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NFL Pro Bowl Ends Wild ’05 Season

Fri, 01/20/2006 - 00:00 — Draft Insiders

The NFL’s ’06 Pro Bowl is scheduled for Sunday night and will complete the ’05 season that was filled with many surprises. The Pittsburgh Steelers are the new NFL Champs after winning Super Bowl XL. They got one for the thumb in a sloppy game marked with big plays and terrible officiating. They were the superior club on Sunday and deserve all the recognition they have received this week despite several questionable and ridiculous calls. The NFL Draft and Veteran Free Agency will be the main focus over the next few months. The NFL Draft ’06 this April has all the makings of one of the special classes over the past decade. We are finishing our 15th Edition of Draft Insiders Yearbook for the NFL Draft ’06 which will have over 450 in-depth scouting reports. NFL Free Agency has been a means by clubs changing their makeup quickly if they have managed their salary cap well over the past few years. Our online NFL Free Agency book will be out in a few weeks.

The Super Bowl is the reason for all the other events over the NFL year – NFL Draft, Veteran Free Agency, trades, training camps and regular season. It is the reason NFL clubs spend millions of dollars scouting prospects in college and the NFL. All that time, money and energy is for one reason – get the title ring.

We take great pride in seeing players we scouted and touted as future NFL stars make the Pro Bowl. Players in this year’s game we ranked high that were obscure college performers were CB Terrence McGee, LB Lance Briggs, WR/RS Jerome Mathis and QB Matt Hasselbeck. We specialize in small college prospects and sleepers that no one else ranks high. We ranked McGee as the 9th cornerback and top return specialist when every other scouting service had him the 50th safety prospect. He was our small college sleeper of the year. We had Briggs ranked as a top defender ahead of backers like Victor Hobson, Kawika Mitchell, Eddie Moore and Terry Pierce, all struggling marginal NFL starters. Briggs has become a fixture on the Bears tough defense right from the start. Jerome Mathis was a prospect we saw extensively as an underclassman and consulted with NFL clubs a year before he shined at the Gridiron Classic and NFL Combine that year. Our staff expected his early success in the NFL as a return specialist after our staff scouted him extensively for a few years. We believe he also has nice upside as a receiver. Hasselbeck was a guy we loved after seeing him beat Notre Dame. His accuracy, smarts and toughness impressed us over his full career. We ranked him as the top sleeper in the class and a fine future NFL starter. That class featured Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf.

Any web site or publication can line up players, copy background info and do mock drafts. The internet is filled with them. They change rankings by the week on player who have not played a game since November. We scout the nation’s college talent year round and interview players throughout the year. We work the small college circuit and look for players like Terrence McGee and Mathis who we saw extensively as underclassmen and thru their final college season.

We look forward to Our 15th Edition of Draft Insiders’ Yearbook for the NFL Draft ’06 We will have over 450 in-depth scouting reports in the Yearbook that will be once again the most unique in the business including the NFL front offices.

Note: Our long shot sleeper last year was DE Marcus White of Murray St. who signed as a Free Agent with the Tennessee Titans. He made the team last summer and recently signed a two year contract. No other publication or web site had him in the top 50 defensive ends until our Yearbook came out in March last spring.

The Pro Bowl is the reward for a great season by NFL players. The game itself can be terrible and resembles a two hand touch street game at times. But it is the last football game of the year for football junkies. Enjoy the offseason.

Enjoy the Pro Bowl
Try not to fall asleep
Frank Coyle