I was holding off on my NFL draft coverage, but while I waited, the whole world went completely insane.
The evaluation of potential NFL players could not possibly make less sense. Would you like an example? The league’s official website, NFL.com, has gotten in on the madness. The site features profiles and grades for tons of potential draftees.
Let’s take a look at Vince Young’s.
We'll start off with the grading scale, which assigns Young a final grade of M 5.9. On a scale of zero to I-wish-these-people-made-sense, that grade itself gets a zero. Let me break it down, according to their own guidelines:
Vince is an “M”, which means:
The 5.9 is even more fun:
You really have to read the whole profile to appreciate how loony these guys are and, if you have the time, I highly recommend it. Specifically, though, I also liked their five “critical factors” in the first section. They are size, athletic ability, strength, competes, and play speed.
Two questions: Do those sound like the five most critical factors to you? I agree that competitiveness and athletic ability (which includes strength in my book) could be two of the top five, but the rest of those seem pretty random. Also, Young got a 7.5 on “competes”, which I assume is a distant cousin of competitiveness. Shouldn’t Young be the gold standard for a 10 on that scale?
The system is so inane that I think it would make more sense to rate draftees the way we rank Transformers. I'm serious. Remember those little blue and red charts on the back of the packages? They had eight categories, each judged on a scale from zero (bad) to ten (good). And thus we come to Hole Punch Sports’ First Annual Transformers-style Ranking For My Recommended No. 1 Pick (HPSFATRFMRN1P, for short). (Some of these are a bit more of a reach than others.)
The categories, please:
Strength: Can you remember the USC defensive backs bouncing off Young in the Rose Bowl? Here it makes more sense to compare Young’s strength to other quarterbacks rather than NFL players on the whole, in which case I give him a conservative 9.
Intelligence: He made decisions under pressure about as well as any college quarterback I’ve seen, but like all rookies, he’ll have much to learn in the NFL. I give Young an 8. (Isn’t that about what the Wonderlic gave him?)
Speed: In the age of 4.4 defensive ends, it’s fair to rate Young’s speed against that of all NFL players (rather than just quarterbacks). It’s players at other positions he’ll be trying to outrun. Young’s not really Michael Vick, but he has a deceptively long stride and picks up yards in a hurry. 8.
Endurance: Not sure what football attribute this relates to, but Young is durable and in shape, like almost everyone. I’ll give him an 8.
Rank: Finished the season at No. 1. Rank is a 10.
Courage: Young didn’t win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but neither did any animated robots. He did, however, have the guts to run for a touchdown on fourth-and-five in the closing seconds of the national championship game. Courage is a 10.
Firepower: I guess I have to go with arm strength here. Young certainly has the ability to make every throw in an NFL playbook, but he doesn’t have quite the zip of a Favre. I’ll give him an 8.
Skill: As a total package of throwing ability, accuracy, and mobility, I have to give Young at least a 9.
Weaknesses? I’m not seeing any.
Now back to the other part of that thirteen-character “abbreviation” where, if you didn’t catch it, I recommended Vince Young as this year’s No. 1 pick. This, even though the Texans are apparently considering only Reggie Bush and Mario Williams.
Why Young? It’s simple.
I hadn’t heard of Williams until draft hype season. That alone tells me he’s not really good enough to go No. 1 overall. Sorry.
So it’s really Young vs. Bush. Well, Young beat Bush in the national championship game. Not Bush’s fault, you say. I agree, but then that’s my whole point. Even though Bush had a fine game, he still couldn’t impact the outcome the way Young did.
Will that carry over to the pros? Yes. Great quarterbacks-like Joe Montana, John Elway, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and even the overrated Dan Marino and Peyton Manning-almost always have their teams in contention. With great running backs-Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith, Terrell Davis, Marshall Faulk, LaDainian Tomlinson-it’s more of a toss-up.
So is Vince Young the obvious choice at the top of the draft, or am I crazy, too?
The evaluation of potential NFL players could not possibly make less sense. Would you like an example? The league’s official website, NFL.com, has gotten in on the madness. The site features profiles and grades for tons of potential draftees.
Let’s take a look at Vince Young’s.
We'll start off with the grading scale, which assigns Young a final grade of M 5.9. On a scale of zero to I-wish-these-people-made-sense, that grade itself gets a zero. Let me break it down, according to their own guidelines:
Vince is an “M”, which means:
Very good athletic ability, but inconsistent production in college.Doesn’t learn football well? I can’t remember a college player in my life who made more improvement over his career than Vince Young, who developed from a quarterback who ran early, often, and exclusively to one of the nation’s most dangerous passers.
Meets minimum height, weight & speed requirements for the position.
Player lacks good football instincts or doesn’t seem to learn football very well
The 5.9 is even more fun:
Very good backup & very good special teams playerI do agree that Young could be an outstanding special teams player. He’s got speed, long arms, and strength. Why didn’t Mack Brown have him covering punts?
You really have to read the whole profile to appreciate how loony these guys are and, if you have the time, I highly recommend it. Specifically, though, I also liked their five “critical factors” in the first section. They are size, athletic ability, strength, competes, and play speed.
Two questions: Do those sound like the five most critical factors to you? I agree that competitiveness and athletic ability (which includes strength in my book) could be two of the top five, but the rest of those seem pretty random. Also, Young got a 7.5 on “competes”, which I assume is a distant cousin of competitiveness. Shouldn’t Young be the gold standard for a 10 on that scale?
The system is so inane that I think it would make more sense to rate draftees the way we rank Transformers. I'm serious. Remember those little blue and red charts on the back of the packages? They had eight categories, each judged on a scale from zero (bad) to ten (good). And thus we come to Hole Punch Sports’ First Annual Transformers-style Ranking For My Recommended No. 1 Pick (HPSFATRFMRN1P, for short). (Some of these are a bit more of a reach than others.)
The categories, please:
Strength: Can you remember the USC defensive backs bouncing off Young in the Rose Bowl? Here it makes more sense to compare Young’s strength to other quarterbacks rather than NFL players on the whole, in which case I give him a conservative 9.
Intelligence: He made decisions under pressure about as well as any college quarterback I’ve seen, but like all rookies, he’ll have much to learn in the NFL. I give Young an 8. (Isn’t that about what the Wonderlic gave him?)
Speed: In the age of 4.4 defensive ends, it’s fair to rate Young’s speed against that of all NFL players (rather than just quarterbacks). It’s players at other positions he’ll be trying to outrun. Young’s not really Michael Vick, but he has a deceptively long stride and picks up yards in a hurry. 8.
Endurance: Not sure what football attribute this relates to, but Young is durable and in shape, like almost everyone. I’ll give him an 8.
Rank: Finished the season at No. 1. Rank is a 10.
Courage: Young didn’t win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but neither did any animated robots. He did, however, have the guts to run for a touchdown on fourth-and-five in the closing seconds of the national championship game. Courage is a 10.
Firepower: I guess I have to go with arm strength here. Young certainly has the ability to make every throw in an NFL playbook, but he doesn’t have quite the zip of a Favre. I’ll give him an 8.
Skill: As a total package of throwing ability, accuracy, and mobility, I have to give Young at least a 9.
Weaknesses? I’m not seeing any.
Now back to the other part of that thirteen-character “abbreviation” where, if you didn’t catch it, I recommended Vince Young as this year’s No. 1 pick. This, even though the Texans are apparently considering only Reggie Bush and Mario Williams.
Why Young? It’s simple.
I hadn’t heard of Williams until draft hype season. That alone tells me he’s not really good enough to go No. 1 overall. Sorry.
So it’s really Young vs. Bush. Well, Young beat Bush in the national championship game. Not Bush’s fault, you say. I agree, but then that’s my whole point. Even though Bush had a fine game, he still couldn’t impact the outcome the way Young did.
Will that carry over to the pros? Yes. Great quarterbacks-like Joe Montana, John Elway, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and even the overrated Dan Marino and Peyton Manning-almost always have their teams in contention. With great running backs-Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith, Terrell Davis, Marshall Faulk, LaDainian Tomlinson-it’s more of a toss-up.
So is Vince Young the obvious choice at the top of the draft, or am I crazy, too?
Comments
Williams is sort of the anti-Young. He did produce pretty well-14.5 sacks or something last year-but unlike Young, he totally looks the part at his position. If anything, he could gain some weight on his frame and still look bad. Vince Young's obviously a physical specimen, too, but he doesn't look anything like a traditional quarterback, and I think that's hurting him.
Leinart's Ultra Magnus-someone's going to hand him the keys to the franchise/the Matrix, but he's not going to be able to open it.
Jay Cutler's Starscream-he wants to be in a leadership position, but you'd be insane to put him there.
D'Brickashaw Ferguson is the immovable Fortress Maximus.
Too bad Maurice Clarett isn't in this year's draft-he's an obvious Dinobot, whose attitude problems made them more trouble than they were worth.
As the preeminent coach in the game and with his vast knowledge, Bill Belichick is clearly Teletraan I.
I think Matt Millen's draft strategy is to build roster like the merged Constructicons. Devastator looks like a good idea on paper, but up close he's an unbalanceable collection of poorly matched parts.
The way LenDale White's stock is dropping, he may end up like Cliffjumper. Everyone liked the red Bumblebee, but I think he was only around for like two episodes, and White'll flunk out of the NFL just as fast if he's in as bad of shape as everyone says he is.