Ed Szczepanski-US PRESSWIRE

That’s why one-time Raider executive turned broadcaster Michael Lombardi pegged Crawford as one of the members of his All Value Team. Seems the Raiders and Lombardi are both thinking along the same lines in seeing nothing but massive potential for a highly coachable D-lineman like Crawford who is still learning the game.

Lombardi goes as far as to say the Raiders might have drafted man that could be starting in 2013.

Time will tell on that. DIRECTV on the other hand wasted no time in honoring all the members of the All Value Team. As DIRECTV offers the best value there is to its customers in the NFL Sunday Ticket at an incredibly low price of $199 it was only right they give all members of the All Value Team a free year of service.

So during the season Crawford can enjoy all the benefits of DIRECTV just for being singled out as one of the draft’s best values. Meanwhile the rest of us can enjoy every game on Sunday by purchasing the best value there is to be found. Too bad Crawford can’t enjoy his Sunday Ticket. He’ll be too busy terrorizing quarterbacks for that. But, hey, at least he can enjoy all the Sunday action during Oakland’s bye week.

Now we’ll have to wait and see if Crawford does in deed pan out to be a true value pick. However you can cruise over to DIRECTV now and get your Sunday Ticket at 40% off what is would have cost you last year. That’s one value that doesn’t require the wait and see approach. Well…except for having to wait until the NFL season starts at least.

So you can’t read anything into Mel Kiper’s C- grade applied to Reggie McKenzie’s first draft class as the Oakland GM.

I’ll be the first to say that taking one glance at Oakland’s 2012 class doesn’t exactly inspire Super Bowl talk. But that has nothing to do with the players selected. For all we know Tony Bergstrom could be the next offensive lineman to enter Canton as a Raider. Thing is we’ll have to wait and see.

I realize taking a wait and see approach doesn’t make for great television. So Kiper has no choice but to inspire draft talk via meaningless grades. That’s just the nature of the ratings beast.

Fact of the matter is we all know you can’t evaluate a football draft until years later. Even then it is pretty much an impossible task. I feel that the Raiders had an excellent draft in ’08. Still, here we are four years later and this franchise is still .500 at best.

Does that mean Oakland has failed in drafting from a team perspective yet has succeeded on a talent level?

Also, what about undrafted free agents? They’re not considered to be part of a draft class but a team like the Houston Texans has got to get some credit for unearthing Arian Foster. How does that figure into evaluating a team’s ability to evaluate talent? Let that sink in for a second.

A draft grade is really nothing more than an evaluation of a team’s evaluating process. That’s like predicting someone’s ability to predict something before they’ve predicted anything.

My head hurts trying to think all this stuff through. Let’s just move on from this now and we’ll revisit Mel’s C- three or four years later.

Stupar is a solid athlete with limited collegiate experience. He made only 7 starts during his time in Happy Valley but has a reputation as a hard worker and was a key special teams contributor. No telling what the future holds but Stupar has his work cut out for him in order to make the 53-man roster. I’m guessing the practice squad is calling but anything can happen during camp.

At least Stupar will be among familiar faces. In the 5^th round the Raiders grabbed fellow Penn State alum Jack Crawford and of course last year’s top pick, Stefen Wisniewski, also attend PSU.