Analysis of Draft Is Just Hot Air

Thousands of miles above the South Pole, there is a hole in the ozone layer so large that in southern Chile, sheep are treated for sunburn and a man chopping wood for 10 minutes returns to his front porch redder than a steamed lobster.

The NFL draft is largely to blame for this.

Without the NFL draft, there would be no need for six hours of live ESPN draft coverage.

Without six hours of live ESPN draft coverage, there would be no need for Mel Kiper Jr.

Without Mel Kiper Jr., truckloads of cans of hair-spray varnish never leave the warehouse, and the earth’s atmosphere is spared a decade’s worth of hazardous aerosol abuse.

Quite simply, the world would be a better place.

But these are not the best of times. No, the best of times was Walter Dunson’s 4.27 at the scouting combine. Dunson is a running back from Middle Tennessee State. He is a “quick darter” who “has good stutter step and change of direction” but is “perhaps too move-oriented at times,” has a tendency “to turn his back through the hole” and is “limited by his size,” so he projects to make it only as “a situational pro.”

Critical assessment of Dunson was provided by the 1993 Ourlad’s Guide to the NFL Draft, which is 64 pages thick and costs $16, not counting the $18 six-newsletter subscription or the $13 Review/Preview.

Ourlad’s is not alone. Not by a longshot (a longshot being any prospect who grades out lower than 4.0). The pre-draft and post-draft analysis industry seems to grow exponentially by the year, as everyone with a home computer, a VCR, an intense fascination with vertical-leap marks and no social life seems to be hopping on board.

You might have heard the Rams were interested in drafting Garrison Hearst, the Georgia tailback, today. Let’s see. Hastings, Hatch, Hawkins . . . Hearst. Grades out at 9.44. Recently ran a 4.38, according to one publication.

Was that pre- or post-MRI?

With or without torn ACL?

Will he slide?

Is he gettable with the 10th pick?

Or will the Rams have to reach and dangle a 1 and a 2 in order to interest someone in a trade-down deal?

Draftspeak. It’s in the air, and like a flu virus, it’s contagious.

Just the other day, John Becker, the Ram director of player personnel, was talking about Hearst, extolling his versatility, and described him as a running back a team can “detach.”

Detach? If the Rams are to go through all the trouble of trading up for Hearst, why would they want to detach him? You’d think they’d want to keep him.

Chuck Knox has been through 30 drafts, long before there was cable, Fred Edelstein and 1-900 draft hotlines. By now, Knox heard it all and seen it all, so when someone asked him if this year’s college crop was a good one, the old coach began to laugh.

“I think it’s a good draft, but I’ve felt that way every year,” Knox said. “The personnel guys, they’re the ones who invariably will say, ‘This draft is short here, short there.’ You see, it’s a protection.

“If you go out and have a great draft, it’s, ‘Boy, they did a great job.’ Course, if it didn’t work out, then you hear, ‘We told you ahead of time, this was a bad draft.’

“This is standard.”

Knox is similarly amused by the hue and cry over this year’s shortened draft, cut back from 12 rounds to eight, as if 28 NFL scouting departments are going to miss the 12th round.

“One thing I don’t know,” Knox said, “is who those geniuses are who can pick ‘em in the 12th round. . . . That’s a crapshoot when you get to the 12th round. That’s why a guy like Donnie Shell, who was a Pro Bowl strong safety, could fall through the cracks and wasn’t drafted.

“Because this isn’t an exact science now. I haven’t seen the genius yet who can go up there in the 12th round and say ‘This guy’s going to make it.’

“But, then, if a (12th rounder) does make it, I have heard guys say, ‘I saw some redeeming quality in this player, and that’s why I liked him.’

“And I’m looking at this guy and I say, ‘Wait a minute now, we stumbled around. We didn’t even have him on the board. Some guy called up who was the brother of a cousin of a nephew of somebody that had some connection.’ And that’s how we happened to get him.”

Less is more, I say, especially in the field of instant post-pick analysis, which is where some team selects an anonymous nose tackle with a prison record, but because he has “great tools,” Kiper immediately nominates him for the next eight Pro Bowls. Worse yet is when said team fails to pick the player Kiper has touted for three months as a mortal lock.

Home viewers then can use Kiper’s face to help readjust the color level and tint on their televisions.

“You know this,” says the ever-jaded Knox. “On draft day, after you’ve made the selections, everybody’s happy. It’s kind of like Christmas morning. All these presents are there, beautiful bows and ribbons and colors. Everybody’s all excited.

“Then you open them up. Sometimes what you saw on the outside is not equal to what was inside. And when it doesn’t work out, they’ll say ‘This guy was not very good’ or ‘This team didn’t have a good draft.’ You got to wait at least a year, or longer, on that.”

Then again, it’s kind of not like Christmas, and good for that. No second-grader coming off a down year needs to hear Chris Berman tell the world that he “underachieved in 1992.”