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Clemson defensive tackle Christian Wilkins celebrates with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell after being drafted in the first round.
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Gene Collier: Analyzing another year of NFL draft analysis

Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

Gene Collier: Analyzing another year of NFL draft analysis

Once the boutique hobby of quasi-eccentric aficionados, NFL draft analysis erupted into a national obsession in the later part of the 20th century, an obsession that cable television and various co-conspirators inflated into outlandish proportions, like that ballooning front-lawn Santa that’s bigger than your house.

Considering all the solemn, near sacramental draft preparations (Mel Kiper ranked the top 10 long snappers!), we hope you had a fantastic Christmas.

Working the draft is a serious professional challenge for serious professional journalists, serious professional football people and seriously common social media hacks alike. The task requires a high motor and a dynamic skill set with no character concerns or red flags, all of which, mercifully, leave me out of it.

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More than 100,000 people turned out in the rain in Nashville the other night essentially to watch some people announce the names of some other people, apparently because everyone has forgotten that this is the event in which Tom Brady, ostensibly the greatest quarterback of all time, was the 199th pick one year, and that two years earlier, the second pick was Ryan Leaf.

Steelers first-round pick Devin Bush at a news conference, Friday, April 26, 2019.
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Who?

I rest my case.

I prefer to analyze the draft five years after it takes place, five years at the minimum, unless I forget, but I don’t mind analyzing the analysis, which reliably illustrates not just how difficult player evaluation can be, but how difficult it is to have your analysis stand out in the annual tsunami of draft coverage.

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The best analysts try to keep in mind exactly what a team is trying to accomplish with their selections, or as explained this past week by Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert, “it’s how we say or how we try to predict that they will be who they think they are.”

Uh-huh.

No wonder some analysts can’t even constrain their evaluative observations to football, which is why we see certain players called a “slam dunk” pick or a “home run hitter,” both linguistic misplays that are highly forgivable so long as nobody gets praised for his “200-foot game,” which is an annoyance that should be restricted to hockey, besides which the football praise equivalency is a 360-foot game.

Also, leave Bambi out of it.

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“The Oklahoma transfer was hopping around the field like Bambi during the week of practice at the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl,” nfldraftscout.com gushed about pass rusher Mike Onuoha, “flying around the field like a man with his hair on fire.”

Half-man half-deer then, and ablaze. Got it. Game plan for that, why don’t ya? 

As pro football evolves along with the skills necessary to play it, so too does the fitful nomenclature that embroils the draft. New terms emerge all the time, such as “threaten the seam,” now an apparent requirement of prospective tight ends, who must endanger the seams of zone defenses, particularly if the prospect is a “new age tight end,” which I gather is not a tight end at all, but a receiver who can line up anywhere even though he might have the approximate dimensions (big) of a traditional or classic tight end.

I had no idea until this past week that the Steelers’ primary need was an off-ball linebacker, probably because I’d never heard that term. Apparently this is another way of saying “inside linebacker,” since inside linebackers line up off the line of scrimmage (where the ball is, I’m pretty sure), hence they are off-ball linebackers, whereas outside linebackers often line up on the line of scrimmage (though they are not yet called on-ball linebackers), or, in the case of then Chiefs linebacker Dee Ford, across the line of scrimmage to negate via an offsides penalty a clinching interception in the AFC championship, a goofball linebacker.

A few linebackers, tight ends and even some receivers were described in the draft ramp-up as “rocked up,” which apparently means conspicuously or newly be-muscled. No one got characterized as “rocked down,” which I guess means everyone else was rock steady. The most rocked up guy in the draft, despite the ceaseless body building efforts of the draft class as a whole, was still clearly Temple cornerback Rock Ya-Sin.

The 2019 draft was purported to be ocean deep in defensive lineman, many of whom got praised for their “get-off”, and one got praised for “unparalleled get-off.” This probably means he has a great first step at the snap, which, if you’re former Jets coach Rex Ryan analyzing Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams on ESPN, is combined with outstanding “knock-em-back.”

“Look at the knock-em-back he’s got!”

Thanks, Rex.

Many a wideout got praised in the pre-draft months for the way he “eats up cushion,” an attempt at describing how fast he can approach and presumably surpass a defender. That’s the first I’ve heard “eats” and “cushion” since the late ’60s, when our dog Clancy ripped apart and ate the stuffing from all of the couch cushions. Clancy was a dominant interior disruptor, which was also a thing in this draft.

Elsewhere, the descriptions of potential draftees again ranged from the painfully obvious to the preposterously arcane. A good example of the former was the defender who “shows ability to change direction when going from rush to coverage.”

Well that’s good. Because if you had no ability to change direction while going from rush to coverage, you wouldn’t be going from rush to coverage. It pretty much requires a change of direction.

The most ambitious attempt at describing an unusual talent probably came from the eminent Irish analyst Sam Monson, who wrote this on Twitter to describe cornerback Byron Murphy:

“Has an ability to move within zones with his eyes on the QB but reacting to route combinations that you rarely see. Stupidly hard to make those adjustments on the fly without your eyes on the receiver.”

This is a more contemporary way of saying (I think) that Murphy has eyes in the back of his head, something you’d think teams would have noticed at the combine. Talk about measurables.

One offensive lineman in this draft was said to “create serious torque with faster-than-you’d-expect leg churn,” which if nothing else is a good reminder that it’s always a good idea to temper your leg churn expectations. Also, I’m pretty sure I saw Serious Torque at Mr. Small’s Funhouse. At the other end of the rhetorical overreach were the characterizations of quarterback Kyler Murray, the draft’s very first pick: Short. Small. Diminutive. Really small. And my own observation: Shorter than the woman who was interviewing him on ESPNU, although she may have been wearing heels.

There was a late dispute as to whether Murray was the shortest person ever to be picked No. 1 in the NFL draft, with some reports noting that Oklahoma measured him at 5 foot 9⅞, contrasting with his official combine height (now more commonly described as length for some reason) of 5-10⅛. A number of 5-10 folks got chosen No. 1 throughout the draft’s history, so the shortest-ever tag depends on your reference.

Our friend, the veteran NFL analyst John Clayton, noted pre-draft that Murray “measured just tall enough to quiet most of his doubters.”

Yes, you know those doubters. If you’re 5-10, they have no use for you, but if you’re 5-10⅛, you’re good to go.

Otherwise, there wasn’t a lot that was new this year in draft analysis. Most candidates were prototypes with elite athleticism, if not freakish athleticism, many were hard-nosed with speed to burn, thus creating a matchup nightmare due to strong ball skills (they can catch), and many were again described as no-nonsense even though no one, even the people who deserve it, ever get described as some nonsense or all-nonsense. Talking about you, Mr. Big Chest.

Finally this trend persists describing linemen as “bendy,” which I presume means flexible, particularly at the waist. I’d prefer to think “bendy” traces all the way back to 1932 and the football scene in the Marx Brothers classic film “Horse Feathers,” in which Baravelli (Chico Marx) barks signals from behind center thusly:

“Uno, doe, a tres, a bendy, this a time we go left endy.”

Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter @genecollier

First Published: April 28, 2019, 12:00 p.m.

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