Overruling the scouts

Overly complex draft process makes for bizarre choices

It's that time of year again, time for football fans to get all geeked up about the NFL Draft.

You'll have to excuse me for not joining the party.

Having watched most of these guys in college and followed their careers closely, I don't see why the process has to be so mystical.

We're talking about a pool of prospects who have played against a similar level of competition. Just pick the ones who performed the best.

If it were that simple, though, scouts and personnel gurus wouldn't be able to justify their existence. They have to prove they're capable of seeing and knowing things the average Joe with a DirecTV package can't. Thus the combines, the interviews and the private workouts.

Thus their often puzzling decisions.

The way NFL teams often decide on their draftees is akin to interviewing someone for a job without looking at his resume. For some reason, four years' worth of quantifiable performances often carries less weight than one day in February.

One bad workout by Terrell Suggs is somehow more revealing than his 24 sacks last season. One dazzling 40 time is enough to jump career five-game starter Justin Fargas ahead of a host of accomplished running backs. And Chris Simms' numerous big-game meltdowns somehow magically melt under his seductive physique.

This, of course, is nothing new.

I had to laugh last year at all the NFL followers marveling over the emergence of St. Louis Rams quarterback Marc Bulger, a former sixth-round draft pick, as they did another sixth-round wonder, New England's Tom Brady, the year before.

Folks, Bulger was an acclaimed quarterback at West Virginia, broke 25 school records and was on national TV throughout his career. Brady played for one of the most visible programs in the country, leading Michigan to consecutive New Year's Day bowl games.

These guys weren't exactly hiding under rocks. They never would have been such surprises if the NFL hadn't so grossly underestimated them in the first place.

Meanwhile, these same NFL people wring their hands over such recent high-profile busts as Akili Smith, the No. 3 pick in the 1999 draft by Cincinnati, or Cleveland defensive tackle Gerard Warren, taken in the same spot two years later.

Who were the geniuses who put such stock in Smith in the first place following just one successful season at Oregon? Or Warren, who in three years at Florida was never considered one of the four best defensive linemen in the SEC, much less one of the three best players in the country?

I do realize it isn't always so cut-and-dried. If college production were the sole predictor of NFL success, Ryan Leaf would still be in the league and Peter Warrick and Ron Dayne wouldn't be afterthoughts. And even the most untrained eye can look at an otherwise accomplished collegian like Ken Dorsey and see he doesn't have the world's greatest arm.

But for every Dorsey or Matt Wilhelm -- the star Ohio State linebacker whose skills aren't quite as massive as his heart -- there are plenty of other proven players who are inexplicably brushed aside by the draft gurus. And there are others whose stock seems unusually high compared with their college careers.

Here now, from purely the collegiate perspective, are two players at each position who fit into one of the two categories above.

 

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