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.

The Oakland Raiders are to blame for the burgeoning swine flu pandemic. Those horrific business practices of Al Davis have ultimately led to the disbanding of the major U.S. automakers. That’s right! All of the world’s problems can be traced directly to the door step of Al Davis and his cohort Tom Cable.

Exhibit A: The Raiders selecting Darrius Heyward-Bey over Michael Crabtree

ESPN’s draft coverage missed the moment when Al Davis and Tom Cable each took turns using Mel Kiper’s mock draft as toilet paper. Never one to do what is best for his franchise, Mr. Davis decided that it just didn’t make too much sense to listen to a TV analyst and instead decided to lean on paid professionals to properly evaluate talent. How could he?

Shame on Mr. Davis for thinking he knows more than Mel Kiper! At this point in time, I’m not even sure why we still hold a draft. Wouldn’t the NFL be a better league if we just got rid of the draft and allowed Kiper to pick for every team? I’m sure his decisions have led to more Lombari trophies than those made by Al Davis.

After all, every fan out there can’t spend much time evaluating talent, right? The average fan is just too busy with, well, life. Therefore, Mel Kiper becomes the mouth piece for the layman. What he says goes and anyone who opposes is a draft neophyte void of rational decision making.

Al Davis should be ashamed for not considering Michael Crabtree’s stats and his two Biletnikoff trophies before making his decision to pass on the Texas Teach star receiver for Heyward-Bey.  As we all know, putting up huge stats in division one college football is a sure fire way to tell if a player will be productive in the NFL. That is why the best quarterbacks in the modern game are being cranked out of Texas Tech.

Why, the list of Biletnikoff winners alone is enough to make one believe that every recipient is a lock to be in Canton. After all, Bobby Engram, Marcus Harris, Troy Edwards, Troy Walters, Josh Reed, Charles Rogers and Mike Haas have all gone onto great NFL careers.

Head coach Tom Cable clearly has no idea what it takes to be successful in the NFL. While defending the selections of Heyward-Bey and second round choice Michael Mitchell, Cable made it clear that his players must have talent (of course) but they must also be hard workers and dedicated teammates. Who thinks this way?

You can’t build a winner with quality character guys! What fools Davis and Cable have revealed themselves to be!

What angered most on draft day was that Davis and Cable announced themselves as the smartest guys in the room by ignoring what the consensus proclaimed. They should have been more like the Philadelphia Eagles in round one. When it was Andy Reid’s turn to pick, he simply turned to Mel Kiper and looked at his big board. Hello Jeremy Maclin. Never mind that DeSean Jackson is the same player, Mel says to draft Maclin.

The popular theory is that all Mr. Davis did was look at 40 times. He never considered that Heyward-Bey might become the next version of Terrell Owens, minus the prima donna, Michael Crabtree-like attitude. No, Mr. Davis simply decided that speed means more than anything else.

Team speed is, after all, the Raider philosophy. Every team has a philosophy. Jerry Jones likes knuckle heads. Ralph Wilson likes mediocrity. Bill Belichick likes cheaters. Al Davis likes speed. 

The whole world knows that Al Davis can’t possibly have a clue when it comes to evaluating receivers. That’s why he waited more than 20 years to pick another receiver in round one of the NFL draft. The last stiff Davis picked in the first round was, of course, a speed demon from Notre Dame named Tim Brown. What a scrub that Tim Brown was.

If ridicule is truly the burden of genius, then Al Davis must be Albert Einstein. Time will tell if Darrius Heyward-Bey can find a vaccine for the swine flu. As of now, Al Davis will just have to keep those three Lombardi trophies hidden from plain sight. Should Mel Kiper find out that Mr. Davis has actually had success in the NFL, it could ruin the good name of the Oakland Raiders.

Cue the cliché: The NFL draft is the biggest gamble in all of sports.

There is a reason why the above saying is uttered more than 1,000 times daily on sports talk radio – it’s true.

This is the time of year when Mel Kiper grabs the attention of the football world. Kiper is the Rain Man of the NFL draft. Toss out a name, any name, and Kiper will not hesitate to respond with a thoughtful analysis and critique of said NFL prospect. However, if Kiper were really that great at evaluating talent, he’d be employed by NFL general managers and not Disney.

Despite careful analysis, timely evaluating and professional perspective, Ryan Leaf still happens.

The only thing guaranteed on draft day is the amount of money players selected in the top 10 will receive. Here we find the Raiders, sitting at the number 7 spot, in one of the most uncertain drafts in recent memory.

In 2008, the New Orleans Saints selected a defensive tackle from USC by the name of Sedrick Ellis with the 7^th overall pick in the draft. Never mind how he performed in his rookie year, by simply hearing his name called by Commissioner Goodell, Ellis earned a 5-year contract worth $49 million, $19.5 million of which is guaranteed.

Should the Raiders select Boston College defensive tackle B.J. Raji with the 7^th overall, you’d better believe his agent is going to want Sedrick Ellis money, if not more.

I’m not here to say that Raji is not worth the price tag, but how do you know he truly is?

The NFL draft is a roll of the dice. No player is ever a “can’t miss” prospect as football is a sport where the unexpected is always expected. Don’t believe me though. Just ask fans in Dallas who knew they had a Super Bowl team in ’08 and fans in Miami who knew they had another top 10 pick coming their way before the season started.

Despite a fantastic ending to the 2008 season, Tom Cable knows the heavy lifting has just begun. The Oakland Raider defense needs immediate help in a multitude of areas. Perhaps the needs are too great to be dealt with in one off-season, let alone one draft.

The offense is in dire need of a play maker out wide. Many look to Texas Tech receiver Michael Crabtree as the solution. Again, I defer to the clichéd adage. Not only is Crabtree a gamble but he’s also going to command a heavy price tag if picked in the top 10.

Given the amount of money spent on a terrible crop of free agents in ’08 and all of  the guaranteed cash endowed on unproven talent over the last few years, it would seem only logical for the Raider brass to take a more careful and cautious approach on April 25^th.

No matter how great any prospect looks, there is not one player so good that his mere presence in Silver and Black will cure all that ails the Oakland Raiders.

This off-season has been about being precise and cautious. The Raiders have spent next to nothing on free agents instead choosing to invest in known commodities such as Nnamdi Asomugha and Shane Lechler.

Tom Cable’s football philosophy is based on building strength through competition. Therefore, it would seem to be in the spirit of Cable to trade down. Whenever a player is selected in the top 10 – with the exception of quarterbacks – they are expected to play immediately. Not many general managers will tolerate a player being paid more than $50 million to sit and learn. Perhaps Michael Huff’s career would have been much different had he not been selected number 7 overall. Not all players make a quick adjustment to the NFL, some require time. When a player is picked in the top 10, there is no time for waiting.

In the game of poker, it is always ideal to be in one of the late positions. You have the opportunity to study every move made before deciding how to play your cards. Every year in the draft, a player with plenty of potential will slip out of the top 10, allowing another team to get a great player at a lesser price. Randy Moss immediately comes to mind when thinking of this scenario.

In 2009, it would be in Oakland’s best interest to trade down. Selecting two players late in the first round would cost less than one in the top 10 and would give Tom Cable and his staff more options instead of betting it all on one player who comes with a bloated value.