Everything to Know About the 2018 NFL Draft Crop, According to Gil Brandt

The 411 on what to expect in Dallas in a little more than two weeks from the man who would know best. Plus items on the tragedy in Canada, the new punter in Denver, an underrated signing in New England and a football fan in the Faroes

Stream of pre-draft consciousness, 17 days before the first round kicks off before 75,000 fans in Jerryworld:

It’s Gil Brandt’s world, and we’re all living in it

Sixty years ago, Brandt, then 25 and a baby photographer, was hired as a full-time scout for the San Francisco 49ers. Two years later he moved to the expansion Dallas Cowboys as their chief scout. He’s lived in Dallas ever since, and this will be the first time in his life that the draft is a home game for him. Now he’s the NFL draft shepherd, going to almost every pro day, keeping tabs on the prospects, wooing the top ones to come to the first round, working for the league and helping organize the football side of the draft. We caught up late Saturday, and I tried to denude Brandt of everything he knows about the 2018 crop.

• On what makes this draft different: “This is going to be the most talked-about draft in history. And not just because quarterbacks could go one through four, or four of the top five picks. But this will be an incredible extravaganza. For years to come, people will compare every draft to Dallas. The saying Everything’s bigger in Texas will definitely apply. We’ll have sections all over the stadium for all 32 teams, and it’ll be like a competition between all the teams and their fans. Twelve big-time college coaches will be there—Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Chris Petersen, others. Day two’s going to have the same excitement.”

• On the walkup to the draft: “There’s been more activity than I ever remember at all these pro days. More coaches, more assistant coaches. South Dakota State had their pro day last week, and there were six NFL tight-end coaches there to see their guy [Dallas Goedert]. But he didn’t run the 40. Hasn’t run it yet. He could go anywhere from low first to the third, but it’s hard to know because teams don’t know his speed.”

• Quality of the draft: “This is a draft where 13 to 17 guys I could point to and say for sure, This guy’s a first-round pick. After that, there’s a lot of starting-type players who could go anywhere. Let me put it to you this way: My guy who I have 21st overall on my list could go 64th. The guy I rank 47th could go 19th. So the Patriots, with their needs and their two first-round picks, should be able to get a tackle to replace Nate Solder. They need the tackle from UCLA, Kolton Miller. He’s Nate Solder, is what he is … 6'8", 310 pounds, unbelievable 10-yard speed, which is what you need for a tackle. Needs development. But [offensive line coach] Dante Scarnecchia can develop a guy like that as well as anyone.” 

• His order of the quarterbacks: “Rosen, Darnold, Mayfield, Allen, Jackson.”

• Top of the draft: “Here’s what it looks like: The running back from Penn State [Saquon Barkley] has all the characteristics needed to be an All-Pro player and could go anywhere in there. Nothing would surprise me. Let’s go to the quarterbacks. Josh Allen has everything you need to be a franchise QB, but he lacks accuracy, and you can’t complete 56 percent in the NFL. Now Sam Darnold, he’s got great mechanics and the right attitude and approach to be great. But he throws interceptions. This is where you have to grade him—was the interception his fault? Josh Rosen started as a true freshman at UCLA. Never happened before. Started 5-0 or something like that as an 18-year-old. [Actually 4-0, and he won seven of his first nine starts]. You want to be the surest that you won’t be laughed at five years down the line with one of these quarterbacks? Pick Rosen. He’s a player. Lamar Jackson, immense talent, immense upside. Baker Mayfield is a guy like Drew Brees. He’s got velocity, good accuracy. We all undervalued Drew. But what you don’t know about anyone is which quarterbacks are gonna work like Drew Brees. Drew’s gonna work his ass off. His agent could get a call during the season from a car company saying, ‘We got a $200,000 commercial for you to tape on Tuesday.’ And Drew would say, ‘No, I’m not gonna do that on Tuesday. That’s my day to work on the next opponent.’ Your job if you’re going to draft one of these guys is to figure out who’s like Drew Brees.”

• Josh Rosen and the questions surrounding his desire: “I have zero questions about Josh Rosen. I have no problems with him at all.”

• Biggest surprise in the top 10: “My biggest surprise would be to see [Notre Dame] tackle Mike McGlinchey going in the top 10. I think he’ll be in the first round, but probably in the mid-20s.”

• Player who will go higher than everyone thinks: “Will Hernandez, guard, UTEP. Reminds me of Mike Iupati—both drafted higher than anyone thought.”

• Draft invitee who fascinates Brandt: “Leighton Vander Esch, the Boise State linebacker. He’ll be the first man ever invited to the draft who played eight-man football in high school. He’s from Salmon River High School in Riggins, Idaho. A true rising star.”

• The Super Bowl champions’ plans: “I don’t know what [the Eagles] are going to do, but I have been amazed at their presence everywhere at these pro days. I told [general manager] Howie Roseman, ‘You must have an unlimited scouting budget—and I think you’ve exceeded it.’ They’ve had coaches and scouts everywhere. They don’t act like they just won the Super Bowl. They act like they’re dying just to make the playoffs.”

• Happiest draft invitee: “We’ve got 22 guys coming in, and maybe the happiest is a guy who won’t be picked in the first round: Shaquem Griffin [the UCF linebacker who lost his left hand because of a birth defect at age 4]. When I called his mother to invite them, she started crying because of how much this means to the family.”

Rosen has a friend in Aaron Rodgers

Interesting week for the UCLA quarterback, deciding how to respond to his former coach’s comments in this column a week ago and ultimately settling on one word on Twitter: 

Why? 🤷🏻‍♂️ #why

— Josh Rosen (@josh3rosen) April 2, 2018

Rosen is mentally and physically spent from the pre-draft pushing and pulling, and he has four on-campus visits left: Giants today, Jets on Tuesday, Bills on Wednesday and Chargers, back home in southern California, late this week. Then he’ll disappear and work out and veg out for a week or so before going to Dallas for the draft.

He’s developed a relationship with Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who had some advice to Rosen about putting his best feet forward in every visit with a team. (At least I think that’s what his message to his mentee was.)

“The road is long,” Rodgers texted. “The time is short.”

Wise old owl, that Rodgers.

Would Jordan Palmer Draft Sam Darnold or Josh Allen With the No. 1 Pick?

An interesting critique of Josh Allen from Dan Orlovsky

I had the former Lions, Bucs, Texans and Rams backup on my podcast this week. Orlovsky has become a must-follow on Twitter for his quarterback insight, breaking down plays of the top prospects and giving pointed critiques of what he sees. I found his take on what he considers two glaring weaknesses in Allen’s game interesting:

“The two things for me that are like major red flags … There’s a couple of times on tape in a game where he’ll get up to the line of scrimmage and he'll communicate with his offensive line. It looks like he's changing your protection or setting your protection one way … There’s a clip against Iowa where he changes a protection. The Will linebacker blitzes and everybody runs hot, and Josh Allen does not move until his third step of the drop. What were you thinking? What was going on? And that shows up way too much for me. And again, that stuff is not fixable. You think Dick LeBeau is easier to do it against? When he’s got Star Wars on the back end going on? … When the ball is snapped it's almost like, I don't know what's going on … It seems like he doesn't have a plan and a process, and to get to the NFL level and to not be able to do the little things—if you can't do the little things, you can't do the big things. The little things are your plan and your process. The big things are executing against what happens. And so it just seems like he doesn't have that as part of his DNA, as part of his quarterbacking. And that for me I go, Well, what does it matter how big he is, how athletic he is, if you could throw it to the moon, the field’s a hundred yards. To not be able to adjust or react to a Will linebacker blitzing is alarming to me. Alarming.

“And then the second thing—I saw this at the combine, and it made me go watch all his tape again. But when he was throwing at the combine, he was staring at his receivers. And I was like, well, that’s a bad habit, and it’s a habit you can create just trying to be better at accuracy. So, I watched all his tape, and that showed up on tape a bunch where he would just stare at receivers when he catches the snap … And so for me those are things that are really hard to change. You got to change years and years of having those bad habits.”

Answering the Crucial Question for Each Top Quarterback in the 2018 NFL Draft

On Saturday, I read Orlovsky’s criticism of Allen to one draft-day decider (on a team that is studying quarterbacks for this draft and could pick one) and asked if he agreed with Orlovsky.

“I’d say it’s true,” the NFL person said. “If people see Carson Wentz when they look at Josh Allen because they’re both big guys, they are making a massive mistake. Wentz was so ready mentally for the pro game. Allen needs a lot of work there. If you pick Josh, you are taking a raw, talented kid and banking the future on your coaches being able to take that raw talent and turn him into a great player. It’s a gamble for sure.”

Josh Allen spent Friday in Augusta, watching the Masters

I like that. All preparation and no play makes Josh a dull boy.

Sports Quiz

On Saturday, the fledgling league The Alliance of American Football announced the first of eight franchise cities, Orlando. The league said 72-year-old Steve Spurrier would coach the team.

This will be the first pro football coaching job by Spurrier since 2003. Spurrier’s embarrassing 12-20 two-year run in Washington ended on Dec. 27, 2003, with a 31-7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Here’s the quiz:

Who was Spurrier’s starting quarterback in the last game he coached in the NFL?

Here’s the bonus quiz:

Who was the replay official in the press box for the last game Spurrier coached in the NFL?

Answers in number 8 of Ten Things I Think.

There are no words

But I’ll try.

The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League has 12 teams playing through the winter, stretching from Estevan in the southern edge of the province, just above North Dakota, 500 miles north to Flin Flon; and 300 miles from the eastern part of the province in Yorkton to Kindersley in the west. The players are between 16 and 21 years old. You’ve doubtless heard in the last couple of days how many of the greats, from Gretzky to McDavid, have spent much of their teen years on buses traveling six, eight, 10 hours from one town to another, in pursuit of the dream. For some, the dream is the NHL. For others, like almost all of the players in the SJHL, the lottery is the NHL—and the dream is a college scholarship or playing for town pride, many of the kids Saskatchewan natives who grew up idolizing players in towns like Humboldt, population 5,800.

On Wednesday, for game four of the best-of-seven SJHL playoff semifinals between Humboldt and the Nipawin Hawks, 1,900 fans filled the local arena. Humboldt trailed in the series 2-1, but the Broncos roared into the lead in the second period. When one of the team’s stars, Conner Lukan, scored late in the second, Humboldt took a 5-3 lead into intermission, and the cheering locals could feel a tied series. But Nipowin scored twice midway through the third, pushing the game to overtime.

No score in the first overtime.

No score in the second overtime.

Finally, five minutes into the third overtime, 105 minutes into the game, Nipawin scored the winner. The dejected Humboldt team trudged off the ice after one of the great games in recent league annals. Now the Broncos would have to win three straight to take the series, starting Friday night in Nipawin.

“Such an incredible game,” said the radio colorman for Nipawin, Dan Ukrainetz, on Saturday from Saskatchewan. “To play a game like that, everyone there, the players and the fans, they knew every player left it all out on the ice.”

On Friday night, a packed house of 1,100 in Nipawin was set to welcome the teams for game five of the series; that crowd included Ukrainetz’s mom and dad. They’ve had season tickets in the same seats since 1986, sitting next to the same family, remarkably enough, for all 32 of those years. “I was getting my coat on to go over to do the game,” said Ukrainetz. “Everybody in town was excited—this was going to be a great, great game between two great teams. Then I got the news. The play-by-play guy called. The game was canceled. There’d been an accident with the Humboldt bus.”

Twenty minutes or so outside of town, on the equivalent of a U.S. county highway, the Humboldt bus, carrying 29 players, staff and a driver, was traveling north on a main road without a stop sign. A semitrailer was traveling west on a road with a stop sign at the intersection of the highway. There is no word on what happened yet, but the truck, with a load of Canadian peat, hit the bus and tore it apart.

When word came of the accident and the canceled game, Ukrainetz’s mom went to the place where parents and kin of the Humboldt players—many of whom had traveled to the game in their own cars—were waiting. “That’s the one thing I thought of right away—the families,” said Dan Ukrainetz. “There’s so many long miles families drive. They get to the arena, they look for the bus, the bus isn’t there, and of course they start wondering: ‘What’s happened to our son?’ Or brother, or nephew.”

Fifteen of the 29 on the Broncos’ bus died in the wreck. All weekend, support came in on a GoFundMe page, via Twitter (from Gretzky, the Canadian prime minister, hockey people everywhere), from NHL teams wearing BRONCOS in the place of the names on their jerseys. On “Hockey Night in Canada,” Don Cherry asked for the country to pray. We’re fortunate to have such a caring, cohesive country to our north, and it showed all weekend. Oh Canada, we admire how you’ve handled the worst day in so many of your citizens’ lives.

“The hockey rink is the gathering place for our people throughout Canada,” Ukrainetz said. “You want to know what’s going on in town? Go to the rink. We’ve got no movie theater in Nipawin, no casino. We’ve got a hockey rink. That’s how so much of Canada is. That’s why this hits us so hard.”

Quotes of the Week

I

“Everyone told me growing up I was a football player who plays baseball. As a pitcher, I wasn't as concerned about throwing strikes as I was lighting up radar guns. When I would get mad, I'd try to throw even harder. And that doesn't correlate to success. In football, there is a mental side to the game, which is huge. But there is also that raw aggression. If I get pissed off, I can put my face mask in this guy's chin. That's where a lot of my success comes from, that pent-up aggression from baseball.”

—South Carolina tight end Hayden Hurst, to Dan Pompei in an insightful story for Bleacher Report. Hurst, as a Pittsburgh Pirates minor-league pitcher throwing in the mid-90s, got the yips and had to quit baseball. That forced him to try football, and now he could be a first-round pick this month.

II

“Every single person. Everyone in hockey. That’s exactly why it hits home, because everyone has been on the bus before.”

—Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid, who rode buses in junior hockey, on the crash involving the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League that killed 15 team members.

III

“It’s gotta rip the heart out of your chest.”

—Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who is from Saskatchewan, breaking up while speaking to reporters Saturday.

IV

“The defensive coordinator has more swag than all of ’em, so we’ll be in good shape.”

—Rams coach Sean McVay, on the big stars the Rams have added to the defense (Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib, Ndamukong Suh), and how he thinks 71-year-old Wade Phillips will coach them up.

Sean McVay on Why the Rams Will Be Different Than Dream Teams Past

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Stats of the Week

I

The Denver Broncos lucked into a top-five punter for very good value last week, signing Jon Gruden-reject Marquette King for three years and $7 million, making him approximately the 12th-highest-paid punter (in average cap value) in the NFL. Not bad for King, who finished second in the league in punting average in 2016 and third in 2017, and who is 29 years old.

When the Broncos signed King on Thursday, he was positively giddy about getting to punt in altitude for half his games over the next three years. “Denver’s a punter’s paradise,” King said. “The ball definitely travels a lot further. I’ve always enjoyed punting out here in the altitude just because the ball travels further.”

The evidence in his five seasons is significant, if limited. King’s numbers in Colorado versus all other places:

The Broncos are going to have to work with King specifically on placement on inside-the-20 kicks—kicking as he did for Oakland could result in too many into the end zone.

II

Rams receiver Brandin Cooks, 24, is a mere 16 months older than the top receiver prospect in the draft, Alabama’s Calvin Ridley, 23. Ridley will turn 24 in his rookie season. Cooks leads Ridley in NFL games played, 61-0.

Pod People

From “The MMQB Podcast With Peter King,” available where you download podcasts.

This week’s conversations: Rams GM Les Snead and Dan Orlovsky, the former NFL backup quarterback and current NFL analyst.

Les Snead on the Rams Action-Packed Offseason

• Snead on his willingness to trade more than his predecessors, and on the willingness of a cadre of young GMs to do the same: “You know, that’s an interesting question, and to start with, I don't think you can ever be reckless because—let's go way back to 2012. You know we traded the No. 2 pick overall to the Redskins that ended up being known as the RG3 [Robert Griffin III] deal, but the whole purpose of that was to acquire as many draft picks as possible. We got to build a young core because at that point it’s nearly, let’s call it 26 players of the 53 who finished on that 2011 Rams team never played in the NFL again, so you knew we had we had to replenish this with a good core, and over the years you draft it, but last year we tipped into let's call it being a ‘legit contender.’ So at that point, you’re well aware, wait a minute, we want to sustain this, we want to keep contending. And, I’ll always say this, I got a simple rule: You can't be scared in this league. Look at Doug Pederson this year and, it wasn't reckless but it took courage and guess what? They won a Super Bowl on some of those fourth-down plays. So you try to do that as a general manager, but I also think, and this is long-winded answer, some of the analytics that you have now to really look at what historically draft picks bring you in reality over time …”

Me: “You’ve basically looked at draft choices as tools in the toolbox. That's how I kind of look at your thing: You’re not wedded to your draft picks.”

Snead: “Right. You should be my interpreter.”

Factoids That May Interest Only Me

I

Curly Lambeau was born 120 years ago today in Green Bay.

Curly Lambeau played for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame 100 years ago this year.

II

Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri, who, if healthy, will break the NFL’s all-time scoring record with his 58th point this season, missed more field goals in the second game of his career (three, in 1996) with New England than he missed in full seasons with the Colts in 2014 (one) or 2015 (two). Not bad, considering he turned 42 and 43 in those two seasons in Indianapolis.

III

The Detroit Tigers have to have the worst schedule in major league history. How could it be any worse than every one of the first 25 games on the schedule being played (or having a projected temperature) in weather never warmer than 48 degrees, with the majority of the games at 40 degrees or lower?

That, of course, is accounting for the weather in Detroit’s eight games so far—never warmer than 43 degrees—and the long-range forecast for the next week, with seven games in Cleveland and Detroit, and the temperature in those seven games predicted to be 36, 35, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 46.

MLB scheduled Detroit’s first seven series, covering 25 games, for Detroit, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Will the next three series (in Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City) be better weather-wise? Let us pray. But it’s incredible that Major League Baseball scheduled every one of the first 35 games of the season for the Tigers in places where weather can be awful through early May.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note

Last week I received and used an email in my Wednesday mailbag column from Jens Andrias Vinther, a partner in the Hansen Thomassen Vinther law firm of Tórshavn, a town in the Faroe Islands (population 50,000). The Faroes are a small island chain 200 miles north of Scotland in the north Atlantic. I looked up the islands on Wikipedia and found that it’s a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. I was surprised by three things:

• That a lawyer from the Faroe Islands would write to me.

• That the lawyer would postulate that the Browns should take quarterbacks with the first and fourth overall picks in the draft, theorizing that since the washout factor for the first-round quarterback is so high, it stands to reason that if you take two, at least one should become a good NFL player.

• That the lawyer would know who the Cleveland Browns are.

So I phoned the cell number on the bottom of his email and asked Mr. Jens (pronounced Yens) Andrias Vinther: How in the world do you know anything about the Cleveland Browns way over there in the Faroe Islands?

“I am a football fanatic,” Vinther, 44, said in quite good English—considering it’s his third language. He also speaks his native Faroese and Danish. “The first time I experienced football was while I was studying in Denmark. Denmark, I guess you would say, is the owner of the Faroe Islands. So it is not unusual for people in the Faroe Islands to study college courses in Denmark. I was in Copenhagen, and a Danish channel showed the football games on Sundays. I fell in love with the physical contact of the game. It’s a real man’s sport. I chose the Seahawks right away, and that has been my team ever since. I think I chose them because of the grunge music. But I have followed them and now I have to see them every Sunday during the season.”

How?

“Oh, I have NFL GamePass,” Vinther said. “I can see all the games. I watch them here in my home on Sundays. Then I will watch the Red Zone channel for the other games, mostly on how they impact the Seahawks.”

Watch with anyone?

“No,” he said. “I don’t really have anyone I know very well who watches football. But there is a Facebook group in the Faroe Islands that follows the NFL. It’s got about 350 members. I think it mostly young people. In the Faroe Islands, U.S. sports are quite unknown. We have football [soccer], handball, volleyball. No basketball or American football.”

When Vinther wrote to me about his Browns question, I answered that it would be difficult to get enough practice time for a veteran quarterback like Tyrod Taylor to prepare to play the games at least early in the season, all the while getting two rookie quarterbacks ready to play so you could judge in a year or two which one to keep long-term. There are practice-time limits to consider also, I told him.

“I understand your answer perfectly,” Vinther said. “But if you think about practice times being limited, why don’t you split the practice field in half, and have two practices running at the same time? That way you could have twice the number of plays to judge the quarterbacks.”

Hmmmmm. This Jens Andrias Vinther is a pretty bright fellow.

“But I understand draft capital is gold,” he said. “You don’t want to risk such a high pick.”

He told me he will be coming to America for the first time in the summer of 2019 with his wife and three kids—ages 11, 8 and 4. They are going to rent a car and drive across the United States. “Brilliant idea,” I said. “You’ll see the real United States.”

“Yes,” Vinther said. “I want to see the South. I want to see where Alabama plays.”

Tweets of the Week

I

Humboldt, we're all playing for you tonight. pic.twitter.com/YJoRsBvscs

— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) April 8, 2018

II

You asked what’s Cookin’with the Rams-they say we are getting too many star players. So Suh us!

— Wade Phillips (@sonofbum) April 6, 2018

III

Bernd Wiesbeger is your new Masters leader. If he wins, he is going to use his payday to buy a vowel.

I’m gonna go back outside.

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) April 6, 2018

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think Baltimore signing Robert Griffin III doesn’t mean anything about the Ravens’ draft-weekend intentions. If there’s a quarterback there at 16 (Lamar Jackson?) whom the Ravens love, they’ll take him. As they should. Since Joe Flacco won the Super Bowl with Baltimore, there have been five seasons played in the NFL. In those five seasons combined, 31 quarterbacks have started at least 40 games. Flacco is 30th in passer rating in those five seasons, at 82.1.

Will Robert Griffin III Rebound in Baltimore?

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2. I think if, in “Paterno,” HBO intended to show Joe Paterno as an altogether doddering old man who had no business coaching Penn State in his last few years, HBO succeeded. I have no dog in this fight, and there is no question whatsoever that Paterno was allowed to coach that team far too long. But was it really that bad? Was he really that bad? Check out Conor Orr’s commentary on “Paterno.”

3. I think one of the best free-agent signings of the second wave of the free market is New England procuring wide receiver Jordan Matthews after his lost and injured season with Buffalo in 2017. New England signed him to a one-year deal worth up to $1.7 million including incentives. Mike Reiss reported in his Sunday column that Matthews wanted to play with Tom Brady and, presumably, could have signed for more years and money elsewhere. Love this for the Patriots because Matthews will play this year at 26, is now healthy, and in his three NFL seasons before 2017 with Philadelphia, averaged 75 catches and 891 yards. He’s the kind of big target (6'3") the Patriots and Brady needed.

What Will Bill Belichick and the Patriots Do With All of Their High Draft Picks?

4. I think I don't understand why uniform numbers can’t be simple. Just like I never understood why the Bucs made the numbers on their new uniforms unintelligible, I don’t get Tennessee’s new digits either. Why can’t a 2 look like a 2, and not a Z? Why make numbers make you do a triple-take?

5. I think, while I’m on my 60-year-old-man riff, what’s up with “uniform launch parties” or “uniform unveilings?” I see the Jaguars are having one April 19, on the heels of the Titans drawing 20,000 for theirs last week. I don’t get the unveiling of uniforms being a news event. How did we get to this point? You know, it’s okay to not have everything be a big event. It’s okay for teams to say, “We’ve got nothing going on this week. Go cover something else.” And it’s okay for media to say, “We’ll run a photo of your next uniform on our site. That’s enough.” And be done with it.

6. I think now I’ll stop screaming for you to get off my lawn.

7. I think this Johnny Manziel admission to Dan Patrick just really rubbed me the wrong way: “Guys are good in the NFL because they know film, they study hard, and they work even harder in the offseason. I didn’t know that. I feel like if Cleveland did any of their homework, they would have known that I’m a guy that didn’t come in every day and watch film … When I get to Cleveland, I have a quarterback in the room [Brian Hoyer] that’s not helping me. And it’s not really his job to, but nobody was there, helping me. And it was hard. I struggled … There was a lot of winging it, and not a lot of, you know, knowing what I was doing.”

One: It’s not the starting quarterback’s job to help the backup take the job from him. It would be nice if the starter did that, but in my experience, many more starting quarterbacks over time have been okay but not super-helpful to the first-round pick who’s there to put the starter out of business. Two: “Nobody was there, helping me.” What? Dowell Loggains, quarterback coach, and Kyle Shanahan, offense coordinator … They didn’t help? They weren’t there to help? Their office doors were closed? That is, to be charitable, a disingenuous claim by Manziel. To be uncharitable, it is downright lame.

8. I think the answers to the Steve Spurrier quizzes surprised me.

The starting quarterback for Washington in the 2003 season finale—and one of six quarterbacks to throw passes for Spurrier in his two NFL seasons—was Tim Hasselbeck.

The replay official in FedEx Field for Spurrier’s last game? Dean Blandino.

9. I think I can’t say this enough: If San Francisco safety Eric Reid does not get signed, it sends a chilling message about free speech to every NFL player who would think about protesting anything. Colin Kaepernick being unsigned is reprehensible enough. But if Reid, Kaepernick’s protest partner with the Niners in 2016, is not signed to a representative safety contract this spring, every player will know the league’s mantra: Get in line, or this will happen to you when your contract expires—no matter how good you are.

10. I think these are my other thoughts of the week:

a. Story of the Week: by Abe Streep, writing for The New York Times Magazine, on the Arlee Warriors high school basketball team in Montana, which plays to win basketball games and to urge young people to not kill themselves.

b. It’s so encouraging to read about young adults who see the bigger purpose in life. The Arlee Warriors do.

c. Plus haunting black-and-white photos by Devin Yalkin. His photo of the team on the school bus home from the state championship game is absolutely marvelous, a work of art.

d. Streep with an emotional and great close, which you’ll understand when you read this: “The world is never so hopeful as when the old honor the young.”  

e. Column of the Week: by Dan Balz of the Washington Post—you know, one of those papers that makes everything up, going all the way back to Watergate, when it made up the stories that forced Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Balz writes about what a tough week it was for the truth for our president.

f. Sports Column of the Week: by Howard Bryant of ESPN.com, “NFL Players Have Succumbed to Protest Pressure.” Well-reasoned and smart.

g. Sideline/Dugout Interview of the Week: by Sophia Minnaert of FOX Sports, with Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia after a game-winning hit.

h. So many good things about that interview—the quick translation from Spanish to English, the deft spinning away to avoid the Gatorade bath … all like she’s taking a walk in the park. That is just tremendous.

i. News item: Conor McGregor, appearing to be in some sort of non-earth orbit and accompanied by a crew of burly “friends,” goes batcrap and destroys a bus by throwing things like a dolly and a steel barrier at it and through its windows.

j. McGregor has always seemed like such a well-adjusted guy.

k. Coffeenerdness: No more butterscotch lattes at Starbucks. They say it’s “seasonal.” I say it’s “fantastically outrageous.”

l. Beernerdness: Happy National Beer Day! I celebrated with Vitamin Water Zero lemonade. Haven’t you heard? It’s Sober April!

m. Including today, the Red Sox had three scheduled days off in a six-day period. Play three, sit three.

n. First-pitch-of-the-season temperature at Coors Field on Friday afternoon: 27. Fahrenheit.

o. When the Mariners woke up in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, it was 11 degrees. First-pitch temp: 27.

p. Not that I’m paying close attention or anything, but in his nine-game Yankee career, Giancarlo Stanton has seven hits and 20 strikeouts.

q. That includes 16 strikeouts on the season-opening six-game homestand, and striking out to end Sunday's 8-7 loss to Baltimore.

r. My prediction is that will not last.

s. Anyone see a little of a Greg Bedard look in Patrick Reed? Pretty gutsy of Reed, hanging on after Jordan Spieth nearly had the comeback of the year.

t. I’m not a big-enough hockey fan to know the impact of the retiring Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel of the Vancouver Canucks. But how great was it that in their last game ever in Vancouver on Thursday, the game went to overtime, and Henrik Sedin passed to Daniel, who scored the winning goal in the 4-3 victory over Arizona.

u. Congrats are in order for my old HBO friend Jason Hehir, who directed the “Andre the Giant” documentary on HBO. Looking forward to it—particularly to see how the “Princess Bride” stuff is treated.

v. Congrats are in order, too, for my old Montclair friend Mike Goldstein (Mike from Montclair to you WFAN listeners), the first-year varsity softball head coach at Montclair (N.J.) High School. He got his first head-coaching victory Friday over Essex County rival Belleville, 8-0, on the road. Couldn’t happen to a better guy.

w. Thank you, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for streaming so much informative content over the weekend so we could follow closely the news from Saskatchewan. What a touching vigil Sunday night. Thanks for being a good public servant when it was so necessary.

The Adieu Haiku

Draft season home stretch.
Mindful of this Parcellsism:
“No one knows nothin’.”

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