biel all in the same day than correctly pick five busts and five Pro Bowlers in the draft.
Oh, predicting when guys will be drafted is easy. Combine results and college careers, along with scout leaks, give us a pretty good clue of where guys will go April 28. But predicting success is another story.
As in March Madness, we all have guesses. And some will be right, allowing us to do the I-told-you-so dance a few years down the road. Of course you will conveniently never dig up the other 12 fearless predictions you have buried in your backyard. In the end, projecting which players will be stars and which will drop off the face of the earth faster than Jerry Seinfeld after his show's last season is about as easy as picking the 12-5 upsets on your bracket.
People generally take too much stock in measureables this time of year, largely because no one is playing football. And forty times and bench-press statistics are super — they can flush out weaknesses and break ties — but that's about it. Measuring arm length to the quarter inch? Okay, maybe we are pushing the envelope just a bit on that one.
And even the most revealing statistics a combine can measure cannot tell a thing about whether a player is a player. Does he have heart, desire, instinct, football IQ? Depending on position, these quotients mean more than a combine freak that can accomplish any and every athletic feat known to NFL scouts except play football.
Teams need to keep those game tapes handy every time a set of cold numbers has them feeling like they just fell in love. For every Julius Peppers, there is a Mike Mamula. Who is Mike Mamula? Exactly.
Quarterbacks are especially difficult to project. Ryan Leaf was actually drafted second, despite a temperament that would make Jeff George murmur "man, what an ass." Akili Smith, Tim Couch, Cade McNown, Todd Marinovich ... I could go for days. At least people know position players have shorter shelf lives, and will likely only be with a team 3-4 years. Top-10 quarterbacks are supposed to be the lynchpin of a franchise.
So what of this year's crop? JaMarcus Russell is an intriguing pick who is being compared to Daunte Culpepper. Raiders fans cringe, but we are talking about good Daunte, 2003 and 2004 Daunte. But still, its Daunte, holder of countless fantasy football owners' hearts he ripped out the last couple years.
Brady Quinn skipped the combine, but had a pretty good workout for NFL scouts up in South Bend. Maybe even good enough to get them to forget that he faltered against top-level competition all four times he faced it last season. Not that fledging performances against top competition should be a concern for Brady as he moves to a higher level...
From there, even a Heisman winner (Troy Smith) or national champion (Chris Leak) can get first or even second round love. And the best player to come out of this draft will probably be not in anyone's top five. Even in the NCAA tournament, most of us could guess a champion with five guesses at least half the time.
But teams continue to guess because no one has found the formula to indicate what that "it" is. No team has found what makes a Tom Brady, Terrell Davis, or other second-day pick that was deemed defective, yet managed to become a star.
In the end, the Raiders should realistically be happy to get a signal-caller that gets them the three good years and one all right one in six as a starter, as the Vikings did with Culpepper. And there is the proof at what an inexact process this really is.
And hey, it's a hell of a lot easier to forecast than baseball's draft.
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