Unveiling the Legacy of the Sixth Pick in NFL Draft History

It's the pivot point of the top 10, the sixth overall pick in the NFL draft, a slot where superstars are born and franchises are forever altered.

Historically, the number six selection has delivered some of the most iconic names in NFL archives, from the elite playmakers to the cornerstone offensive tackles.

But what makes this specific draft position so unpredictable?

We're sitting down with Ed Cleese to pull back the curtain on the NFL draft history of, of the sixth pick.

And we're talking draft day steals, legendary careers and the what ifs that still haunt front offices today.

Here's as promised in the pig pen.

Pigskin dispatches.

32 Days cycle through the NFL Drafts, first round picks, and Ed Cleese joins us now.

Welcome, everybody.

We are six days out from the NFL draft and we are covering the history of the first 90 drafts by talking about the legendary players, the busts and some of the great significant picks picked at number six.

Today I'm joined by Ed Cleese.

Ed, welcome back to the Pig.

Ben.

Hey, Darren, how are you?

Less than a week.

Less than a week.

Six days.

This is all my senses.

My fingers are tingling and toes are tingling.

I'm ready to go here and see who's going to be our next NFL stars and what teams they'll be playing on.

I want to get that checked out.

I want to get that checked out.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe I get a little bit too excited about things, but it's, it's the closest thing for football season, the NFL season anyway, here in the spring, one of the highlights of the spring.

But before we do that, let's talk about the history of this number six spot in the NFL draft.

And what do you have to say about this?

Sure, this one was pretty good.

It had.

There's plenty of hall of Famers and then there's a lot of guys that I think are on the edge either that got in that I'm not quite sure deserve it, or haven't gotten in yet and have a good argument.

So there's a lot of guys kind of in that debate group.

It wasn't quite the slam dunk I expected.

I thought there'd be a lot more guys that were like, oh, stamp them, stamp them, stamp them.

And this was a little bit more.

You could use Sway either way.

But in recent years, I say it's been pretty promising.

We have.

Ashton Genti was taken here last year.

Malik Neighbors, Justin Herbert, Daniel Jones, Quentin Nelson, who's a fantastic offensive lineman for the Colts.

They really hit on that one which we talked about.

Before you're going to take an interior offensive lineman with the sixth pick in the draft, you better hit.

And they did.

It has not been very pretty for quarterbacks, and that seems to be a little bit of a trend that we've talked about.

You know, like, I wouldn't say a bust, but disappointing.

Two guys that really never really played and when they did, that was.

It was not good.

Rich Campbell was taken sixth overall from Cal by the Packers.

Zero NFL starts and it doesn't.

And he wasn't injured.

It sounds like he kind of got to camp and they're like, this guy's got a noodle arm.

And there was a little bit of a debate.

I guess the office of coordinator at the time didn't want to play him.

He thought he needed some more coaching.

Like the.

Campbell thought he needed some more like one on one coaching that he wasn't getting.

Never.

He threw 68 career passes.

He does in a very funny kind of twist.

Again, you can find it on YouTube.

I love the YouTube rabbit holes he had.

So he brought them back and has a long touchdown pass to beat the Bears in Soldier Field.

So he had like that one shining moment.

He.

He's got that.

But otherwise was a pretty big bust.

Gosh, I. I don't remember him playing for the Bears because I'm sitting here thinking 84 and 85.

The Bears had like, you know, Flutie and.

Well, no, he played.

He was a Packer.

Oh, he's a Packer.

Okay.

Okay.

Come back against the Bears.

Okay.

The packers beat the Bear.

Okay, I gotcha.

Okay.

Yes, he was a Packer and they're.

The reason you don't remember him is because he had zero career starts.

I guess so.

Was that.

Was that like the era of like Magikowski was the.

Yeah, he was later late 80s.

The.

The draft wasn't a big deal.

It wasn't a TV show yet, you know, so it wasn't like leading up to it, you had all of this chatter about Rich Campbell and where he might go.

So if you didn't watch Cal football, you may not have any idea really who he was.

You probably saw it in the newspaper the next day that the packers took this quarterback until he forgot about it the next day.

So, you know, there wasn't quite the scrutiny that we have today to where there are no surprises, you know, with guys that are taken.

Yeah, it's.

The ESPN world was just starting to come around at that time, so.

But those weren't the, Those weren't the only busts.

And these have a very unfortunate theme to them, the ones I'm going to rattle off now.

He was taken by the Chargers.

He's a defensive back.

He immediately got into a contract holdout, didn't sign, didn't play in the NFL, went to Memphis, played in the usfl.

I guess the Chargers got exasperated with him, wound up trading him to the Packers.

He played a couple years for the packers.

Nothing stood out.

He got in some major legal trouble, criminal stuff.

Wound up in jail and never played again.

And then really, and just like, gosh, this is just.

You'll remember this.

One of the best college running backs I've ever seen.

Lawrence Phillips was insanely good.

He was a legendary college running back and a guy that just jumped off the page.

I mean, the TV screen.

He was incredible.

They had Jerome Bettis, traded him to the Steelers because they wanted Phillips instead.

Phillips had some trouble in college that the Rams overlooked and they should not have because we will not get into this like the details, but his off field troubles were just off the charts.

Like he just could not stay right at all.

There were so many incidents, so many different incidents.

He wound up in jail.

He went up dying in jail.

So just a very tragic, Sad, sad, just a terrible thing.

To this day, a lot of the coaches that either coached with him, played with them.

Players said he was the guy.

Like he was Walter Payton, he was Adrian Peterson, he was that good.

And just could not escape his problems and demons, which is a shame for sure.

Yeah, tragic.

Yep.

And there's.

And then himself got into some serious sons though.

Junior Junior Junior Correct.

Yes.

Kellen Winslow Jr.

So that didn't work.

Wind up very, very good.

And then this guy did not get in this kind of trouble.

These other guys did.

But he certainly had his share of of issues as well.

And then he went to the the Bengals of that era and looked like a good guy compared to Right, Exactly.

He was kind of all over the place too.

So there's a little bit of a history of teams taking guys that didn't do what they needed to do outside the lines that really cost them big in their careers.

Let's take a break for a moment to tell you about a new product so that you can take and put your football knowledge that we feed you each and every day to the test.

It is the Pigskin trivia drive on pigskindispatch.com you're the quarterback.

You call the shots, choose your play, grind it out with a run, pick up steady gains on a short pass, or risk it all with a long pass for a massive chunk of yardage.

This isn't just a quiz, it's a march for glory.

It's the Pigskin Trivia Drive.

Remember when the huddle's over, when you picked your play, the faster you answer, the more yards you gain.

Hesitation is the enemy of the end zone.

Keep those chains moving.

Cross that yellow line to reset your downs and earn a critical audible.

Stuck on a tough defensive look.

Use those audibles to strip away two wrong answers and find your open receiver.

1.

Watch the play clock.

You've got just 25 seconds to make the read take too long and it's a five yard penalty for delay a game.

It's game action in this stadium.

Your brain is the engine, but the clock is the opponent.

The mission is simple.

Score as many touchdowns as possible in five minutes, and when the clock hits zero, your score hits the global leaderboard.

Are you a bench warmer or a Hall of Famer?

Step up to the line.

Your drive starts now on pigskindispatch.com, the trivia drive.

Don't let your football history knowledge go to waste.

Try the Pigskin trivia drive on pigskindispatch.com and now let's get back into our program.

However, we have some good honorable mentions as well.

Kevin Carter stands out to me as a defensive lineman for the Rams.

In 95, the Rams had this pick four out of five years, which is kind of strange.

And they kind of did it all.

They took Kevin Carter, who was a really nice player.

They took Lawrence Phillips, who we just mentioned.

They took Grant Winstrom, who was a okay player, pretty, you know, another really good college player who was pretty good in the NFL.

And then they have another guy they took that we're going to talk about in a little bit.

That was a big hit.

He was a beast.

He couldn't stay healthy, but he was a beast.

And he sticks out, Darren, because I think he's the first or only did not go to college.

No college football.

He was ineligible to play college football, I think due to academics.

And he.

Instead of like going the community college route or whatever, he played semi pro football.

He made $5 an hour doing that.

He did it so well that he was taken sixth overall in the NFL draft as a semi pro football player and then had a really pretty nice career.

A pretty.

A pretty nice career.

He's like.

Again, he was.

He played in the NFC east back in the Cardinals where we played the Redskins.

Played him twice a year.

He was a problem.

He was a.

He was a really nice player.

He just couldn't quite stay on the field enough.

But that was a really good player.

And then we can really get into this one because my last two cuts are players that have a lot of passion about.

They played the same position in similar eras.

So that's Brown as an offensive tackle taken by the Lions and Jimbo Covert taken.

Also an off the tackle taken by the Bears.

So same division.

Jimbo is in the hall of Fame, Lomas Brown is not.

Darren, that should be reversed.

I don't.

I've never been able to quite figure out why Jimbo Covert is in the hall of Fame and guys like Joe Jacoby and Lomas Brown are not.

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Get this.

Lomas Brown played in 151 more games than Jimbo Cover did.

151 More games.

Brown had seven Pro Bowls versus Covert's three.

He had three all pros versus coverts, two.

I think Covert played eight years in the NFL and had two Pro Bowls.

I'm sure he was.

He was a good player.

I mean, there's no doubt he was a good player.

I think maybe the 85 bears thing pushed him over.

It's a ring.

The ring.

But I mean, you know, I guess, you know, but I mean, because, you know, we all remember all the guys on that 85 Bears team so much, they all stand out.

It's almost like, well, we need to put somebody else in the hall of Fame besides Walter Payton from the 85 Bears offense.

Let's put in covert.

But if you stack up covert against other offensive linemen who are not in the hall of Fame, man, that's a long, long list of guys with arguments.

So Jimbo did not make my top five.

Lomas Brown didn't either, but I would actually have.

Brown was my last cut.

Okay.

I mean, I mean, it's a different, different topic for a different day, but I think maybe the hall of Fame committees are getting cleaned up here.

They've had some recent issues with some other things, but they're getting, not just having the reporters and journalists do it, but they're having some former players and coaches and historians doing it.

Some people that I know very well that are on these committees and trying to help out.

So I'm available if you want to give them my number.

Okay, I certainly will.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll be looking for me for advice on there.

Yeah, I will take their call.

I'm sure you will.

All right, well, who do you have in your top five?

You know, I actually, I would, I, I hate, I don't want to use the word overrated for a guy that I'm putting in my top five, but I, I, there's a few things about him that I think, you know, could push back a little bit.

He was a defense, he played inside a lot.

He wasn't like your, your traditional, like edge rusher, but he was listed as a defensive end and he never, he wasn't a big sack guy.

So for me, if, like, you play on the edge, you know, I'd like to see a few more sacks.

He did make three straight first team all pros, and he made them during that run of three Super Bowls in four years for the first iteration of the Brady Patriots.

And that is important.

Right.

Well, remember, he's a D end and a 34 and a Belichick 3 4.

So he's more of a 5 technique than he is, you know, because the outside linebackers are more your pass rushers.

And, and that's fair.

And that's fair.

And he made five straight Pro Bowls, like a three straight all pro teams.

He was very, very good.

So that is the first three Super Bowls.

So he was on those awesome, awesome teams.

And he was the best player on the defense, maybe Ty Law, you know, depending on who you would rank.

And he didn't play too bad when he went to the Raiders either.

No, not at all.

He made a couple Pro bowl and they moved him inside there.

He played more of a traditional defensive tackle position with the Raiders.

So while I wouldn't stack him up against maybe, you know, some of the other historic interior edge guys, whatever, however you wanted to define him, really awesome player, a fantastic pick at number six.

And I have no problem with him being in Canton.

Yeah, not a problem at all.

Good, good pick.

Be a number five too.

So who do you have above him?

Number four is a guy that's not in Canton, but I think will be.

Thirteen seasons in the league.

He.

His last four were kind of pedestrian and he kind of had that like slow slide.

Sometimes we see it just end.

He went from 51 catches to 31 catches to 24 catches to 11 catches in his last four years with the Falcons, Titans, Bucks and Eagles.

So he kind of fizzled out late in his career.

But in the nine seasons prior to that, he was.

Well, he was awesome.

He.

And that was the.

The first of two straight first team all pros.

And then three years later, he led the league in yards receiving.

Again.

He has not only just, we saw, we talk about over a thousand yards.

He had 66 career touchdowns.

And then in the NFC championship game, you know, again, he didn't plan a ton of playoff games, but in the NFC championship game that they won the year they went to super bowl, he had nine catches for 180 yards and two touchdowns.

So, you know, he showed up big in a big moment.

He was, he was on the team, of course, that blew the lead in the Super Bowl.

Had the catch on the sideline that looked like they would end it.

And then they had that, the sack that knocked him out of field goal range and the rest is history.

But Julio was a great player, a great receiver, fun to watch and I think someday he will be enshrined.

Yeah, but you never know.

Maybe if he has a couple more good seasons here, you know, I know he's near the.

No, he's done.

He's done.

Really done.

Oh, he.

I think he's been two years out now.

Oh, okay.

I thought he played last year.

No, he's done.

Oh, okay.

All right.

We'll have to see then.

Yep.

Okay.

Who do you have next?

We have a guy that does have a gold jacket.

An offensive tackle by the Seahawks all 13 years in Seattle.

Very durable.

Four first team all pros, nine Pro Bowls.

And.

And kind of what puts him over the top for me a little bit is we talk about the premium position.

So left tackle is a premium position.

It's a hard position to maintain because you're going against the other team's dominant edge rusher for 13 years.

He did it.

He did it extremely well.

And so if you have the sixth pick in the draft and you draft a left tackle and 13 years later, he's still playing for you, and he goes to the hall of Fame.

That's an A plus.

So it's swinging.

A plus player, A plus pick.

You can't do any better than that.

Yeah, most definitely.

Great, great player.

Very dominant on the line.

All right, who do you have above him?

All right, this is the one that might.

You might push back on.

That's Torrey Holt, wide receiver for the Rams.

Ten years with the Rams.

He had a fine rookie year.

He had 20 catches in the playoffs and in the super bowl, he had seven catches for 109 yards and a touchdown in a game, as you well remember, was very close, and they needed every point they could get.

He was kind of like the best player in that game.

Warner won the mvp.

Fine.

You know, no real argument with that.

But Holt probably would have been next in line.

As a rookie, he led the league, and he led the league in yard yards receiving twice.

He led the leading catches once.

He had 74 career touchdowns, which is more than Julio Jones we just talked about.

He's top 17 all time.

And receiving yards, which is ahead of many, many, many hall of Famers.

I put him side by side with Julio, both in statistics and sort of my own memory, and I think Holt's just a little bit better.

So a guy that both guys, I think, are gonna.

Well, I think Julio is going to get there, and I think Holt should be there now.

He's been passed over a lot now.

So there he's no longer thinking like, oh, he'll get in, he'll get in.

He may not, but I think he should.

And it boils down a little bit to eye test for me.

He played on a really, really memorable iconic offense.

He was a major, major part of it.

He was very, very good in big games.

They had an offense where they spread the wealth a lot with Isaac Bruce, who's in the hall of Fame, Marshall Faulk, they had a lot of weapons.

So he was probably never going to have, you know, 120 catches in a season with the way they ran the offense.

But I thought he was awesome.

I thought he was great player.

I thought he was always a little bit underrated.

I thought he was really right there with Isaac Bruce maybe even sometimes in some of those years, maybe a little bit better.

And a guy that I hope someday gets in the hall of Fame.

Yeah, I think he's almost in the sort of the same boat that maybe Reggie Wayne is because, you know, his with Marvin Harrison where you have Isaac Bruce and you know, the guy that was there first and had the impact first gets the gold jacket first, you know, even though they had great careers after those other two players left and.

Or the Reggie Wayne comparison, that's excellent.

That's a great comparison.

That.

There's a really parallel comp there.

That's good.

Good work, Darren.

Oh, thanks.

I was up all night doing that one.

That was great.

All right, so who do you have above him?

17 Years in the league, first of all, which is great, and 16 of those with the Raiders.

I think he ended with a year in Tampa.

Kind of nondescript season in Tampa.

7Th all time in yards, 11th all time in touchdowns.

Now what I didn't understand is, and I didn't quite get an answer for this, he had a nice rookie year and then in years two through four, he only had two starts even though he played in some games.

So I don't know what was going on there.

I think they were using him for a returner because he was, I guess.

Well, that was a mistake.

Yeah, because once they finally started starting him again, he went to.

He had nine straight 1,000 yard seasons.

And then his catches.

Darren, listen, this consistency, this is all in a row.

89, 90, 104, 81, 90, 76, 91, 81, 80 And 100 career touchdowns receiving.

Then you layer in he played that late 80s to the like late 90s was.

I don't want to call it the dead ball era of the NFL.

But it.

It wasn't the air it out that we saw in like some of the 70s and 80s.

We had gotten back to a little more of a grind.

We had think we had defenses changing, we had some zone.

You know, there was a lot of.

It was a little bit of a down error in quarterbacks, so you didn't have some of the huge numbers of receiving in the 90s, which is sort of his heyday.

And he didn't play with great quarterbacks or great teams.

But talk about a constant.

You know, he was always in that late window game, you know, at first the Coliseum and then, well, I guess the Coliseum in both places, LA and then Oakland.

But you know, those old LA games, you know, it'd be like Charlie Davis on the call with, you know, Randy Cross or, you know, Merlin Olson and Bob or Dick Enberg, something like that.

Chargers and the Raiders and it's Sonny and, you know, Tim Brown's just kind of there all the time.

All the time, all the time.

And the guy just kept producing and producing and producing and producing.

I can only imagine what he would have done with maybe a little bit of a better setup on an offense.

But awesome player, great hall of Fame receiver.

What can you say?

Yeah, and he's a Notre Dame guy, so Golden Dome Heisman Trophy winner.

Yes.

So a rare Heisman Trophy winner that equaled his college output in the NFL, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Great, great selection here.

No, no complaints at all of that.

So who do you have next?

Nobody, because he's number one.

Oh, that was number one.

Okay.

I had one of my fingers under something, I guess.

I guess.

All right, well, that is a great selection here.

You know, you talked about quite a few hall of Famers in your thing.

This is by far the biggest bonanza we've talked about in hall of Famers and our journey here in our last 20 some days, because there has been 13 hall of Famers so far that we've been selected.

Number six.

You talked about many of them there.

We'll go right back in order here.

And I've skipped over Floyd Little taken by Denver in 67.

And John Riggins taken by the New York Jets.

So we don't think of him too much as a Jet, but, you know, more of a Redskin.

But don't even mention the Jets.

He had a great career with the jets too.

I can't even imagine who was taking the first five before him.

But you know, you talked earlier about quarterbacks not hitting at this.

Well, we do have a couple that did ya tittle.

1948 Taken by the Detroit Lions, but the San Francisco 49ers also took him in the rival league, the AAFC.

He played for the 49ers first.

Hall of Fame thing.

And not a center, but guy that snapped the ball to him.

So back to back hall of Famers in the first two drafts, number six spot.

So as a mouthful, there's quite a few there and it takes us, you set us up a little bit for this segue for our draft data day.

But I'm sorry, but I'm forgetting something.

Our most popular position.

You talked about a lot of defenders.

Well, offensive tackle has been the most popular position taken at the number six spot with our.

I'm sorry, there's 14 hall of Famers.

I've said 13 earlier.

But you talked about Eric Swan being sort of a more experienced player, didn't go to college, but he wasn't the oldest player taken.

We have three players that were taken that were much older than he is.

The oldest is kicker Ove Johanneson from Abilene.

But we, we talked a couple days ago about, you know, those early 70s.

They had, you know, 12 rounds, I think, and in the late 70s, but you know, Ove played two games, went two and six on all of his kicks.

So he wasn't.

Not NFL stood for, not for long for him.

But in the modern era, we have a couple players that weren't 29, but they were close.

The Chris Winkey was 28 years and 264 days.

He was playing major league baseball after he won the Heisman Trophy at Florida State.

And Brandon Whedon was 28 years and 195 days taken by the Cleveland Browns in the first round.

So he is the oldest first round draft pick taken by Cleveland Browns.

And I forget Wheaton play.

I think he played Texas Tech if I'm not mistaken.

I'm sorry, Oklahoma State.

Okay, okay.

I know it was one of the Big 12 teams.

Okay.

So yeah.

So some in other words, don't take old guys.

Yeah, old guys at 28 and 29.

If I could only be 28, 29, half my age right now.

So I have a prediction for this upcoming draft.

No 29 year old Swedes will be taken.

Well, you never know.

You never know.

Well now, now they would be the international player probably they wouldn't need to go in a draft do that.

Well, that wraps up our day six talk.

And you know, we have five more days coming up and there are some doozies coming up this day.

Number six, we had some stars.

Just wait till you hear.

We're going to be talking about tomorrow day five.

Ed, we'll talk to you then.

We'll 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 Big Skin 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 yesterday.

Of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.