Every year we get wrapped up in the NFL draft. Every year draftniks gather and yearn for their team to pick their choice. Every year hundreds of thousands of words are generated by media outlets trying to assess who'll go at what spot. To what end though? What difference does it make?
Year after year the analysts get it wrong. OK the first couple of picks are often locked in (like last year when Andrew Luck and RG111 went 1 &2 as expected and did very nicely thank you for their new teams. But this is the exception. After the first couple of picks if you look back over the hundreds of draft scenarios envisaged you'll see incredibly low correlation between expected picks and actual ones. So why do we still insist on wading through so many of these pointless exercises in futility in the run up to the actual thing itself?
As for the draft itself? Well, it's a gamble every time. Just because players do well on one team doesn't mean they'll do well on another. people often cite Marino being passed until late in the 83 draft as crazy. But was it a the time for the teams who didn't pick him? Plus, what if he'd started his carer on a crappy team with poor o-line protection and poor coaching? There are so many ifs, buts and maybes to every draft story that you can't really second guess them.
Which leaves the last part of the draft that's so frustrating. The instant leap to judgement. How can you grade a draft as soon as it's happened? you don't know how those players are going to play out. They could be great, or they could be injured and have no career from an early stage. They could be undervalued and become a star or they could be overvalued and become a bust. you have to see at least 3-4 years of their career before you can know if they were a great pick or not.
So come on, let's stop pretending we can pre-pick, immediately judge and analyse these drafts. We can't. let's just welcome the new players to our teams and see how their careers unfold.
No comments:
Post a Comment