The Morning According To Us

Matt Ryan's success will just spawn more mistakes.

Getty Images

Millen would have drafted him based on "sleeveless audacity" alone.

Blame Matt Ryan.

Pundits are already starting to take guesses at what the Detroit Lions will do with their number one pick, a right the team sadly secured with weeks still remaining in an NFL season. Matthew Stafford, once the best high school quarterback in Texas and now the big-armed QB for Georgia, is a likely candidate, say some in these parts. But this we'll blame on Ryan, the man you voted in as NEXT when, as a rookie, he has already arrived.

As our pal Malcolm Gladwell notes this week in the New Yorker, "The job (a quarterback) is being groomed for is so particular and specialized that there is no way to know who will succeed at it and who won't. In fact, (research has) found no connection between where a quarterback was taken in the draft—that is, how highly he was rated on the basis of his college performance—and how well he played in the pros."

That's right. Ask an ensemble of statisticians who follow every quarterback ever taken and even the scouts who would bet their lives that this guy or that would succeed, and none can tell you with any degree of accuracy who will be good, much less great. In fact, the article notes that a far safer approach would be for a team to simply not draft a quarterback at all, then "give up trying to figure out who the 'best' college quarterback is, and, instead, try out three or four 'good' candidates." That's right. Quit trying to decipher a Donovan McNabb from an Akili Smith, a Ryan Leaf from a Peyton Manning, a Drew Bledsoe from a Rick Mirer.

Just hold tryouts.

At least then you wouldn't feel compelled to hand the ball to a man selected based on a science that if it were real from a diagnostic sense, at least in the medical field, still wouldn't even be able to spell cancer. Give a more sane science a try. They would, but teams see a good arm, great poise, some kind of glow, and, well, they fall in love. Teams see brilliance in Ryan, then project it on to Stafford.

Or maybe the Lions will also note that the team who actually made the biggest turnaround in the NFL this year, the Miami Dolphins, went the boring route and even minus a dependable quarterback drafted a player in Jake Long that could keep whatever signal-caller was taking snaps off the ground. Last year they were 1-15. This year they are 9-5. They just went for the best player. At QB, they basically had try-outs.

They could have drafted Ryan. But who knows, minus a good left tackle, maybe Ryan in Miami is really Tim Couch.

Elsewhere…

The Jamaican bobsled team is getting a lay of the land up in Vancouver. Cool Runnings II?

Browns fan busted for an unregistered couch. Ouch.

Not to be outdone, a Giants fan is busted for bustiness.

Nothing like a freaky mind coach to get your swing back in order.

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine