The NFL Mock Drafts, Combine – gosh, I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND IT

With the first pick of the 2013 NFL Draft, the Kansas City Chiefs select … no, not this kid!

I bleed Green and Gold, I think most of you who have read my journalist scribblings can figure that out.  I crash with each loss and I soar with every victory. I have my favorites and not so favorites.  I am not just an owner, I am a fan!  BUT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!

Understand what, you may ask?  Well I don’t understand the hype and the excitement about the mock drafts, the combine and the draft (unless it is a cold one, then I understand).  I mean this is all statistical, Pythagorean theorem, E=MC2 sort of stuff.  It’s void of emotion and passion.  Why do I not understand what everyone is so geeked about?  What am I missing?

I mean mock drafts start the second after the first pick for this years draft. “With the #1 pick the Kansas City Chiefs pick….and projected to go first in the 2014 draft is Joe College from some football factory University.”

Wait I missed who was picked first this year, how can we talk about next year when we have not even finished this year’s draft?  I mean I know who was picked first last year but what did that have to do with this year, let alone the adverse quadrilateral affect it will have next year.

Does this mean that I can project that in the 2028 draft my son, AJ is going to be the first overall pick???  Yeah BABY!  Daddy is set to retire cause with the inflated rookie scale he will be rolling in the money (he being me cause I have already signed the kid to a lifetime contract of me being his manager, parental privilege!)

But seriously, I don’t understand where the excitement is in this whole mock draft thing. You look at the top 50 guys and try to figure out where they will go.  It is pure luck (no pun intended Andrew).

Two great Packer examples (unforgettable and forgettable) solidify this theory that mock drafts mean nothing.

Aaron Rodgers was projected number one, but went number 24. Sheesh!

Let’s start with Aaron Rodgers.  Projected to be the #1 pick in 2005, he dropped all the way to 24.  The guy wins an MVP and a Lombardi.  I bet those other 23 General Managers are feeling kinda stupid for blowing that one right about now. Then  we move on to the greatest (or worst) Packer blunder of all time.  1989, we draft the greatest offensive lineman to ever come out of college.  Yep we drafted Tony Mandarich.  We drafted him in front of guys like Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders, and Derrick Thomas and guess what out of those four players all but one is in the NFL Hall of Fame.  Yep that would be our guy, Tony.

So how can you project who will do what and where they will end, when even the professionals blow the picks!

Then there is the combine.  Now being from Wisconsin, a combine is an implement of husbandry used in the field of agricultural engineering.  Yet somehow some guy in a suit at the NFL network decided they could broadcast fitness tests, hype it up and sell commercial space and make money and call it a combine (even though it has nothing to do with farming).  The NFL combine is no where as close as exciting as a Wisconsin combine at harvest time.

Seriously, I don’t care who runs a forty yard dash in 4.2 seconds, or can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Does it matter that the kid from Iowa can bench press a barn?  No, none of these events test what matters most between the hash marks, heart, soul and passion.

Feb 02, 2013; New Orleans, LA USA; Rashad Thornton Sr., of New Orleans, jumps into the air at the Under Armour scouting combine area inside the NFL Experience, pro football

Give me the slow fat guy from hillbilly college of the Ozarks who will bleed green and gold and put everything he has on the field over the (allegedly) chemically enhanced cyborg from some BCS school.  You can’t measure what is on the inside and that is all that matters when the pads are strapped on.  Just ask Donald Driver and Mark Tauscher and  about that.

Then finally there is the NFL draft.  This is the equivelant of picking teams for dodgeball in fifth grade.  All the popular kids go first and then it is the uncoordinated kid with braces and glasses picked last.  Yet thirteen years later that geeky kid who was picked last has the multi million dollar contract while Mr. Popular from Dodgeball is cleaning toilets at the local Motel 6.

It does not mean a thing who gets picked where or when (well except in regards to the contract) cause how many top draft picks have flamed out while late round guys go on to greatness.  What matters is what the kid does after he gets picked.

So as I read all the prognostications as to what team will pick whom and what to look for at the combine and how that will affect this kid’s draft stock, I don’t get it.

Nobody, not even Einstein, Nostradamus and Lombardi combined can accurately predict which players will succeed and which ones will Mandarich, I mean fail.

Why get all excited for soemthing that has no basis in what drives football, the passion.  I mean can’t we spend our time better philosophosizing more important things like the annual swimsuit cover of Sports Illustrated, for the guys and who is the Sexiest Man alive for the ladies (sorry ladies I have taken myself out of the running this year to make it a fair fight).  I mean that has an emotional reaction to it.  Pretend drafts, agility tests and school yard picking of teams…..BORING!

How much longer until OTAs????