Draft Slot 28: A Treasure Trove or a Desolate Tomb?

Is draft slot 28 a gold mine or a graveyard?

We are officially 28 days away from the NFL draft and today we're digging into a position that has produced legendary hall of Famers, but also some of the strangest busts in league history.

This includes one player who inspired a fan to drive a station wagon through a stadium gate.

From 99 yard touchdowns to the NFL.

NFL's fastest man.

We're counting down the top five players ever taken at 28.

You won't believe who claimed the number one spot here now as Ed Cleese joins us on the Pigskin Dispatch podcast Draft Countdown.

Hey, Darren, we're rolling right along.

Yes, we definitely are.

You know, we've just covered the last four days of some great draft picks, some great players that have been drafted in the positions of 32 through 29, and tonight it's slot number 28.

So what are your thoughts on pick number 28?

Well, you know, it's a bit of a theme now is with recent picks, I think we're pretty underwhelming.

You know, I.

Look, if you go back from like the last 10 to 15 years, there's going to be a lot of names that absolutely do not stand out.

Maybe even a few quote unquote busts mixed in.

Other than that, almost nobody stood out after the last dozen years or so.

Yeah, well, yeah, the last dozen years kind of vacate vacant of really superstars, but some of them can still emerge.

We still got some time on some of these guys.

You never know.

Could have some sleepers in there.

But we have had three hall of Famers come out of this draft slot through the history of the NFL.

Most of them in recent history in the super bowl era, I believe on this one.

And we got some interesting things going on here.

So what do you want to talk about with the players of the last, you know, 50 years?

Yes.

And I'd say the top five here is pretty strong, but there's a lot of forgettable guys kind of in between.

There are a few honorable mentions.

I would say Mercedes Lewis, the tight end who has had an incredibly long career.

He's never had a big year, he's never really caught a bunch of passes or anything, but he's hung around for 20 years, so that's certainly worth mentioning.

Chris Gamble was a pretty good defensive back.

R.W.

mcWhorter is also a decent defensive back.

Eric Wood was a center for the Bills for a number of years and William Floyd the fullback and an old school fullback, probably most famously for the for the Niners back in the day.

Those were all number pick number 28's pick went at pick number 28 and then I found two that you know again at pick number 28.

And the reason he sticks out is because he actually had a very.

He didn't play on the O line very long but he's had a pretty big media career in, in the, in the.

On ESPN and doing some college football and NFL analysis and it was kind of funny.

So this tells you how down the rabbit hole I go.

I needed to find video of the touchdown.

As sad as that might be, it was like a tackle eligible type play.

So Trevor Matic was taken there and also a guy you're going to remember.

This kind of made me upset because we didn't have any quarterbacks taken at pick number 31, 29 or I'm sorry, yes, 31, 30 or 29 at all in the past 45 years and we almost made it through pick number 28.

But again, another guy that went on to some pretty big things in the media after his career was over.

And if I told you, if I, if I mentioned to you this station wagon incident, do you know what I'm talking about?

The station wagon incident?

No, I'm not.

I don't know that one.

This is probably worth pointing out I guess a disgruntled Steelers fan in the mid, I think it said it was like 85 somewhere around in there was so frustrated he what he claimed by Mark Malone's performance.

He drove his car through the gates at Three River Stadium and all the way into the stadium itself was driving through the concourse and crashed, eventually ran down on the field and as the report said that he was kicking imaginary field goals on the field before he was arrested.

And he blamed it all on Mark

Malone, that doggone Mark Malone.

But you know, Mark Malone had a long standing Steelers record that you really wouldn't think too much about.

And it was.

He caught the longest pass in Steelers history as a quarterback.

There was a Monday Night Football game.

I can remember watching this and I was probably a young teenager at the time.

Monday Night Football, the Steelers had or I think they're playing Seattle and Seattle was a fairly new team then and maybe I'm wrong on the team, but I think it was Seattle.

But anyway, they're playing.

The Steelers are on like the one yard line.

Bradshaw's in there.

But they have.

The receiving core is just like getting destroyed.

You know, they're, everybody's hurt.

Swan and Stallworth are out and so they have to bring Mark Malone in the backup quarterback to play receiver.

That's how bad they were.

But the guy's a great athlete.

He catches a pass and takes it 99 yards for a touchdown.

And it was a long standing record for the Steelers.

I believe it got broken just a few years ago or maybe it's still standing or maybe it just tied the record.

But yeah, he rabbit hole for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's almost as bad as watching a Patriots jets game from 91.

Yeah, really.

And he also, he also had a heck of a mustache game.

Oh yeah.

He was like the Tom Selleck of the NFL at the time.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

But he was, he was a big dude.

He made it.

He made it.

So that's the only quarterback taken in the last 45 years at pick number 28, 29, 30 or 31.

That's crazy to me.

Yeah, that definitely is.

I guess there's.

I have, I see one back in the 50s, but I've Dale Samuels, which I don't think he did much of anything, but.

Yeah, so.

In that late 70s, they, there was only 28 teams in the league.

They're picking 28.

But the Steelers only had three of those picks.

So I'M not sure what.

They must have traded one off or.

Or something, because.

But they.

Not only they get Mark Malone the year before that, they got Greg Hawthorne, was a pretty decent running back for him.

Played some spot duty for them.

He's almost like the Dwayne Washington of his era.

Gigantic human being.

It just caught everything.

And I can remember back in when, when he was playing, there was a toy called the Weebles, and they thing that they would have the commercial on, the Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

That's what was Benny Cunningham.

People would bounce off this dude, and the only way you got him down is that you pushed him out of bounds.

So he was.

He was a great tight end.

Nice, Nice.

Yeah, they were.

They were picking 28th a lot back then.

Yeah, that's for sure.

All right, so what do you want

to give us your top five?

I'm very excited about my top two here.

I'm sure you are.

Yeah.

But we'll start with number five.

And this one kind of surprised me a little bit.

In my mind's eye, I don't remember a particularly remarkable career, but when you dig into it, I'd say it's a better career than I thought.

He had over 8,000 career yards rushing.

He's the second leading rusher in Saints history behind Alvin Kamara.

So that's ahead of, like, Deuce McAllister and Dalton Hilliard, Chuck Muncie and a couple of other pretty good Saints running backs over the years.

He had a really good year with the Ravens, too, a little bit later in his career.

And he was the opposite of most running backs.

That's what really stuck out to me, because running back is a ticking time bomb position.

Right.

The miles pile up fast, and, you know, by the time you're in your fourth or fifth year, you're already kind of old and teams are looking to move on.

He didn't get going until, like, his fourth or fifth year and kind of had a really nice career in the middle and then a decent into it.

Well, I most certainly do because I have a cheat sheet in front of me.

It is Mark Ingram, his father.

And the son was the better player.

Yeah, that's, that's really, you know, when you talk about chip off the old block, it was a better chip for.

At least for the NFL.

A blue chip.

Yeah, I guess you could call it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so moving on to number four.

Well, I got one, one thing to say, you know, let's talk about Ingram sort of being a little bit forgettable at New Orleans.

Remember they had sort of that three headed monster in the backfield when he was there.

I believe Sprouls was there at the time.

Ingram.

And I'm trying to think who the other back was.

Was Reggie Bush still there?

I can't remember.

Yeah, I think Reggie Bush was there.

So.

Yeah, so he, you know, he might have shadows a little bit because you have these, you know, different styles of backs and they used all the tools at New Orleans back then.

Yeah.

So that he kind of, that was kind of surprising when I looked at it.

He played 14 years.

His best years were in Denver.

He did win the super bowl within those two years.

He was that.

He drafted in 97.

So he was on the 97 and the 98 Bronco championship teams.

He was, he was sort of more of a role player than.

He wasn't playing a ton at that time.

His best year was in 99, the year after they won the super bowl.

He had 13 sacks and he was a first team all Pro, which as we've talked about is sort of like the be all, end all for me when it comes to accolades in the league.

If you know that almost all pro teams first or second, that really stands out.

And some people consider him to be a little bit of a sneaky hall of Fame candidate, a Canton guy.

You know, for me, he's probably just on the outside looking in there probably wasn't quite enough dominance, but he was a very good player for quite a long time.

Yeah, definitely a solid pick there to take.

And then, and then moving on to number three, we have a guy that's probably going to get in the hall of Fame, I think, and that is Joe Staley.

And he kind of, his arrival kind of coincided a little bit with a bit of their resurgence where they've started to Become much more competitive.

You know, he made that.

We don't, you know, especially now, I don't really want to use the Pro bowl as any kind of marker.

But back, you know, that probably only started the last five to 10 years.

Prior to that, it was a decent award to get.

So he did make the Pro bowl six out of seven years and he was on the All Pro second team two years in a row.

The other thing I really liked is for five straight seasons in the middle of his career, he did not miss a game and he was in the.

Yeah.

So he made the top 50 in the hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility this past year, which is.

That usually puts you as a pretty strong candidate.

Not sure if he'll ever get in.

I do think there are some linemen out there that are much, much older and probably more deserving.

But he's going to be a guy that's on the list for quite a while.

Great career.

Yeah, that most definitely, definitely was a great player.

So who do you have above him?

So these are easy.

Now which way I ranked them is not easy.

And I have a feeling that I'm going to have.

Anybody from Tampa is listening, they're going to have some problems with this.

We there's just total stud, like awesome.

One of the best linebackers of all time.

This is crazy.

Darren, you hear me say he played 14 years, right?

How many games did he miss?

Wasn't it like one or two games?

I think zero.

Zero.

Oh, okay.

00 games missed in a Hall of Fame 14 year career.

So he was the best player on a Super bowl winning team.

He made nine straight All Pro teams, which is insane.

He had 25 interceptions as a linebacker.

And I think he is the best buccaneer of all time.

I don't even know if that's really that debatable, to be honest.

I don't really think.

I mean there's.

I can't think of anybody better.

Yeah, you know, Warren Snapp was great.

There's some other guys that are, you know, the Sellman was a Hall of Famer for the Bucks, you know, but there's.

Mike Evans is a, is a great, is a great buccaneer.

Right.

But.

But none of them get to the level of stature of Derek Brooks.

And I also think he's in the argument for possibly one of the five to top 10 linebackers of all time.

So we're talking about a home run.

You can't do any better with the 28th pick in the draft than this.

Although maybe you can do one better.

Yeah, I think probably you would argue with that yourself, but yeah.

So you.

I, I have a pretty good idea who you're going to pick at this and that's.

What are your heroes.

So who's number one?

Definitely one of my heroes.

Differentiating him between Brooks was very difficult.

Brooks definitely had more accolades in his career.

Daryl Green only made three All Pro teams throughout his career.

He did have 54 interceptions, which is amazing.

The reason that I put Green above Brooks is I green play for 26 seasons in the NFL.

20 years.

He was also.

He didn't.

He missed some games, but he was very durable.

He didn't miss many.

And he played a position at corner that's you could argue is requires more athleticism and is going to wear you out faster than a lot of other positions.

And he made an all pro team in.

So that was about 14, 15 years into his career.

He was still one of the best corners in the league.

Little bit of a drop off at the end.

And also he probably has one of the most iconic plays in Redskins history.

The kind of the famous NFL films of him hurdling the guy that, you know, it was a tie game at that point late in the game and he took it back to the touchdown.

Gibbs always put him back there for the big punt returns.

So Green was a lockdown corner, like a lot of the good lockdown corner and he was a playmaker.

That is not something we've seen a lot in the NFL.

Some of the more locked down guys just, they do such a good job locking down that they don't get their hands on the ball that often.

Green did both and he did it for 20 years and he is the number one player ever taken at number 28.

And he was number 28.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't disagree with you at all on that.

I think over the span of night, the 90 years of drafts, I think he's probably the best player that's a slot number 28.

We just celebrated his birthday on Pigskin Dispatch, you know, not too long ago.

And one of the things that amazed me is when he was, you know, playing, he played 20 years, so he's playing well into his late 30s.

He was still the fastest man in the National Football League.

And at like 35, 36, there's stories of him racing rookies that would come on that are, you know, the young buck coming in saying I think I'm faster than you old man.

And he would just smoke them, you know, in his late 30s.

That's pretty impressive.

In the old days, Darren, you know, we didn't have quite the wall to wall year round NFL coverage.

So in the summer I'd always be kind of like dying for something NFL.

And they always put on that NFL's fastest man competition sometime in the summer.

You know, they probably pre recorded it or whatever.

And I would look forward to that so much every year rooting for Green and he didn't need my help because he wanted every year.

And yeah, he was, I think he was really one of the fastest athletes in the world.

Like you said, you know the famous, his first game ever Monday Night Football at RFK against Dallas, he had the famous play where he took, where he chased down Tony Dorsett all the way down the sideline.

His first game ever in the NFL and then in his last game ever in the NFL he took an end around on a punt return.

Didn't go to the house, but he ran it for like 40 yards, something like that.

So just, just an amazing, an amazing player, a good leader, a good community guy and one of my all time favorites.

Yeah, so we mentioned at the top that there was three hall of Famers select at 28.

Bobby Dillon of the Green Bay packers defensive back was drafted in the number 28 slot which was a third round pick back then made the hall of Fame out of Texas and that is, you know how we have that.

Also our draft most popular draft position in slot 28 is by far the defensive back position.

We just talked about two that are in the hall of Fame that were DBs.

They were far and away with 14 of the 90 drafts picking at DB.

Next closest was defensive line which was like 10 or 11.

And we'll have that graphic up on the screen here that you can see where some of the other positions came out.

Also we want to mention our draft stat of the day.

Are you ready to be amazed?

Ed?

I'm ready.

I'm always ready for your amazing stats.

Okay, well consecutive number one picks is our theme today and USC and Oklahoma are the only programs to ever produce the number one overall pick in back to back years.

So figured you would get a kick out of that with the Sooners.

A lot of Sooner talk on this pot.

I like it.

Yeah, try to get a couple of days in a row here for you right so.

See you tomorrow.

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

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics.

Pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports

History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear

of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.