• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Blog Talk Football

Football Talk - Your Opinion Counts

  • Looking For Writers
  • Social Media
  • Radio Show
  • Football Fan Primer
  • Football Tickets
  • Contact Us

NFL Draft

2020 Draft: Well Done Despite ESPN

April 26, 2020 by Micheal Savoie

The world needed a distraction. Sickness/fear/isolation was the anvil dangling over all of our collective heads, hanging by a worn thread. Sports were all suspended indefinitely – no hockey, no basketball, no baseball. After streaming the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies for the fifth time, the world needed something to watch. Enter the NFL Draft, the ultimate reality show.

Think about it. Kids who started with nothing but a dream of something better went out on a football field in school and found that they were good at it. They rose through the ranks of high school sports and were recruited by colleges and universities – given the opportunity to get an education that many could never dream of being able to afford. Many of those kids kept playing at a high level and earned an opportunity to show off their skills at the NFL Scouting Combine – although a few skipped the combine because of health issues or because they wanted to invite scouts to their schools’ Pro Day. Unfortunately, Pro Days were canceled because of the illness spreading across the nation. Teams’ scouts and general managers were told to stay home, which dashed the hopes of many of the players who didn’t participate or had a bad showing at the Combine.

The Draft put cameras in the homes of team representatives and the top rated players considered for this draft. This allowed the people starved for something to watch the ability to see how the NFL sausage was made – at least for the NFL Draft. We got to see a piece of the home life of GM’s, Head Coaches. Owners, and the families of many of the top players. Some of these peeks revealed the family life of people we don’t associate with families. Seeing a Head Coach or a GM interacting with their children (or grandchildren) while working revealed a cool part of their lives that is often ignored.

The Commissioner, Roger Goodell, allowed the world into his man cave, where we got to see a more human look at the big guy. He encouraged fans to boo him, which has taken on a life of its own over the years. But Goodell used it to help feed the people who are unable to afford to buy food during this period when jobs are paused to help avoid spreading a disease that could eliminate a large portion of our elderly or at-risk people. After 3 days, the NFL had raised over $100 Million through their NFL.com/relief link that they promoted throughout the entire event.

My only gripe about the coverage of the draft was giving control of it to ESPN. The ESPN announcers know each other and they do have a fan base, but the rest of the world – the ones who can’t afford ESPN on their cable service – has no clue who these yahoos are. Or, they may remember them from 20 years ago, and did not grow up with them. 20 years has not been kind to a lot of these guys. After a while on Saturday, it was getting difficult to follow what was happening with the top 2/3 of the screen talking about one player while the bottom of the screen was trying to keep up with the actual timeline of the picks. Sometimes, the guys talking were skipping over some of the picks to catch up, and they spent some time reintroducing people to the old timers. Mort almost lost it when they played his 30 year highlights tape and Mel Kyper was unrecognizable in the tape of his history…

Maybe I am just getting old, or I am just used to the NFL Network team’s draft coverage in the past, but it just did not sit well with me. It seemed like the personalities didn’t fit well together. Maybe next year, the people will mesh better, and they will still allow us into the homes of the GM’s and Head Coaches again, because that was my favorite part of the draft. Well, that isn’t quite true. My favorite part of the draft was seeing the joy in the faces of the players who went from nothing to a career that will set their families up for the rest of their lives if they don’t do anything stupid.

Filed Under: News, NFL Draft, NFL Drama, NFL News, Socially Speaking, Trades Tagged With: NFL Draft

The Browns Must Get It Right In The Upcoming Draft

March 28, 2015 by Micheal Savoie

 

Bernie KosarThe 2014 Cleveland Browns turned in marginal results. The high point commenced on November 23rd, which included a two point victory over the Atlanta Falcons that bumped their record to seven wins and four losses. Yet as excited as the fan base became, it all came crashing down with five consecutive losses to end the year seven and nine. So this is the time of year when Brown’s fans wonder who the team will select in the upcoming NFL draft. The immediate needs are defensive line, linebacker, wide receiver, and yes, a quarterback that can fill the void left by Bernie Kosar since 1993.

Cleveland-Browns-Blog-Talk-FootballCleveland Browns Gear

Defensively, the Browns ranked 27th of 32 teams in 2014. The secondary, led by Joe Haden, turned in a good season as evidenced by their 8th overall ranking in passing defense. Yet teams were able to run the ball with ease which drafting defensive tackle Danny Shelton from Washington could correct. Shelton is huge at 339 pounds. He would immediately plug up the inside run, and in addition, his athleticism will improve the pass rush. Coach Pettine’s goal is to develop the Browns into a dominating defense which would mask the deficiencies on the offensive side of the ball.

The linebackers did not assist in stopping the run, so Craig Robertson and Karlos Dansby need immediate competition to improve the inside linebacker position. A couple of options that will be available when the Browns pick 12th and 19th include the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, Missouri’s Shane Ray and a better option in Kentucky’s Alvin Dupree. Dupree has the size at 6’4”, 269 pounds and speed running a 4.54 40 yard dash to make an immediate impact to the glaring weakness the Browns had at this position a year ago.

Johnny Manziel

Finally, the quarterback position must be addressed. It is no surprise that Johnny Manziel struggled in 2014. His lack of maturity and non-existent skills for the NFL game was evident to all but the Browns. The opportunity to get it right exists if Marcus Mariota falls a few notches in the draft. Although he would not be immediately ready for week one, his size, arm strength, and demeanor are a perfect fit to finally get a franchise quarterback to Cleveland for the next ten years. Many compare him to Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson. As a Browns fan, one can only hope that the Cleveland brain trust gets it right this time.

Related stories:

The 3 Biggest Draft Needs For The 2015 Cleveland Browns

NFL Draft 2015: Cleveland Browns Team Needs

Browns ‘Now Positioned’ To Trade Up For Marcus Mariota?

Filed Under: AFC, Cleveland Browns, NFL Draft, NFL Drama Tagged With: Alvin Dupree, Cleveland Browns, Danny Shelton, Marcus Mariota, NFL Draft, Shane Ray

New York City Could Lose The Draft

May 17, 2014 by Micheal Savoie

hot-draft-newsNew York City has been the location of the NFL draft for the last 50 years (first New York City draft was held on November 28, 1964 in the Summit Hotel). It has grown over the years with larger and more modern venues until the most recent, held in the Radio City Music Hall for the last 8 years.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has announced that multiple cities have declared their desire to host a future draft, including Los Angeles, CA. He also stated that he would look into the possibility of moving the draft in 2015.

http://westsidetoday.com/2014/05/16/2015-nfl-draft-could-come-los-angeles/

Personally, I have found the New York City venue to be a poor place to hold an event like the NFL Draft, because the majority of attendees are either Giants or Jets fans and they are loud and impolite whenever the commissioner or anyone from any team other than the Jets or Giants was on the stage. If we have to watch the draft on television, we should at least be able to hear what the commissioner or announcer is saying instead of hearing the boos and catcalls of the New York fans.

Holding a draft in Los Angeles or Las Vegas would make the draft a lot more pleasant, because the audience would be more varied than one that is strictly from two home town teams. Holding the draft on neutral ground would allow the audience playing field to be leveled.

What is your opinion?

Filed Under: News, NFL News, Opinion Tagged With: Draft, New York City, NFL, NFL Draft, NFL News, NFL Opinion, Radio City Music Hall

Primary Sidebar

Categories

HanesInk

Copyright © 2022 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • Looking For Writers
  • Social Media
  • Radio Show
  • Football Fan Primer
  • Football Tickets
  • Contact Us