Sports on Draft

Training camp is underway, and is already jolting its way through to the NFL Preseason, which is set to begin on Thursday – which means football is on the horizon fellas.

The best season of the year is coming, and no it is not winter. The NFL is coming, and its time to get pumped!

With preseason set to begin in just a couple days, that also means college football is here to satisfy our football fanatic needs as well.

The 2017-2018 NFL season will be filled with parody and more fluidity than recent past with key veteran trades, and high-risk, high-reward draft acquisitions. Premier NFL Rookies like Deshone Kizer, Leonard Fournette, and James Conner are already turning heads during this offseason.

The dumpster fire, that is the Cleveland Browns, has had an offseason to remember with accumulating some of the best players in the draft – starting with the no.1 overall pick, Myles Garrett. These new acquisitions will help this team finally go in the right direction, and actually give them some kind of relevancy.

Myles Garrett will give this franchise the biggest impact it has seen in years, because he’s a straight up beast.

Standing at 6’4’’, 270 pounds, Garrett is one hell of a force to deal with. His gifted stature, added with his freakish athleticism and ridiculous amount of power, makes him a scary opponent for any offensive line to face.

Garrett and Quarterback Deshone Kizer were seen running 100-yard sprints shortly after the Browns’ practice ended, showing the team the extra drive they need in order to be successful. This is good news for the Cleveland, for their draft pick acquisitions are already showing progress and flashes of their self-worth.

If any player were to live up to the hype, it would certainly be the monster defensive end from Texas A&M, that is Myles Garrett.

The Browns other two key 1^st round picks: safety Jabrill Peppers and tight end David Njoku, were some of the most athletic players in the draft. Many NFL draft experts and league sources say that Peppers was a complete steal with the 25th overall pick in the first round (could have easily been top 10 overall).

Peppers, the most versatile player in the entire draft, showed the nation last year his athleticism could be shown in three, four different positions. According to ESPN, Peppers had over 355 snaps at defensive back, 324 at linebacker, 29 at quarterback, 12 at wide receiver, and 10 at running back.

The star defensive player from Michigan also returned 21 punts and 10 kickoffs – now that’s versatility for you.

Cleveland’s logical decisions with this year’s draft will help turn the franchise around in the 2017-2018 season. Now that the Browns are building pieces to the puzzle on defense, it is now up to the quarterback rotation to take them to postseason.

Could the Cleveland Browns really be a playoff team in the next two, three years?

Right now there are teams on the brink of either turning things around, and or finally living up to their potential, like the Dallas Cowboys. Winning 10-straight games under the NFL Rookie of the year, Dak Prescott, the Cowboys looked like a serious threat last season – until that wasn’t the case.

The Cowboys won 10 games in a row under Prescott, finishing 1^st in the NFC East with 13-3 overall. Many people believed that fellow star rookie Ezekiel Elliot would win the award, showing promise at running back with over 1,631 yards.

Being a huge Cowboys fan for years, I am not really sure how to feel about last year’s success, because let’s face it, their still the Cowboys. The hype with Cowboysnation was through the roof, much of the incentive coming from their star rookies (And maybe from no Tony Romo).

There are still many questions on the defensive side of the ball with this team, especially after star cornerback Morris Claiborne taking off to the New York Jets. Even with the Cowboys’ priority to improve their pass rush, their will still a huge focus on the new group of defensive backs.

This Cowboys team will need to find chemistry with the new faces on defense, especially if they want to live up to the hype train that is in Dallas. Will they be able to live up the hype with all said and done?

The NFL this year will feature drama, hype, and promise – the question is which teams will fit in these categories. After all, the Cowboys are the Cowboys, and the Browns are the Browns – can this year be different for teams like these?

Photo by Erik Drost (Deshone Kizer) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons