Off-Season Paradebulation Part II: Mockity Mock Mock & Scott Pioli

Or "Piolileo Piolilei, Renaissance Man."

Orrrr, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love 'In Pioli We Trust.'

In what is hopefully the second installment of a week-long series, Christiane Amanpour style, we will try to help ease the suffering of Chiefs fans through the off-season.

In a move no doubt consistent with the PARADE's earlier attempt at alienating our valued readers we mock the concept of mock drafts and general draft adulation while splitting the difference on our new, unfortunately stereotyped, Piolverlordi's draft.

First a brief disclaimer for those draftniks who consider this so much heresy:

Look a lot of things are fun while not particularly fulfilling, and as a football fan you can't expect every other football fan to share your particular fan peccadillos.

Put it this way, if having you team win a regular season game is like finding out a close friend is gonna have a baby, don't expect us to throw you a baby shower just because you bought a playboy.

But that's just how WE feel, maybe after the jump it'll make sense?

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The face of evil?

No doubt, we understand the legions of draft fans that trot out the usual litany of justifications for loving the draft: it's middle of the off-season, I want to know what my team's doing, and the ever popular 'successful teams build through the draft.'

All of those are pretty good reasons to care about the draft.  Although the last is an incredibly annoying cliche: "well, duh if you look at Indy & the Pats but Jerry Jones and the Redskins would kindly suggest you blow that out your pajama-hole."

More importantly though, it's not a matter of caring about the draft that bothers us.  It's the constant obsession, mock drafts, and expression that you're not a true football fan unless you have a draft day experience.

Anyone who questions the severity of that statement need look no further than our dear friend and blogfather Chris who suggested he might rather watch the draft than the Super Bowl.

To paraphrase Kenny Powers (@the 2 min. mark):

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"I like watching real sports not trying to be the best at predicting what other people are gonna do."

Not to mention the combine.  Sweet jebuz if that's not some of the most nonsensical bullsh*t we've ever seen.  You're going to take NFL recruiting, which has reached the degree of low-level international espionage at this point, and try to boil it down to what amounts to some glorified speed-dating conferance in Indiana?  To quote one PARADE-y lady, upon seeing the combine "oooh dance draft monkeys, dance!"  Moving on...

What bugs us most is the concept of "mock drafts."  Not so much the "fun of it" aspect, which is well and good, but the fact that professional sports journalists do it and expect them to be taken seriously.  Let's step away from this a second.  Take NCAA Basketball brackets, a similarly futile but entertaining exercise in soothsaying.  There is at least a 1 in 18.5 quintillion mathematically certain chance that you will pick a perfect bracket.  Whereas, it is a virtual certitude no one will ever 'perfectly mock' the draft.  Moreover, the highly subjective and common draft day trade virtually guarantees not being able to even get the order right.  So why?

In the interest of full disclosure here, we'll point out we participated in the AP (mercifully only 2 round) draft the past two years.  But on the same note we've represented the Dan Snyder  and the Redskins each year, giving us essentially carte blanche.  "Oh they went with the DE?  I thought drafting Snuffaluffagus out of Sesame Street Tech with 35 mil guaranteed up front was a lock."

Well the best argument we've heard is that as we get older and spend far more time talking about and thinking about than actually playing football, the strategy aspects become more entertaining.  The same goes for the fantasy football argument that it makes regular fans, better fans..

HILARIOUS NSFW FANTASY FOOTBALL IMAGE HYPERLINK!!!!

and...

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Why is that kid tackling Jesus?  What's wrong with him?

But really?  Is that any excuse for saying you'd rather see male physical attributes and iffy college comparisons evaluated than seeing professionals violently attack one another in attempting to establish their superiority?

We're not saying you can't enjoy the draft or fantasy football or Madden or even collect NFL: The Gathering cards, just admit that it's part of the Geekification of football.  And even that's okay by us up until the point it obscures the actual sport.

(Except for maybe Madden talk, that sh*t's just annoying).

But the emphasis on the draft has gotten out of hand.  These are rookies, they're not supposed to be good, they're supposed to be good in 2-3 years.  The Chiefs supposedly "won" last years draft.  Where'd that get us?  2-14 and a bunch of question marks.  Now, this is admittedly somewhat spurious, the draft does matter and so does drafting well.  However, the concept of the "immediate impact" player has really outgrown its use.  Look at these players: Reggie Bush, Adrian Peterson, Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco and Vince Young.  All were high impact rookies at highly visible positions.  Any of them "change the game" or win a Superbowl?  Nope.

This is part of why we'd love to see Matt Ryan crash and burn this season, the other is that ridiculous NFL network ad in reverse slow motion trying to sell their ugly hats.

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How could Curry possibly be less than a pro bowler in that accoutrement?

This brings us to our next two points: A. 'Don Pioli' is a stupid nickname and B. we won't know the success or failure of this draft until 2011.

Not to sound like a typical Mile High Report Fan Post, "hey guys trading our franchise QB and getting another RB instead of defense is just another masterstroke in McDaniel's GENIUS plan to fake out the whole NFL, and he wears a hoodie, like Belichick, ZOMG!!!," (apologies to MHR for the cheap shot), but we do feel objectively Pioli's track record has merited allowing for player maturation rather than demanding media-annointed "draft wins" like last year.  (For our MHR visitors, please contain any vitriol, a "McGenius" post

That said, there's a short leash for turning this thing around quick.  The stockpiling of a 2nd rounder and 3-4 conversion sounds good right now, but if the Chiefs don't break out of the AFC West basement and Curry and Gonzalez are in next year's Pro Bowl, it won't feel very good.

But before getting too heavy, can we move to ax the 'Don Pioli' moniker?  Yes he is a large, folicilly-challenged, gentleman of Italian-American decent, AND sir eccles Godfather photoshop is awesome (and should still be used regardless).  But, as evinced by his stylish eyewear and affinity for walks in Loose Park, he is clearly a Renassaince Man, and not a cartoonish mafia thug.

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DaVinci, also a Parcell's man, fact.

Moreover, it looks like Pioli's making an effort to slim down.  So sure, if you want to use the 'Don Pioli' nomenclature in regard to the new "Red Curtain" of secrecy, so be it.  But we can to better by our new benefactor.  After all, Haley's not going to be feeding the media any warm and fuzzies by looks of it anytime soon.  *Fingers crossed on the LJ Haley impression follow-up!*

Back to the 2009 draft.  Again, not to sound too Pollyanna, but we're willing to wait and see.  GM, Coach, DC, D scheme, new LBs (not to mention QB) is a lot to change to expect them all to work.  But the draftboard is a far different piece of paper than the depth chart, and long-term success has far more to do with the latter than the former.  Also, we get the impression that the Chiefs got passing grades from a lot of media draftniks if for no other reason than out of league respect for Pioli.  We suspect Tyson Jackson shooting up all the last minute draft predictions may have been more of a Pioli effecting the media's perception than vice versa.  Regardless the perceived "reach" in Jackson will be a great GM measuring stick in 2-3 years.

Of course, by then some third or fourth round pick will be blowing the competition away, and we'll all look like idiots.

Yay!  The Draft!

It's over!

And now for something completely different, the Starz Network has a new show produced by KC native and Chiefs fan Paul Rudd.  It's called Party Down, and it's getting it done son, straight. getting. it. done.

Oh, and just in case you thought you could encounter anything mentioning the NFL Network and the draft without hearing this, you were wrong:

Feel free to wipe the tears from your brown eyes in the comments...