Wow, took a little heat yesterday for my first day draft discussion. Understand, I was just throwing out observations of what I saw on TV and I hadn’t had a lot of time to digest what these players meant to their new teams yet. Still haven’t. So if you think my observations were pretty surfacey, you’re right. They still will, unfortunately, but at least I’ve had some time for the draft to settle with me, get some feedback, and decide how much better or worse teams are after this weekend.

• Nice to see the Lions aren’t getting beat up for taking another wide receiver. Really, there’s not much else you can do when the best player in the draft comes to you. You can’t let Mike Williams burn you twice. And you actually got someone to take him off your hands, too. Nice weekend for Detroit. Well done, Nagel.
• Wow, Dolphins fans really did not like their pick.
• If you had told me that Cleveland would have gotten Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn, I would have thought you were crazy. A little pricy, but the coaching staff needs these guys now and is willing to mortgage a high pick next year for some breathing room now. They made the best out of what I thought was a no-win situation.

The Bengals draft didn’t exactly thrill me, not that there’s anything wrong with what they did. Without reaching, we took the best cornerback on the board, which was a need, but the guy has a rep for getting beat by NFL-caliber receivers in big games. And going runningback in the second was a little disconcerting. Then again, what do I know? Check out what I said last year:

Personally, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the Bengals top pick. This guy may be great, but he sounds like he’s gonna need a lot of work before he makes a positive impact on the field. And then offensive tackle in the second round? I’m not seeing any immediate help from either of them.

Boy, was I wrong. Jonathan Joseph was our best cornerback (the only thing he couldn’t do was catch the ball) and Whitworth was crucial filling in for injured left tackle Levi Jones. This year, they’re both most likely going to be starters. So, I guess these professional coaches know a little more than me.

What do you think of the actual picks this year? Back to giving out a Sock Point if you let me know how your team (or someone else’s) did.

Unfortunately, I had an issue with some work I brought with me to the Goat’s and had to return home last night so I can work on it today. As a result, I will hold off until tomorrow to break down the Bengals draft. Besides, it feels pretty incomplete after only two picks.

I had a good time at the Goat’s enjoying Baby’s First Draft. Let me share some of my observation’s from the Wooster war room.

• Roger Goodell certainly has a more spirited podium presence, rallying the fans of the team who’s pick he was about to announce. “Let’s go, Buc fans!” Can’t see Tabliague doing anything like that.
• JeMarcus Russell’s mom thanked God in her initial NFL Network interview following her son’s selection as the first overall pick. She’s not even an athlete and she dropped a “Lord & Savior” right off the bat.
• I think it’s obvious that Brady Quinn’s hairstyle was instrumental to him falling down draft boards. Teams want a quarterback, not a pretty boy cover model who looks like he’d spend more time on his fingernails than going through the playbook.
• Hey, Viking fan in the Randy Moss jersey: not cool. Buy a new damn jersey, man.
• All week, ESPN has been saying that draft day to Mel Kiper is like Christmas to Santa Claus. So why did the Easter Bunny and Kwanza-bot get more face time than poor Mel?
• Brady Quinn, that’s your girlfriend? Really? You couldn’t do better than that?
• I don’t like the term “getting on the table.” I know it means someone in the war room campaigning for a player, but I had a bad image of Mike Martz “getting on the table” and doing what it took to get Calvin Johnson.
• Wow, Dolphin fans hate their pick. Wow, they really hate their first round draft pick.
  
  And if you want more draft day fun, don’t forget this classic draft day picture of MOe disliking Johnny’s helmet phone call.

  “Instead, we accidently made zombie livestock.”

Oh, Jim Rome, you are so correct. But then again, there’s a good track record of why they should. Heck, some years they made the Bengals seem smart! At least we didn’t spend a first round pick on a fullback or tight ends year after year after year.
I really wanted to get the one where Mel Kiper and the Colts GM or president or whatever are tossing verbal barbs at each other but it was not YouTubed up.

I guess I’ll just leave this open today as an open thread if you want to leave any comment about what your team or anyone else did today. But you won’t get a Sock Point for it! Due to popular belief, only if you’re the first to get this quote right will you get on the board today.

“Oh great, if you see him tell him I want my sword back.”

Stage
Originally uploaded by Eeleus.

I spent a large amount of blogtime this week on the draft. So you can only imagine how much time I will devote to it while it’s actually on. How will my Saturday go? As the Goat suggested, probably like this. (By the way, kudos to Kissing Suzy Kolber to standing up to those who poo-poo on the NFL Draft. Even though you ripped off my Better Know A Prospect series, I still love ya.) I will be a large sloth on the Goat’s couch, absorbing his NFL Network. And I’m sure the most effort I will exert that day will be lively discussions with said Goat about what teams should do or should have done.

I will also have my laptop at the ready. It’ll help me keep up with the latest news and reactions during those pesky commercial breaks. I’ll also try to keep ahead of the picking and see who’s still available and who might got where. Here’s the cheat sheet my girlfriend created. Yes, my girlfriend helped me with something football-related and it counted as quality time. How awesome is that? We compiled the results of almost 20 mock drafts to see what players are often associated with possible new teams. I meant to do more but it served me well when we did a mock draft at Cincinnati Sports for our weekly podcast. And the great thing is, I can resuse the template for future drafts.

How will I handle this weekend on the blog? I liveblogged during the 2005 draft and it was good fun. But a surprising amount of work. I’ll probably just do a general overview like last year on Sunday. I’ll probably just put up some YouTube tomorrow. I imagine the Goat will probably have some more immediate reaction from us tomorrow night.

By the way, this is TV Turn-off Week. Yeah, you can imagine how well I followed that suggestion. I’d have a hard time following it any time of year, especially if that includes video games. But this week? Ain’t happening.

Let me know what your draft day experience will be like and you get yourself a tasty Sock Point. Yes, even if you’re not going to watch any of it.

This week, I’ve defended the NFL Draft and my decision to watch as much of it as I possibly can. Maybe I should actually talk about this specific draft coming up this weekend. By the way, go here for our annual guess-who-your-team-will-pick contest. Yeah, I’ve never been right, either. But it’s been fun!

Bengals Pick Offense And They’re Screwed: Obviously, the number one thing I’ll be following on Saturday is what will my team do with their (currently) two first-day draft picks. There’s a rumor that Cincinnati might take Ted Ginn if he’s there. He’d be a great luxury but this team desperately needs to fill up some holes on defense. Obviously, who they take to wear a Bengal uniform for the next couple years is of great interest to me this weekend.

Picking Brady Quinn Says “I’m Screwed”: Anyone in a position to take the Notre Dame quarterback probably has holes at several other positions that could be filled with their first round draft pick. But if they use it on a guy who will spend most of the year on the bench learning, there goes your 2007 season. And if you’re Cleveland, Detroit, or other teams with coaching staffs on the hot seat… there goes your jobs. Unless Quinn can come in and Vince Young it up, that’s pretty much what will happen.

Cleveland’s Screwed: No offense, Browns fans, but I don’t see any good move you can make in third slot. Like I said, Brady Quinn most likely can’t help you this year. Adrian Peterson would probably get hurt and you already have a backfield full of well-known RBs. You just spent two Top 6 picks on receiving targets so the best player in the draft, Calvin Johnson, would be redundant, as well. Even the sensible O-Line pick of Joe Thomas would be redundant after your free agent pickups. Maybe the ghost of an executed Browns fan will lead you on a path to victory.

Teams Try To Move Current Players Or They’re Screwed: Guys like Lance Briggs, Trent Green, Alan Faneca, Larry Johnson, Randy Moss, and others who have been trade bait for the last couple months may finally get moved. Established NFL players on new teams could definitely make for some good draft day dish.

Stupid Teams Are Screwed: Every year, some franchise does something mind-bogglingly idiotic. Whether it’s not turning their selection card in on time or passing on Reggie Bush, it adds a little shock value to a very non-athletic sporting event. As long as it’s not my team, that’s extra entertainment value for me.

What are the big storylines you’re following this year? Let me know and, yep, you’ll get a Sock Point.

As you can tell, I am pretty stoked about the best part of spring coming up: the NFL Draft. So you can imagine I didn’t take well to an article that says: Abolish the NFL Draft. Yeah, it got my ire going. The Goat and I had words about that. Not that he’s completely in favor of it but, according to him, the effects wouldn’t be that bad. And he’d be intrigued to see how franchises would adapt their strategy to this new environment. I was ready to try and stamp out that noise because I already criticized a similar notion last year. And it’s starting to look like the go-to column to write before the NFL Draft is going to be “Let’s Not Have The NFL Draft.” Let’s nip this stupid idea in the bud, shall we?

It all starts with a sound argument: These rookies cost teams too much. High draft picks get paid more than most veterans before they even show up for training camp. Before their first practice, JeMarcus Russell and Brady Quinn will probably be pulling down the same amount of Matt Hasselbeck or Trent Green or other QBs who have done things like lead their team to the playoffs and make the Pro Bowl. Not exactly sound economics. On top of that, dependable veterans will have to be cut to make room for these expensive, inexperienced rookies.

I cannot argue with that. The high draft picks, due to their high price tags, are almost more of a hinderance than a help nowadays. If that’s the problem, the solution seems simple enough. Slot the draft picks’ saleries. Determine before the draft even takes place how much each pick will make, regardless of who is taken there. That’ll cut back on those annoying rookie holdouts, too.

But that kind of talk doesn’t build controversy so you have to make a giant leap into the land of outlandishness and declare the draft should be dismantled and chaos should reign. Cause that’s what will happen. If you open the floodgates and let hundreds of rookies into the league with no direction, that sounds crazy to me. And good luck getting these unrestricted rookie free agents to go to cold, dismal loser places like Detroit and Cleveland. (Sorry, Nagel and Eric. We used to be right there with ya, though.) But you have to force some of this talent to these places they wouldn’t choose to otherwise go. At the end of the day, this is an orderly fashion to infuse over 250 rookies onto 32 different teams.

And that’s not even mentioning the big PR boost the NFL gets out of this week. For a couple days this week, the league will be parading through New York City, showing off top prospects on TV morning shows, ringing the bell at Wall Street, and anything else they can think of.

And the Draft has created a little cottage industry that continues to keep the NFL in the spotlight following the Superbowl all the way through March and April. Where once there was only Mel Kiper and a handful of others, a virtual army of draft prognosticators keep NFL interest high through March Madness and past Opening Day. Like I said before:

But this sets up a good point that JoJo gets close to, but jumps away from when you start approaching reality. Only about the top ten picks made crazy cash. So, all 32 franchises should alter the orderly selection process and replace it with free agent chaos for the other 250 players whould be chosen? I think that’s drowning the baby in the bath water, then setting the bathroom on fire. Then throwing the tub out of the window.

So, do you want to get rid of all the positives just because one thing is wrong with the current process? Hogwash! Fix the one problem and move on. Agree with me and get a Sock Point. Disagree… and I may still give you a SP if you don’t sound TOO stupid.

It seems like there’s two kinds of people in the world: those who watch the NFL Draft and those who make fun of those who watch the NFL Draft. I am the first of those two categories. But I don’t just watch the NFL Draft. I absorb it. I live it as much as I can. I block out the entire weekend on my social calendar months in advance. I will sit in front of my TV for as long as it is on. Only an empty stomach or full bladder will remove me from the couch.

For pretty much all of you, that’s a disturbing statement. Even for the football fans in the audience, there’s only so many times they can watch the commissioner walk up to the podium or only so long they can look at Mel Kiper’s hair. So why is it that I feel compelled to spend pretty much all of Saturday and even part of Sunday stuck inside, even if it’s a beautiful spring day? Good question. Let’s see if I have a good answer.

The first defense I have is that I’m a football fan. From February to August is a long, long time of year for me. Sure, there’s news that trickles in due to free agency or some bonehead player’s latest shenanigans. But there is no other time in the offseason where more shit will go down in a two-day period than this weekend. So I feel I can devote this time now since nothing this significant will happen until teams actually take the field in the fall.

Second, watching the draft unfold is surprisingly dramatic if you know what to look for. There’s also the intrigue of watching the handful of prospects that are in New York, waiting in a room, patiently sitting until their name is called. Why do I like to see this? It’s not because they’re good-looking athletes like these ladies are. It’s to see how they react when a team picks them. Some cheer, some cry, some wear T-shirts that have a picture of themselves. Or better yet, when no one’s picking them. And for the team that’s doing the picking? These actions really give us a glimpse into the mindset of where this team wants to go. For some, it’s a new direction. For others, they just keep spinning their wheels. Sure, I can just get the results in the paper the next day. Or, if I understood technology a little better, I could probably have the picks emailed to my phone. But there’s no substitute the anticipation, the moment, and the ability to second guess the decision instantly.

Lastly, it’s become a little tradition to get together the Goat’s, watch the draft, shoot the breeze, and just enjoy a couple days talking about football in the middle of baseball season. With him moving later this year, I don’t know if the tradition will continue. But if this is the last one, then by golly, we’ll go out screaming at the TV.

So, when you look at my Draft Weekend behavior: is it any stranger than 75,000+ OSU fans watching a scrimmage or 92,000+ fans getting their first look at Nick Saban? I don’t think so. Then, you might say those people are just as nuts as I am.

While many of you are saying that I’m wasting an entire weekend, I choose to look at it as dedicating one weekend to a hobby… then moving on to other activities in the coming weeks and months. Until the fall, that is. Then it’s back to the couch for actual football, baby.

Let me know what you think of my reasoning for my Draft Day dedication and you’ll get a Sock Point. But don’t tell me what you’ll be doing on Saturday, yet. That’s a Sock Point for another day.

Sorry, non-football caring folk, but this is going to be a gridiron-intensive week here at the Sock Drawer. As most of you know, this weekend is the crown jewel of the off-season: the NFL Draft. Sure, no one catches, throws or tackles (unless we’re lucky) but it’s rivetting television if you love the shield and try to glean everything you can about it. There’s lots of intrigue around the players who will be the future of this leagues, but last week saw some current players make some interesting headlines.

I found this to be a strange bit of news: Brian Urlacher fined $100 grand for wearing the wrong hat. I’ve seen guys get smaller fines for inflicting physical pain with illegal hits. I guess we know where the league’s priorities are: with NFL sponsors. The new commissioner really brought the hammer down. Almost made me feel sorry for Urlacher. Almost, but not really.

As if Nashville hadn’t suffered enough from this before. Here comes the sequel. Vince Young: Madden NFL 2008 cover boy. Better get that insurance! I also find it funny LT turned it down first. Not because of the infamous curse, because the honor of being the coverboy didn’t pay well enough, supposedly. Good for Charger fans, bad for Titans fans.

Alright, that’s it for now. But there’s still lots more football talk to come. So, don’t you worry. Or worry if the football talk isn’t for you.

“They’re not evil! But don’t be confused. They are jerks.”

Dan & Molly Wedding Day, originally uploaded by Woodmania.

Yesterday was the wedding day for Lisa’s sister. Everything went pretty well. The ceremony was beautiful, the reception was fun, and the weather was picture perfect, as you can see.

Congrats to Dan and Molly!

Alright, that will probably be the last non-football entry we’ll have on here for a while. It’s NFL Draft Week, baby.

“It’s called reading. Top to bottom, left to right… a group of words together is called a sentence. Take Tylenol for any headaches… Midol for any cramps.”

This here is a blast from the past as I used to mock this commercial pretty fiercely. Then it stopped getting shown and I grew to miss it. Nice to see it again for old time’s sake.

A Sock Point goes to Maderer for pointing me in the direction of this gem.

Feel free to send your suggestions of the next YouTube video I should post to my gmail account. It’s woodmania. I’d type it out but I don’t need more junk mail. Just your YouTube suggestions.

“Hey. Whoa, that’s too much water. It’s gonna be all soggy.”
“It’s oatmeal, dude. It’s supposed to be soggy.”