Draft Exclusion

I've gone back and forth in my head about this all week: Shall I stay up all night for the NFL Draft?

The Draft is one of my favourite things about the league, and it's one of the aspects of the sport that helped draw me in. It's one of the many ways in which the NFL promotes competitive fairness.  The Draft is a chance for teams to address their needs by picking the best players to come out of the US College system.  It's where the next Mannings, Urlachers's and Reed's are unveiled (as well as the next JaMarcus Russell) and we find out where they will be starting their careers.

The main problem is that I don't follow College football.  If truth be told, it's a sport too far.  They are only so many hours in the day to watch sport and maintain a job and a relationship.  Football (both forms), cricket, golf and snooker just take up too much time.  Maybe one day I'll have time for college football, but it won't be any time soon.
Of course, the other main reason for not watching the Draft is that it takes place at 1am and lasts for around 200 minutes!  I'm not adverse to staying up all night watching an actual football match, but I'm not sure I can manage it, just to watch some names being read out, handshakes and photo ops.  Especially, when it's not being covered live on UK tv, so I'd be watching it on an internet stream.

But then again, there will be some excellent online coverage of the event and chat between fans.  Plus, it'd make me a proper fan if I sacrificed a night's sleep for the event.  It's a tough decision.

In the end, my sensible head is going to win and I'll be off to bed at a normal hour tonight.  Before, I get labelled a "part time supporter", I'll quickly reveal that I have put a Mock Draft together.  Given my lack of College football watching, it wasn't easy.  But by using a combination of reading expert analysis, watching lots of you tube clips and sticking a finger in the air.  You'd think assigning 32 teams with a player from a list would be pretty easy, in reality it took me about 3 hours. On at least 5 occasions I thought I'd finished, only to realise that I'd completely forgotten about somebody  Just by putting that one name in the Mock, meant multiple chances across the board.  Eventually I was happy with my effort and here it is:

Pick #		Team	Player
1		Indianapolis Colts	Andrew Luck
2		Washington Redskins	Robert Griffin
3		Minnesota Vikings	Matt Kalil
4		Cleveland Browns	Trent Richardson
5		Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Morris Claiborne
6		St. Louis Rams	Justin Blackmon
7		Jacksonville Jaguars	Stephen Gilmore
8		Miami Dolphins	Ryan Tannehill
9		Carolina Panthers	Fletcher Cox
10		Buffalo Bills	Jon Martin
11		Kansas City Chiefs	Luke Kuelhy
12		Seattle Seahawks	Dontari Poe
13		Arizona Cardinals	Michael Floyd
14		Dallas Cowboys	Michael brookers
15		Philadelphia Eagles	Melvin ingram
16		New York Jets	Quinton Coples
17		Cincinnati Bengals	Dre kirkpatrick
18		San Diego Chargers	David Decastro
19		Chicago Bears	Mark Barron
20		Tennessee Titans	Whitney Merculis
21		Cincinnati Bengals	Courtney Upshaw
22		Cleveland Browns	Kendall Wright
23		Detroit Lions	Cordy Glenn
24		Pittsburgh Steelers	Donta Hightower
25		Denver Broncos	Jerel Worthy
26		Houston Texans	Riley Reiff
27		New England Patriots	Janoris Jenkins
28		Green Bay Packers	Andre Branch
29		Baltimore Ravens	Pete Konz
30		San Francisco 49ers	Stephen Hill
31		New England Patriots	Harrison Smith
32		New York Giants	Coby Fleener

First of all, even by American standards Whitney is a terrible name for a bloke!
More importantly, I'm pretty satisfied with my effort.  I've probably not nailed it, but I think my effort's won't be a million miles away from the truth.  I've tried to assess each teams' needs and pick accordingly. I haven't included any trades as I think they are pretty much impossible to predict.

I've only made one truly leftfield prediction;, I've got the Patriots taking Jenkins at 27, despite the personal issues that have seen him tumble down Draft boards.  I can see Belichik taking a gamble on him as the upside is immense.  Aside from that, I've not massively deviated from what the experts are predicting, they are experts after all.

So, the plan is to find out the 1st Round outcome on Friday morning and review how it has been reported.  What are the headlines? Who has thrown a massive curve ball to ruin everyone's Mock efforts?  And who will the Eagles take in the 7th round, to make up for losing Asante Samuel.  Actually, we'll have to wait another 24 hours for that last question to be answered.

Because if there's one thing I've discovered from the Draft build up, it's that the Eagles can make some absurd decisions, even though the new season is over 4 months away!