Football: Draft Review

The draft has ended, and the big story for Michigan fans is Ernest Shazor going completely undrafted. In fact, no Michigan player was chosen after David Baas, who went with the first pick of the second round to San Francisco.

Why did Shazor fall completely out of the draft? A number of reasons. He ran poorly (4.75) at the combine, leading teams to doubt his ability to play safety at the next level. After he nearly tore Dorien Bryant in half and ended the Purdue game, most of the Michigan defense decided to take the rest of the year off--Shazor was a part of that. The truth was that he ended up badly overrated by college football fans and media after the Bryant hit, which ended up one of the iconic plays of the season. His season-ending vacation got overlooked.

There were also rumblings that Shazor had... character issues. There had to be character issues, and severe ones, or someone would have taken a chance on him making the shift to linebacker or being able to play safety even if he is a tiny bit slow. There's no other reason a player projected in the fourth round by the most pessimistic analysts would drop all the way out of the draft, behind approximately 20 other safeties (including players from mighty Albany and both Louisiana-Monroe and Louisiana-Lafayette). After the defensive implosion at the end of last year, insiders strongly implied that there was a lot of dissent and acrimony between a number of defensive players and the coaches, and the events of the past couple days point the finger squarely at Shazor.

Moving on... Let's check those predictions I made. And, hey, IBFC posted some predictions too. Let's have a contest!
Braylon: MGB wins by predicting him 2nd instead of 1st, since he went 3rd.
Jackson: IBFC got this one exactly right--29th to the Colts. Two points for IBFC.
Baas: I said #37 to the Titans. IBFC said #35 to the Eagles. IBFC wins.
Shazor: We were both really, really wrong. Call this a push.
Dudley: Both predicted him to go somewhere in the 7th. Both wrong. Push.

Final score is 3-1 for IBFC. Damn you, Khan!

I was basically wrong about everything else except "Aaron Rodgers drops like a stone," and I wish I was wrong about that because I could really have done without the four hour Rodgers infomercial/melodrama. So we'll gloss over the rest of it. Suffice it to say I'm not going to rush to Vegas to bet on the '06 draft.