Sports Time Radio

I asked you on Saturday if you watched the NFL draft and apparently you did. On Thursday the draft won all three hours of the television time it was on. It did slowly decline through the hours, but that was to be expected. Don’t forget that this was just the 1st round of the draft.

Friday night of the draft didn’t do as well as Thursday night, but that’s to be expected since there are a lot of people who just want to know who their favorite team is picking in the 1st round. While the draft didn’t dominate the television ratings like it did on Thursday it still posted solid numbers and finished second for the night. CBS was the network that beat out the draft and to be fair they didn’t beat it by that much.

I did watch all of the first two days of draft coverage and while I did tune in for quite a bit of the Saturdays coverage I found myself flipping channels. Since I’m not a huge college football fan by the time they got into the later rounds I didn’t know who most of the player being picked where and that contributed to me losing interest.

Humorously the one thing I forgot that I don’t like about the NFL draft is the actual coverage itself. Now this year was a completely different animal with it being a virtual draft, but the coverage ESPN provide was sub-par at best. I got the impression that they try to stretch every pick out because they have so much television time to fill and it becomes tedious to watch.

I also did notice this year more than any other year that ESPN really seemed to play up any type of tragedy or other type of event like that the drafted player had to over come. I’m not sure if they where trying to get sympathy for that player or if they where just trying to show that they overcame some type of hardship in their life. It just seemed odd to me that this was the part of certain players life that they decided to highlight.

They other thing that  heard over and over before the draft was how many problems that could come up since this was a virtual draft and everything was going to be done with computers. Oddly it seemed that the only people who had issues with this set up was the ESPN personalities themselves. It seemed like time after time there was a delay as we waited for an ESPN personality to start talking. It was clear that the teams didn’t have any issues making their picks and the commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t appear to have any trouble announcing the picks, but when they went back to the ESPN desk it seemed like there was always a delay before they started talking. I would’ve thought that the network covering the event would’ve been better equipped to televise it.

How did you feel about the virtual draft and it’s coverage? There’s been talk of the NFL involving a virtual aspect to every draft; of course we don’t know what that would be just yet. Would this be something you’d like to see the NFL do?

Now days after the draft everyone looks back an tries to figure out who had the best draft even though it’s really not possible to do that. You just never know how a college player is going to do as he moves up to the next level. Of course there are a lot of people who get paid a lot of money to do that, but I’m not one of them; so I’m not going to try to tell you who had the best draft.

The one thing I can share with you about the draft is what surprised me in the draft. The New England Patriots made 10 picks in this past draft and none of them was a quarterback. New England used their first three draft picks on defensive players. They used their 4th and 5th draft picks on tight ends before taking a kicker with that 6th pick. Their 7th and 8th picks where used on offensive lineman. The 9th picks the patriots made was back on the defensive side before they wrapped up their draft by picking a Center.

Now since we’re not inside the Patriots draft process we don’t know if they where ever planning on drafting a quarterback or if the draft just possibly didn’t fall their way and they missed out on a quarterback they wanted. We also don’t know if New England tried to move up in the draft to try and select a quarterback. All we know is when the draft was all said and done the Patriots didn’t end up drafting a quarterback.

That meant that after the draft the Patriots had two quarterbacks on their roster; Jarrett Stidham and Brian Hoyer. Now after the draft the New England did sign two undrafted free agent quarterbacks.

J’Mar Smith and Brian Lewerke where the two quarterbacks the Patriots signed. Smith played at Louisiana Tech while Lewerke played at Michigan State. Smith  threw for 2,977 yards; 18 touchdowns with only 5 interceptions in last season at Louisiana Tech with a 64.3 completion percentage. Lewerke threw for 3,079 yards and 17 TDs in at Michigan State, but he also tossed 13 interceptions.

Smith is a multi-sport athlete and was actually drafted by the San Diego Padres out of high school in the 2015 MLB Draft. However, he decided not to sign but played both baseball and football at Lousiana Tech. Interestingly his father Kenny also played for the Patriots. He was a defensive lineman in the 2000s, but never played a game for New England.

Lewerke is the only player in Michigan State history to throw for 8,000-plus yards and to also rush for 1,000-plus yards, finishing with 8,293 passing and 1,255 rushing yards in his collegiate career.

Will one of these quarterback end up making the Patriots roster as the 3rd quarterback? I guess will have to wait and see.

Don’t forget to check out the Sports Time radio podcast on BlogTalkRadio.com. The podcast is also available at TuneIn.com.

You can also find me on Twitter @Burketime