Thursday, April 25, 2013

NFL Draft

There remains no clear consensus as to whom the Minnesota Vikings might select with the No. 1 overall pick, but I still have Southern California tackle Ron Yary at the top of my 1968 mock draft.


 

However, I should also point out that my exclusive analysis indicates that, if they do follow through with the conventional Yary choice, I'm afraid Bud Grant and the boys are likely to rue their passing on Manny Fernandez, a relatively unknown defensive lineman from Utah.

40 comments:

  1. The 1968 draft, by the way, took place on Tuesday, Jan. 30, and Wednesday, Jan. 31. That was 16 days after Super Bowl II.

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  2. It seems that coaches were once less involved with the drafting decisions, and, if that was true, I wonder if the proximity of the draft to the prior season was one of the drivers in this.

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  3. The Vikings were picking here because of the trade a season before that sent Fran Tarkenton to the New York Giants (and away from then-coach Norm Van Brocklin). Minnesota received first- and second-round picks in 1967 and '68 in exchange for Tarkenton.

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  4. 2. Bengals: Bob Johnson, center, Tennessee

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  5. Jack Zanger, in Pro Football '68, didn't seem to know what to make of Cincinnati's choice: "(S)couts say he has all the pro requisites."

    By Pro Football 1971, however, Brenda Zanger was sold:

    The first man Cincinnati ever chose in the draft is alive and well--in Cincinnati. Bob Johnson hasn't missed a play since he joined the team in 1968. He was a rare first-round draft choice because he was a center at the University of Tennessee, and centers usually aren't chosen that high. But Johnson was an unusual center, as the Bengals soon found out. He is larger than most at 6-5 and 265 pounds, and he's very intelligent. The team made him offensive captain from his first game on. He made the AFL All-Star game as a rookie, and started getting some all-league second-team mentions last season. He won't turn 25 until before the opening game so he should be heard from for years to come.

    Zanger, Brenda, Pro Football 1971 (New York: Pocket Books, 1970) 158.

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    1. Per Wikipedia, Johnson's 54 is the only uniform number ever retired by the Bengals. He retired in 1979, and then he was around for some fun Cincinnati seasons as a radio analyst 1981-85.

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    2. Johnson was an offensive team captain from his rookie season on. And per the 1974 Bengals media guide, Johnson, who holds a degree in industrial engineering, was "Assistant Director of Marketing for the Imperial Adhesive Division of U.S. Shoe Corp."

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  6. The Zanger story is heart-wrenching.

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  7. The dedication in the 1970 book: "In memory of Jack -- husband, father and friend."

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  8. From the 1971 book:

    Just five years ago Brenda Zanger was working toward a career as a designer of theatrical scenery, costumes and lighting. Then she met and married Jack Zanger, whose enthusiasm for sports proved to be contagious. Brenda's love for theater took a back seat to a new interest in sports; she found herself preferring a night out at Yankee Stadium to an evening of theater. In 1968, Jack asked Brenda to try writing some of the profiles for Pro Football-1968, and with each of the following books her involvement and productivity increased. Each year the Zangers wen to Florida during spring training, and Brenda--unlike many sportswriters' wives--attended the ballgames, arriving well before batting practice and leaving well after the final out. It was on their return from Florida in 1970--a trip which served as a well-deserved vacation for Jack, who had just finished collaborating with Tony Conigliaro on Tony's book, Seeing It Through--that Jack was stricken by a brain tumor. He died within a week. With the aid of many of Jack's friends, Brenda Zanger saw to it that Pro Football-1970 came out on schedule, and then was given the opportunity to continue writing the baseball and football books herself. Brenda has since written some magazine articles, most recently about quarterback Fran Tarkenton. She resides in New York City with her two-year-old daughter, Nora.

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  9. Brenda Zanger's dedication in Pro Football 1971: "For my mother, who always comes through in the clutch."

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  10. The John Clayton-lives-at-home-with-his-mom This Is Sportscenter commercial is The Best.

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  11. 3. Falcons: Claude Humphrey, defensive end, Tennessee State

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  12. Meanwhile, in the Feb. 1, 1968, issue of Sports Illustrated--which would've had to be prepared before the Jan. 29/30 draft--Tex Maule leads off the features with a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in which Maule warns that the league is becoming boring despite the fact that it's coming off its most successful season. In "Dear Pete," Maule draws on his "past 20 years deeply involved, one way or another, with pro football players, coaches, owners, fans and even commissioners" to propose the following changes:

    -- Improve the likelihood that the Super Bowl pits the two best teams by having the NFL conference champions play the AFL conference champions in semifinals to determine the Super Bowl participants.

    -- Reduce Sunday TV doubleheaders. Giving viewers in any given market four games from which to pick on a given Sunday afternoon is oversaturation, Maule writes.

    -- Don't put games on Monday night. This would hurt the competitive position of the participating teams on the following Sunday, Maule writes.

    -- Revise the new four-division format to organize teams by team quality (seeding the best four teams in a first division, the next-best four in a second, etc.) "They group according to ability in England, you know. Or maybe you don't know. ..." (And then Maule goes on to explain the setup.)

    -- Ban trades of first-round draft choices. Maule writes that bad teams are too often tempted to trade high draft choices for low-risk veterans who aren't quite good enough to start for top teams. (Green Bay traded veterans for draft choices that ultimately yielded young stars Donny Anderson, Jim Grabowski and Bob Hyland, for example, SI points out in accompanying photograph captions.)

    -- Move the league's trading deadline to the start of training camp so that teams with too many good players at a given position are forced to make their extras freely available to all teams as opposed to being able to balance their depth via trades.

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    1. These are exactly the sort of ideas I would have expected Tex Maule to come up with.

      Presumably George Allen and the Redskins are glad the NFL didn't forbid them from trading their draft picks.

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  13. Ron Yary is USC's No. 77 in this game. Watch for him flattening two UCLA Bruins on the right side of the defense at about 5:08 (and then again when the play is shown in "ABC COLOR SLO-MO"), to spring (amazing) O.J. Simpson for a long run.

    That video is a pretty darned compelling 8 minutes, 45 seconds if, like me, you don't know who is going to win and don't let yourself read the Wikipedia summary until after you watch to the end.

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    1. It was regarded at the time, and has been ever since, as one of the greatest college football games ever played.

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    2. Oh, man! At 4:05 there's a fabulous shot of the L.A. Coliseum Scoreboard. I've been looking for one of those for a long time.

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    3. I had never realized the extent to which UCLA was hurt by poor special teams play in this game. The Bruins missed one field goal, had two other field goals blocked, and had an extra point that was blocked. If any of those kicks had been good, the result might have been different.

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  14. Here's a person who's really, really upset that Claude Humphrey hasn't yet been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Warning: Language unsuitable for SmartGirl, Number3Son and maybe even Number2Son and the wives of the HP after he starts ripping on the NFC East about five minutes in.)

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  15. 4. Chargers: "Mountain Man Russ" Washington, offensive tackle and defensive end, Missouri

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  16. Per his 1980 Topps football card, Russ Washington "now holds Charger records for longevity. He has played in more games (172) and has made more consecutive starts (142) than any other player in club history."

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  17. So, anyway, four picks in--Yary to the Vikings, Johnson to the Bengals, Humphrey to the Falcons and Washington to the Chargers--and all four picks have been fantastic. All four are considered to be among the best players in the history of their teams; all four had careers of more than a decade, and all four spent most of those careers with the teams that drafted them. Some of the contemporary reports on the 1968 draft indicate that this one doesn't have the star power of next season's draft--featuring USC's O.J. Simpson--but, man, this is going to turn out to be an unusually fruitful top of a draft.

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  18. 5. Packers: Fred Carr, linebacker, Texas (El Paso)

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  19. Fred Carr played in all 140 games of his 10-year career with the Packers. Per his 1974 Topps card, he intercepted a pass on the first play of his first game with the team.

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  20. 6. Boston: Dennis Byrd, defensive end, North Carolina State

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  21. 7. New Orleans: Kevin Hardy, defensive tackle, Notre Dame

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  22. In their first season, 1967, the Saints surrendered the No. 1 overall choice as part of their trade with Baltimore for Gary Cuozzo.

    In 1968, New Orleans should've been picking fifth overall, but the league awarded that pick to Green Bay as compensation for the Saints' signing Jim Taylor. That's the pick that became Fred Carr.

    Hap Glaudi was right that Minnesota was trading with New Orleans for Cuozzo. But the deal was for Minnesota's No. 7 overall choice in 1968 (not No. 1), as well as the Vikings' first-round pick in 1969. The No. 7 1968 pick nets Hardy.

    However, Hardy never played for the Saints. When New Orleans signed free-agent end Dave Parks from San Francisco, the league awarded Hardy and the Saints' own first-round pick in 1969 to the 49ers.

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