- If I had to give the Lions a grade for day one of the NFL Draft, I'd say it's around a C. The Gosder Cherilus pick is a B for me. It's not all on the Lions for it not being higher as what happened in front of them just went completely wrong, but I do think Detroit could have made a better effort to trade down one more time before settling on Cherilus. The Dizon pick, on the other hand, is more around a D in my mind. I've got nothing against Dizon, but there was no need to draft him that early, especially when the running backs were going off the board so quickly.
- This year was my first chance to watch the NFL Network's coverage of the draft, and compared to ESPN, they are a million times better. ESPN used to be good, but they just continue to get worse each year, and 2008 was by far their worst performance yet. Chris Berman seemed flustered the entire day. Nobody was listening to Keyshawn Johnson. And everyone was trying to talk over each other. If you replaced Mike Mayock with Mel Kiper, the NFL Network would be absolutely perfect.
- The teams that had the best day had to be Kansas City, Washington, and Miami. The Chiefs got Glenn Dorsey 5th overall, Branden Albert 15th, and Brandon Flowers 35th. All three will be able to come in and start for the Chiefs next season.
Washington made out like a bandit thanks to no receivers being drafted in the first-round. Because of that, they were able to draft Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly in the second-round, and then added tight end Fred Davis as well. Jason Campbell had to be happy after a day like that.
Finally, Miami got a franchise tackle in Jake Long 1st overall. In the second-round, the 'Phins got a steal in defensive end Phillip Merling, and then may have found their future QB in Chad Henne. - The worst pick of the draft so far is without a doubt Tennessee drafting RB Chris Johnson with the 24th pick. Johnson is all speed and probably would have been around well into the second-round. On top of that, Vince Young still doesn't have any great targets, yet he now has another running back instead. That just doesn't make any sense.
- Trades ruled the first-round as there were a record 15 made. Most featured teams moving only a few spots, but Jacksonville made a huge deal that put them all the way up to pick #8 from pick #26. The move didn't make a ton of sense as they took Derrick Harvey, who probably would have been around out of the top ten. Basically, they gave up an awful lot for a rookie that has never played a down in this league.
Coming out of that deal, Baltimore moved all the way down to the 26th pick, but moved back up to the 18th selection to draft Joe Flacco. I still question that move as Flacco likely would have been around when the Ravens went on the clock, but as it turns out there were some rumors of other teams having interest in moving up to get the Delaware QB. If you take that into account the move makes a little more sense, so I guess it wasn't completely uncalled for. - As predicted, my mock draft was very inaccurate. Trades will do that to you I guess. With all of the ones that were made yesterday, I would venture to guess that no one predicted a good amount of picks correctly.
- The new "stream-lined" version of the draft, as they call it, went so much smoother than last year's. With only 10 minutes in between picks in the first-round and 7 minutes in the second, day one of the draft lasted around 6 hours. Compared to last year when it went over 11 hours long, I would say that making it shorter is much nicer. Tomorrow will seem longer for sure, but hey, by the seventh-round most of us have lost interest anyways, so no big deal.
- Yesterday's live blog went very well and the interaction was great. To all of you that were reading along and sent in comments, thanks for hanging out on Pride of Detroit during the draft. To those of you that didn't, make sure to check back in here at 10 a.m. sharp for day two coverage. I'm still not sure if I'll use the software from yesterday for today's live blog as I want to really test out Pride of Detroit 2.0. Since that will be the main way to comment on games next season, I really want to see how the new auto-refresh comments feature works, so I'm leaning towards doing an old-fashioned live blog this time around.
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