1 Day until the 2011 NFL Draft. The irony of the judge’s ruling against the NFL is that it paves the way for the college players to attend the draft. We’ll be following the Draft live from Radio City Music Hall in NYC with media credentials. This is a really good moment to thank the folks at GMC and Big Fuel for giving us access to the players and NFL. And do not forget to Follow Me on Twitter, as that will be the way I’ll be passing along the sound bites from players and our Draft Analysts during the Draft.
Chris Carlin of SNY wrote us back yesterday about our work on the Draft Project- “good stuff as usual.” Those words mean a lot to our guys Wonder and Pete, who bust their tails while waiting for verification. This year it will be interesting to see how the NFL GMs handle LBers Martez Wilson and Dontay Moch. So many others have Moch, for example, as their 10th best LBer. Our analysts have him as the #3 and #4 LBer on their boards. Does Moch go closer to 4th or 10th at this position? And how will he do in the pros, the final word coming a full 5+ years from now?!
A couple of days we made a point of showing how radically different Wonder and Pete were on TE Kyle Rudolph, how each one feels the other is dead wrong. But quietly, on the 100 picks they made to potentially overlap or not, fully 50 players were given an identical grade. What is amusing to this blogger is that while both have been crying about how weak the talent is in this draft, somehow Pete found 7 guys for his Top 100 that Wonder did not have in his Top 200! So what does it mean? GET VERIFIED! How else will we be able to sort out the noise from the insight?!!
Btw, what did you think of Goodell’s Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday? Divide and conquer? It would be easier to read and respect Goodell’s voice if he didn’t sell himself out on issues like the 18 game season. Separately, here is a fellow Bloguin’s view of the big picture macro labor rift.
Marcus Cannon news- Remember last year when we were so high on Sergio Kindle and then he dropped like a stone into Round 2?! It turned out that he had a(previously undisclosed) medical issue that forced all teams to drop him down on that risk factor. Well, there are going to be medical issues that we can learn about, and some we can’t until the draft unfolds. But one breaking piece of news that is huge for us at UltimateNYG is a player we really liked, MARCUS CANNON. It was just disclosed last night, 1-2 days after our final boards were done, that the massive Guard has a treatable form of Cancer, Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He should have a full recovery. But mechanically, we know that the player will be taken later than he would normally have been selected.
Extra tidbit from Rex Ryan’s book.. Bill Parcells went 3-12-1 in his first season and sent guys like Gary Jeter packing. Parcells reasoned correctly that if he was going to lose, he was going to lose with his players, not selfish ones who were a bad influence on the locker room. Read what Ryan had to say about Kerry Rhodes to understand (at least part of the reason) why the rest of the Jets’ players always play for this coach.
TOMORROW’s DRAFT DAY SPECIAL: A Mock Draft. And Andy’s Wish List for the Gmen. (Hint- Rule #9)
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