Thoughts From The Man Cave

It’s that time of year again! It’s easily one of my favorite times of the year (sports and non-sports included) and hopefully it’s one of yours as well. That’s right, it’s NFL DRAFT SEASON BABY!!! The NFL Draft is important for plenty of reasons. One reason it’s important is because it’s the main factor in how your NFL team improves from year to year. A major common misconception among NFL fans is that the best way to make immediate improvements to your teams is in free agency. That’s wrong. If you take a look back at all the past NFL champions, they are teams who have historically drafted well and don’t really do too much in free agency. Free agents in the NFL are free agents for a reason. They are free agents because their last team didn’t feel that they were worth as much as the player thinks he’s worth so that guy goes packing and most of the time, he goes to another team and the truth is finally revealed a little bit down the road….that he really wasn’t worth all that money he was asking for.

That’s why the NFL Draft is so important. Look at the Washington Redskins for example. They were a team that “won” the NFL’s free agency period for years! Did that ever lead to any kind of great results on the field? No! Then last year, the team goes out and has an excellent draft and BOOM….the Redskins are one of the hottest teams in the league now! Every single draft pick in the draft is important as teams can find immediate starters as late as in the seventh-round. For a team that was horrible last year, the draft is huge as they really do have the opportunity to make immediate improvements next season (Colts and Redskins are perfect examples). The 2013 NFL Draft isn’t loaded with big names, but it’s loaded with potential starters all over the place and there are a lot of teams that could walk away from this draft with 6-7 guys ready to start tomorrow. Are you excited yet?

Before we actually get to the good stuff, I figure we should get the introduction out of the way. For those of you who have been following all the action here at<em> “THE MAN CAVE”</em>, you should be familiar with me as I’m the designated “draft” guy here. First of all, I don’t consider myself an NFL Draft expert by any means, I just consider myself a fanatic. I read pretty much EVERY single mock draft I can get my hands on. I also read a lot of scouting reports on these guys and I like to think I know a little bit about what I’m talking about. College football is my favorite sport in the world (GO OREGON DUCKS!) and watching players that I’ve seen over the course of their college careers finally make the jump to the NFL is awesome. The reason I write this mock draft is pretty much for my enjoyment only because I like to see how accurate I can be when it’s all said and done. Considering I go through all the work of writing it up….I may as well post it for everyone else to see. With all that said, LET’S GET DOWN TO BIZNESS!

Read more…