While trolling the net for new information on who the Falcons will select, I came across this 2005 draft report from Scout.com which gave the entire draft a B. It only goes into detail on the first three picks, ensuring that the best player selected (Mike Boley)never gets mentioned, and neither does Chauncey Davis. So who gets the nod?
Roddy White is one. As I tried to copy and paste, Scout.com yelled at me via error message, which I think is a neat trick, but let me summarize. Essentially they said White would become a consistent speed threat and provide relief for Peerless Price. As we now know, neither of those things happened. Price was unceremoniously bounced and White has turned out to have lost his hands in an unfortunate smelting accident.
Jonathan Babineaux was predicted to be a potential long term impact player, which might still be accurate if he doesn't turn out to be a dog-murdering scumbag. Even then, with the way the turnstile of justice works for NFL players, Babineaux might yet get a chance to fufill his potential.
And finally, we have Jordan Beck. We wouldn't really know what he can do beyond his rookie season, because he sort of, well, got hurt for the entire year. So you can't really fault Scout.com for that.
There were two reasons I rolled this out. The first was because it made me bitterly melancholy about this team and I wanted to share it with you. We're like a big dysfunctional family here at The Falcoholic, after all. But the second reason is so that all of us--myself very much included--try not to get too starry-eyed about draft experts forecasting guys we've barely seen play. There's just no way to know what's going to happen. Reggie Nelson could turn out to be the greatest safety ever to play in the NFL or he could run off with Buddhist monks and become the Dhali Lama. It's good to get excited about players, but guys like Roddy White remind us just how inexact the science can be.