Who is Mr. Irrelevant anyway?

I’m sure that most of us here already know the answer to this question.  For anyone who doesn’t, Mr. Irrelevant is the dubious title that is bestowed upon the one lucky fellow who his selected with the final pick in each year’s NFL draft.  Since the Chiefs were awarded this year’s final pick, a couple questions came to mind.

I was curious to see if the Chiefs had ever chosen Mr. Irrelevant before.  As it turns out, they have.  In 1970 they selected a DB our of Alcorn A&M by the name of Rayford Jenkins.  But of course, Primetime07 already stole my thunder here.

I also wanted to see who else had been chosen as Mr. Irrelevant and if any of them had gone on to transcend their lofty title as a well known player in the NFL.  Sadly, I have to admit that I didn’t recognize a single name on the list.  While this could mean that the title of Mr. Irrelevant is appropriate and nobody who’s been selected with the final pick has ever amounted to a hill of beans as a player, the more likely scenario is that my knowledge of football history is truly underwhelming and I don’t have a clue.  :-/  I figured I’d compile the list and let my AP brethren get us all up to speed.

Before I do that, there were a couple of interesting tidbits that I found along the way.  First off, it appears that the draft has really evolved over the years.  When you consider that there were fewer teams in the league and when you back to say, 1967, Mr. Irrelevant was taken with the 445th pick.  Look at 1976 which ended at pick #487.  Compare that with last year’s Mr. Irrelevant who was taken at #255. Wow!  Seems like the draft would have lasted a week!

A couple of other curious items that I was unaware of were two old-school field positions.  Going back to 1963 and beyond there were players listed at positions “B” and “E.”  I have no idea what they are and the little bit of Google research that I had time to do came up fruitless.  I was hoping one of you geniuses could enlighten those of us who aren't in the know.

Anyway, here’s the history of Mr. Irrelevant: