Thursday, April 28, 2011

NFL Draft Live Blog

Are you ready for the biggest waste of time of the year? I know I am. I'm also ready to watch the yearly ritual of rich white men buying and selling athletic young black men. Amazingly, we are not talking about 19th century slavery, but rather the NFL Draft.

Despite all of this, I can't help but write about this stuff. Mostly, I just hope the Seahawks don't draft Jake Locker.

7:04--(DL)Hope all is well in the Land of Depressing Sports. So far, I'm happy about the audience chanting at Goodell.

7:05 (EL)--God, Goodell is a schumuck

7:05--(DL)The Panthers "can't miss" on this pick, yet they pick Cam Newton.

7:09 (EL)--Welcome to the new Alex Smith! The NFL has an iron rule--"new regimes equals new quarterbacks." Even if the new quarterbacks suck. Fail, fail, fail.

7:12 (DL)--Denver has a ton to choose from here, but it'll clearly be Von Miller at this point.

7:13 (DL)--That should be fine. Xanders looked at a computer!

7:14 (EL)--I hope Miller punches Goodell in the face.

7: 19 (EL)--I like the Dareus pick. However, I want to again point out that the Buffalo Bills have far and away the worst name in professional sports.

7:20 (DL)--Who's going to throw to him? Palmer's out. Jordan Palmer to AJ Green!!

7:25--(EL)--How does Marvin Lewis still have a coaching job? AJ Green off to irrelevancy land. Also, you'd think that for all the high draft picks Georgia has had over the years, they'd win some important football games. You'd be wrong. Same goes for Clemson and UCLA.

7:29 (DL)--I know that "best player available" is valuable, but that's only a minor need for Arizona.

7:31 (EL)--Daryl may be right about this, but what the Cardinals need is a QB and they are smart enough not to waste their pick on one of these crappy QBs this year. Might as well take a potential shutdown corner and kick returner.

7:34 (EL)--Julio Jones is rocking that fucking bow tie

7:37 (DL)--Wow...what an awful trade for the Falcons

7:37 (EL)--Julio Jones had better be the next Jerry Rice for the Falcons to give up that much. Did the Browns also demand Matt Ryan's first born son? Great trade for Cleveland.

7:40 (DL)--How many weeks do they deal with Jones' drops before declaring him a bust. A total snowjob for Cleveland.

7:41 (EL)--This could be the greatest thing to happen to the Cleveland Browns since 1987! Oh, wait....

7:42 (EL)--I don't know anything about Aldon Smith, but I do know that the 49ers made a really good move by not picking one of these crappy quarterbacks. Blaine Gabbert=Alex Smith. They already have that guy. Take someone who is going to help you.

7:45 (DL)--Wow...disaster.

7:48 (DL)--Locker is a winner...at least eight times in college. Gruden should really shut up.

7:49 (EL)--Tennessee saves me from the indignity of the Seahawks drafting Jake Locker. I think Bud Adams has been hanging out with Al Davis a lot lately. Jake Locker is a terrible, terrible pick. And now Chris Berman is comparing Locker to Brett Favre.

7:51 (DL)--Locker is the anti-Vince Young? Because he's white? They're the fucking same...good lord....

7:53 (EL)--I was going to make the same comment as Daryl above. Love the coded racism of professional sports. Locker--white and safe, Young--black and scary. As Daryl says, they are the same quarterback.

8:00 (EL)--Jacksonville trades up for Blaine Gabbert? The 3rd crappy QB goes! That ought to continue the utter irrelevancy of Jacksonville Jaguars for another several years. Also, Gabbert has dumb hair.

8:02 (DL)--And Blaine Gabbert is one of the worst possible names.

8:06 (DL)--Who knew that a teal hat could make you look less like a douche?

8:08 (EL)--The Wonderlic probably doesn't have a whole lot more value than other standardized intelligence tests. But it's worth pointing out that Jake Locker had the lowest score of any leading QB this year, including the supposed dumb Cam Newton. But somehow he is the anti-Vince Young. He's dumb as a rock! But hey, he's white! Don't you understand--he's WHITE!!!!!

8:09 (EL)--I think the last black player to play for the University of Wisconsin was Ron Dayne.

8:15 (EL)--Nick Fairley just made Julio Jones' bow-tie look chumpish.

8:17 (DL)--Tavarias Jackson will still start for the Vikings next year. Ponder will be terrible.

8:18 (EL)--Kiper just compared Ponder to Chad Pennington. And that's the upside. Horrible pick. Horrible. My Packer fan friends are very happy right now.

8:20 (DL)--Oh, Bill Musgrave is the QB coach. It's like looking in a weak-armed mirror.

8:21 (DL)--Fairley and Suh is scary as hell.

8:22 (EL)--Here's why I don't like this Fairley pick (bow-tie notwithstanding)--the Lions always pick the best player available. OK they have sucked for a long time and have a lot of holes, though less than they used to. But--the OL sucks. And Matthew Stafford is always hurt. So why not pick the best OL available. Don't you have to do this at some point? I don't like this at all. Plus the highlights of Fairley dominating the Oregon offensive line is making me want to break my television.

8:28 (DL)--How is it that Gruden can both look and move like a marionette puppet?

8:28 (EL)--So far, this draft is refreshingly Todd McShay-free.

8:31 (DL)--I'm certain they're drafting Dalton.

8:37 (DL)--I was wrong. Pouncey is a solid pick.

8:42 (DL)--I still laugh every time #8 comes on the ticker. Tennessee, you fools....

8:45 (DL)--Apparently, according to the commentary team, no team has made a bad choice yet, only surprising ones. Clearly nobody does wrong in the draft...ever.

8:46 (EL)--It seems that Daryl doesn't understand the level of whiteness Jake Locker brings to Tennessee.

8:50 (DL)--Is there a way to make moneyed Tennessee any whiter than it already is?

8:53 (EL)--If there was a way, it was accomplished tonight.

8:53 (EL)--Will anyone really miss Chris Berman when he retires? The verbal puns got old 20 years ago.

9:06 (DL)--I think that what is shocking me most is how normal and banal this draft has been.

9:08 (DL)--Aside from, of course, what will go down as "The Cleveland Boondoggle."

9:15 (DL)--How many times in his life has Chris Berman uttered the phrase, "Fill that Jolly Roger!"?

9:17 (DL)--Kiper's right, and I'm positive that Gruden is drunk.

9:21 (DL)--Oh, fuck you Peyton Hillis. Number one, button up your shirt. Number two, being voted in by Cleveland does not make you a star.

9:22 (EL)--Peyton Hillis thanks his Lord Jesus Christ for the ability to wear that unbuttoned shirt. This is literally the most exciting thing that's happened in the last hour of the draft.

9:30 (DL)--The Hangover II looks like the most unnecessary sequel of all time.

9:31 (DL)--Even Hardbodies 2 had harder bodies; this just looks more expensive.

9:32 (EL)--And now it's time for the ritual festishization of the military, reminding me why I should hate football but can't get away from it.

9:33 (EL)--If Roger Goodell wraps himself in the flag tightly enough, will the public forget what a complete fucking douchebag he is?

9:36 (DL)--That's all so disgusting...just yuck....

9:38 (DL)--Ladies and gentlemen...your heroes.

9:42 (EL)--Cameron Jordan completely shut down Oregon this year. Great pick for the Saints.

9:46 (EL)--Given the quality of defensive linemen left, I am going to be very irritated if the Seahawks don't draft one, unless they trade down.

9:51 (DL)--Drafting, Pete Carroll style.
 
9:52 (EL)--Sigh. The Seahawks absolutely need an interior offensive linemen, but I also feel they could have traded down and still picked up James Carpenter. Still, the interior OL really sucked last year. Ever since Steve Hutchinson left for Minnesota, Seattle's had no running game. So maybe this will work out. Still, I'd like to see good value at the pick and this is not that.

9:54 (EL)--To be clear, Pete Carroll drafted very well last year with Okung, Earl Thomas, and Golden Tate. Other than the Whitehurst trade, the personnel moves have been good. We'll see about this. Maybe it'll be worth it. Would like to see former Duck Max Unger get healthy and work with Carpenter to provide solid guards and open up some holes for the lame-ass running backs.

9:57 (EL)--I think Jimmy Smith is trying to get over his character issues by surrounding himself with white people on TV. Knowing the NFL's racial politics, this might actually work.

10:08 (EL)--I really like that Jimmy Smith pick by the Ravens. The whole character thing has gotten out of control. If you have someone totally crazy like Pac-Man Jones, OK. But LaGarette Blount didn't get drafted last year because he punched a guy. Then he ended up the top rookie running back. Jimmy Smith is a stud corner and a top 10 talent. With the level of mentoring he's likely to receive in Baltimore, this is very good.

10:15 (EL)--My only concern about the Saints drafting Mark Ingram is the likelihood that they are going to dump Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll throws a ton of money at Bush to come and suck in Seattle.

10:38 (EL)--And there ends one of the most boring 1st rounds in history. This is what I learned tonight: Peyton Hillis demonstrated that each team should pick its douchiest player to announce the picks. I totally want to see Tim Tebow present Denver's picks. Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to hear Deion Sanders present picks back in the day? This would make things so much more interesting!