Mike Sielski: The NFL draft is decadent and depraved

PHILADELPHIA — I hate the NFL draft.

Is that too strong to say? I suppose it is. I suppose it’s better to say that the NFL draft — with its months of overwrought coverage, with all its hyperbole, with all the guesswork masquerading as expertise — annoys me. But now I’m guilty of the same charge that I am levying against all those who love the draft, immerse themselves in the draft, and have elevated the draft into one of the most popular sporting events of the year.

I have exaggerated for the sake of drawing attention. I have spoken too strongly and with too much certainty about an uncertain exercise.

I have become Mel Kiper, screaming into the void Thursday night about the greatness of and injustice done to Shedeur Sanders. I have become an analyst/panelist on the NFL Network, praising every prospect and criticizing none of them, swimming in a sea of football jargon such as He plays through the echo of the whistle and He has good tools in his body and This guy is a football player, phrases that either make no sense if you think about them for more than a millisecond or sound so obvious that they carry no true meaning or insight.

Come to think of it, maybe I do hate the draft.

The draft is the consummate example of, Don’t hate the players. Hate the game. I don’t hate the players. I can’t hate the players. There’s no reason to hate the players. These are young men who are at the verge of realizing their wildest dreams.

It was impossible to watch Jihaad Campbell bounding down a Lambeau Field hallway Thursday night and not smile at his obvious joy that the hometown Eagles had drafted him. LSU offensive tackle Will Campbell, taken fourth overall by the New England Patriots, started weeping and could not stop. Those moments and others like them are the best, most rewarding aspects of the draft. They’re also the most genuine.

The rest of the event dips only the tips of its toes into the realm of the real. The run-up to the draft — the mock drafts and the reporting and scuttlebutt about what team is picking what player when and which teams might move up or down — is useful in so far as it provides general managers, talent evaluators, media and fans with an understanding of each prospect’s value within the marketplace.

Everyone knew going into Thursday night that the Tennessee Titans were likely, if not definitely, going to take Miami quarterback Cam Ward with the draft’s first pick. That knowledge and similar information allow teams to gauge when players are likely to be picked and which teams are likely to pick them.

If, for instance, the Eagles have a second-round grade on a safety, but Howie Roseman and his staff, based on the intel they have gathered, believe that safety will still be available in the third or fourth round, they might draft other players earlier, banking that they can fortify the Eagles’ defensive backfield later.

But all of those decisions and trades and possibilities are based on the presumption that a team will pick or trade for the right player or players for the right reasons. And it’s here where the congregants in the Church of Draft Hope and Praise are at their most infuriating, because the most important question about any player selected in any draft — Can he play in the NFL? — is the hardest question to answer, and don’t let those day-after-draft report cards lead you to think otherwise.

Go Google the Eagles’ “grades” from last year. Their consensus “worst pick” was Jalyx Hunt, the same Jalyx Hunt who, eight months later, tormented Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl LIX.

Hunt is merely a recent and convenient example. Remember: The most significant draft pick of the last quarter-century (at least) was a sixth-rounder in 2000, and the most significant draft pick for the defending Super Bowl champions was a second-rounder in 2020 for which the local media generally and immediately ripped them. (Insert raised-hand emoji here.) The first rule of the NFL draft is that everyone pretends to know everything, and no one knows anything.

Are there exceptions to that rule? Sure. In 1998, everyone figured that Peyton Manning would be pretty good. In 2019, everyone (aside from Dave Gettleman) had an inkling that the New York Giants’ decision to take Daniel Jones with the No. 6 pick was a stretch at best. But in the main, the collective reaction to every first-round pick — the gasps and cheers and Got him!s — makes it seem as if every team is getting an all-time great. And most of those teams aren’t.

“It’s funny,” Roseman, who has proved to be better at mining drafts for talent than most of his peers, said early Friday morning. “We were watching on the NFL Network, and the first few guys are Hall of Famer comps. So we’re looking at that, and we’re going, ‘Whoa, those are big shoes to fill.’ "

The quasi-temper tantrum that Kiper threw on ESPN over the Titans’ decision to pass up Sanders and take Ward was overwrought and self-indulgent. But at least it was an increasingly rare example of a talking head daring to suggest that a team had made a mistake with its first pick. Nobody wants to be wrong about a pick these days, because in the age of social media and memes, your wrongness could live forever.

What’s more, network insiders and evaluators are often hesitant to jeopardize their relationships with the leagues’ coaches and executives. So they either pull their punches or lay out best-case scenarios and comparisons for each pick, with the added benefit of firing up each team’s fan base. (The NFL draft: where the Green Bay Packers’ picking a wide receiver in the first round is treated like Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.)

Empty praise as part of a TV show/pep rally — that was Thursday night. Roger Goodell on a bicycle, pedaling around like a poor man’s Butch Cassidy, making everyone cringe — that was Thursday night. We’ll find out a few years from now how fun it all really was.