For the first time since 1951, no Penn State players were selected in the NFL draft. What does this tell us?
It tells us that it don’t git no lower!
Was it a surprise that Zack Mills wasn’t picked? No. Zack wasn’t really NFL material–or even NCAA Division I-A material, if you please. Given the anemic performance of the Nittany Lion offense this past season, it is not at all shocking that no offensive player was picked. What of the defense, though? Andrew Guman was a starter on our vaunted defense. What about him? What about Derek Wake?
Could Penn State’s overall reputation as a producer of underperforming first-rounders finally be catching up with them? Look at some of the first-round busts of the past 10 years. Ki-Jana Carter, Curtis Enis, and Courtney Brown were all highly touted. Where are they now? Sure, they were all plagued by injuries. However, one has to wonder how lightning can strike so many times in the same place. Could these injuries have been precipitated by a lack of conditioning?
Perhaps the conditioning program at Penn State is as bad as the offense has been? Doesn’t it all relate back to coaching?
In any case, this snub by the NFL’s 32 teams is just the latest affirmation that Penn State no longer runs a Division I-A top twenty-five football program. Duh! Not a major leap of faith arriving at that conclusion, was it?
They tell us that things will get better. They had better. The way it has been going, Penn State might not have been able to muster a winning record in the Mid-America Conference. This certainly will have a negative effect on recruiting.
A winning season will shut my mouth.
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[…] We hit rock bottom last year, to be sure, with negative reinforcement coming from all angles. One of the biggest indications of Penn State’s impending irrelevancy at the nadir of the slide was in the reluctance of the NFL teams to draft Nittany Lions this past spring. I wrote about that, too, in an article entitled “NFL Draft Grumble: Rock Bottom?” but I might well be writing a different story in the spring of 2006. The Lions have caught the eye of the national sports press—aka “da media”—and will play in a major bowl. Several Penn State players are up for awards. You can be damn sure that with all this exposure, Penn State players will not be snubbed in next year’s draft! […]