What the World Needs Now

The NFL Draft = anxiety.

It should be no secret to regular readers that while dreams make for some good material, I prefer the known to the unknown. Solutions in one sense. Mining the deeper truths buried beneath the surface in another. But in all senses concrete provides a better foundation for analysis than clouds.

Outside of heavy-handed analysis and Mel Kifer's sculpted do, the Draft however is light on the concrete.

Drafts are unique as sporting events because they offer nothing in the way of closure. After months of speculation all that follows is, well, more months of speculation. Dreams do not become real so much as shuffle off to the next phase of REM sleep.

It’s not that there’s nothing to say. The sheer volume of draft-centric websites that have cropped up over the past several years disproves that notion out of hand. Rather this wealth of data - mock drafts, scouting reports, lists of measurables - proves the inverse: just how little we know. Far from alleviating anxiety, the information overload underscores it.

Next week, I’ll kickoff Fuhbaw’s Know Your War Room series, a sifting through the tendencies of each NFL front office for clues about how these dreams might take shape. Does your team's GM draft for need or take the highest rated player on his board? Does he place measurables above production?

That analysis won't lead to anything definite except perhaps a fuzzy picture of possibilities and limitations. But this cottage industry of draftniks can’t answer the fundamental question either: what impact this rookie class will have on our teams?

Malcolm Gladwell confronted this problem in a New Yorker article some months back, using the difficulty the NFL has scouting talent as a framing device for difficulties predicting success in important professions, specifically teaching.

The point Gladwell makes about teachers goes doubly so for all NFL players, though in the article he focuses on quarterbacks, namely the job is so difficult, the environment so unique in its challenges, that no objective measure consistently and accurately predicts who will succeed and who won't.

Thus, pro prospects are by their very definition unknowns, pure potential in NFL terms. This gap in substance transforms prospects into, alternately, vessels of hope or harbingers of despair for fans.

I can stare at as many wonky draft sites as a human can read in a day. I still won't know who will be on the board when my Packers pick ninth overall. I still won't know if BJ Raji or Brian Orakpo or Malcolm Jenkins or Michael Oher will become a Pro Bowl caliber, much less solid starting, pro for my team or anyone else's.

And, of course, the Draft itself, the event the last weekend of this month, won't bring us any closer truths. But it will bring some measure of relief. The end of smokescreens and speculation. All the ideas we invested in these prospects, all the hopes and hesitations, will lead us to think differently about our teams and their chances for the upcoming season than we did before the weekend.

Last year during the Draft, I was sneaking around the upper balcony when the Jets selected Vernon Gholston sixth overall. The Jets fans cheered, thinking they landed their DeMarcus Ware, their Shawne Merriman. They busted out their four syllable, five clap cheer - "Ver-non, Ghol-ston" clap clap clap-clap-clap - and howled wildly amidst scattershot high fives.

Gholston, however, had the worst rookie season of any first rounder from last year, save maybe Keith Rivers's busted jaw.

So, as we hurtle toward the Draft, let me caution a bit of restraint even though I plan on losing my head in this drama as much as anyone. Let's just all agree that it's silliness while we let ourselves be engulfed by the angst.