In our last post, we talked about the plethora of articles on the 2017 NFL Draft.
There are so many of them, in fact, that you can’t count them.
And with the draft set to begin Thursday evening with the first round, there will be even more stories over these next several days as things really begin to heat up.
It is the same now – it will be the same in these last days – with mock drafts. They will be like elbows in that everybody and their uncle will have one by the time the Browns, or – gulp! – someone else, makes the first pick. You’ll be able to paper your wall with them. Heck, maybe even two walls, or three, or four.
Probably because of the lack of top-flight quarterbacks available, and because quarterbacks drive the draft, all the mock drafts this year seem to be vastly different.
So who do you believe? What draft “experts” are really experts and deserve your attention?
I got asked exactly that last Friday afternoon by host Joe Dunn on his sports talk show on Akron radio station WARF (1350). It was an outstanding question, but it caught me off-guard a little bit and I didn’t give a great answer.
Given some time to think about it, here’s the answer I should have given:
What I did tell Joe was a story about Bill Belichick from when he was in Cleveland as head coach from 1991-95. I think this story is from 1993 or ’94.
Anyway, I privately asked Belichick the same question that Joe asked me and the first thing out of his mouth was to not pay any attention to Mel Kiper.
“His draft guide isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Belichick said. “Just tear it up and throw it away and use it to start a fire in your fireplace.”
The draft analyst Belichick really liked was the late, great Joel Buchsbaum, who put together the Pro Football Weekly guide. Along with its author, the guide went away and so did the PFW magazine.
But Hub Arkush, a well-respected man in the football media who had been with PFW a long time, has revived the guide. I’m guessing that Belichick would give his stamp of approval to it.
The other publication Belichick liked was Ourlads. I doubt that has changed. Again, the guide has always been put together by solid football men.
ESPN’s Louis Riddick doesn’t have a draft guide, but he really knows his stuff when it comes to evaluating players and separating junk from fact. He was a safety on Belichick’s last three Browns teams and then worked in personnel for the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles. He thinks a lot like Belichick.
Peter King, whose Monday Morning Quarterback on sportsillustrated.com is a must-read to stat the work week, has become probably the most knowledgeable – and most well-respected – man in the football media now. I’m sure he’s another guy Belichick likes, and as such I bet the coach likes just about all of SI’s NFL writers.
Just don’t listen to Mel Kiper, at least according to Bill Belichick. And because he’s one of the greatest pro coaches of all-time – if not THE greatest – that’s more than good enough for me.
