2014 NFL Draft Recap

Another NFL draft has come and gone. I’d say I paid more attention to this year’s draft than I have in several years. I think it was more about the Fresno State ties, waiting to see where Derek Carr and Davante Adams ended up. I can’t recall “top-of-the-draft” prospects out of Fresno State since Ryan Mathews, and the draft in general is such a crapshoot that I can’t get too excited about it.

Nonetheless, here are a couple random thoughts regarding Fresno State and my San Diego Chargers from this year’s draft:

As a Chargers fan I can’t think of a worse place for Derek Carr to go. I always like to root for former Fresno State players, but it’s going to be really hard to root for a Raider.

Same thing with Isaiah Burse being on the Broncos.

I may not know much about a lot of college players, but it was nice to see the Chargers draft positions they needed to fill.

I know I’m obviously biased, but I felt like Isaiah Burse and Marcel Jensen were worth a 7th round pick.

I imagine lots of college football fans think this about players at their school.

The Chargers didn’t get anyone too flashy, but that might be a good thing

I can’t help but wonder at what point the NFL will cross that line and get too much over saturation. More games on more nights, and now the draft spread out over two evenings and a third day. I just feel like eventually people are going to stop caring. It may not be soon, but it will happen.

Only 4 months until the season starts!

Thoughts on the 2012 Draft

Well, we’ve had a couple days to let the NFL Draft settle in.  Now that the excitement has worn off, it’s time to look back at what the Chargers did and what happened with those former Fresno State players.

First, the Chargers.  And this picture basically sums it up:

As I followed the draft online, mainly waiting to see what our picks would be, I went through a few phases.  First there was the disappointment that Mark Barron was gone.  Then came the excitement when we got Melvin Ingram.  Then the disappointment again when Harrison Smith went off the board.  But the night ended on a good note when someone posted this video on Twitter:

Of course highlights mean next to nothing.  I found YouTube highlights of Larry English that got me excited, and we know how that turned out (I’ll be honest and admit that the majority of the highlights I found of Corey Liuget were of him destroying my Fresno State Bulldogs, so I wasn’t totally sold on his highlights.  But this video got me fired up for this season.

As the draft days wore on, we got our safety in the 3rd round and got a nice tight end in the 4th.  Our main holes were filled, we found some backups and potential projects, and overall I was happy.  Now I just have to last out the next few months until the season actually starts!

As for our former Fresno State Bulldogs, there wasn’t a lot of action.  Devon Wylie did get drafted in the 4th, which was awesome, but unfortunately it was by the Chiefs.  I guess I can wish him luck in 14 games of the year (that comment feels a bit like I’m talking about fantasy football).

For the guys who didn’t get drafted, Logan Harrell went to my Chargers.  I’m always excited seeing a Bulldog head to San Diego, and I’ve always been a fan of his, so this one is great.  I remember being at that game against Cincinnati when he basically took charge and had 3.5 sacks.  Of course I went to look up his exact numbers on gobulldogs.com and he looks a bit like an arch villain in his photo.  I’m not sure if I think that’s great or terrible.
For the others, it looks like Bryce Harris got picked up by the Falcons.  Makes sense since former Fresno State head coach Pat Hill is the offensive line coach in Atlanta.  The only other guy listed on the NFL’s draft page is kicker Kevin Goessling, and I can’t find anything saying that he’s been picked up yet.  I’m sure he’ll end up in a training camp somewhere.  In the meantime, I still love this video of him hitting the game winner against Louisiana Tech a few years ago: