50 Best Draft Picks From Small/Unknown Schools

jeremyh — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:00:13 +0000

One big, if not the biggest, pet peeves of mine is when fans or anybody sees their team draft a player from, let’s say San Diego State, and they cry out loud like they just saw “Two Girls, One Cup” or got a picture text from Brett Favre. They’re the same people who think the only good players come from the SEC, Texas, or California schools. It’s easy to make general judgments like that, especially if you’re a casual fan. If that’s the case, I have nothing against you. You don’t know any better. But in some places, where football is life (quite a few SEC and Big 12 places out there), people have trouble seeing past all the “great” wide receivers and quarterbacks from Florida or “future MVP quarterbacks” from Texas Tech. Pet peeve number two: huge stats in college don’t equal a good NFL prospect. I’m not saying everyone who follows and loves the SEC or Big 12 is like this, but in seeing so many comments on football websites, a lot of peoples’ love for their team gets in the way of seeing how a player stacks up as an NFL prospect.

Now, I’m not saying that the big/popular schools don’t produce a lot of NFL talent because they absolutely do. I’m just trying to let it be known that scouting departments, for the most part, do their homework on the entire country, not just the ACC, Big 10/12, SEC, and Pac 10, although that is where a ton of the talent comes from.

In order to prove to you that smaller and unknown schools produce big-time talent, I’ve compiled a list of very good players, some legendary, that I’ve seen in my lifetime that came from those types of schools. I went back in the NFL Draft’s history and went through every team’s draft since 1987, the year I was born. I came up with 89 players who could be considered for my list. In addition to those players, I probably missed quite a few more players since I only started seriously following football in 1996 when I was nine years old.

The list is in alphabetical order, NOT ranked in order of greatness (I just know if there are any comments on this, it’ll be from some guy criticizing me because Jared Allen is first). Some players on the list are young and have quite a few years left, so I put their age to show that even though they may only have one Pro Bowl selection, they still have years left to get more accolades. Kurt Warner is not on the list because he was undrafted out of Northern Iowa. Check out the list after the jump. … [visit site to read more]

50 Best Draft Picks From Small/Unknown Schools - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

NFL Team Needs: NFC North

joshd — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:07:13 +0000

The newest segment for NFLMocks is the NFL Team Needs focus. We are going to bring you division by division team needs and these needs will be updated throughout the offseason and during the actual season. And after the season is said and … [visit site to read more]

NFL Team Needs: NFC North - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

Urlacher Injures Wrist in Loss

nflmocks — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:58:50 +0000

The Bears couldn’t overcome the four interceptions thrown by Jay Cutler. The outcome got even worse for Bears fans when Brian Urlacher couldn’t return to the game with some type of wrist injury.

Chicago … [visit site to read more]

Urlacher Injures Wrist in Loss - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

NFL Mocks » Brian Urlacher

50 Best Draft Picks From Small/Unknown Schools

NFL Team Needs: NFC North

Urlacher Injures Wrist in Loss