By now you've probably heard about Grady Jarrett's heart-wrenching weekend.
Not sure one could invent a more difficult experience than 1) dealing with the disappointment of not being picked where you thought you'd be picked in the draft and then 2) dealing with watching your house burn down while you're dealing with the disappointment of not being picked where you thought you'd be picked in the draft.
Robert Klemko of Monday Morning Quarterback went to Conyers for an in-depth profile on Jarrett and this story.
The 42nd pick came and went, with the Falcons choosing cornerback Jalen Collins out of LSU. As the Texans were on the clock with the 43rd selection, several people mentioned they smelled something funny in another room (Grady recalls the timeline down to the pick, because he was sure the Falcons would take him at 42). Elisha rushed to the kitchen thinking she’d left a burner on. Nothing. Then a cousin saw a flicker of light upstairs where the youngest children had been playing. Grady and Elisha sprinted the stairs to find a wall in the game room in flames.
“I think several of us smelled it at the same time,” Elisha says. “We ran upstairs, and it was basically engulfed.”
As smoke filled the second floor, they frantically searched for any remaining children. Children as young as six had been playing in the room minutes prior. Says Elisha: “They were sitting on the stairs. It was an anxious moment.”
Grady’s agent, Carmen Wallace, ran for a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but it was useless. Grady’s childhood home would burn for as long as it took firefighters to arrive.
“We ran out of the house,” Grady says. “It was uncontrollable. Just to watch a piece of your house on fire, it’s a feeling of hopelessness. You can’t do anything but pray to God and hope it doesn’t spread.”
And this:
The Falcons asked former Pro Bowl linebacker Jessie Tuggle, Grady’s father, to help introduce their fifth-round pick remotely from Atlanta. Elisha is the driving force in Grady’s life, but he has a good relationship with Tuggle.
When the fourth round began at noon, Grady didn’t know what to think anymore. He was a three-year starter at Clemson who finished his final season with 73 tackles and an All-ACC nod, but interior linemen from schools like Washington State and Delaware State were being chosen in front of him. One NFL personnel man later chalked up Jarrett’s slide to widely-held doubts he could be a three-down tackle in the NFL. Grady had achieved a significant degree of authority between the lines, but now, between the fire and the draft, he’d lost all control.
“The further I fell the worse I felt,” Grady says.
Tuggle introduced Falcons season-ticket holder Kimberly Newman to read the pick, then stood to the right of the podium. He was stoic as Newman, to everyone’s surprise (including Tuggle’s) read: With the first pick of the fifth round, No. 137 overall, the Atlanta Falcons select Grady Jarrett, defensive tackle from Clemson.
A smile washed over Tuggle’s face and he began pumping his fist. A tiny sliver of Covington exploded.
“It was euphoria,” Wallace says.
“We erupted,” Grady says.
A few Wednesday links:
-- Peter King opens up his mailbag and says he'd have taken Marcus Mariota over Jameis Winston.
He is safer off the field, and he makes fewer mistakes on the field. With the prospect of playing behind a bad offensive line—getting better, certainly, after adding two second-rounders as prospective starters—I’d rather have a more mobile quarterback. But it’s certainly close. There’s one other point that piqued my interest, from my research in Tampa over the weekend. Did you see it? On his March visit to the Bucs’ facility, Winston told offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter, “I’m not afraid to make any throw.” Koetter told him maybe he ought to be—after his 18 interceptions in 2014.
But—and it is a big one—this is hardly a science. It is a gut feeling. Good for Licht to feel strongly about a pick and put his job on the line for Winston. Licht very could be right, and he certainly knows more about analyzing quarterbacks than I do.
The one other point I feel strongly about is this: Winston never has been found to have sexually assaulted Erica Kinsman. Not by two legal investigations, and not in a Florida State probe of whether Winston violated the student code of conduct in his contact with Kinsman. The university retained retired state Supreme Court Justice Major Harding to find whether Winston was culpable in the case. Twice before Harding took the case, the legal system in Florida considered whether Winston should be brought to trial. Twice there was not sufficient evidence. When the case was put in front of Harding, the burden of proof at the university level was not as stringent as in the court cases. Harding did not find enough proof to support the sexual-assault charge against Winston. “This was a complex case, and I worked hard to make sure both parties had a full and fair opportunity to present information. In sum, the preponderance of the evidence has not shown that you are responsible for any of the charged violations of the Code,” Harding said in his ruling. “In light of all the circumstances, I do not find the credibility of one story substantially stronger than that of the other. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses.”
-- The Big 12 apparently reverses its position on instituting a conference championship game -- wisely, I'd say.
Andy Staples gives his take and makes a good point here:
Here’s the truth. If Georgia Techmakes a couple of stops againstFlorida State in the 2014 ACC Championship and Ohio State beats Wisconsin by seven instead of 59, it’s entirely possible the Big 12 would have had half the teams in the playoff. Baylor and TCU would have both made the field, and the Big 12’s model would have appeared ingenious. Considered that way, tacking on a championship game would seem the acme of foolishness.
But since the Big 12 became a punchline by declaring co-champions in a year the league’s advertisements touted “One True Champion” and was the only one of the ultra-wealthy leagues to be left watching the festivities, the conference title game became a legitimate topic of discussion. It seemed even more legitimate last week after Bowlsby emerged from a meeting with College Football Playoff selection committee chair Jeff Long and all but said the Big 12 needed to install a championship game. Bowlsby said then that it was clear the lack of what Long called a “13th data point” put the league at a disadvantage. Tuesday, Bowlsby didn’t seem nearly as adamant. “What I said is there is some disadvantage – all things being equal – with 12 versus 13,” Bowlsby said. “We needed to talk about it. I continue to believe there is a disadvantage, but I couldn’t characterize it as one percent or three percent.”
George Schroeder of USA Today says the right move is no move.
The best news is the league isn’t jumping to conclusions. It was a 180-degree turnaround from Bowlsby’s comments after a discussion last week with selection committee chairman Jeff Long. After months of preaching caution and saying he didn’t think the Big 12 needed to overreact, Bowlsby emerged from the College Football Playoff’s spring meetings saying he believed the Big 12 was “disadvantaged” by not playing a conference championship game — a “13th data point,” using the new terminology we’re all learning as we go, for the committee to weigh — and added, “I surmise we would probably move in that direction.”
Instead, after significant opposition from several athletic directors, the league will stay put and instead ponder the question posed Tuesday by TCU coach Gary Patterson:
“How do you know it’s not an anomaly, the way it turned out?”
No one knows, which is the point.
-- David Teel of the Newport News newspaper says Steph Curry's MVP reignites the story of his recruitment ... or lack thereof.
Sure enough, as Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry collected his MVP hardware Monday, ESPN's Darren Rovell tweeted that Tech had passed on Curry in favor of Nigel Munson, who averaged three points and an assist as a freshman before transferring.
Were Rovell obscure, his incomplete and unfair tweet might have gone unnoticed. But when you work for the worldwide leader and have more than 600,000 Twitter followers, unnoticed is not in the equation.
Furthering the intrigue: Seth Greenberg, the Hokies' coach during Curry's recruitment, is an ESPN analyst.
Greenberg ducked the Twitter fray, but Munson's coach at DeMatha Catholic, Mike Jones, did not. Nor did former North Carolina State star Julius Hodge or Greenberg's daughter Paige.
Jones, a DeMatha graduate who played at Old Dominion, reminded folks that Munson was an accomplished prospect, and indeed, he was recruited by Xavier, Miami, Clemson and George Washington, among others.
Hodge mentioned that every major college program whiffed on Curry, whose scholarship offers coming out of Charlotte Christian were from Davidson, Winthrop and VCU.
Most pointedly, the often-unfiltered Paige Greenberg suggested that Rovell have the moxie — she used a more graphic term — to call out her father by name.
Upon learning some background — informed discourse often is an oxymoron on Twitter — Rovell backpedaled and conceded that Tech had offered Curry a scholarship, if he redshirted for a year as a non-scholarship walk-on.
-- For today's musical selection, we check out an all-star cast of jam otherwise known as The Word, playing some Stevie Wonder.
