The NFL scouting combine starts kicks off in earnest today, and with it the hype machine for the NFL draft will whir into high gear and start whipping everyone into a frenzy.
Hand sizes will be too small. Forty times will be too slow. Draft stocks will rise and fall.
Everyone will get excited, and it’s right to get excited because while the NFL’s new league year officially starts with free agency March 16, the combine marks the de facto beginning of the 2022 NFL calendar. Because the combine is where teams, prospects, agents and media converge on the tropical destination that is downtown Indianapolis.
The combine is the closest thing the league has to an annual trade show, an all-comers big-top event where gossip flows like water and tampering is as common as a cold kid futzing with the thermostat in February.
So get excited. You should. Especially all you Detroit Lions fans, because your team has the No. 2 overall pick and the NFL draft is a mere 58 days away.
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Ah yes, the draft. Or as the late, great Drew Sharp used to call it, the Lions’ Super Bowl, because that’s the only time the team is relevant on the national stage.
I can’t blame Lions fans for their excitement this week, because their team certainly wasn’t relevant last year. The closest Lions fans got to mattering was watching their former quarterback win it all while he promised he still truly, deeply loved and cared for every last one of them back in Detroit (just make sure you don’t need his help if you’re taking his picture on a platform).
OK, let’s be real. Forget last year. The Lions haven’t been relevant for the past 60 years, give or take a decade. So the combine, which is really just an extension of the draft, is rightfully a huge deal for Lions fans. And no one does a better job of ginning up excitement for Lions draft picks than my man, Dave Birkett, the Cheech to my Chong, the Screech to my Zack, the Beavis to my Butt-Head.
So Beavis — I mean Dave — released his NFL Mock Draft 1.0 in the Free Press last week, which means he has roughly 17.3 more mock drafts before the actual draft begins April 28 in Las Vegas. In his first offering, an amuse-bouche if you will, Dave mocked local hero Aidan Hutchinson by way of Plymouth and Dearborn Divine Child and Michigan, who’s probably handing out free paczki later today in Hamtramck, to the Lions with the No. 2 overall pick.
DAVE BIRKETT: How Lions landed Michigan’s Aidan Hutchinson in my NFL mock draft 1.0
Then he mocked Alabama receiver Jameson Williams to the Lions with the final pick of the first round. Then he sent Florida cornerback Kaiir Elam to the Lions with the second pick in the second round.
All solid choices that make all the sense in the world. Elite talent and players who fill a need. What more could you ask?
Well, if anyone happens to be interested in such a query, I’ll tell you: a quarterback.
Because if this year’s Super Bowl, or pretty much any Super Bowl, or the fortunes of an successful team in NFL history has taught us anything, it’s that a team needs the right quarterback to win big. And that means that until the right quarterback, meaning the quarterback of the future, arrives in Detroit, the Lions’ rebuild won’t truly get underway.
No disrespect to Jared Goff, but we’ve all seen him play. He’s a capable, serviceable quarterback who was a good soldier during a very difficult year. But he ain’t the future here.
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So if Brad Holmes and his scouts and Dan Campbell all think Malik Willis or Kenny Pickett or Matt Corral can be their future quarterback, then pull the damn trigger and draft a quarterback No. 2 overall!
I’m not saying the Lions have to, or should, draft a quarterback this year. What I’m saying is that this rebuild that produced 3.5 wins last year has no chance of making significant progress until the Lions find their Joe Burrow or Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes. And how much longer does anyone want to put that off?
Most general managers want to put that off as long as possible because those kinds of bold moves usually lead to firings if they don’t work out. Instead, most GMs love to talk about building foundations, because most people don’t criticize safe, boring picks.
But at some point, you have to stop building the foundation and, you know, actually build the dang house.
The fact is the draft is just a guessing game. Yes, it’s based on well-researched educated guesses, but they’re still guesses. No one knows. Right, Tom Brady, Kurt Warner and JaMarcus Russell?
And the combine is the start of that annual NFL guessing game, which is less like checkers, more like chess but really like Wordle. Based on last year’s obvious and safe picks, I’m guessing Holmes has already typed in A-I-D-A-N. But I hope he’ll at least consider M-A-L-I-K or K-E-N-N-Y.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.