The 1989 Draft

ESPN is showing the 1989 draft tonight and it's pretty amusing to see how much more of a production it is now, and how little knowledge everybody actually had then. Chris Berman and Tom Jackson keep referring to the head coaches like they are making the decisions on players. No internet. It's still at the Marriott Marquis. It was Rozelle's last draft. Beano Cook is actually up in the rafters interviewing schlubs in the crowd and asking them multiple questions. I miss earnest (and often wrong) Mel Kiper.

It was an interesting draft for football reasons. While the top few were all-time great players (well mostly), the rest were just awful. All kinds of 1st round guys out of the league in four or five years. It was also interesting to revisit some of the picks that KIper excoriated at the time. I'm sure anyone of a certain age will remember all the grief he gave the Jets for the Jeff Lageman pick. He said they should have taken Hart Lee Dykes. Now you can argue they could have dropped and still got Lageman but there is no debate who had the better pro career--Lageman. He also went nuts on the Saints for taking Wayne Martin rather than Bill Hawkins. I think we know how that worked out for the team that took Hawkins. He ran out of gas by the time the Broncos took Steve Atwater over Louis Oliver, but again the team made the right pick.

Watching this reminds me of a couple of things. 1) Draft players from the positions of strength in the draft--it's already a bit of crapshoot, don't make it worse by stretching to fill needs in undermanned talent pools. So yes, we need to take a WR with one of the two 2nd round picks, and I probably take at least one or two more later. It's that deep. 2) Stack your board based on talent and stick to your evaluations--it doesn't matter how it looks to the "experts" on Monday, it matters how it looks in 10 years.