Mr Irrelevant is in, and just to be more irrelevant than usual it’s a Kicker. Which ironically means This year’s Mr Irrelevant, Ryan Succop, might actually have a good chance of making his team’s opening day roster. If he can beat out Connor Barth in Kansas City anyhow. What’s interesting for me is to look at who teams picked and see the different methods they’ve gone about selecting their picks. I’ll do my best to categorise a few notable examples:

1. The Trailer Trash Method
We’ve all seen Cops right? You know the ones where they have the woman in the trailer park beaten up and bloody desperately trying to convince the Cops not to take away her latest deadbeat boyfriend? Only for her to go out and find herself a new deadbeat boyfriend in the next exciting installment? Well that’s about how this method works. You know they’ve been bad in the past, it might be drugs, it might be run-ins with the law. They might just be flat out lazy or dumb as a bag of spanners but you’re still gonna chase after em, shower them with love, affection, expensive gifts only to have them just let you down again and again. Ladies, Gentlemen, I give you your Cincinnati Bengals! Ok, ok maybe I’m being a little harsh, I mean by Bengals standards this was a great draft. If the various deadbeat boyfriends can actually turn over a new leaf this might even be a great draft. God knows there is no lack of god given natural talent in this draft class. Andre Smith, probably the most talented all round Tackle in the draft. He’s available because he basically took the off in offseason too literally. Rey Maualuga, an unbelievable talent with some past transgressions of his own and Michael Johnson, perhaps the most intriguing combination of size, speed and athletic ability since Julius Peppers. But he’s so inconsistent that may be the last time you’ll ever see those two mentioned in the same sentence again. You know the last couple of drafts for the Bengals haven’t quite approached that train wreck status of the mid and early 00s but this one? They talk about prospects being Boom or Bust, this draft is Force or Farce.

2. The Pin the Tail on the Donkey Method
Also known as the Dart Board method. Simply put, you take some doddery old guy, stick photos of the top 20 prospects with the fastest 40 times around the walls, blindfold and spin the old geezer hand him a dart and let luck be thy lady tonight. It helps if some of those Top 20 photos on your walls are of guys no-one’s ever even heard of. Take a bow Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders! The runner up award goes to Meddlin’ Danny Snyder in Washington.

3. The Throw S$%! and see if it Sticks Method
In order to properly pull this one off you first need to trade away all your early picks in favour of a mountain of late round draft picks. The plan is this: 1. Pick up a big handful of crap. 2. Throw it at the wall. 3. Hope some of it sticks. To add further gravitas to this method it’s highly recommended that any time a camera cuts to your war room you do your best to look a) panicked, b) senile, c) drunk or d) all of the above. This technique makes great use of “the law of averages” and the law that states “even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day”. Jerry, 12 picks on day 2? There may well be some gems in there, but if they’re surrounded with crap you may never be able to spot them.

4. The Bamboozle/Monopoly Method
Perhaps the best living exponents of this method are the New England Patriots. Every year they enter the draft with about 15 first round picks. Deciding they’re too cheap to pay top end talent they attempt to confuse their peers by repeatedly trading, chopping and changing. Never sitting still for more than a minute. This technique appears to work brilliantly when once you’ve stockpiled 53 3rd round picks you somehow manage to sucker your foe into taking one of them off your hands for 1st or 2nd round pick next year. The main goal of this method appears to be some form of longterm draft domination whereby they trade so often and so repeatedly, they complete a total monopoly of Round 1. Presumably enabling them to build Hotels on the 5th pick and charge you $30,000 a night to stay there in an effort to have enough money to pay a first rounder for once. I understand the educational video is currently being filmed somewhere in New Jersey.

5. The Bet it all on Black Method
The draft is often described as a crap shoot. Well I prefer to look at it as Roulette. With this method you take most of your draft picks and bet them all on one spin of the wheel. Then you take what’s left and do the same again a little later. You’re going to walk away with something but like Vegas, everything looks great at night but by day it’s not quite what it seems. In case you hadn’t figured it out I’m talking about the New York Jets here, so maybe I should’ve gone with some Atlantic City references instead. Mark Sanchez certainly looks the part, hell he looks and talks as smooth as a politician with a velvet suit but is he more than a Vegas-like facade? Only one season starting in a system tailored to him means this might have been more like Russian Roulette for the Jets.

…mainly because no-one else has yet! Day One is in the history books and what has it taught us? Well firstly it’s taught me to design my CGI scripts better as trying to keep up with all the trades was frankly a bitch!

You can pick over all the mistakes I made and read Curt and Mark’s immediate unfiltered (except for the swear words and blatantly libellous material) reactions to each pick on our Draft Tracker. If you’re feeling in a particularly generous mood you can point out all the mistakes I’ve made with the trades! Drop me a line: ben@draftboardinsider.com

Secondly it’s taught me that Mock Drafts are a total lottery when even a rank amateur like me can make it look like they know what they’re doing. Seriously a 41? Joint 21st overall? That’s just insane considering I can’t even watch College Football from New Zealand. No wait, this is the point I’m supposed to say I’m a genius and swiftly move on right? Yeah, whatever… tomorrow I’ll be back to writing CGI scripts in the basement. Or maybe even my day job.

I am proud, and slightly worried that I correctly predicted the Heyward-Bey pick to Oakland. On one hand it’s a stroke of genius, on the other hand it’s the same thinking as Al Davis. Which is worrying. On the subject of Al Davis, Raiders fans, seriously you have my sympathy. We didn’t know who Michael Mitchell was either. It seems nfl.com didn’t either as despite their vast database of players (ours is only 360 or so big), their website was unaware of his position, height, weight and college for about 40 minutes. Ouch. Mel Kiper’s 73rd ranked Safety apparently. I was predicting another workout warrior, Michael Johnson to be Weird Al’s pick at that point. But hey he’s still out there so maybe round 3!

I’m not really the guy to comment on how well various teams drafted but if it’s grades for volume then Denver’s haul of  guys should net them the Valledictorian award. Dallas and Chicago get a frown from the teacher and a couple of “Incomplete” grades. No picks on Day One but the Cowboys have a whopping 12 picks on Day 2. When in doubt it appears you a) trade with Buffalo and b) try to use the law of averages to your advantage.

I’ll be back tomorrow in case anyone’s actually reading this s*%$

Well, it’s actually late Saturday for me but hey. Yes the Detroit Lions have made it official by signing Joey Harring… I mean Matthew Stafford to a gargantuan deal, bigger than last weeks deal to the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Yeah Goodell, before you do anything else, it’s time to even out the money earned by rookies. It’s a crazy situation when a dozen kids who’ve never played a down in the NFL can earn more than half the proven vets in the league. Just crazy. The drop off in money for rookies is too high. They get too much at the head of the draft, probably about the right amount for the second half of round 1 and not enough beyond that. What’s even crazier is that 7th round selections end up making less than a lot of guys who aren’t even drafted at all! Yes the most prized undafted guys can often find themselves with bigger signing bonuses than their 6th and 7th round colleagues.

There are set amounts paid to players depending on how much league experience they have. I’d like to see there be levels set for what amount draft picks can receive based on their draft position. I somehow doubt the majority of current members of the NFLPA would disagree!

Oh wait this was going to be about Jotthew Staffington and how some teams in the NFL seem to just be cursed to repeat their mistakes.

I guess at least they didn’t draft a WR.

As I am sitting here working on a brand new mock draft for the site, I always run into the same snags.  Who does Detroit take at 1, and who does Pittsburgh take at 32?  Picking at the end of the round is tricky, because you are probably a really good team, so you don’t have a ton of holes in your roster but you still want value for the pick.  But at the same time  you may have “that guy” you really want and so you reach for him, assuming he won’t be around at 64.  Oh what a problem to have.

The same can’t be said for Detroit.  Their roster has more holes than a leaky tug boat.  Offensive line, defensive line, quarterback, peanut vendor, ticket taker you name it.  Then you mix in that they are holding the kiss of death of all draft picks.  A pick that costs a fortune in a draft that is more deep than elite, and are seemingly being backed into the corner of drafting Matt Stafford and throwing him to the wolves.

If I were the GM, I’d mess with the entire league.  Commissioner Goddell would announce I am on the clock, and at that point, I’d just let the time run out.  Yep, I’d go all Minnesota Vikings on ‘em.  Just sit tight.  You need a ton of players.  Matt Stafford, Mark Sanchez, Aaron Curry, Jason Smith, Eugene Monroe, and even a kid like Brian Orakpo.  So if I am the GM, I just sit back and wait.  Let these other teams pull the trigger on these guy, and when I felt comfortable I’d send one of my lackeys up to the podium with my card.

I know what you are thinking.  But their agent will want no.1 money.  I don’t care about that.  Not at all.  In fact I think just to hedge my bets a little, instead of waiting until draft day to do this, I hold a presser on Friday afternoon announcing my intentions to sit on my ass for at least the first 3 picks and to whomever I draft, don’t try to get No.1 money because it won’t happen.

Detroit as a franchise is a grease fire so why not toss a little gas on it, and really shake things up?  Oh, if I were the GM…