Ryan Leaf, First Round Prison Pick
If there’s a rock and roll heaven, well you know they’ve got a hell of a band. And if there is an NFL prison, you know they’ve got one hell of a team.
Here is one attempt at compiling an all-time criminal NFL team. Note that this is not an “all-thug” team, because what constitutes thuggery is strictly a matter of opinion. By some definitions, one can be a successful thug while staying within the confines of the law. In order for a player to qualify for this list, he must have been arrested at least once. Conviction is helpful, but not strictly required. Of course it’s possible for a player to be wrongfully arrested, or for the arrest to be clearly out of character. If so, the player likely won’t make our list.
All players who have been arrested are considered for selection on our All-Incarceration team, and where there are multiple candidates we give weight to players of higher quality rather than higher criminality. All other things being equal we will choose a murderer over a junkie. But if the junkie is a Hall of Fame caliber player while the murderer was an undrafted rookie who lacked the talent to ever start a game, the nod would go to the junkie.
The real measurement we’re after here is the magnitude of wasted opportunity, and loss of career or reputation. Where there is not a clear winner by this measurement, we’ll give bonus points to repeat offenders, and for cases of special notoriety or comedic attributes.
First we’ll look at candidates for each position, evaluate the merits of their cases, and then make selections. Number of arrests, and major infractions, are shown in parentheses.
Read the rest of this entry »
Fans and media are usually wrong about their early draft analyses, but even coaching legends can turn out to be less accurate than a Joe Flacco pass under pressure. After the first day of the 1974 draft, an article by Phil Musick in the Pittsburgh Press stated that the year had “produced a skinny crop of collegians” and that the first round pick “would probably be the only meaningful one” for the Steelers. Chuck Noll agreed, stating that the draft would be worthwhile for only “about a round and a half”, meaning the pickings were slim by the time the Steelers had gotten to their second selection. In fact, this draft was so meaningless, the Steelers traded their third round pick to Oakland.
History proved Noll wrong, because although the first round pick, Lynn Swann, would turn out to be pretty meaningful, picks in rounds two (Jack Lambert), four (John Stallworth), and five (Mike Webster) each would join Swann in the Hall of Fame. Their draft class is generally regarded as the best in NFL history, not bad for a skinny crop.
We can only wonder what might have been done with that missing third round pick. Oakland used that pick to nab a pretty good Pro Bowl fullback, Mark van Eeghen. Perhaps if the Steelers had used their third round pick there would have been a butterfly effect that would have negated their brilliant downstream picks.
To read the entire article, click the image below. Note that Phil Musick bore a pretty solid resemblance to Austin Powers. Yeah, baby.
P.s. By the time that article was written, the first five rounds were done and in the books. The rest of the rounds came in day two.
Inspired by a question in today’s PG+ chat, the question is this. Imagine you are in the Steelers war room during the upcoming draft. Pick #17 rolls around and many of your top prospects are still on the board. You have only a few minutes to make your decision. Which of the following options do you take?
- draft Jarvis Jones, OLB, Georgia
- draft Kenny Vaccaro, S, Texas
- draft Cordarrelle Patterson, WR, Tennessee
- draft Justin Hunter, WR, Tennessee
- draft Tyler Eifert, TE, Notre Dame
- draft Eddie Lacy, RB, Alabama
- trade down six spots for a 2nd round and 7th round pick
Bonus question: at pick 12, Tavon Austin, WR, WVU, is still available. You have reason to believe the Panthers will draft him at pick 14. Tampa Bay offers to trade pick 13 in exchange for your first, third, and 7th round picks plus a conditional pick from next year. Do you take the deal and draft Austin?
This site is serving only one purpose, and that is to provide a place for all of the PG+ experts to post their 2013 season predictions. [Edit: you don’t need to be a PG+ subscriber to post here. The only requirement is that you can’t be a douchebag.] [Edit 9/18/13: Now that PG is setting up a universal paywall, this site is serving a new purpose – a Steelers “sound off” chat forum that doesn’t cost $10/ month. Welcome one and all.]
The most accurate prognosticator will win the best prize
of all: bragging rights. You can change your prediction at any time as new information becomes available, but the accuracy of later predictions has less weight than those of earlier predictions. Final winner will be chosen by the SteelSwami, whose identity is hidden from mortals. SteelSwami does not suffer appeals.
Only the prediction for the Steelers counts in this particular thread, but feel free to make other predictions, such as division standings, SB winner, player Most Likely to Sweed, etc.
Note: you can enter a bogus email address. It won’t be checked or published. But, use your PG+ name please. Also note, your first post will be moderated to weed out autospam.
Predict which positions you think the Steelers will select, per round. This is not intended to be a mock draft with specific players identified, but you can include some names if you want.
