Odd Future, NFL Style






Warning: Occasional strong language. If you are easily offended, please skip over.

The NFL draft starts tonight, and while a part of it definitely interests me, especially just seeing who goes where, part of me feels that the true excitement lies not in knowing which teams get which players, but in seeing how those picks work out as time goes on. Many times, we as football fans have witnessed players coming out of college labeled as "can't miss," "The Next Peyton Manning," "The Next Ray Lewis," and so on. Teams pay big money for the top picks, and fans gain hope and optimism that their team's pick can turn things around for them. Inevitably, if a top pick falls short of expectations, he is labeled a bust and a failure, but usually, we reserve judgment on those type of things after 3 or so years. I can remember, from personal experience, being excited when my Raiders drafted JaMarcus Russell in 2007. To me, he seemed like the quarterback of the future, a key piece in the Silver and Black's return to contention. The first warning sign was his holdout from training camp that year. At the time, it did not concern me as much as it probably should have, but looking back on it, I should have known. Then, that season, when he finally got on to the field, I could not believe what I was seeing. I saw him make stupid decisions that led to three and outs, and interceptions. I thought to myself, "This is the dude we gave a fuckin' $68 million contract to?" It was a disastrous first season, but I held on to some hope. The next season, things only got worse and worse. By the end of that season, I said "Is there any way we can get rid of this motherfucker's contract?" Then after another year of poor play, JaMarcus was released by the Raiders in May of 2010, shortly after the 2010 Draft. I was happy as hell when he was released, as he had performed terribly and his big contract was finally gone. He's run into some legal issues since then, and while I feel kind of bad for the dude, I believe he had a good thing going and threw it all away once he got to the NFL.

So, the moral of this story is, sometimes what you think is a good thing may not be so good, and you'll realize it was bullshit all along. I know Andrew Luck and RGIII are amazingly talented players, and seem like good, humble, and smart guys. However, we will never truly know how good they are until a few years out.