Bill Parcells confirmed with the New York Daily News last week that he is, in fact, willing to trade out of the first overall pick. We all would like him to do this for a number of reasons -- mainly to get more picks so he can have more flexibility to fix our numerous problems. Also, because there isn't one player in this draft class that screams out must-draft-franchise-player. Chris Long, Jake Long, Matt Ryan, Glenn Dorsey, Vernon Gholston -- all the top prospects -- are great players. But they're not franchise changing, cornerstone players. They're the kind of players you would add to football team with a weakness or two. They're the kind of solid players you'd draft in the middle portion of the first round in any other year. But, of course, since the Dolphins hold the first overall pick this year and since God hates the Dolphins, the fact is this is what we have to choose from this year. Sigh.
Recent history tells us that drafting No. 1 overall does not favor the Dolphins. According to this SI article, teams that pick in the top ten are usually doing so for a long, long time. Mainly this is because the system is all kinds of shades of fucked up. You've got a player coming out of college who basically amounts to a prospect and right off the bat, you gotta pay him $30 million guaranteed. And yet you really have no idea if the guy you just drafted is Super Bowl winning, record-breaking, commercial starring Peyton Manning or dog killing, weed-in-a-fake-water-bottle carrying, flipping off the fans Michael Vick. And the amount of money the top pick in the draft gets increases every year.
In my opinion, the only clear solution is for the owners and the player's union to come up with some kind of rookie salary cap. Then these insane gobs of money won't be blown on shit-the-bed busts like David Carr, or Alex Smith, or Robert Gallery, or Cedric Benson, or (gasp!) Ronnie Brown, until they prove they're worth a damn and can then be given an extension or a re-structured contract. How many good proven vets have the Dolphins been forced to waive for salary cap reasons because they owe Jason Allen's sorry sack of shit no-talent ass big draft money? It's a crazy-ass system and it's flawed because of the way the market flows and it needs to stop with... Wait.
What am I doing?
Bill Belichick is a dickbag!
Whew. That's more like it.
Anyway, Parcells needs to get up in somebody's ass and get them to trade for the number one pick. -- Chris Joseph
For more on sports from Chris Joseph go to Finsnation.com
If they can't get out of the first pick, they should take a true franchise player: Darren McFadden is the only player in this draft worthy of a number one overall pick. Then they could either keep his bad ass or use him to bait other teams who swear he's going to fall in their lap at fourth or fifth. Either that, or take Matt Ryan and force Atl. to trade.
Posted at: April 1, 2008 9:13 AM