For me I remember the 1988 Draft being really bad. The Falcons had the number 1 pick that year and took Aundray Bruce (a linebacker) with it (only time in the history of the NFL that a linebacker has been taken first overall). Meanwhile there were no QBs taken in that draft until the 3rd Rd when the Cardinals took Tom Tupa.
There were some great players that came out of that draft (Tim Brown, Michael Irvin, Ickey Woods, Thurman Thomas, Dermontti Dawson) but rumor was the Falcons were desperately trying to get out of the number 1 pick that year because Aundray Bruce was considered the consensus number 1 player in that draft (whereas in most other years he might have been a late first rounder).
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1992 which so far has no HOFers and likely never will.
The Patriots drafted 17 players in that draft and went 1-15 the next season. Not a lot of talent in that pool.
Got us Drew Bledsoe in the following draft though. Every cloud has a silver lining after all...
Sam Gash was in that 92 draft. It is amazing how few of those players were even on the 96 team that went to the Super Bowl.
Phew, I knew this was the legendary Colts draft where they blew both the #1 and #2 overall picks...
But I forgot how stunningly bad the rest of the draft was.
Sean Gilbert at 3
Desmond Howard at 4
Terrell Buckley (should have been so much better than he was in the pros, I still can't believe he didn't make multiple all NFL teams)
At least Desmond Howard won a Super Bowl MVP I guess?
I guess he found his niche in limited usage, but lord those overall career stats are painful.
Sean Gilbert was good but he was also responsible for some of the absolute worst trades in history. He was traded for the pick that became Lawrence Phillips, then he got tagged and traded after holding out for a year for two 1st round picks, the first of which was the pick that became the Ricky Williams trade.
Damn that draft is dire. At least Jimmy Smith is there.
When Carl Pickens is the offensive rookie of the year...
It's not good
His rookie season wasn’t much so I don’t necessarily disagree, but do want to say Pickens was a solid player throughout his career.
Hall of Fame name though with Chester McGlockton
What an interesting Packers draft. Very typical of Ron Wolf's drafts.
Complete swings and misses at the top (TBuck over Wisconsin's Troy Vincent, D'Onofrio who played one year), but middle rounds filled with major contributors. Robert Brooks, Edgar Bennett, and Mark Chumura all were big pieces of the the Super Bowl winning team.
I enjoyed this episode of "Let's Remember Some Guys".
Brooks was so good, but tore his ACL in an era where that was career-ending. I think Wolf routinely passed over drafting guys from Wisconsin because of the pressure to play them.
Woodson will get in eventually, but even then, only 1 HOF and its a guy who people consider borderline ain't cutting it.
No HOFers but Green Bay got a bunch of guys who were solid starters for the '96 Super Bowl.
Darren Woodson has a shot but beyond that.....
Jason Hanson, baby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Hanson#NFL_records
Probably 2015. Only 3 drafts in NFL history with no HOFers & 2015 likely to be the 4th.
Jesus, there is really no one even with a chance. Diggs is the closest and he would probably need 2-3 more seasons of AP/PB level play at minimum, and maybe a SB win to even be considered close.
And he was a 5th rounder. That class was truly starving.
Funny enough it's probably top 5 vikings drafts of all time
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2015/draft.htm
Going by weighted career AV, the Vikings drafted 3 of the 6 best players in that draft.
Stefon Diggs - 83
Amari Cooper - 64
Marcus Peters - 64
Tyler Lockett - 64
Danielle Hunter - 62
Eric Kendricks - 60
Why did the Vikings waste all their Scouting Points on the year where nobody was any good. Are they stupid?
I'm convinced if Bradford didn't die in the 2017 season we would have won the Superbowl. Our team was built from the ground up
Dude was a phenomenal QB but made of glass. I doubt he would have thrown those two pick 6s in the NFCCG like Keenum
Man I loved Marcus Peters on the chiefs
Damn, I had no idea that Jets practice squad legend Cedric Ogbuehi was the 21st overall pick
One could make the case that Nelson Agholor was one of the best WRs picked in that draft. Like I think he would be ranked top 5
He’s had a pretty solid career as a “good enough” option without ever excelling outside of some clutch games. If there were a “Hall of Sustained Mediocrity” I think he’d have a great shot.
And I’d still probably place him at 3rd in that WR class. Career-wise.
Is Diggs closer than Danielle Hunter?
Neither are all that close but Diggs has a first team all pro and Hunter doesn't.
“All that close” feels like putting it nicely. Neither should be even mentioned in the HoF talk
Hunter unfortunately missed pretty much 2 entire years due to injury. I think relative to his peers he's peaked higher but he needs another like 4 years of high level play to get to HoF level
Although tbf it's very hard to get in the HoF as a WR so Diggs might need another 4 years too
Fair enough. Hunter probably ends up like a sack accumulator who falls short of the Hall, like Leslie O'Neal or John Abraham (and Jared Allen as of now, although he should be in based on his 4 first team all pros)
If Todd gurley never got hurt maybe just maybe he would be up there
Think one of the best in that class is Leonard Williams. But he will need a few more AP/ PB to make it. He is still 29 year old.
And there’s already a log jam at wide receiver waiting to get in the HOF
Looking back at the draft, I feel a bit better about Washington taking a guard 5th overall. Brandon Scherff is NOT a HOF or even Hall of Very Good lineman but compared with some of the guys I coveted there he had a solid run.
You guys got his best years out of him and he was a solid contributor. 5x Pro-Bowl, 1x All-Pro. Obviously you hope every first rounder is HoF talent, but teams sure have done a whole lot worse.
I think fans really overthink these things. If you went to any GM or Coach and said that your draft pick would be be a 7 year starter with 5 pro bowls and an all pro, they would be over the moon. 13 of the 1st rounders from 2015 are out of the league and the two headliners Winston and Mariota busted and are backups now.
Hall of Solid for sure
A lot of people forget Scherff was supposed to be a tackle for us, but he wasn't very good at it so we moved him to guard.
I just looked at the Packers 2015 draft and nearly threw up, so this is my vote as well.
Ironically enough, Seattle had one of their best draft classes of the mid-late 2010s in 2015.
Granted it’s carried hard by our first two picks but Frank Clark and Tyler Lockett were absolute home run selections
Wow crazy Lockett is from such a terrible draft class
Hawks traded up to get him as well. He's been quality from day one and says he's going to retire as a Seahawk, which will most likely happen next year.
And to think the Packers traded their first round pick from that draft (Damarious Randall) to the Browns in 2018 for (barf) DeShone Kizer. They had to be all kinds of unhappy with his development as a player to agree to that trade (considering they got almost nothing of value in return for it outside of a broken QB who didn't belong in the NFL).
I will always love Randall for handing the ball to Hue Jackson on the sideline
Kizer had an arm like a cannon and a dick like a fucking python
I liked Kizer a lot.
Not as a football player, mind you, but he was a very likeable dude that would get super excited on the sideline to cheer the team on. Didn't want him being on the field other than a victory formation, but I can attest he was at least better than Tim "How the hell does one guy have this much blackmail" Boyle as a backup QB
At least you didn’t blow a top 10 pick on Kevin White
Crazy when you think about it, having nobody that you graduated with be great at football.
Jesus. I remember shitting on the Eagles picks that year, led by Nelson Agolohor in round 1… I never stepped back and realized the entire draft sucked.
Well at least Aglohor made it to the meme HoF
Sadly that was one of the Cardinals best drafts of the decade.
And yet maybe Keim’s best draft in his time here. DJ Hump, Markus Golden, David Johnson, Rodney Gunter, and JJ Nelson is a pretty decent class.
Danielle Hunter has a chance, no?
87.5 sacks, likely will surpass 100 career sacks, 4 PBs so far
He'll turn 30 this season.. So it's not crazy to think that he can play at least another 4 years and he just had his best season last year
100 is still pretty far from HoF guaranteed. I agree he stands the best shot of everyone remaining but he has to have at least 4 more years of pro bowl/all pro level play (avoiding serious injuries)
There are several guys with 120-130 sacks that haven't made the HOF & likely won't.
Hunter would essentially need to get about 50-60 more sacks & a couple all-pros to get ahead of those guys.
The best player the Eagles picked up that year was Mostert and he was an UDFA haha. And he also wouldn't get good for like 7 more years
2015 was pretty shit
During the show Quarterback you get watch Patrick Mahomes crazy work outs and Kirk Cousins post game weekly soreness prep and daily ice pool baths, private chiropractors to keep him from getting stiff. Just insane amounts of dedications to the craft and keeping their bodies in tip top shape.
Marcus Mariota gets on the screen like, “yeah this is my childhood friend he’s a professional chef, he keeps me in shape, if it wasn’t for him I’d eat McDonald’s every day 🥴”. Okay, guy.
To be fair, Hawaii McDonalds still deep fry their apple pies.
Studies show its more addictive than super crack.
Also they have a breakfast plate with Portuguese sausage, eggs, rice and soy sauce that's actually amazing.
Man that was the breakfast of kings back when I was a kid
They served that as breakfast to us in school and it was crack
They also had the Spam egg and cheese McGriddle. I loved those.
Hawaiian McDonald's is dangerous
This thread has convinced me that I need to travel to Hawaii someday solely to try McDonald's there.
I’m inclined to be skeptical on these studies referencing “super crack” but I’ve had those apple pies and I’m willing to agree anyway.
But have you tried “super crack”?
It’s me, I’m studies.
Bullshit. No IRB would approve a randomized controlled trial where the comparator arm is "super crack." Also, you would need a double-placebo double-dummy design for scientific validity. How would you set up a placebo for fried apple pie? It would be immediately obvious to all of the study participants whether they were randomized to the fried apple pie or the super crack arm.
Watching that show, I couldn't shake the feeling that "Marcus seems like a nice guy and all, but I'm not surprised at all that he's not had anywhere close to the success of the other two..."
They were in different leagues. No, literally, it felt like I was watching a docuseries featuring 2 NFL QBs and 1 XFL QB.
He also just seemed really sad and I was wondering if maybe he had that work ethic early, but now he's just mentally checked out. Mans just needed a hug.
Mariota was great at Oregon, has that wild playoff comeback, and generally seems like a nice dude but is one of the prime examples of a highly drafted QB being a total bust and somehow getting away with it lol. It's actually unreal that the Falcons went into a season with him as the starter and expected to be decent
I don’t really think they expected to be decent. I think it was largely seen as a sort of “tide us over into next year” tanking-adjacent move (I remember a lot of referring to Mariota as a “tank commander” that offseason) because the idea was they were going for Young/Stroud after tearing things down by trading Ryan, Julio, etc. It looked like a pretty clear-cut blow things up and rebuild in year two type of move, like what Buffalo did in 2018
Then they ended up overachieving expectations and being a pretty damn good offense so it was disappointing in retrospect that they sort of blew off the position, and their success that season led to them scrapping the rebuild and trying to push their chips in with Ridder. But on a snap-by-snap efficiency basis Mariota was actually pretty productive that year
You gotta have a little bit of manic energy like Mahomes to succeed. Always thinking football.
Or you are like Cousins. You can tell he had some underlying anxiety of being physically able to perform. Always getting treatments and working out issues before they affect his gameplay.
Brady checks both those boxes as well.
I mean, he's still a top 100 QB in the planet. The got to play as a starter in the NFL for many games, which is better than probably 99% of college QBs. While he was never great, achieving that level os quite an accomplishment. Yeah, you aren't mahomes, or even Cousins, but few achieve that level.
I would agree in general terms, yeah he’s better than the average dude. But if that show had any sort of truth to it, he had zero real motivation to do anything above bare minimum. And that’s what we’re really talking about here. His work ethic and commitment compared to Cousins is why he would never be close to their level.
I wonder if he still employs his friend chef. lol I remember that scene and was thinking that the chicken dinner wasn’t exactly doing anything for his life
"This is my only friend. He cooks my dinner."
Eats alone while looking sad
Like damn marcus lol u ok?
No kidding. Our first two picks in that draft were Cedric Ogbuehi and Jake Fisher (two of the worst offensive tackles I've ever seen play for us).
stefon diggs is probably the best player from that draft class - very good player obviously but not great if he's the number one lol