Riding the Ebb and Flow of Draft Season

The Draft season is like any other season. It has a beginning, middle and a glorious ending at the end of April. In the beginning, the prognosticators are basically just throwing darts at the board and seeing where they stick. A lot of the Mocks in January can’t be taken seriously. Their draft boards are made up of the stars who get the most face time at ESPN over the course of a College football season.

I have to admit though, for the last 40 years that I’ve been a Draftnik, I might as well have just gone to IDontHaveALife.com to register. I always had a pretty good idea about the draft by the time the Lions were out of the division race by the Thanksgiving game. Last year’s terribly exciting season kept me thinking about Lions ON the field and not the future players that could save this franchise through the draft. What a nice change of events.

Now that the Combine is in the books, and everybody’s 40 time is etched in stone, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of who should the Lions take with the 23rd pick in the Draft. Every year there’s somebody that I feel the Lions just HAVE to draft; player who just makes me salivate just thinking of him in a Detroit Lions jersey. The year before Ndamukong Suh came out, I was pissed if the Lions won any games at all after the Turkey game, because a win would place us too far down to pick him. If I’d had known that Matthew Stafford would be this good, I would have openly cheered for the Lions to lose every game, with pom poms in my hands during that dreadful 2008 campaign.

For most people, this time of year is celebrated for the weather turning warm and the start of daylight saving time. Draftniks like myself are standing around the 7-11, waiting for the first Draft magazines to arrive. The Mocks that are being posted now are not likely to change much in the next month or so. The huge trade that just went down this weekend sure mixed up some Mocks. I thought for sure the Cleveland Browns would be the ones making a trade for RGIII, not the Redskins.

The ebb and flow of Draft season and also having a lot of time to research the incoming class has also affected my own personal Mock. That’s just the way it goes, all of the sudden that prospect I had before just doesn’t look as sexy as the newest Apple of my eye. The closer you get to the actual draft the more you look at the other candidates. I’ll be posting my latest version of the Draft soon and explain next week why I changed my focus slightly. For now, just ride the waves and enjoy the process!

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