The Legacy of the 25th Draft Slot: A Historical Examination

Is pick number 25, the NFL's best kept secret.

From the super bowl heroics of San Antonio Holmes to the absolute dominance of nose tackle Ted Washington, this draft slot has quietly shaped the championship dynasties.

But there's a catch.

Since the AFL NFL merger, not a single player from the spot has made it to Canton yet.

Is that about to change?

Today we're counting down the legendary number 25s and seeing who finally might get the break of the hall of Fame curse.

Welcome to the Pig Pen and Pigskin Dispatches podcast with Ed Cleese as our guest to go through these legendary players.

Hello, my football friends.

Welcome back to the Pig pen.

We are 25 days before the National Football League draft.

We are covering all 32 days leading up to the draft and we're covering the top 32 draft selections in the history of the draft.

90 Years have gone by of the National Football League draft.

Joining me today, as always, during this journey is Ed Cleese.

Ed.

Ed.

Welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, how are you?

I'm doing super Ed.

And you know, 25 is kind of a middle of the road of the draft selections for the modern draft.

And what is your take on 25?

Well, Darren, the Bears have the 25th pick in this upcoming draft and if they are paying attention to the history of this pick, they need to trade it and they need to trade it fast.

Because I was shocked when I.

This is crazy to me, this list.

This was borderline impossible to come up with the top five.

To the point where I went.

I probably spent more time on this one than any others we have.

Because I kept going back, assuming I had to be missing someone.

Because I kept going back and thinking, wait, what?

And this is my number one, you know.

And so I went back many times and I'm pretty confident that I got it right.

What could be a saving grace is that opposite of what we've talked about with some of these other picks recently.

There are some draft picks that are off to pretty good starts in their career.

Travis Atn, Brandon Ayuk, who's got some off field issues but is very talented, is going to land somewhere else this year.

Tyler Linderbaum, who's a pretty big free agent right now, has had a pretty good career with the Ravens.

Dalton Kincaid for the Bills looks really good.

And then Jackson Dart was taken at this spot last year.

So maybe this group of younger players will save the history of the 25th pick.

Because it ain't pretty otherwise.

It's not pretty before that either, because there has not been one Pro Football hall of Famer taken at the 25th pick in 90 years.

That's kind of unbelievable.

And nobody on my list is even considered for it.

I would say not even on the radar.

And for me, Darren, you know, I consider myself pretty big historian here, and especially when it comes to the 80s and 90s when I kind of grew up watching.

But there are some of these guys that were drafted in the 80s.

Vegas Ferguson, Billy Cannon, Emmanuel King, Scott Davis, Terrence Flagler.

I've never heard of any of these guys.

And I am a draft and NFL nerd.

And I was like, who is this?

I'm clicking on them.

And sure enough, they're in and out of the league like that.

It's not the Billy Cannon that's in the hall of Fame who's drafted about four decades earlier.

I clicked on him because I kept thinking maybe I got the wrong one.

So it was.

It was wild then.

We also have some quarterback busts, too.

I wouldn't say that he was a total bust, but certainly didn't pan out.

Taking one pick before him in that same draft was Aaron Rodgers.

So that kind of.

And there was a lot of rumors that Washington would have taken him had he fallen.

So that's always been something that stuck with me.

None of those guys panned out at.

All, except he was the comeback player of the year.

Yes.

The Steelers, yes.

But.

Yes, certainly, yes.

20, What?

21 Point comeback against the Browns in the playoffs.

Those.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was his injury that brought Ben Roethlisberger, rookie, off the bench and never looked back.

That's right.

That's right.

So not a great list, Darren.

No.

Okay, so.

Well, let's get into this top five.

Okay, so these players are at least good.

Number five.

I have Dante Hightower, a linebacker for the Patriots.

Again, on paper, not a whole lot stood out.

He did make it 1 2nd team all pro.

He played in 17 playoff games and he was the starter for the three.

He started on all three of the super bowl winning teams in that Last era.

Era of Patriots football.

We talked about Devin McCourty in the last.

When we talked about pick number 26 or 27, I can't remember.

But Devin McCourty was taken a couple years prior and so he and Hightower were sort of like their best defensive players on those teams.

A nice, a nice career.

And that's all, that's all you can say really.

Yeah, he was solid, very well rounded, you know, decent against pass coverage, covering tight ends, earning.

But he was a run stuffer and he was a great leader to have for a Belichick led defense in the middle.

Yep.

Honestly had a fairly pedestrian career.

Wasn't.

I would certainly.

It's not a great pick.

He was fine.

He had some, a couple of decent years.

He had one big year.

But he certainly had one big game.

And if you are the super bowl mvp, that is something that's going to stick out and be remembered forever.

And especially to punctuate it with one of the greatest catches we've ever seen to win the Super Bowl.

So that's why I've got Santonio here and I will point this out as well.

He ended his career at the Jets.

He was on the last jets team as long ago as it was now to make the playoffs.

And in that playoff run he did catch two touchdowns for the jets as well.

So maybe a little bit of a big game player.

Yeah.

And probably that.

That catch at the end, the end scored the touchdown.

That might not even been his best catch on that drive.

I mean he, I think he made the majority of his catches on that final drive that the Steelers had.

The big one was the fourth down play.

They were at Steelers like their own five yard line.

He caught one like the 24 yard line which nobody will ever remember.

But you know, he drops that pass, you know, the, the Arizona has the ball inside the 10, you know, and probably going to win that, that super bowl.

So.

Yeah.

But he got in a doghouse too.

Just a couple years later, Steelers trade him for a seventh round pick to the Jets.

Right.

Yeah.

So his career kind of end flamed out quick.

I like to tell my kids, you know, sometimes when is a lot more important than what.

And San Antonio did pick a very good Time to have his best moments.

So that, that, that puts him on this list.

All right, so.

So who do you have above him?

Made a few Pro Bowls.

He was a first team all pro one time.

He got some defensive player of the year votes.

He was, he was much more of a lockdown corner, kind of like the island corner.

He didn't make a.

He didn't have a ton of interceptions.

He didn't have a lot of flashy plays, but he was a really solid, really good, just lockdown corner.

That side of the field is kind of shut off as long as Xavier Rhodes is doing it.

Had he been able to do it for a little bit longer, he'd probably feel a little bit.

I'd feel a little bit better about having him on this list.

But he had a fairly short career overall and his peak wasn't.

He didn't maintain it for that long, but you know, it was.

He was a good player, probably better than good.

And a really nice pick by the, by the Vikings there.

Yeah.

Wasn't he just playing like a couple of years ago still?

I think he retired like 20, 22.

Was it okay?

I thought I remembered him playing like a playoff game maybe the year before.

I could have been wrong when I looked at it, but I think his career ended about 11 years, something like that.

Yeah.

Which is pretty good.

Long career for a db.

That's not too bad.

Not too shabby.

Yeah.

Okay, so.

So who do you have above him?

This was tough, man.

It's, it's.

You're gonna be like this guy's number two.

And the reason I've got him there is, is because he just had an excellent start to his career.

He was second in defensive rookie of the year.

Then he was first team all pro in his second year.

Then in his third year, he was second team all pro.

In his fourth year, he made the Pro bowl.

And then his career was kind of over.

So he went from like this super top of the mountain.

But Darren, after that fourth year, after that third year, I believe third or fourth year, he became the highest paid middle linebacker in NFL history by the Panthers.

Wow.

He suffered some serious injuries.

He basically missed two seasons in a row pretty much after signing that deal.

And at that same time they drafted Luke Keakley.

So it's like he got, he was on the mountaintop.

He was considered like a premium linebacker in the NFL.

Got paid more than anybody else, got hurt.

They drafted his replacement and then it was over.

He played.

He had one more kind of good year.

He ended his career with the Giants.

But he makes this list on the strength of four tremendous seasons and then that was it.

Well, it's not too bad when your replacement is having.

Right now, currently having his gold jacket sewn.

There's induction here in a couple of months.

Right, right.

And that's going to bring us to number one, which you're going to be like, how can this guy be number one?

But I had to pick somebody, Darren.

He made the first team all pro team, Darren, at age 33, which is impressive, especially when you consider he was a very traditional run stuffer.

He was not a pass rusher.

He never got more than four and a half sacks in his career in any season.

But he was a really highly regarded run stuffer.

Played for the 49ers, he played for the Broncos, and then he played 16 games for the Bills for six straight seasons.

He started every game for the Bills for six straight years.

I'm sorry he missed one start, but he played in the game.

So for six straight years he started every but one game and played in all of them.

Um, and then he went to the Bears.

Yet that's where he had his all pro season, actually.

He started for them in the Super Bowl.

Then he started all 16 games for three straight more years with the Raiders and Browns.

So his stats don't jump out, but that's often not really the case with a.

He was a pure old school nose tackle.

That's what he played over center, on the guard, run stuff or eat up space.

And he did that exceptionally well for 17 years and he was there every Sunday.

And I think if you boiled it down to not defensive tackles, but if you just said, hey, take all of the true nose tackles in the history of the NFL, he's got an argument to maybe even be the best or in the running.

He's.

He's in the conversation.

Yeah, I think that's fair to say because he was definitely a guy that would eat up two blocks on everything and free a backer up.

So yeah, that's doing your job up.

Front if you keep getting jobs and you keep getting starts for 17 years, everybody's not.

Everybody's wrong.

You know what I mean?

So he did something right.

Yeah, I have a feeling, you know, we talk a little bit about the lackluster of these selections are your top five.

You know, if we do this five years from now, that might totally change what you alluded to because I think we've got some bright young folks that are coming into your own possibly.

You know, Dalton Kincaid is, is in that group.

Tyler Linderbaum, you know, he may be on that list.

Who knows what Jackson Dart is going to do.

He's only a year in and you know, might be able to talk about some other folks who do this a few years from now.

They need it because it's.

The history here is rough.

Yeah, it definitely is.

Well, if we look at the history of the pick and if the history alludes to what we may see, we may be seeing a defensive back.

We're back on that train of the DBs ruling the pick selection because they had 15 selections of the 90 drafts have been defensive backs at pick number 25.

You know, like we said, there's no hall of Famers in this draft or just a draft slot.

They had 14 players taken in those seven slots.

So 256 picks or whatever it is, 14 of them were Buckeyes.

So that's our amazing stat of the.

Day, the Sean Taylor draft.

Sean Taylor draft.

Right, Right.

So that takes us down.

We can mark another check in the calendar and you know, when we come on Tomorrow, we'll have 24 days left and take a guess what position that we'll be talking or what draft slot we'll be talking about tomorrow.

We'll let you guys do that for your homework.

And Ed, we will see you tomorrow.

I'll see you tomorrow, Darren.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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