By Pete Williams

NOTE: In the year leading up to the 2005 NFL Draft, I followed the process from the perspectives of NFL teams, scouts, college programs, agents, and the players themselves. The result was my book THE DRAFT: A Year inside the NFL’s Search for Talent, which came out in 2006. The 2005 draft was a trainwreck on many levels. For all of the talk we’ll hear this weekend about blue-chip prospects and can’t-miss talent, the NFL Draft is at best a crap shoot. This is a story I wrote that appears in The Sporting News’ 2010 NFL Draft preview magazine.

THE DRAFT FROM HELL

It’s not quite the disaster that the 1986 NBA Draft turned out to be, but the 2005 NFL version looks like it will go down in pro sports history as one fo the most cursed of all time.

By Pete Williams

Five years ago, the San Francisco 49ers were thrilled to take quarterback Alex Smith with the No.1 overall pick in the draft. The Minnesota Vikings, with two first-round selections, thought they had a pair of solid building blocks in wide receiver Troy Williamson (seventh) and defensive end Erasmus James (18th).

The Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers respectively thought Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams, who shared time in the Auburn backfield, could each handle the workload of a featured back.

Braylon Edwards, Cedric Benson, Adam “Pacman” Jones, Antrel Rolle, Carlos Rogers and Mike Williams were viewed as future stars worthy of top-10 picks.

Edwards, Brown, Smith and Cadillac Williams have shown flashes of their draft-day potential. Even Benson, a bust in Chicago, looks to have rejuvenated his career in Cincinnati. But not one player selected among that 2005 group has become an established NFL star.

Every draft has its busts, but it’s difficult to find a draft without at least one perennial Pro Bowler among the first 10 selections.

“The biggest misperception people have about the draft is that you have a comparable talent pool every year,” says Charley Casserly, an NFL analyst for CBS and a former NFL general manager. “This was not considered a good draft at the time.”

Many NFL executives believe three seasons must pass before it’s fair to grade a draft or a player. That’s the period necessary for some players to learn complex playbooks or, if nothing else, outlast aging veterans. After five seasons, it’s unlikely a player is going to suddenly emerge or make vast improvement.

Though nobody is yet comparing the 2005 NFL Draft to the drug-infested 1986 NBA Draft that featured Len Bias, Chris Washburn, William Bedford, and Roy Tarpley among the top seven picks, it is replete with high-profile stories of unfulfilled potential, character issues and tragedy.

Pacman Jones, selected sixth by Tennessee, became the poster boy for the NFL’s epidemic of off-field misbehavior. The twice-arrested Matt Jones, the star of the 2005 NFL Scouting Combine, was a bust in Jacksonville after being selected 21st by the Jaguars.

Mike Williams and Maurice Clarett, who had unsuccessfully challenged the NFL’s early-entry rule, are now out of football. Clarett, taken by Denver with the last pick in the third round, is serving a seven-year prison term after a plea bargain on robbery and concealed weapons charges.

Williams, once rated at the top of ESPN analyst Mel Kiper Jr.’s pre-draft “bigboard,” ate himself out of the league, catching just 44 passes for three teams while at one point ballooning to 270 pounds.

“Williams was one of my worst evaluations ever,” Kiper wrote on ESPN.com. “I thought he was the best player in the 2005 draft.”

The 2005 draft also featured David Pollack (No. 17, Cincinnati) and Buffalo third-rounder Kevin Everett, both of whom suffered career-ending injuries. Those stories, while sad, are not as tragic as the deaths of Darrent Williams (second-round, Denver), Chris Henry (third round, Cincinnati), and Jonathan Goddard (sixth-round, Detroit).

Goddard, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2008 while playing in the Arena Football League, was part of a Detroit draft that produced little for then-general manager Matt Millen, though he was hardly the only front office boss to whiff in 2005.

The Vikings used the seventh overall pick they received from the Raiders in the Randy Moss trade for South Carolina wideout Troy Williamson, who struggled with drops and was later traded to Jacksonville for a sixth-round pick. James recorded just five sacks in an injury-plagued career with the Vikings and Redskins.

“You’re not going to draft well every year,” says Gil Brandt, the former longtime Dallas Cowboys personnel director. “But a bad draft or two can set you back for years.”

Though the top of the 2005 draft produced little, plenty of talent emerged later. DeMarcus Ware, Shawne Merriman, and Jammal Brown were taken with the 11th through 13th picks. Aaron Rodgers (No.24) and Roddy White (No.27) have been late bloomers.

The last three picks of the first round – Pittsburgh tight end Heath Miller, Philadelphia defensive tackle Mike Patterson and New England guard Logan Mankins – have been three of the draft’s best picks.

Those three teams drafted late in ’05 because of their ‘04 success, which has continued under coaching and front-office staffs that have stayed mostly intact. That lends credence to the theory that players who remain under the same schemes and coaching philosophies are more likely to last.

It’s tough to maintain that continuity, of course. Only eight head coaches and 10 general managers hold the same job they had in 2005.

“Continuity matters,” says Falcons president Rich McKay, who also was the team’s general manager in 2005. “If you bring in a new set of coordinators, I guarantee that within three years you’ll have nothing left from the previous regime.”

The 2005 draft illustrates how it might be more appropriate to judge a class as a whole rather than the impact of its top-10 picks. The class of 2005 included second-rounders Lofa Tatupu and Vincent Jackson, third-round pick Frank Gore, and fourth-rounders Marion Barber and Brandon Jacobs.

Of the six players from that draft to reach the Pro Bowl following the 2009 season, only Ware, Mankins, and Rodgers were first-round selections. Green Bay safety Nick Collins was drafted late in the second round, the Eagles’ Trent Cole in the fifth, and Dallas nose tackle Jay Ratliff in the seventh.

Then again, six Pro Bowlers is a small contingent for a recent draft.

Casserly admits that his 2005 draft with the Texans – headlined by No.16 overall pick Travis Johnson – was not very good. The following year, he used the first overall pick on Mario Williams instead of Reggie Bush or Vince Young and selected DeMeco Ryans in the second round.

Both Williams and Ryans are established stars after four seasons.

“It’s not like teams suddenly forgot how to approach the draft in 2005,” Casserly says. “Some years are better than others. We knew 2005 wasn’t as rich in talent and that’s proven to be the case.”

By Pete Williams

Riley: In good PR hands

I’ve dealt with hundreds of public relations people over the years, both as a journalist looking to land credentials/interviews and as an author seeking publicity. Some PR people are very good, some not so good. It’s a tough gig and a difficult one to do well.

Then there are those who have a sixth sense for matching stories/clients and media outlets.

In 1992, I had just started writing a column on sports memorabilia for USA Today Baseball Weekly. One morning, a publicist phoned and asked if I wanted to interview one of his clients, an up-and-coming comedian who had a collection of celebrity-signed baseballs.

The column was new, I needed material, and the comic would be in town the following week.

“Sure,” I said, “but…who is Jeff Foxworthy?”

I spent a memorable morning at a dive DC hotel coffee shop talking baseball with Foxworthy. His career soon took off, no doubt helped by the tireless efforts of a publicist who explored every last angle for promoting his client’s career.

The publicist’s name was Jeff Abraham. It’s not an unusual one, but I have a photographic memory when it comes to names. It’s probably from collecting baseball cards as a kid. If only I could monetize this talent.

Last week I received an e-mail from Forbes Riley, who is well known in the infomercial and Home Shopping world. She’s the creator of a new fitness gadget called “The Spin Gym” and wanted to know if she could appear on my radio show “The Fitness Buff.” We’re both in the Tampa Bay area, so this connection was not unusual. We exchanged some dates and times and hopefully our schedules will match soon.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a Los Angeles publicist wanting to know if I’d be interested in having his new client (Forbes Riley) on the radio show. He had Googled fitness radio shows and stumbled upon my program, unaware that Forbes already had contacted me.

The publicist? Jeff Abraham.

It was the first time our paths had crossed in 18 years. The Fitness Buff Show is four years old and we’ve developed a nice little following. Still, we’re not exactly mainstream media.

Jeff and I caught up on the phone yesterday. He’s still representing comics; he worked with George Carlin for 11 years up until Carlin’s death.

If Jeff Abraham is tirelessly chasing down every possible promotional angle for Forbes Riley, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years from now she’s as famous as Jeff Foxworthy.

Lots of Yankee merchandise still available

By Pete Williams

I’m a huge Costco fan. I spend much of my money there. I’ve purchased my laptop and Blackberry there, a lot of my clothes. Most of our food comes from Costco, along with a lot of our furniture, gas, tires, and household items.

I love the business model: sell premium merchandise at affordable prices. Costco pays its employees well – with full benefits – and keeps its profit margins low. It does twice the sales of Sam’s Club with half the stores, as well it should. Sam’s Club is just Wal-Mart with a cover charge.

Costco is everything that Sam’s/Wal-Mart is not, which is why Wall Street hates Costco. It doesn’t matter. Costco stock moves up slowly but steadily, even in the Great Recession.

Everything you need to know about the Costco demographic can be summed up in this sentence: Costco is the nation’s biggest seller of wine and the fourth-biggest book seller.

Costco has an uncanny knack for putting the right products in front of customers. It constantly rotates merchandise, creating a treasure hunt effect. This being the start of baseball season, my Clearwater, Fla., Costco has had a table of Tampa Bay Rays gear for the last month or so. Many of the shirts, not surprisingly, have a No.3 and “Longoria” on the back.

That’s why I was stunned last night to see half the table now devoted to New York Yankees gear. Granted, the Yankees are headquartered just across the water in Tampa. But this Costco is less than a mile from the Philadelphia Phillies spring training site. (The Phillies have trained in Clearwater since 1947.)

Obviously the Yankees have a huge presence in Tampa, where the Steinbrenner family has lived forever and where the Yankees have trained since 1996. The Yankees are forever encroaching on the Rays by broadcasting their games on local radio.

But if there’s one demographic that doesn’t get Costco…it’s New Yorkers. As much as New Yorkers love to think of themselves as hip and up-to-speed on everything, they’re generally clueless when it comes to Costco, even though they have stores in Brooklyn, Queens, and most recently in East Harlem. Loading up an SUV or minivan on a weekend afternoon just isn’t part of the New Yorker culture.

A book editor friend of mine, a middle-aged lifelong New Yorker, recently told me how she made her first trip to a Costco in a tone of voice that suggested she had visited her first farm.

You hear a lot of New York accents in the Tampa Bay area, but not in the Clearwater Costco. That’s probably no coincidence. As with most seasonal merchandise, the Yankees gear will disappear in a month, along with most of the Rays stuff.

I’m guessing the Rays stuff will sell better, as it should. The Phillies would have sold better than the Yankees gear. It’s too bad some Costco buyer is as clueless as magazine editors and television executives who still think the tired Yankees story is what best appeals nationally.

The few young people that follow baseball are more interested in Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard.

C’mon Costco, you’re better than this.

April 2, 2010

By Pete Williams

I missed the Winter Olympics.

I missed the Academy Awards

I missed March Madness.

I missed the various half-confessions of Tiger Woods, the latest debates and passage of health care reform, and anything else that has appeared on television since February 17.

Actually, I didn’t miss anything. That’s why my wife thought it was lame of me to give up television for Lent; I don’t watch much anyway.

I have not watched a network television program regularly since the first season of Survivor in 2000. I have not seen a single episode of American Idol, Lost, Dancing with the Stars, 24, or most anything else that has debuted in the last decade.

I’ve enjoyed several series on HBO, especially Six Feet Under, Rome, and Band of Brothers. But with True Blood on hiatus until mid-June, I knew I wouldn’t miss anything there, though I did have the DVR set to record The Pacific.

I was inspired to give up TV for Lent because we’ve had an ongoing struggle trying to find a phone/TV/Internet provider we like. At one point, we considered cutting the cord and going with our cell phones, over-the-air television, and stealing the Internet signal from one or both of our next-door neighbors. I wanted to see if I could live without.

In the end, we decided that was unrealistic.

Our neighbors’ Internet signals are just too weak.

By then, I felt committed to a no-TV Lent and forged ahead. It’s a challenge to go 43 days without watching a single minute of television. I had to turn off the eye-level TVs in the locker room at my gym whenever I entered. (In the main room, it’s easy to ignore the endless loop of stale ‘80s music videos.)

I stayed out of sports bars, barely entered our family room, and did not touch the TV in my home office.

It helped that I was on the road in Orlando for March covering the Atlanta Braves for Fox Sports South. (Oddly enough I twice appeared on Braves broadcasts.)

My biggest concern was how I’d deal with spending so much time in baseball clubhouses and press boxes, where there are televisions everywhere. Thankfully, there are no TVs in the Braves clubhouse and I stood with my back to the one in manager Bobby Cox’s office during his post-game media chats.

Unlike the regular season, where writers routinely glance at press box monitors to view replays, nothing in a spring training game is that important. Plus, most spring games aren’t televised anyway.

I grew up in a home where my parents refused to get cable TV, but I still watched a fair amount of network programming. I can recite dialogue with any of the 200-plus episodes of M*A*S*H, for instance.

But gradually my viewing has diminished to almost nothing. Maybe it came with having kids or taking up triathlon. Maybe it came with the lack of quality programming. Maybe it came with Disney hijacking ESPN and making it unwatchable. Maybe it came with the transition of television from news and entertainment to talking heads yelling about politics and sports.

For whatever reason, I barely watch TV and I’m not alone. I have several friends who do not even own televisions, people in their early 30s. Buster Olney, the terrific ESPN baseball writer, grew up on a farm in Vermont without television and still managed to follow baseball religiously. I had TV in the Virginia suburbs, but mostly followed sports through newspapers, magazines, and baseball cards.

As someone whose living depends partially on following sports, I wondered if I could pull it off for 43 days. But because of the non-stop chatter surrounding sports, you need not watch the games themselves anymore to follow along. In 2008, I did not watch a minute of the NFL season until the Super Bowl and still felt like I could keep up with 20 minutes of daily online reading. (Heck, millions of people watch six hours of NFL every Sunday but are too drunk to remember any of it.)

In October, I was on a cruise ship during the World Series. I thought I’d be like Jack Nicholson in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” itching to watch the Fall Classic. But even though the Yankees/Phillies series was on in our cabin and all over the ship, I barely watched it. There were more interesting things to do.

Without TV for the last six weeks, I got through my magazines more quickly. I read my Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day and I remain on pace to reach my goal of reading 52 books this year.

I was able to stay mostly on track with my triathlon training even while dealing with the grind of baseball beat reporting. Mostly, though, I felt more focused and it transcended into other areas. I didn’t check the Blackberry as much, kept the radio in the car off more, went to no movies, watched no videos online other than the Braves-related material I posted for Fox Sports South.com, and just felt better overall.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but several cool projects came my way during this period.

My Lenten television fast will end Easter Sunday, in time for the NCAA basketball championship and Opening Day on Monday. I could even watch Tiger’s latest confession, were I so inclined.

I feel like I could go another 43 days, though not right now.

Maybe the next time Lent rolls around.

By Pete Williams

We’re still four days from Opening Day, three if we count the Sunday Night ESPN travesty (Yankees/Red Sox, you’re kidding?). I thought I’d beat the rush with my preseason picks.

AL East – New York
AL Central – Minnesota
AL West – Seattle
AL Wild Card – Tampa Bay

NL East – Atlanta
NL Central – St. Louis
NL West – Los Angeles
NL Wild Card – Philadelphia

ALDS

Tampa Bay over Minnesota
New York over Seattle

NLDS

St. Louis over Philadelphia
Atlanta over Los Angeles

ALCS: Tampa Bay over New York
NLCS: Atlanta over St. Louis

World Series: Atlanta over Tampa Bay in six games

Usually when you spend a lot of time around teams, their weaknesses seem more pronounced than they are. I’m based in Tampa Bay and usually spend more time around the Rays than I do any other team. This spring, however, I worked for Fox Sports South covering the Braves.

So naturally I’m calling for a Braves/Rays World Series. The main reason is because so many baseball people I respect said the Rays and Braves were the teams that impressed them the most this spring, at least in Florida. And since there’s no team in Arizona that looked like world beaters, I’m sticking with Atlanta and Tampa Bay.

Rays officials like to say this is their most talented team ever and that’s true, though the 2008 team had far more character and veteran leadership. Last year’s team missed guys like Cliff Floyd, Eric Hinske, Trever Miller, Rocco Baldelli, and Jonny Gomes. Pat Burrell’s toxic presence seemed to cast a pall on the clubhouse like so many Harry Potter dementors and he’s still around. Still, the Rays have too much talent, along with their best remaining window to win it all.

The Yankees again went out and bought the pieces they needed. This year’s Christmas gifts of Javier Vazquez, Curtis Granderson, and onetime Devil Ray Randy Winn should help. Theo Epstein and the Red Sox somehow cultivate a reputation as an underdog build-from-within operation when all they do is out-Yankee the Yankees. They’ll take a step back this year, along with the Angels.

That leaves the Mariners and Twins. Seattle has followed the Rays blueprint of building around defense, but they don’t have nearly as much offense. As for the Twins, moving in to a new ballpark is always good for five additional wins (unless you’re the Mets). So how ironic will it be when the Twins, finally free from the Metrodome trash bag, fall to the Rays in the Division Series at Tropicana Field? As magical as the 2008 season was in Tampa Bay, fans never enjoyed seeing the Rays knock out the Yankees, who missed the playoffs. This year, the Rays will win an epic ALCS over their “crosstown” rivals. (Not since 2007 has a team reached the World Series that did not train in the Tampa Bay area.)

That will change this year. The Braves train on a Disney sound stage adjacent to the Magic Kingdom. (Okay, it’s really a very nice ballpark, but Team Rodent sometimes forgets they’re putting on a baseball game.) The Rays moved their spring operations from St. Pete to Port Charlotte for 2009.

Frank Wren and Bobby Cox quietly upgraded a Braves roster that won 86 games last year. Troy Glaus is healthy and playing first base. Melky Cabrera helps the outfield and rookie Jason Heyward is being called the left-handed Albert Pujols. Billy Wagner and Tim Hudson are fully recovered from Tommy John surgery, Derek Lowe has new confidence-boosting mechanics he swears he’ll stick with, and Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens might be the most underrated pair of young pitchers any team can send to the mound.

Plus, the Braves have the ultimate postseason trip insurance: Eric Hinske. Not only is he a valuable backup to the fragile Glaus and Chipper Jones, he’s bidding to become the first player to reach the World Series four consecutive seasons with four different teams (Red Sox, Rays, Yankees, Braves).

Cox, who is retiring at season’s end, is forever linked to contemporaries Joe Torre and Tony La Russa. That’s why it will be only appropriate when the Braves knock off the Dodgers and Cardinals in the N.L. playoffs before facing the Rays in the I-75 Fall Classic. There the Braves will get the best of their old friend Rafael Soriano and send Cox out with his second World Series championship.

AL MVP – EVAN LONGORIA, Tampa Bay. Joe Mauer will be unfazed by his new contract and probably respond with big numbers. But I’m taking Longoria since he spent the off-season training for the first time at Athletes’ Performance in Phoenix. I write fitness books with the training center’s founder, Mark Verstegen, so admittedly I’m biased. But I’ve noticed that guys almost always have monster seasons following the winters they’re introduced to the “Core Performance” program.

AL CY YOUNG – CLIFF LEE, Seattle. Lee won this award in 2008. Now he’s moving to one of the game’s top pitcher’s parks to play in front of perhaps the game’s best defense with the incentive of looming free agency. That’s a good recipe to win hardware in November.

AL ROOKIE – WADE DAVIS, Tampa Bay. For all of the hoopla surrounding David Price, Matt Garza, James Shields and previously Scott Kazmir, the Rays owe a good chunk of their success over the last two seasons to the back of the rotation. Edwin Jackson and Andy Sonnanstine were stellar in 2008 and Jeff Niemann carried the team at times in ’09. Niemann made a run at Rookie of the Year, but Davis will go further.

NL MVP – ALBERT PUJOLS, St. Louis – Pujols, Ryan Howard, and Jimmy Rollins have accounted for the last five N.L. awards, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see any of them win in 2010. Pujols will be the first to win three straight since Barry Bonds Laboratories won four in a row from 2001-04.

NL CY YOUNG – ROY HALLADAY, Philadelphia – If Halladay hadn’t spent his career with the remnants of the once-proud Blue Jays franchise, he’d have more than one Cy Young Award. Now he’s moving to the N.L. and the league’s best team over the last two seasons.

NL ROOKIE – JASON HEYWARD, Atlanta. I was around Alex Rodriguez a lot when he arrived and I don’t remember people talking about him the way they did this spring about the “J-Hey Kid.” I spent the last month with the Braves and it seemed every day a respected scout or manager rolled into town and raved about the 20-year-old outfielder.