Pieces of advice

A service for draftniks and NFL general managers

Today is April 1. April Fool's Day. It's also the day Mel Kiper becomes the most important person in your life, draftniks. It is now draft month.

Just three weeks until you get to open your draft-pick gifts. And while we're still a week or so away from a mock draft that means anything beyond the first couple of locks (David Carr to Houston, Julius Peppers to Carolina), there are some important lessons I'd like to impart today. They have to do with picking wisely and knowing when to pick which positions.

List of the week Ten NFL schedule notes I find interesting ...   1. Dallas visits Houston on opening night, then will not play at Houston in the regular season again until 2010.  2. The Mad Dog Russo Logistics Alert (named so because the WFAN radio personality loves to talk about travel problems): Whoever made up the Jets' preseason schedule ought to have his helmet examined. Monday, Aug. 12, at Pittsburgh. Thursday, Aug. 15, at Baltimore. How stupid. The Jets will have a choice. They can fly home, arriving at 2:15 a.m. Tuesday, then fly to Baltimore 36 hours later. Or they can fly from Pittsburgh to Baltimore, with all the scrubeenies in tow because it's an early preseason game, and practice once Tuesday and once Wednesday in Crabville.  3. Steve Spurrier will face Donovan McNabb, Peyton Manning , Brett Favre and Kurt Warner before Thanksgiving. Maybe that will give him some ideas.  4. Best Thanksgiving games in years. Belichick at Millen at 12:30, Spurrier at Jerry Jones at 4.  5. Do you know how insignificant the league's proposal to allow ABC to change some late-season telecasts would have been? Had the NFL's incredibly misunderstood -- and now dead -- plan to let ABC fiddle with the final four Monday night games passed muster before last season, ABC would probably not have changed a single game. This year, the final four are Chicago-Miami, New England-Tennessee, Pittsburgh-Tampa Bay and San Francisco-St. Louis.  6. Buffalo plays 16 Sunday afternoon games, the last 13 at 1 p.m.  7. This is the third straight year in which the NFL has scheduled Miami to play in Foxboro after mid-December.  8. The Raiders play three night games in four weeks starting Nov. 11.  9. Oakland and Dallas make their first trips to the dome in St. Louis.  10. Presumptuous Quote of the Week, from Washington owner Dan Snyder after seeing the 'Skins on the Thanksgiving Day schedule at Dallas: "We look forward to providing a Thanksgiving celebration for Redskins families throughout the world."  11. The ESPN schedule is the strongest Sunday night slate I've ever seen, even with Cincinnati-Atlanta on Sept. 22.  12. The Bears will ride the train to home games in downstate Champaign this fall. I like that.

Some nuggets from an NFL study of current starters in the league would suggest a few trends to keep in mind come draft day:

Don't overdrool on the safeties. This includes teams like Buffalo and Minnesota that pick in the top 10 and absolutely love Oklahoma safety Roy Williams. Only eight of the 62 starters at strong and free safety at season's end in the NFL were first-round picks. Sixteen were undrafted college free agents. Good safeties can always be found down the line in the draft.

The first round is not just for quarterbacks anymore. Eight of the 31 starters late last season landed on their clubs as first-round picks. Just eight. Consider that the last three Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks came to their teams as a college free agent (Kurt Warner), a street free agent (Trent Dilfer, an itinerant former first-rounder) and a sixth-round pick (Tom Brady). Moral of the story: If the quarterback you love isn't there, draft one down the line and be patient. And get one with an incredible work ethic and drive like Brady has.

The first round, however, is for backs, left tackles, pass rushers and corners. The numbers are borderline overwhelming: Twenty of the 31 starting left tackles (65 percent) came to their teams in the first round. Sixteen running backs. Sixteen right defensive ends. Twenty-three corners. These are the skill positions of the millennium.

Get corners on the first day of the draft. Amazing: 51 of 62 starting NFL cornerbacks came to their teams in the top three rounds.

Offensive linemen are definitely plentiful down the line. Thirty-one guards (exactly half of the starting league total) came in Rounds 2 through 5. Thirteen right tackles came in the second round. Ten of 31 centers arrived on their teams as free agents out of college.

The odds, then, are stacked against Roy Williams. They're very much in favor of Texas' shutdown corner Quentin Jammer. And all signs should point to Miami left tackle Bryant McKinnie over Texas right tackle Mike Williams in a walk, though several teams up high are totally smitten with Mike Williams. But that's why they play the games. And that's why they draft the players.

I turned down two primo seats to the Red Sox opener against the Blue Jays in Fenway today, with Pedro hillside, to go to Jammer's workout in Austin. Moral of the story: Sometimes I actually have to work.

1. I think my Final Four thoughts, valid ones, would fill a thimble because I don't have many. But here goes:

a. If Kansas had won Saturday, then won tonight, Mary Beth King would have won $500. That's the first-place prize in the Ron Fisch Final Four pool, and I can guarantee you that none of the 60 entrants in the pool knows less about the game than Mary Beth. She has never watched a full basketball game of any kind. She has no idea what a Terp is. She can't name a single player in the game tonight, or a single player in any basketball game, except maybe Shaq or Jordan. Maybe. Filling out her bracket was her version of playing the Lotto. But you'll like this. When I told her she'd have to rebate the $20 entry fee for the pool to me if she won because I ponied up, she acted all indignant. "That's my money!" Kids say the darndest things.

b. I would love to hear what Bud Selig said when he found out the first game of the season for the National Pastime was being put on ESPN2 last night, pushed out of the way by a women's basketball game. That one stunned me. I'm as big a fan of the UConn women as one could be from New Jersey, but would that game get a bigger cable audience than the first game of the baseball season? Wow. I worry for baseball if that's so.

c. UConn, 39-0. The coronation last night, an 82-70 win over Oklahoma, ought to be required viewing for any team in any sport experiencing selfishness problems. This team never met a pass it didn't like. The two big stars of the team are player of the year Sue Bird and Magic Johnsonish guard Diana Taurasi. They built an 18-13 lead on baskets by Swin Cash, Tamika Williams, Williams, Cash, Cash, Williams, Asjha Jones, Jones, Jones and Ashley Battle, in that order. That's a team. To win by double figures when you turn it over 21 times and go 0-for-9 on threes ... well, that must be a pretty good team.

d. Does Diana Taurasi's hair ever move?

e. One question about college coaches: What crooked agent started this business of coaches negotiating with other colleges while they still have five or six years remaining on contracts at their current schools? What exactly does the word "contract" mean to college coaches?

f. Maryland, 80-70. That is a true know-nothing pick.

2. I think a little birdie tells me Cris Carter has an audition at FOX in L.A. tomorrow. Maybe this third-receiver thing in Miami isn't going to work out after all. I still say Carter will rue the day he postponed a flight into St. Louis last month to try to get more money out of the Browns in Cleveland.

3. I think if anyone in the NFL is actually thinking about making folks five years from now pay $400 a seat to sit in Giants Stadium to watch a Super Bowl on the last Sunday in January after the sun goes down ... well, such people, for punishment, ought to actually have to sit outside that day. Think about this, people. An outdoor northern Super Bowl might have been tolerable with the emotion of 9/11 so fresh. But five years down the road? Nuts. Absolutely nuts.

4. I think these are my Opening Day baseball thoughts:

a. Play ball!

b. The Red Sox have two road trips to Baltimore in the first 25 days of the season. Must be the Jets' scheduler at work.

c. My playoff picks: Yanks, Twins, A's, Mariners (wild card); Braves, Cards, Diamondbacks, Cubs (wild card). Why these? Well, the Cubs will outpitch the Mets. The Twins will outpitch the Indians and White Sox. ALCS: A's over Mariners. NLCS: Cards over D-Backs. World Series: A's over Cards.

d. Player we're not talking about this morning that we'll all be talking about come Aug. 1: Chicago starter Mark Prior, who opens the season in Class AA. He'll last about four starts there.

e. I can't understand why Rickey Henderson is leading off for the Red Sox. He's hit .219 (Mets 2000), .238 (Mariners 2000), and .227 (Padres 2001) in his last three stops over the past two years. That's not a trend? Didn't they get Johnny Damon to lead off? Hello?

f. Quote of the Week: Tampa Bay pitcher Paul Wilson, on ESPN, about the difference between this year and the past, when he's been a pretty consistent nobody: "I'm a ballplayer now. I'm not the turd in the punchbowl anymore."

g. Stat of the Week: Tino Martinez has more RBIs over the past six years than Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza or Jason Giambi .

5. I think the Houston Texans are starting to remind me of the kid who gets his $10 weekly allowance on Friday, feels the dough burning a hole in his pocket, and has it spent by Saturday noon. It's one thing to gamble on Tony Boselli, a move I happen to agree with because of the upside if he overcomes his injuries and because of the importance of the position. It's another thing to spend $1.2 million a year on the kicker who led the NFL in missed field goals (14) last year (Pittsburgh's Kris Brown). You don't have to buy everything in the first year, Texans. Winning teams spend smart and save money for difference-makers.

6. I think Randy Moss is going to have one of the greatest years a receiver has ever had. Minnesota quarterbacks dropped back to pass 602 times last year, and 82 times -- 13.6 percent -- the play was a completion to Moss. There's no question a healthy Moss should have his first 100-catch season this fall, provided he plays hard. "From the film I watched," said Vikings offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, the offensive coordinator at Louisville last year, "Randy's been an outside receiver who ran mostly deep go's and deep comebacks. This year, you'll see him line up wide, in the slot, in the backfield, and in motion a lot. We'll make it harder for a defense to find Randy. There's no question Randy will benefit from the Mike Tice Era."

7. I think these are my other non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Montclair (N.J.) High Softball Note of the Week: Following our heroes to the diamonds of North Jersey takes us to interesting places. Last Wednesday, we watched the girls at a field in Kearny, a working-class town famous for producing great soccer players. The scene: An old park with a barking mutt over the right-center field fence, a van beyond the fence next to third base playing "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen when our bus rolled in, a soccer field beyond the first-base fence with an after-work game being played (loudly) by Hispanics, the New Jersey Turnpike off in the distance behind home plate, the skyline of New York City -- the changed skyline, obviously -- a few miles further away. Neat scene. Too bad we lost the scrimmage. The real bullets start flying this week, Wednesday at home against Barringer High of Newark. Then Thursday at Wayne Valley and Friday at Millburn. Soph pitcher Mary Beth King got touched up for three runs on a 41-degree day last Monday at DePaul in Wayne, losing 3-2. Gave up three hits. Walked three. Played in shirtsleeves and shorts. Don't know how she felt the ball.

b. The longer The Sopranos stays in hibernation (has it been four years since the last non-rerun, or six?), the more Six Feet Under becomes my favorite show.

c. Jason Alexander, those KFC ads tell me two things: One, you really fooled somebody in the auditions, because you look silly in those spots. Two, you need George Costanza to make a comeback. In a big way.

d. I pray that I'm wrong on this, but Robin "Death to Smoochy" Williams may have lost his mind with this role.

8a. I think the Bucs would love to find someone to take Mike Alstott off their hands.

8b. I think no one wants Alstott, except at Patriots' prices.

9. I think this is the one thing I find weird about personal relationships in the NFL: When they're over, they're really over. The day Jon Gruden was signed and sealed for Tampa Bay, he had a staff meeting in Oakland and didn't even tell the coaches he'd worked like a dog with for four years what was up. He was a loner at the scouting combine, basically ignoring the Raiders' people. It would be hard for me to work 15-hour days with people, then treat them like strangers the minute I got another job. But apparently that's what Gruden's doing. He's not the only one. I see this in the league all the time. Weird.

10. I think I like the Saints a lot better this week, with Bryan Cox around to kick mental tush from Day 1 of training camp, than I did a week ago. Ask any coach Cox has played for. This is one great influence in the locker room, and one great example on the field. He plays like his hair's on fire.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space -- no kidding -- on Monday mornings.

 

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