But the most important news of the day, the preoccupation of millions of Americans for an entire month, is....which quarterback will the 49ers select with their #3 pick in the NFL draft? WSJ columnist Jason Gay puts it all in perspective: [bold added]
Your humble blogger has been a fan of the local teams, the 49ers and Raiders (until the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in January, 2020). However, a modicum of life balance had been achieved by avoiding fantasy football and the NFL Draft....until 33 days ago, when the 49ers gave up a Bezosian ransom in future draft picks to move up from #12 to #3 in the draft order. If one lingered on any sports channel or any sports page for a half-minute, one could not avoid the blather.Football’s draft, which kicks off Thursday night in Cleveland, is the biggest, most beautiful gas factory in all of sports, a monthslong blabby-blab blab-a-thon in which well-sourced experts, armchair fans and mediocre sports columnists at financial newspapers compete for the right to be wrong at least 50% of the time.
Draft metaphor (From images.squarespace-cdn.com)
A power company could charge the nation with the hot air annually expelled in the weeks leading up to this event—who’s moving up; who’s moving down; who’s the hot pick; who’ll pull off a draft-day heist for the ages. Nobody really knows! And the jargon: You’re not an official draft guru unless you’re tossing off buzzy terms like “arm talent.” Arm talent! What does that even mean? Are the football cognoscenti now evaluating the skill of a solitary arm, disembodied from the rest of the human being, like The Thing in “The Addams Family?” Isn’t arm talent like, just, you know, throwing?
It doesn’t matter. Get it right, get it wrong, the draft is a huge deal, really an optimal event for these times, a windy feast of gossip, cherry-picked facts and baseless speculation—America’s second, third and fourth favorite past times, after screaming at each other on social media about pandemic face masks.
San Francisco, with Jimmy Garoppolo as its quarterback, has a loaded team which was in the Super Bowl only 14 months ago. Apparently the Niners think that Jimmy G. isn't good enough to lead the team long-term; to draft his replacement they made moves that disrupted the NFL eco-system like an asteroid strike.
The apotheosis (or is it the nadir?) was reached when a reporter asked Coach Kyle Shanahan if Jimmy Garoppolo would be the 49ers quarterback on the Sunday after today's draft. His answer: "I can't guarantee that anybody in the world will be alive Sunday." Wow, that's some heavy stuff you're smoking, man.
Again, WSJ columnist Jason Gay: With the third pick in the 2021 NFL draft, the San Francisco 49ers select Friedrich Nietzsche, from Leipzig University!
[Update: 37-year-old Aaron Rodgers, the reigning MVP of the league, wants to leave the Packers and is eyeing the 49ers. Thanks, Aaron, it sure was quiet before you said that.]
Aaron Rodgers wanted Packers to accept 49ers' trade offer. https://t.co/1VD1pgNHJ8
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) April 29, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment