2017 NFL Draft Recap

May 3, 2017

Colin has already presented you with multiple numbers to digest from the Draft last weekend, so I will try my best to avoid duplicating too much in this brief article.

As most of you know by now, I am a big fan and proponent of our annual January Star Games, as Colin likes to refer to them. The Big 3, are the Senior, Shrine & NFLPA games. Trying to sift through the players involved (over 300) it gets hard to pin down an exact output to the Draft from each game. Players at the weigh-in will differ by as many as double digits from those who actually play at the end of the week, primarily due to practice injuries. And of course we have players from the Shrine & NFLPA (which play on the same day) getting called up to the Senior Bowl to fill out roster spots. All that being said I went through the Weigh-In rosters and came up with this count of players drafted from each game:

SENIOR BOWL 83
SHRINE Game 24
NFLPA Game 21

It’s not hard to see the pecking order, but I would point out that the newest game appears to be catching up with the Shrine venue. Please remember that Declared Underclassmen cannot participate in any of these games, which means that 67 of the 253 Draftees never had a chance to participate.
So do some quick math and you understand that 186 of the draftees were eligible for the Draft and 130 of those 186 attended all-star games, minus a few double-dippers.
A tip of the cap to TONY SOFTLI, who now heads up the NFLPA player scouting/recruitment. Only a few years ago that NFLPA number was in single digits. The Shrine venue got a similar roster boost when Dan Shonka of OURLADS began helping them with their player recruitment a few years ago.

In a side note number related to those above, 104 Underclassmen were declared eligible for the Draft, and 67 were drafted. Most of there rest will be in an NFL Training Camp as URFA come July.

I do not believe in grades for individual teams and their Draft efforts. But I realize readers like to see another opinion of some sort on how their team did. I am toying with a code system that will at least present you a relative scale on how I think the teams did. It may be as simple as 3 levels of ranking: +, = , – . Bet you can figure out what they pretty much mean. I’ll keep plugging away at it over the next week and hopefully come up with a report card in the next week or two.

Don’t forget that it will take a wee bit longer to get a grasp on total Draft Process outcomes for all teams. We have to wait until the Undrafted Rookie Free Agent (URFA) signings are wrapped up and reported. Which in some cases will not be officially released ’til after Rookie mini-camps this weekend for most teams. And for those of you carelessly predicting the demise of the PATRIOTS after only 4 Draft Picks, please remember they made a series of trades and RFA signings that count as part of their 2017 Draft Process.

Please be aware that yours truly will still be writing about the Draft a month from now. Unlike some millennials who have a rear view mirror of life after about 2 days, I feel totally entitled to discuss things well after their occurrence.

Pigskin