My NFL Mock Draft!
OK, it’s NFL Draft Day, and I decided to do a fun little thing with it, to celebrate the 150-day countdown to my upcoming book, WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL.
I did not know that I would end up writing a 4,300-word NFL mock draft. I guess I never know what’s coming. But I’m glad I did, because:
It was fun.
It was, as you will see, an homage to my younger self, when I wrote 4,300-word NFL mock drafts just for fun.
I’m about to send out my WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL introduction to those of you who have already preordered your signed and inscribed book from Quail Ridge. Thank you to all who have, and if you would like to be one of those early birds and get a sneak peek at the book, you can preorder a copy from Quail Ridge today and then GMail me the receipt.
OK, here we go …
Please don’t tell my parents this… but 40 years ago, I skipped school to watch the NFL draft. This was long before the draft was a big deal; as far as I knew then, my friend Robert and I were the only high school kids in the world obsessed enough to do something so silly. It was Robert’s idea.
We had skipped school to watch the 1983 draft, which led to one of my favorite-ever sports moments: Robert was an obsessive Jets fan in the same way that I was an obsessive Browns fan. The Browns didn’t have a first-round pick in 1983*; but the Jets did, and Robert was all sorts of psyched, because he felt sure that the Jets were going to draft a quarterback that would turn everything around.
*The Browns had traded the 14th pick in that draft to Buffalo for linebacker Tom Cousineau, who was the first pick in the 1979 draft, but then abandoned the Bills to go play in Canada. That seemed pretty exciting to me; Cousineau was a Cleveland guy through and through (he played high school ball at St. Ed’s, and later returned to coach there), and he did have a couple good years for Cleveland. Alas, he’s probably best-known not for anything he did as a football player but for the press conference he held to announce that he was not gay. There had been some rumors circulating, apparently, though nobody I knew had heard of them before he held the press conference. This was a serious matter in the mid-1980s; Cousineau was convinced that, in the end, the Browns released him because of those rumors (owner Art Modell denied it, but, you know, I wouldn’t believe an Art Modell Yelp review, much less something important from him). The Bills used the Browns’ pick to draft a not-so-bad quarterback named Jim Kelly.
As it turns out, the 1983 draft would become famous for the quarterbacks selected. John Elway was the first pick, and five other quarterbacks were selected in the first round; each would become famous or infamous in their football towns. When the Jets’ pick at No. 24 came up, Robert was jumping up and down like a maniac—the Jets were obviously going to draft Pittsburgh’s Dan Marino, who had taken a shocking fall in the draft. Robert hadn’t thought there was any chance at all that Marino would be there for the Jets, and I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anyone as happy as Robert was in that moment, and that includes dozens and dozens of weddings. He just kept singing again and again, “We got Marino! We got Marino!”
Then commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped up to the lectern and said, “The Jets take, first-round selection, quarterback…”
Here Rozelle paused for dramatic effect, during which Robert jumped nine feet in the air.
“… Ken O’Brien of California-Davis.”
At this point, Robert collapsed to the carpet of his family television room and just lay there for, well, honestly, he might still be lying there.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit low, I’ll think about that moment. I mean, Robert was my best friend, and we still stay in touch. But, man, was that funny.
The next year, I skipped school again for the draft—I’m pretty sure I missed an important test of some kind—but what I remember most had nothing to do with the draft itself. What I remember most are, well, two things:
This was when ESPN was a fledgling network* showing Australian Rules football, lots of auto racing and workout shows like, “Bodies in Motion.” The idea of actually televising the NFL draft did not capture the minds and hearts of advertisers (who ever thought this could be good television?). So they kept showing the same three commercials again and again throughout the day, my favorite being the ad they showed for the helmet phone, a home phone shaped like a helmet. We were told that we could actually own the same sort of phone that our favorite team was using to call in their draft pick! “It’s a real conversation piece!” the narrator assured us.
I probably wrote like 500 mock drafts leading up to that day.
*It was actually 1984 when ABC bought ESPN from Texaco and founder William Rasmussen for a little bit more than $200 million.
This is what I used to do back when I was 17 years old. I saw in the comments that someone wondered if I would just write all these stories and books for nobody if I did not have a newsletter or publisher. Not only would I, that’s exactly what I did long before I had a newsletter or a publisher. I just wrote sports stories to pass the time, to empty my mind, to avoid paying attention in various math and science classes.
In 1984, there were not many draft resources. This was long before everybody on planet Earth did a mock draft, long before there were detailed breakdowns of every college football player and most high school football players, long before the term “draftnik” was invented and then abandoned. I’m not entirely sure where I got my information from, but I went at it day after day, writing passionate predictions about Dean Steinkuhler (a future Pro Bowler!) and Carl Banks (“might be another Lawrence Taylor!” and Wilber Marshall (who I really wanted the Browns to draft) and a bunch of other players I had never seen play.
And so, to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of that 1984 draft, I thought, Hey, why not, let me do a mock draft the way I might have when I was 17 years old. There is absolutely no reason for you to pay any attention to it since there are a trillion mock drafts out there being done by people who actually write about this stuff for a living. But, hey, I’ve never let that stop me before.
One thing I will add: I do not predict any trades in this mock, so this is less a prediction—there will surely be trades, and those will shake up the board—and more a general guide to tonight’s first round.
JoeBlogs NFL Mock Draft 1.0
Pick 1: Chicago Bears—Caleb Williams, QB, USC
Poor Carolina Panthers. The Bears had the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft, and they traded it away to the Panthers, who used the pick to select Bryce Young. It’s too early to make any definitive judgments about Young, other than to say he sure doesn’t look close to as good as C.J. Stroud, who was their other option. Anyway, the Panthers didn’t know they were trading back the No. 1 overall pick in 2024, but they sure were. Carolina was far and away the worst team in football, and so now the Bears will take Williams. Patrick Mahomes told me that Caleb Williams reminds him of himself a little bit, so that seems good.
Chicago’s 75-year search for a quarterback—since the retirement of Sid Luckman—is one of football’s most enduring tales of woe. They’ve never had a quarterback throw for 4,000 yards or 30 touchdowns in a season (Erik Kramer in 1995 was the closest to both) and their first-round picks over the last 50 years have included:
2021: Justin Fields
2017: Mitchell Trubisky
2003: Rex Grossman
1999: Cade McNown
1987: Jim Harbaugh
1982: Jim McMahon
I really thought Justin Fields would be good, and there were times he flashed some of that goodness. But the Bears dealt him away to Pittsburgh (where he probably will be good) to clear the way for the Caleb Williams era.