Drafting really is one of the craziest parts of the sport. Yes, it’s a reason for fans to get excited about a team with a win ratio of under .400 four months before the start of the season. If it feels like the rest of the league is on the mend and your favorite team is stuck in the depths of the sewers, read about your team getting a good draft grade nearly a half year ahead of everyone else in game action is all the light you need to keep those phone notifications on for the rest of the off-season.
For the people whose job it is to improve their teams through the draft, they are faced with the task of evaluating potential players against inferior competition. About two percent of the players who participated in NCAA football in the past season will play professional football. In the NFL, 100 percent of players active in Week 1 will be playing pro football. While it’s stunning to see 21-year-olds move like they’re engineered in a lab compared to some of their peers who look like they’re taking an accounting class on Monday morning, it’s sometimes hard to see how that carries over leaves.
That’s why there are draft combines, interviews, profit days, and people checking your background as if you’re going to join the FBI. Team Principals and Scouts need to be safe, because if they miss too many times, their careers will never even come close to reaching cruising heights.
With so much at stake, can people still get a little more advanced in the way they rate players? If stopwatches and game tape aren’t enough, we can’t do away with the stereotypes that are always attached to certain players. Of course it’s draft season, so we have to wonder how much of this information is coaches and organizations trying to find their way into what they want. Last year there was a real question as to whether the San Francisco 49ers would trade to the third overall pick to select Mac Jones, who would take 15th place to the New England Patriots.
This year we have a good old fashioned matchup. Something for the legendary Nolan Nawrocki to set his teeth on. Which pass rusher should be drafted first, the white player from the Big Ten or the black player from the west coast? This is Larry Bird and Magic Johnson’s pivotal casting, and a new mock draft played into it like it was 1984.
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Bruce Feldman of The Athletic released Earlier this month, a mock draft for which Michigan’s Aidan Hutchinson was chosen first overall from the Jacksonville Jaguars and Oregon’s Kayvon Thibodeaux, the eight going to the Atlanta Falcons. What prompted him to make these decisions, let’s take a look at what the coaches said to him about both players.
Hutchinson: “He loves football and wants to be a great leader” – first sentence. “I wasn’t impressed on film” – I always thought films didn’t lie. “But personally, it’s the engine he’s playing with, combined with his speed and power.
Thibodeaux: “If he wants to go, he really can go” – so sometimes he just says fuck it even though he was injured last season? “There’s talent, but what do you get?” — Talent, I suppose. “He’s a generational talent, freaky in film. Best D-lineman in Pac-12 since Vita Vea” – that’s scary. “You just wonder how important football is to him.”
Ahh, so maybe football isn’t that important to Thibodeaux, unlike Hutchinson, who eats face masks and shits on chin straps. To be fair to Feldman, it’s not just the people he’s spoken to who have that opinion. Since the beginning of the new year, do a Google search for Thibodeaux. There are headlines like “He’s Good, Not Great,” “Top Prospect Kayvon Thibodeaux Responds to Criticism,” and “Kayvon Thibodeaux’s Newest Duck Faces Confusing Criticism.”
The other was Los Angeles Chargers starting quarterback Justin Herbert, who was questioned before the draft as to whether or not he really was a “leader of the men.” Because even if you’re white, there’s a part you need to look for in the NFL. You have to be popular but not aloof, confident but not arrogant, demanding but a good teammate, obsessed with football…no compensation, just snort pigskin from 11 years old until your body can’t get out of it or you get cut once too often.
One of the problems with Thibodeaux is that he’s thinking about life beyond football. So he chose Oregon and Phil Knight over Alabama. He even has his own cryptocurrency. It leaves him open to questions how much he wants to play football and he will bring it to every game.
I really thought we would be over it by 2022, but I think we’re still here. I understand there are JaMarcus Russells out there that need to be avoided, but the late Al Davis is no longer around to make that mistake. On the other hand, Tim Tebow is the leader everyone wanted, aside from the fact that he completed 46.5 percent of his passes in 2011, averaging 6.4 yards per attempt, and the Denver Broncos threw more than 20 in his 11 starts scored points.
Drawing may be an imprecise science, but how does measuring what we literally call intangibles make the process more accurate. All it does is subject people to stereotypes that people who are can easily fall into laser focused As for football, they never took the time to realize how important it is to actively avoid these stereotypes in order to be a decent human being.
So for those who think Thibodeaux can play or he can’t do your due diligence, the same goes for Hutchinson. But don’t give us that love of gaming crap that’s been shoveled at a willing trough of desperate sports fans for 100 years. Watch the tape, compare the measurements, and when it is necessary to throw a red herring at the other NFL teams, it can be done without character descriptions worthy of a 1980s buddy cop flick.
