We (Meaning Fans and the NFL) give up on QB's way to early or others are never given a chance. Without a farm system how much talent is being missed or never given a chance or a chance to develop. Without NFL Europe, Arena Football and a freak injury we would have never heard or Kurt Warner. Baseball someone struggles they send to the minors to learn Football relies on a educational institution to develop their prospects. Warner is just one example look at late bloomers like Rich Gannon or Brett Favre being traded heck the chargers gave up on Brees and drafted Manning. QB is hard and these kids are judged very quickly and judged even harder today because of Rookie contracts. In today's NFL there would be no Terry Bradshaw. Why was David Carr not given another chance? It takes 5 years to really judge a Qb and that is when they have a stable OC and some talent around them. Even look back to the replacement players during the strike. Several of those players and Qb's found roster spots after the strike. Brady got lucky as well if Drew was never hurt we might have never heard of Brady. The NFL needs to fix the problem with a minor league system but it is hard to argue with mighty dollar. The NFL has college for free and current players are not willing to cut into their portion for others not yet in the league.
I totally agree. I have always thought it ridiculous that with the exception of NFL-Europe, the NFL never had a farm system to develop players.
One possible problem with an NFL farm league is the game itself is so brutal that most careers last less than 4 years. If we have a post-college farm league, the avg age of a NFL rookies will be close to 25. Their bodies/careers will be half gone by then.
Totally disagree with the bold. I think if anything the opposite is the problem, teams give highly drafted QB's way too long of a leash and pass up good opportunities to replace them. The Browns are an example of a team that did it the right way, drafting lots of QB's and cutting them loose at the first sign of it being clear they weren't the guy. QB's improving like Allen has are very uncommon. Usually when a guy starts his career very poorly he's never going to improve enough to be the guy.
They do need to fix some things and I agree with a lot of what you said about developing players. I don't think a full fledged minor league system is entirely possibly because there's just too much risk for the players and players at a lot of positions are starting to trend into decline around 28-29. What I'd like to see is practice squads expanded, an ability to somewhat protect players with future guaranteed roster spots or something (not sure how to do this) and a more dedicated coaching staff on each staff to develop these players. Teams would create an incentive for themselves to develop players if they had to give them a roster spot or something. The NFLPA also needs to have some more nuts and demand changes to help develop players. It won't happen until then but I think it'd definitely help certain position groups. Cornerbacks and runningbacks specifically would still probably be SOL due to the age decline, but offensive lineman, quarterbacks, linebackers and safeties could greatly benefit. Receivers would fall somewhere in the middle.
Next week he'll have us drafting Sewell. The following week it will be Lance. Then maybe he'll get BOLD and have Lawrence fall to us. Then on draft day he can say he had whoever we do actually draft predicted. Mock drafts are ass.
How often has this guy been right? I am not talking about if a player is a good or not but how close is he to who teams end up drafting. From what I can tell he is never really close yet they keep bringing him out on ESPN. They wonder why nobody watches ESPN anymore.
At this point he is a caricature and entertainment for the network. Just like Barry "Too cool for School" Melrose when he comes on to talk hockey
I always wondered who has the best percentages of being right as far as projecting draft order. There used to be a guy that ran NFLDraftCountdown and a big forum that evaporated a long time ago amid some sort of controversy. His mocks were always seriously close.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Mel Kiper is a clueless hack. He must have compromising pictures of his bosses. I can see no other way that moron keeps his job.
If the NCAA is our farm league, then perhaps the NFL can start pushing NFL philosophy down to the college ranks, so when these kids come out they aren't seeing NFL game plans for the first time? Not sure how this would work, but the NFL can use their $'s to influence college HCs to start running more pro-offenses, versus one read (if that) offenses. Perhaps the NFL can provide an advisory panel that works with the college teams installing a more NFL ready offense/defense. Kind of like the Senior Bowl that has NFL coaches come in and plan/run that one game. Do more of this....like a joint venture between the NFL and NCAA? Just thoughts really, but we see so many players coming out that have no clue what a real NFL team looks like or plays like. We can do better.
The vast number of NCAA football players will have nothing to do with playing in the NFL. So why in the world should NCAA coaches give a shit about what the NFL wants for the 1% of players that might end up there?
