From Icons to Busts: The Legacy of the NFL’s Third Draft Selection

The first pick is a sure thing and maybe the second pick, that's the consolation prize.

But the third overall pick, that's where the NFL draft gets interesting and weird.

It's the slot that gave us the dominance of Barry Sanders and the greatness of Larry Fitzgerald.

But it's also the graveyard of can't miss prospects who never saw a second contract.

From franchise altering icons to cautionary tales, we're diving into the chaotic high stakes history, the NFL's most unpredictable podium spot with our guest Ed Cleese who's joined us for all 32 of these great NFL draft history slots of the draft.

Now we're going into the pig pen once more.

Pigskin dispatch's 32 day journey.

This is the legacy of the pick number three in the NFL draft.

We have 32 straight days where we're talking about the selections of each slot.

32 Down to 1 to correspond with these days.

My co part in this whole endeavor has been Ed Cleese.

Ed, welcome back to the pig pen.

Hey Darren, how are you today?

I'm doing super, Ed.

We are right down to the wire here now.

People are starting to arrive in western Pennsylvania, get ready for the draft.

The probably the players are coming in, coaches, everybody's getting all set here and really pumped up for this great, great event coming up.

Schools are shut down, work is closed, all the roads are closed.

We're all the, all the bars are staying open later.

The kids that were supposed to be in school, they're gonna let them go to the bars.

I think that's what's happening.

We take football serious here in Pennsylvania apparently.

Yes, apparently.

Well, I'm sure it's going to be one heck of a fun week.

I'm sure it will be.

It's gonna, it could be a blast here coming up.

But we've had some blasts from, from the past as we've been talking about the history of these draft slots and today draft slot number three has some great history.

What's your take on the history?

I bet that you will pretty much remember every single one of these guys that was picked, even the ones that didn't turn out.

Because if you're kind of Tuning into the draft yearly, you know, usually know the guys that are going at the top.

So there's just so many recognizable names, good or bad, that it's going to be impossible for us to talk about even the majority of them.

There is recent years are been pretty good, pretty darn good.

There's.

There appears to be maybe one massive bust that's, that's getting close to being a real massive bust.

But Abdul Carter went there last year.

Drake May, Will Anderson, Derek Stingley.

We're talking about, you know, some really big time players in recent years.

There is a little bit of an ugly history for some, some busts.

So I think we need to talk about those too.

Okay, well let's get undust those and talk about them.

Yeah, we're going to talk about number five, the five biggest.

I actually didn't want to put him on here because he was taken by such a miserable franchise at a miserable time.

So it's hard to know with him his career record.

Unlike some of the bus quarterbacks, he actually did start a lot of games.

So his career record was 26 and 50.

But one thing was that looked at is like his year one and then year two kind of got worse, which is that's not the trend that we want.

He led the league in interceptions and he finished his career with more interceptions and touchdowns, which is not normal for that era of football.

You know, we saw that somewhat more in the past where the quarterbacks were throwing a lot of picks.

And then the other thing is he played for Miami, he played for Atlanta.

Unlike some of these other quarterbacks that had a nice second act, he didn't.

So he got a couple extra chances.

He never panned out and unfortunately just he, he makes our list.

Yeah, he had a lot of promise, a lot of hope.

People in Detroit were happy when they got him, but just never hit the limelight like they wanted.

Yes, and going on to number four.

Only played three total seasons.

His rookie year was okay.

And then the next year, Darren, the Colts gave up a first round pick for him.

And I would say if you're the Colts, man, is that not a giant red flag, that the team that just drafted this guy, number three, a year ago is willing to already trade him.

So for once, the Browns may have made a smart move.

They actually got a first back for Trent Richardson, who did nothing in Indianapolis.

He got demoted, then he got suspended, then he's out of the league.

And my friend Joe, the Browns fan, he put it pretty simple.

He said, it's pretty easy to summarize.

Trent, he did not like football, and that is problematic.

But I have a funny Browns twist to this story.

They got the first round pick back from the Colts.

Do you know who they took with that first round pick that they received from the Colts?

Was it that the Courtney Brown.

No, no, no.

It was Johnny Football.

Oh, Manzel.

Okay, so they.

They drafted Richardson, massive bust, thought they were the smart guys to get the first round pick, and then somehow took an even bigger bust with Johnny Football.

So leave it to the Browns.

Even when they get somebody to bail them out, there's a.

No, no, no, no, no.

We will not accept your gift.

We are going to blow it again.

So sorry, Joe.

Yeah.

All right, so who do you have next?

Number three is a guy that, you know.

Every now and then I said, we remember all these guys.

This was one where I had to, like, really squint.

I was like, oh, yeah.

He had five career starts, and it looks like he had almost as many drug suspensions.

So that's really.

His story was just problems on the off the field, didn't play a lot, didn't get many chances, and was see you later.

Yeah.

That doesn't mix well with a professional sports career.

No.

And this.

And this does.

A lot of these busts we talk about, Darren, you're noticing a trend, right?

There's a lot of guys we talk about that can't get themselves together off the field.

Trickles onto the field.

So again, we talked about a lot, man.

Do your homework, teams.

Yeah, and I'm glad the NFL is putting a lot more programs into their rookie symposiums and everything.

Get.

Try to get people educated to, you know, get out of the wrong crowds and rep bad habits and get into something more conducive to having a good career.

For sure.

All right, so who do you have next?

Number two is a guy that apparently is a great dude and probably worked hard and just did not work out, though.

Quarterback.

Another quarterback out of Oregon, but this one by the Bengals.

He had a 3 and 14 career record and 12 of those starts came in his second year.

So it's like the Bengals saw him in year two and it was like that's enough for, for everybody.

He only had this.

The other thing is crazy, that's still 17 starts, Darren.

He only had five touchdown passes.

Like how do you start 17 games in the NFL and only throw five touchdowns?

He had a 46% completion percentage.

I mean that's just terrible.

But the one, one of the worst thing about this is I am forever saddled with Achilles Smith because I made a comment prior to the draft to my friends that they still bring up to this day and make fun of me for.

I happen to be watching a pre draft analysis show and Joe Theisman was on and he was talking about Achilles Smith and how he had some of the best revolutions on his passes.

Like when he threw the ball it was more revolutions.

Probably just something silly that Joey T. Was saying.

But anyway, I was dumb enough to repeat it to my friends.

I was like, you know what, they're going to take that Achilles Smith guy.

He's awesome.

He has way more revolutions on his passes than the other quarterbacks that they might get taken.

And so for years, like he flamed out very quickly.

And so for years and years they made fun of me.

And to this day, whenever the draft comes around, people will text me or call me and say, oh, Ed, how many revolutions does this quarterback have on his passes?

Are you going to analyze this for us?

So thank you Joe Theisman and Achilles Smith for giving me something that has followed me for I guess 27 years now.

Yeah, well, you deserve to be made fun of.

So I'm glad that your buddies still ruby about it.

All right, so who do you have next on your list?

Number one?

I've got another story that's going to be kind of embarrassing for me, Darren.

You know, he went four and five with the Saints in his last year and he went 4 and 9 with the Redskins.

He had a 15 touchdown to 33 interception ratio.

But he wasn't done there because he also had 13 fumbles and a couple things.

He was, you know, the Redskins were.

That's the first time the Redskins were bad in my lifetime.

And the reward for that of course was they had the third pick in the draft and we had never had like a young exciting quarterback in the Gibbs era.

So I was excited.

We had just hired North Turner to this offensive guru and now we're going to get our quarterback.

I was so excited.

We.

They took Keith Schuler.

I went down to a local mall and I guess whatever the equivalent to the lids store was back then, you know, the hat store.

I had them custom make a hat.

It was a black hat with burgundy writing and it said Heath Shuler, incursive number five.

And so this was like my pride.

I got this right after the draft.

Okay.

And then I remember I was watching them in a preseason game and it was like, oh, no.

Oh, this doesn't look.

He looked Darren.

Like he could not play football.

Like, I think you should have wore this hat to this episode.

Well, I, I can't.

I'll tell you why.

About a year and a half, about a year and three quarters later, the end of the 95 season, they were, they were 18 point underdogs playing Dallas late in the year.

The the future champion Cowboys and I ritualistically discarded the hat with a fellow Redskin fan.

We did like a ceremony where we like threw it away, burned it.

We did something.

What's funny is right after that, the Redskins pulled off one of the greatest upsets in regular season history.

They beat Dallas in Dallas.

And that was like the one game where Shuler actually played pretty well.

It did not last.

So it was over for Heath.

Now I think Heath was just a miss by everybody.

Like overrated his athleticism, overrated his arm talent.

He just wasn't good.

I mean there's just.

No, I don't think it was like a work ethic thing or anything like that.

He just couldn't play.

He's had a very nice post career.

He's a politician.

He's won.

He's won elections in Tennessee.

So he's had a really nice.

I think everything turned out great for him, but it did not turn out great for me as a fan or my hat.

Okay, well, that was kind of brutal one.

But it's just fun to hear some things that you've done that you can get some ragging for.

So.

Yes, well, they believe me.

We, we can do a top 100 on that if you'd like someday.

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Hey.

Well, I think maybe we should get into some of our candidates that are had a much better careers.

Sure.

So I just had.

We're going to do our top five.

I really only had one real honorable mention because there's a lot of players that were good, but there weren't a whole lot that pushed my top five.

I didn't have a hard time getting to a top five on this one, but the one that I did struggle with was Cortez Kennedy.

He did not make my list.

He's in the hall of fame.

He was the.

This is a great stat.

So the Seahawks were horrible, but he was so good that everybody recognized him out there.

And, you know, he was that very traditional, more of a nose defensive tackle, but he still collapsed the pocket.

He was a great player.

Unfortunately, he died of heart failure at 48, which is really sad.

But he does have the gold jacket.

He was a pretty easy one, but he didn't quite make the top five.

Hmm.

Okay.

All right.

So who did make your top five?

Number five is.

You know, I've given the Browns a lot of a lot of heck, but I am going to put one of their guys here at number five.

It's really pretty simple, Darren.

He played 11 seasons he made 10 Pro Bowls.

He made six all pros.

He's on the all decade team and he played in zero playoff games.

So even when the Browns get it right, they kind of still get it wrong because they can't, you know, take advantage of this hall of Fame left tackle that was there.

But it does not take away from how good he was or his place in league history.

Yeah, he pretty.

Pretty good player, that's for sure.

All right, so who do you have up next?

This was kind of tough because number four is.

I didn't.

These three.

The next three guys.

Okay.

Really, the next four could probably go in any order and I just kind of landed.

He was the first great Texan football Texan at least.

Apologies to all the Cowboys out there.

He had a slightly slow start in a struggling offense and then he had five straight 100 plus catch seasons.

Say that again.

Five straight 100 plus catch seasons.

He is 11th all time in yards.

He is 12th all time in catches.

Now this is interesting because you remember him as a really tall, big, imposing guy, right.

He's not even in the top 50 though, of reception touchdowns, which is kind of weird.

Kind of.

Yeah, yeah.

Not even top 50.

So he wasn't getting the end zone much, but maybe it was because, not to disparage these guys too much, but he basically played his entire career with David Carr and Matt Schaub as his quarterbacks.

He did have one year, I think, with Fitzgerald there at the end.

Fitzpatrick.

I'm sorry, there at the end.

But Johnson was older by then, past his prime.

But, you know, Car was kind of a disappointment and Shaub was okay, you know, and so he never even came close to playing with like a Pro bowl level or better quarterback.

Only played in four playoff games.

In those four playoff games, he was really pretty productive.

Just very obvious that he was an all hall of Fame receiver and probably would have done even better had he been in a better situation.

Yeah, I think that's true of some other great receivers that have been on some bad teams.

Oh, okay.

So who do you have up after him?

I think I'm going to get flogged for this one.

People are gonna.

A lot of my friends especially are gonna try to jump through the.

The computer screens and I'll get blown up for this.

That face you made.

I got reasons, Darren.

So 10 seasons he was very healthy in those seasons.

He is fourth all time in yards.

He is 11th in touchdowns.

If you're going to ding him for anything at all.

And this is kind of pushing it is he did okay in this.

He played in six playoff games.

Did okay in his first three.

In his last three playoff games he got totally shut down, including one game where he had negative yards rushing.

So he didn't do much in like the big, the few big games he got in.

He doesn't, he wasn't much of a factor.

Hard to blame him for that, to be honest.

For example, they played the 91 NFC championship game in Washington.

That team was so much better than Detroit.

Sanders didn't stand a chance.

So I don't really ding him for that.

But the two guys that are ahead of him I think deserve to be ahead of him.

And I'll explain why it's no mark against Barry Sanders.

I would me personally, based on all these lists we see I probably have Barry just a tad lower on the all time great list than some do.

But we're talking maybe you've got, I've got Peyton ahead of him or Emmett, you, you know, and other people have Barry ahead of that or whatever.

It's.

He's a top five ish running back of all time.

So save your pitchforks for somebody else because it's just a little unfortunate that he's behind these two.

Okay, so who do you have in front of Barry Sanders?

Well, you're gonna like this one I think, Darren, because number two is Larry Fitzgerald.

I think, Darren, that Jerry Rice is the best receiver of all time.

And you can't argue that.

But if you were going to find a guy to argue it, I think it's Fitzgerald.

Okay.

If you're going to try to pull out something, I think he's your, your, your trick card.

He is second in all time in yards to Jerry Rice.

He is second all time in catches to Jerry Rice and he is sixth all time in touchdowns.

So he's got the numbers.

And then again you go to situation, right?

Arizona, not a great place, traditionally not a great organization.

So I think just watching the guy play, every time I watched him I was like, that's the best player on the field.

That's the best player on the field.

He made a game winning play against your team in the super bowl, his team just didn't have the ball last, so he did it all.

Larry Fitzgerald, I would rank him just slightly above Barry Sanders because he did it for quite a bit longer.

And he's a Western Pennsylvania guy.

Yes, Pitt, Panthers.

But he has kind of an interesting story because his father, I believe, was like an assistant coach for the Vikings, and he was the ball boy for helping out Chris Carter and, you know, some of those guys.

I think Randy Moss might have been there when he was doing some of this stuff.

And so he's learning from some of the best receivers, you know, in NFL history and must have took his lessons well because he did it really good in college and in pro football.

And a great dude, a great guy that played with a lot of joy and a lot of passion.

Very fun to watch.

Was very.

A lot of his career very buried out there in Arizona, you know, not a lot of national games, things like that, but, man, one of the best ever.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Okay, so who do you have number one?

Now, there's no sense in me trying to.

Because we've talked about this before with office alignment, there's no numbers I can use to compare, right?

There's no.

Well, this guy had so many catches, this guy had so many yards.

How do you rank this guy?

How do you possibly rank Anthony Munoz over Barry Sanders?

Right, because we're not talking about impact so much because then our list would be kind of all quarterbacks, you know, so we're just trying to find the best players that were the best at their position.

And the reason I have Munoz number one, Darren is because it's.

It's.

It's subjective and it's kind of analytical and sort of narrative.

But if you go.

There's a lot of.

There's been a lot of publications, articles written over time where they tried to figure out who the best office of lineman in NFL history is.

Anthony Munoz is number one or two on 100% of those lists.

So no matter what metric you try to find, whether you're trying to go backwards and do some next gen type stats, or you just do an oral history from people that played against them, Munoz is always number one.

Everybody says that dude is the best offensive tackle we've ever seen.

And to me there's just no reason to argue it.

I think Anthony Munoz is the best office of lineman probably in the history of the NFL.

I think he Kind of stands alone in that regard in a lot of ways.

So he's number one for me.

Okay.

I mean, you have some merit for what you're saying.

I don't know that I still have a problem with Barry Sanders being number three on that list because I think he was that special of a player that maybe that transcends some of the.

The Munos and Fitzgerald.

So you think he's better than Fitzgerald?

I. I think I would.

He was more important to the NFL as a player than, Than those other.

That's a different.

That's a different question, though.

So, So I, I think it.

Because of that, I would rank him higher than the other two.

But that's just my opinion.

That's what's fun about opinions or.

Well, and I certainly wouldn't argue that Barry Sanders is a much more important figure in the history of the NFL than Anthony Munoz.

No question.

Nobody, no kids today are dialing up YouTube highlights of Anthony Munoz the way they are Barry Sanders.

That's a fact.

And I mean, I'm not even going to get into the what if, you know, retiring early that whole thing because I was, you know, it's probably because of the, the teams he played on.

Right.

Just got tired of it.

But, you know, I think there's some legitimacy they, you know, he gets compared to Emmett Smith a lot because they played in the same time frame, I guess compared a little bit to.

To Walter Payton because they played in the same division for a period, short period of time.

But I think you put Barry Sanders on either the Bears or the Cowboys of the.

Their errors and you switch them up, I think it's a whole different scenario.

I think, you know, he's.

He may be the NFL leading rusher.

And I'm not sure I agree with that.

He had very good offensive lines.

They didn't have good teams.

They were not.

The lines are a bad organization, but they had very good off the lines.

Lomas Brown was great.

Kevin Glover was great.

They had Eric Andelsek for a lot of years.

Their offensive line was really good.

But who was.

I mean, you talked about it earlier.

Who was going to throw the ball for the Detroit.

Where was the.

Where was the threat on offense?

It was all defenses could just lean back and stack the box and okay, Barry Sanders is the offense.

There's not really much other threat that was going to happen.

I'm not trying to disparage.

We didn't have you know a Troy Aikman throwing and or you know Joe, some of the things that the Bears were doing, you know he didn't have have that or you know, great defense on the other side, you know it was all him.

The Detroit Lions were Barry Sanders and.

That could balance either way.

Because when we talked about the triplets in Dallas we also talked about how they could have almost hurt each other.

Meaning Michael Irvin's stats probably were hurt a little bit by the fact that they did everything else so well and vice versa.

So I think you can look at it either way.

And the fact that he retired early.

He did retire early.

So you know, I can't project.

Yeah, I'm sure he would have broken all the records.

Like I said, I'm not going to even put in that things because you could have the same argument about Jim Brown and because I see retired a little earlier because he's career very, very similar but he.

His impact when he did play was tremendous and he was, you know he's a video game before they were popular.

I do think he probably is the all time highlight dial upper in terms of going back.

I would say that he's probably number one on that list.

Okay.

We won't be a dead horse or okay any any further but all great players.

So.

So you know it's a, it's a fun topic to discuss here on that why we're here.

Right, Right.

Well this, you know the hall of Famers at number three are it unbelievably this is.

And this sort of almost gets into our draft.

Fact of the day there is more third pick hall of Famers than any other pick in that we've talked about which astounds me.

You know.

So you know, you know spoiler for the next two days.

But you know 15 of them that we've had, we've had some 13s.

We had a 14 in last few days.

Bobby Lane by the Bears in 48 and Doak Walker by the Brooklyn NYB it must be the Brooklyn Dodgers.

And you know how could that be?

And he.

So he backed up Otto Graham who we just talked about the other day.

The a year later the he was traded to the New York Yankees in the AAFC who sent him to the Baltimore Colts who were in the AAFC when the leagues finally merged.

There were some teams that pick we're allowed to pick up so many players but players on the roster at the time when the full the end up the Colts end up folding.

That's it's not the same Colts that we know today.

And Allah that we have ya tittle getting drafted again this time by The San Francisco 49ers who are also formerly an AAFC team.

So that's very confusing.

Yeah, very confusing.

But he was in two NFL drafts.

He was drafted twice, three years apart.

So that's pretty kind of unbelievable.

All of those guys you mentioned, Darren were better than Barry Sanders.

I'm just.

I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't.

Yesterday we could say that but I would say probably the the 40/ some years you players you talked about would probably be your top five.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

Everybody calm down.

Even you know, maybe Buckus and Bobby Lane.

I don't know if they would even hold a candle to get on there.

So that is that.

So just a real quick another added bonus draft stat of the day.

Of the 21 players with seven all pro appearances 20 went into rounds one or two.

So.

So that's no surprise to anybody there.

So just tells you the importance of the first and second round players picked and we're definitely into those.

You know we are getting right around the corner here.

Tomorrow we will talk about the second pick overall in the NFL Draft the first 90 drafts and have some more exciting players in ED.

I'd love to talk to you about that.

I'll see you tomorrow, Darren.

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