In essence, you can do no wrong.
If you end up being good, you can add a righteous veneer of "take THAT, you racists!" to your game. If you suck, you can always fall back on how the racist NFL didn't "give you a chance."
The latest handwringing comes over one Geno Smith, who nobody in their right mind was calling a first rounder back in October. Now.. NOW... if he slips into the second round, it's an outrage and racism?
Jarrett Bell of USA Today called it a "black tax" that QB's have been paying since the days of Warren Moon.
Nice try, but uh... no.
In fact since Moon, black QB's have been benefiting from their generally perceived "athleticism" for years, artificially boosting their draft position, not hurting it. The thinking, crude as it may be, was that at least a black QB can run around a bit if his passing isn't all that good.
Surely Akili Smith, Jamarcus Russell, Andre Ware didn't have to pay a "black tax." Cam Newton and RG3 had a few select negative scouting reports come out, but they not only were drafted 1/1 and 1/2 overall, they are currently endorsing the living shit out of everything that moves.
Hell, the only guy who paid a "black tax" as Bell suggests, is a half black guy named Russell Wilson, who was not adorned with any of the so-called code words of a black QB. He was smart, focused, driven, all of that. But he was too small.
So he fell to the 3rd round.
Poor guy. If only somebody had called him lazy and stupid, he's have been a high first rounder!
Never mind that ol' Nolan Nawrocki's scouting report on Cam Newton came roaring back to truth with a vengeance in Year 2. And so what if current ESPN analysts like Trent Dilfer said Geno Smith has been knocking it out of the park in pre-draft workouts and interviews?
Nawrocki or other scouts write up reports on intel and film study from things that occurred while a player was IN college, not when he was running around trying to impress Jon Gruden for his TV show.
I mean, if some scout had just done some legwork on Ryan Leaf while in college, realized he was a festering douchebag, and been courageous enough to write what he thought was a giant red flag, well then it might have saved the Chargers a whole lot of grief.
Oh, wait.... somebody DID do that! Too bad Ryan Leaf was/is/will always be... WHITE!
However, there appears to be some minor nagging questions in the area of maturity and his mental approach to the game. He is perceived as not always an easy guy to work with, and he tends to beat to his own drummer...As good as he is, he can have some streaks on the field where he looks like he has forgotten everything he has been taught...There seems to be a nagging question here that something might be missing, but it may be hard to verbalize it...
Oh, Leaf ended up "verbalizing" that "nagging something" alright once he turned pro.
Why yes he did.
So yeah, back to Warren Moon. I'll grant you that he was likely the victim of stereotype discrimination, at least early on. Yes, he had to go to Canada to prove himself. But he STILL ended up playing 17 years in the NFL, making millions and millions of dollars, and ending up in the Hall of Fame.
Joe Theismann had to go to Canada too. So did Doug Flutie for a while.
Cry me a river. Racism. Whatever.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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