In honor of Dan Marino, let’s rewind the clock 13 years: The 2013 NFL draft class produced a grand total of zero Hall of Famers. Out of the 32 first-round draft picks, only five made the Pro Bowl.
Ouch!
It gets worse: Out of the hundreds of players picked in rounds two through seven, only two made the Pro Bowl.
The 2013 NFL draft was a historically bad draft, but all drafts have far more misses than hits. For all the media attention and fan interest that the draft generates — and oh, by the way, the 2026 NFL draft is kicking off tonight in Pittsburgh — it’s mostly a waste of time.
But it’s a magnificent waste of time!
Because, good or bad, nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes, the #199 pick turns out to be the greatest football player who’s ever lived. Sometimes, Mr. Irrelevant (the last player selected) leads his team to the Super Bowl.
And a whole lot of time, the players picked in the top ten never become top-tier talents. The pinnacle of their career was being a first-round draft pick — and sadly, it’s all downhill from there.
The NFL draft is the theater of the unexpected.
Each franchise gets roughly seven draft picks (between trades and supplemental picks, the number varies). And if a team walks away with two above-average starters and a pretty good backup, that qualifies as a very good draft class.
Most of the time, they get less than that.
It’s puzzling why NFL teams are such poor evaluators of talent. After all, college football is a high-profile sport: Even at the smaller schools, there’s plenty of game tape, stats, metrics, and figures. Then, at the annual NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, all the invitees are weighed, measured, skills-tested, and interviewed. On top of that, all the teams have their own scouting department, personal investigators, analytics experts, and medical advisors.
So you’d assume an NFL team would be able to identify NFL talent, but nah.
Part of the challenge is that football is the ultimate team sport, so it’s tricky to tell if a player’s success is due to his talent, his teammates, or his coach’s scheme. I’ll give you an example: In the next few hours, three Ohio State Buckeye defenders will likely go in the first 15 picks: LB/DE Arvell Reese, LB Sonny Styles, and S Caleb Downs.
But if the telltale sign of a great player is that he elevates his teammates, how confident are you that all three players are worthy of those picks? Maybe one (or more) player is making his teammates look better than they actually are.
An okay college running back looks like an All-World stud when he has a great offensive line. Star receivers make an average college quarterback look like a future Pro Bowler. An ingenious offensive/defensive scheme will mask an athlete’s shortcomings. Determining how much of the equation is Willie’s and Joe’s versus X’s and O’s is difficult to discern.
It makes “trusting the tape” fraught with peril.
Two big draft trends to look out for tonight:
One: The athletes are getting older.
Players used to be incentivized to leave college early and turn pro because football is a high-risk sport. If you can make millions in the NFL, why on earth would you play for mere tuition money — and risk a career-ending injury?
But not anymore. With NIL money, college players are already making millions. If you’re a top college player at a top-25 program, you can make more money by returning to school than you’d make as a second-round pick. (Plus, you get to party with college chicks for another year.) Staying in college is the smarter decision.
NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk covered Baltimore Ravens’ general manager Eric DeCosta’s concerns about the change:
“There is a changing dynamic we’ve seen with the draft,” DeCosta said. “Players are older. The average age of the players is not necessarily older but there are older players in the draft. We’re seeing more 24 and 25-year-old players. That’s because of COVID initially, and now because of NIL, guys are getting paid to stay in. That’s problematic for us because if guys are coming in older they’ve probably got less upside. They’re not three-contract players in some cases, they’re two-contract players. And in some cases they’ve got more injuries. They’ve been playing college football longer so they’ve taken on more injuries.”
DeCosta, who has been with the Ravens for 30 years, says the team has more players who will turn 25 as rookies than ever before.
“We’re trying to get a handle on that,” DeCosta said. “It’s tough for us to assess what that means. It’s something we’ve seen over the last three years, this will be the third year, 2024, 2025 and 2026. We might have had 4 percent of our players on the draft board 24 1/2 or older prior to 2024, now that number is up to 18 percent. So we’ve seen a 14 percent increase in older players on the draft board. That’s something that we don’t really understand fully what that means. I don’t think it’s a good thing, certainly. Historically we’ve tried to draft younger players when we can. That’s something we feel strongly. But now we’ve got 18 percent of the draft board that’s over 24 years old. So that’s going to change the way we target players.” [emphasis added]
No longer are college players turning professional. Today, they’re already professionals.
Fun Thought: If we count college players as state employees — which is probably fair, because they’re being compensated for their “work” at a public college — then the 20 highest-paid government employees in many states are all football coaches and football players.
Two: If you love prank calls, tonight should be a doozy.
Last year, Deion Sanders’ kid, QB Shedeur Sanders, slid out of the first few rounds. But for a brief moment, he thought he’d be a first-rounder.
Turns out it was just a prank call.
According to Pro Football Talk, about 2,000 people had access to the college prospects’ phone list. Two early picks, LB/DE Abdul Carter and RB Ashton Jeanty, were victims of prank calls, too.
It’ll almost certainly happen again this year. Phone-pranking seems more like a trend than an anomaly.
‘Cause hey, it’s live TV. Anything can happen.
A decade ago, we saw a top-five prospect plummet on Draft Day because a video leaked of him using a gas mask for, ahem… recreational purposes:
Insane: On draft day 2016, a video of Laremy Tunsil smoking marijuana through a gas mask was posted on his official Twitter account.
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) February 14, 2026
Tunsil ended up falling to pick 13 and lost millions of dollars as he was supposed to be a Top 5 pick.
The craziest draft moment in NFL history. pic.twitter.com/6kOIcSCdxA
What will happen this year?
The Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Las Vegas Raiders have the first pick in the draft. It’s a slam-dunk guarantee they’ll take the quarterback from Indiana (a.k.a. James Madison West), Fernando Mendoza.
After that? Nobody knows.
It’s a strange draft, with elite players mostly coming from non-elite positions, namely running back, linebacker, and safety. There’s a handful of quality defensive ends, tackles, and receivers, but not many you’d project as future superstars. Other than Mendoza and maybe Alabama’s Ty Simpson, that’s it for the first round QBs.
What’s more important, drafting the best overall player or positional value? Do you take the young kid with the biggest upside — or the older kid who’s proven he can handle the pressure? What matters more, measurables or game tape?
Tune in tonight and find out.
