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| Hate him all you want, but Mel Kiper has earned his spot on NFL Draft coverages |
What's an NFL draft without Kiper? After all, he's been breaking down the draft since he was a college kid. He created a niche for himself at ESPN for an event that was previously untelevised. This year will be the 30th draft that he has analyzed. Which begs the question...
Does anyone have a better gig at ESPN than him? Think about it.
His only job for ESPN is to break down the current crop of college talent that are pro-level talents. That's it. Sure, he gives his mock drafts and updates them accordingly, based on how certain teams may be viewing a guy or how a guy might have done at a recent combine. But he doesn't even need to be right in his analysis to stay in his current gig!
Here are just a few clips/quotes of horrendous bits of analysis (hindsight being the decider in the word 'horrendous'). Quotes obtained through various websites (verified quotes through multiple websites):
Analysis of JaMarcus Russell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZubYpplmzVk#t=49s "Three years from now, you could be looking at a guy who's certainly one of the elite top 5 quarterbacks in this league...his skill level is John Elway-like".
Regarding Mike Williams, USC WR who the Lions picked early in the 2005 draft: "I'll see you at his Hall of Fame induction." He was out of football by 2008.
Regarding Akili Smith, a high pick for the Cincinnati Bengals in the QB-rich first round of the 1999 draft: "...will be a great NFL player and would finally provide the Cincinnati Bengals with the passer they'd lacked since Boomer Esiason." Smith would go on to start only 17 games for Cincy before bouncing around other NFL stops, NFL Europe & the CFL.
There are plenty of other bad breakdowns that he's had in his time as an analyst, which is bound to happen when you're analyzing over 250 picks a year for almost 30 years. In fact, when the 2013 version of the draft is done (which features 254 picks), here are Kiper's stats. Sorry I do not have a 40 time or what his standing squat reps are.
- 30 years of analysis
- 256 rounds (from 1984-92, there were 12 rounds; 1993 featured 8 rounds. Since then there have been 7 rounds).
- 8259 draft picks
- At least one draft pick, Kiper was able to analyze twice (Bo Jackson was drafted #1 overall by Tampa Bay in 1986, but since he never signed there, he was eligibile for the draft in 1987, when he went to the Raiders)
At the current rate of about 255 picks per draft, Kiper would reach the 10,000 pick mark in about the 6th round of the year 2020. Now I should note, I am not aware of how ESPN did the draft in the early days - whether Kiper analyzed just about every pick back in the day like he does now is unknown to me. All I know is, that's a lot of damn players, so error on his part is understandable.
There's no question he's one of the best at what he does - he was the draft analyst pioneer. That's not to say he doesn't have his faults, as noted above. And some skeptics (like a football fan who I spoke with at a friend's party last weekend) believe that his role in the draft now may be more to boost the draft status of certain agent's players rather than provide solid, hard-hitting analysis.
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| You might be able to outpick Kiper in a 1st round mock, but you'll never get his gig. |
I, like many other football fans, are a little jealous that Kiper has created the perfect niche for himself in the NFL, where his job consists solely of analyzing the draft prospects of pro-eligible college football players. I am even more jealous of a guy who doesn't even need to be right most of the time in order to keep his job, whether it be right with his analysis or his mock drafts (from memory, his mock drafts have been just as sporadic as the average sports reporter who fills one of these out).
The only other guy who can be this wrong is the ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, but that's college basketball, so who cares - we're talking about the NFL here.
I may not like the guy, but I sure as hell respect him for getting this gig from the early days of ESPN through current time. Kudos to Kiper for being the NFL's version of a weather man.
