Last night, Rosenthal posted on New Hampshire tight end Scott Sicko, who decided that if he wasn’t drafted he didn’t want to play pro football.
His reasoning? He believes he’d have a “much longer career” in the NFL if he had been drafted.
And Sicko is wrong.
Less than three months ago, the Hall of Fame voters elected John Randle to join the all-time greats of the game in Canton. And Randle wasn’t drafted, at a time when the process had 12 rounds.
Besides, some agents think it’s better not to be drafted at all than to be picked in round seven. If undrafted, the player can select a place where he thinks he may have a better chance of making it on the final roster.
And players who are drafted have no guarantees regarding their NFL tenure. Indeed, low-round players routinely are cut before their rookie seasons begin, and some teams give up on third-round picks after only a year or two. In 1991, the Steelers picked linebacker Huey Richardson in round one. A year later, they cut him.
Then there’s the fact that the kid could have made a ton of extra money via jersey sales and possibly marketing deals. His name is Sicko, for crying out loud.
It could be that the kid simply wasn’t sure whether he wanted to play football, and that he decided that his decision would hinge on whether he was drafted. If that’s the case, he likely wouldn’t have lasted long in the NFL, even if he’d been taken in round one.