Back when I was with the New Orleans Saints, the draft seemed to last forever.
In the 1970’s, there were only 16 teams in the National Football League while today there are 32, exactly double the number of teams as in the ‘70’s. Yet, the draft lasted five days, with teams getting a full 15 minutes to make a selection in the first round, 10 minutes in the second round and five minutes in the third round.
As the Director of Public Relations, it was my job to announce our draft choices to the media and provide biographical information about each choice. To give you an idea as to how serious Saints fans are, I was walking down Canal Street 20 years after I left the organization and I had a guy stop me on the street and ask me: “Weren’t you with the Saints at one time?”
I left the Saints in 1977 and this incident occurred in 1977!
Amazing!
As you all know, the NFL held the 2019 draft this past weekend in Nashville, TN, home of the Titans! It now lasts three days, seven rounds, 254 draft choices including the compensatory selections which are awarded to teams that lose more, or better, compensatory fee agents than they have acquired in the previous year. Compensatory free agents are determined by a formula developed by the NFL Management Council based on salary, playing time and postseason honors.
As for the 2019 draft, if you like defense, you loved the draft. Eighteen of the first 32 players selected were defensive players and 13 of 32 selections in the second round were defensive players.
You know what they say: Offense scores points while defense wins championships.
Ole Miss and Mississippi State both had good drafts, although not what they expected going in.
The Rebels thought, as did most of the talking heads, that Ole Miss had three players who would be taken in the first round: wide receivers D.K. Metcalf and A.J. Brown and offensive tackle Greg Little. As it turned out, none were first-round selections.
On the other hand, Mississippi State had three players selected in the first round: defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons, defensive end Montez Sweat, and safety Johnathan Abram.
That’s the most players that MSU has ever had drafted in the first round in the history of the school.
Metcalf went to Seattle as the last player selected in the second round while Brown was selected by the Titans, also in the second round, and Little went to Carolina in the second round.
Metcalf and Brown leave Ole Miss as two of the most productive wide receivers in Rebel history as Ole Miss Head Football Coach Matt Luke utilized their talent to the fullest and they responded beautifully. They will be missed in the Rebel nation.
Draft picks seldom turn a team’s fortune around, no matter how great they were in college. They can, however, help a team get better in a hurry, especially defensively. I remember Dak Prescott, going from Mississippi State to the Dallas Cowboys and replacing starting quarterback Tony Romo when Romo went down with an injury during his rookie season. That was Dak’s good fortune. Romo is now in the broadcast booth.
It will be interesting to watch and see how all the 2019 draft choices fare this fall. I don’t pay attention to them until the regular season starts. I learned a long time ago that nothing matters until the games start counting. Pre-season games count for nothing. All-star games count for nothing.
Only regular season count, as do playoff games, championship games and the Super Bowl!
