The practices are in, the games have been played, and other sites have filed their columns on the winners and losers from the week in Mobile. You can determine who our winners and losers are by comparing this draft to our early entrant deadline mock.
Picks with explanations after the jump.
First, a quick introductory note: As part of our coverage of draft season, I’m going to be writing a series of “re-drafts” by year. I do this for a couple of reasons: One, I’m curious as to how historical evaluations change year-by-year. A redraft of 2005 would have looked quite different in 2007, 2009, and 2011. (Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t have even been on anyone’s radar in 2007!) I wanted some historical record going forward to see how my opinions would change year-to-year. I am interested to see how the balance between career-to-date and projected career going forward changes as each year passes, and to find out where the tipping point is when “career to date” is all that matters. By starting this process now, I can keep going every year and have an accurate understanding of what I was thinking at the time, rather than letting hindsight bias interfere with my analysis.
The other reason I’m doing these mock drafts is that they’re a great way to generate content and discussion during football’s slow season.
I’m starting with 2011 because it’s an obscenely talented draft and those are more fun. Here’s a fun1 question: how many of the players eligible for the 2011 draft, knowing what we know now, would have gone #1 overall in 2013? Without looking it over, I’m going to say “ten”.
I should be clear here: I’m not interested in team/prospect fit so much as I am value added by a player’s career and value as an asset going forward. I am using the original teams picking in these slots, rather than using the results of draft-day trades. A 2011 redraft after the jump..
1 – Fun not guaranteed.
The reasons why Jadeveon Clowney is an elite prospect are easily recognizable. Clowney is an athlete in every regard. He is a menace on the edge despite being constantly double-teamed. When you don’t block him at all, the resulting hit on your running back ends up on SportsCenter for months at a time. He checks every box.
So is there something that he could work on to help his transition to the NFL? His attitude and demeanor have been much discussed this year in the media, but we took a look at what he’s actually doing on the field. And we found something other than clichés designed to take up segments on major networks.
Specifically, we looked at Clowney’s game against Clemson from this past year. One thing that stuck out was Clowney’s issues with keeping contain on several occasions.
Film breakdown after the jump.
(ed. note: Earlier this evening your editor found an unaddressed envelope in his mailbox. Inside was a yellowed piece of paper on which had been typed at the top, “Mock Draft For Publication Jan. 16 2014.” vixticator’s unmistakable signature was at the bottom. Attempts to contact him for editorial clarification were unsuccessful, so we simply publish the contents “as is”.)
Meant to publish this before the first Senior Bowl practice. There are a number of players I need to watch much more of and in subsequent additions to the mocking madness it’ll be updated for that. On the other hand, snubs such as Mister Manziel and Mister Barr were quite intentional. Play the game who got snubbed, who didn’t get seen with the entire family.
Other notes: primarily going straight value here (more or less!), match with team I’ll start thinking of at some point later in the process.
Working from this mock draft, I’ll explain the picks I made in as much or little detail as they warrant…
I had to make some decisions on players who had yet to declare in the last draft, and now we have final decisions by everyone relevant to this draft. David Yankey is entering the draft. Ed Reynolds is, too, which wasn’t a given, and thanks to some other shuffles on the board he makes this two-round mock. Vic Beasley and La’El Collins are staying in school. I have adjusted my mock from the 13th accordingly. I also made a couple of changes based on what the Zone Reads scouts told me.
I’ll follow this up with a bit of analysis for each pick later on.
In an attempt to provide some optimism for the many Detroit Lions fans whose visages are currently frozen in WTF-face upon hearing about the hire of Jim Caldwell as head coach, the Zone Reads writing crew brainstormed some potential hires who would have been even worse:
The Lions just announced the hire of Jim Caldwell as their new head football coach. The hiring immediately caused me to wonder what was going on in the Lions front office for this to happen. It seems like an obviously bad hire to me, but instead of just simply saying that, I decided to look a bit into it and see if the evidence matched my perception.
I promised myself I’d wait until the early-entrants list was finalized, but I couldn’t help myself. Here’s a quick two-round mock with commentary later:
(editor’s note: This series is our first by the staff writer only known as “vixticator” to outsiders, a dedicated film scout who lives in isolation in the Appalachian Mountains. His ways and methods are mysterious– some are not entirely certain he exists– but his insights on NFL prospects have proven consistently accurate. Zone Reads was lucky enough to draw his attention to our blog, and we managed to strike up a deal with him whereby he would allow us to transcribe his thoughts on various draft prospects and post them here. This is his first column for the blog.)
Eye on the Prize: Senior Bowl Edition, Part 1
This series will take a look at some of the more “under the radar” prospects– prospects not currently listed as “first round” grades whom I believe can and will rise to that status later– to keep an eye on throughout the next few months, focusing on invitees to the upcoming Senior Bowl. We’re not talking too under the radar, as each of these first three were named All-Americans by the Associated Press, but players who haven’t been seriously considered as strong prospects yet whom I believe will rise over the course of the draft process. Today, we’re going to look at three defensive guys up front: Jeremiah Attaochu, Aaron Donald, and Michael Sam. Nothing super in depth here, just a quick look.
No reason to waste anytime for this so let’s get right into the Defensive side of the ball.
With the end of the regular season and time being limited to do a true player breakdown in recent weeks I did an overall view of the teams in the NFL to put together my all-pro team.
Earlier this year I began working on a coaching rubric to establish some factors I could quantify when it came to evaluating coaches. I never completed it, but I still have my original work as an offseason project. In the meantime, I’ve decided to rank the coaches on a more subjective basis, which I then plan to follow with a comparison to my rubric to see how the two compare. I’ll also include thoughts on specific coaches, and
The firing season has already started, but I’m still ranking the coaches from 2013. In a separate post, I’ll discuss coaching vacancies (and hires, if they’ve been filled) and some selected thoughts on those.
I’ve broken up the coaches into tiers. If you don’t like the way coaches are ranked inside a tier, keep in mind that I did so because I don’t think distinguishing between tiers is realistic. (Even the difference between some of the tiers is murky.) The list follows:
Zone Reads 