I’m not saying I could have a draft as successful as a playoff NFL team, but it wouldn’t be a franchise-ending draft. The fact is that most teams today get their information from the same scouting service, and everyone with the NFL network now has the luxury to watch the NFL combine. With so many analysts dissecting and cutting apart the college level, it is difficult today for a team to consistently draft poorly. In addition to the salary cap, free agency and revenue sharing, the endless draft coverage is a huge reason why there is so much parity in the NFL compared to other leagues.

In 1983, the Baltimore Colts drafted John Elway with the first pick, and everybody in the area knows how that turned out. What is sometimes forgotten however, is the fact that in 1982 the Colts used the fourth overall pick on another quarterback, Art Schlichter. Schlichter, an option-quarterback from Ohio State, was taken by the Colts over Brigham Young’s Jim McMahon. Schlichter never had played in a pro-style offense, while McMahon’s BYU team had a complicated pass-first attack that often forced McMahon to make throws downfield. Schlichter had gambling problems during the season and the upside of Stanford’s Elway tempted the Colts into drafting a quarterback with a top-four pick for the second year in a row. This is an unheard of move in today’s environment. I am not proposing that the drafts today are flawless, but no team gives up on a top-five pick in one year anymore.

It would be hard to believe with today’s yearlong draft coverage that a team would have such poor judgment. There are so many prime time updates on the draft, that a good chunk of America knew the name Joe Flacco for weeks, and the biggest game he played in college was against the Naval Academy. People can point to the Chargers drafting Ryan Leaf, or the Bengals drafting Akili Smith, but these players performed at big time colleges and had the physical tools to perform at the NFL level. They failed because of other reasons, which aren’t as easy to predict as what the combine numbers tell us quantitatively. We still haven’t broken down the science of mental and emotional makeups that determine a man’s fate against the top competition. Some psychologists show up and say so-and-so player has the perfect mental makeup to be a quarterback, but it’s always mentioned after a player has already performed at the top level. This happened with Peyton Manning, and similar comments were made about Brady, but of course the comments came after these players were well on their way to winning four superbowls.

Nevertheless, a player with the character issues of a Schlichter now is tagged as having those problems and every year a player of proven talent drops due to his off-field problems. One could click on ESPN’s draft listings and see the players marked for their off-the-field issues, and predict a drop in the draft value. Obviously, the good drafting teams like the Ravens, Patriots, Eagles and Steelers have better judgment than the Redskins front office has shown, but the Redskins still pull out starters from their drafts. After the Ryan Leaf disaster and some years of futility, Archie Manning feared his son Eli would have a similar career that he had with the Saints if Eli played for the Chargers, so Manning held out and was sent to the Giants. The draft picks given to the Chargers were put to good use, and now they’re perennially one of the best teams in the league. Teams just don’t spend decades drafting poorly anymore, and this is the least acknowledged reason for today’s parity in the NFL.

So, does this mean that Mel Kiper has a shot at the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor? This isn’t as ridiculous an idea as one would think. Dick Vitale just got put into basketball’s hall for his contributions that made college basketball and March Madness the phenomenon it is today. March Madness is now part of the American experience for even non-sports fans who fill out brackets, but this was a fairly easy sell–a single elimination tournament to decide the best basketball team in America that has always provided excitement for basketball fans. The NFL Draft, however was an incredibly hard sell. A days long practice that has no competition, no winner at the end of the day, and without Mel Kiper explaining to the country who each player drafted was and what he can do, it was not a spectacle. Mel Kiper’s love affair of the draft, his devotion to at least knowing a blurb about each player taken, has made him invaluable to the sport of football’s growth.

If the draft’s over-coverage today is a reason for parity in the NFL, and Kiper was major catalyst for the coverage of the draft, then Kiper has to be considered a true contributor to the sport. Without Kiper, it would be very possible that teams like New Orleans could still be making terrible drafts decades at a time. Kiper’s goofy hair and machine-gun delivery of information are becoming every bit as iconic to sports as Dickie V’s bald head and overly loud delivery of catchphrases.

I’m not the world’s biggest Kiper fan, Just don’t be too surprised or outraged if one day in your lifetime Mel Kiper hears his name called to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Testaverde was underrated and under-appreciated, and Dilfer managed games well enough to win the superbowl, but McNair was a guy who had made so many plays when they counted that he would be a true hero. A play-making quarterback is needed, now more than ever, to win superbowls. With the defensive holdings, tuck rules and all the other rule changes that assisted the air game in the last few years, a Trent Dilfer-style quarterback can no longer win the superbowl based on the strength of those around him. Almost a decade ago, the Bucs, Ravens, and Steelers all had dominant teams without a real playmaker at the quarterback position. Ravens fans knew they had a solid roster in 2005, but the quarterback play was so spotty that there was no real chance to compete and Steve McNair was going to change all of that.

In 2006, the Ravens were a dominant 13-3 side, with a record to finally match their swagger. The difference maker, was the ever-confident veteran quarterback, Steve McNair. McNair was never expected to be the player he was when he was a co-MVP, or when he led the Titans to the super bowl, but for some stretches during the season he was all of the player Ravens fans had hoped for. The only problem was that the chinks in his armor were all too noticeable in some games during the regular season. Besides the first game, McNair started very slowly for the Ravens, often threw wobbling passes and showed an uncharacteristically weak arm on deep throws. Ravens fans were assured that McNair was getting healthier by the week, and that he was also learning more wrinkles of a complicated offense that was different from the one he ran as a Titan.

During the Week 7 bye week, Brian Billick fired offensive coordinator Jim Fassel, and took over the play-calling duties. Everything seemed to click with McNair after that point. The Ravens won nine of their last ten games and McNair’s quarterback rating during that stretch was consistently in the 90s. The only problem was that McNair still looked shaky in the week thirteen Bengals loss and in the week seventeen Bills win. It was fairly obvious in the first half of games to see which arm McNair was equipped with, and at times he might as well have thrown with his left arm. McNair never lost his confidence over the season, and in games when he was less than equipped physically he still seemed to have one drive in him to win a game, like in the week three Browns win.

It was apparent quickly into the playoff loss to the Colts that McNair wasn’t in his full form, but for some reason the pass plays kept being called and Jamal Lewis had the ball taken from him. The wobbly armed McNair would reappear in his injury-plagued 2007 season, that only seemed to mount disappointments on top of each other. It is sad that McNair’s career ended this way, but he was always banged up, and it would have been hard to imagine him walking away from the game in an Elway-type fashion after his frailties were all too apparent in the 2007 season.

Some radio show callers questioned why McNair retired before finishing his rehab, but after seeing his performance last season I was amazed that he even was trying a rehab program. The average quarterback would have retired years before McNair did, and it was an amazing feat that he fought through the injuries he had over his career to lead the 2006 Ravens to the playoffs.

McNair was a great player, the face of the Titans franchise for many years, and a solid role model, however I don’t think he was a hall of famer. Had he won a superbowl in Baltimore or won the superbowl against the Rams, McNair could have been considered hall of fame caliber. It’s no slight on his career that isn’t a hall of famer, he was a great player who should be considered alongside guys like Boog Powell and Gil Hodges who are just a step below the hall.