Each year, the NFL draft is eagerly anticipated by football fans. It’s sort of a little Christmas in April. Unfortunately, ESPN has a monopoly on television coverage and chooses to staff their otherwise capable draft program with the hyper-incompetent Chris Berman & Mel Kiper. Yes, the genius Mel Kiper who every year confidently gives his expert judgment of the NFL draft. How is he able to grade each team’s draft performance before a single game with the rookie players and also with a much smaller scouting department than the NFL teams? I'm not sure, perhaps we should just look at his past grades of Bengal drafts...On his blog Tuesday, Paul Daugherty pointed out that with the Bengals’ release of Chris Perry, they now have zero players remaining from the 2004 draft. Henry, Fanene, and Ghiaciuc are the three players remaining from the 2005 draft. 2006 is much better with Joseph, Whitworth, Peko, & Rucker all now being contributers. Daugherty wonders what Mel Kiper gave the team for draft grades those years. Kiper, of course gave the Bengals As in 2003 and 2004, while giving 2006 a C. Kiper does not like 2007 or 2008 either, but it’s too early to tell. Here's a little more detail on Mel Kiper's opinions of Bengals drafts:
What I find amazing is not how poorly Kiper has done at predicting the value of Bengal draft classes. Rather, it's amazing how consistently he is exactly wrong. For every year, besides 2003, Kiper is close to the opposite of correct in his assessment of Bengals drafts. If Kiper had just gone with the opposite of his gut assessments, I might now be calling him a genius.
