The NFL Draft and definitionalism

The NFL draft is almost upon us, and once again I see the participants (and the endless number of analysts who comment on it) are exhibiting angst over the selection process.  Which quarterback will go number one?  Josh Allen?  Baker Mayfield?  Josh Rosen?  Sam Darnold?  The answer to the question of which will be chosen number one has been scrutinized since, well, last year’s draft.

One thing about draft analysis that always bothers me is what I call “definitionalism.”  That means that the number one draft pick will be expected to be better than the other first round picks (and subsequent picks, obviously) because he is the number one pick.  It’s as if picking a player number one somehow imbues him with the qualities expected to be demonstrated by a number one pick.  You expect something to be the definition of that something.

But we shouldn’t expect more of the number one pick than we do of the number two pick, or number four, or even number 10.  First of all, all talent evaluations have a margin of error (just ask the NFL executive who drafted Ryan Leaf).  Number one should be a pretty good NFL player, but so should any of the first-round picks.  If, on a scale from 1-10, Josh Rosen’s prospects are 8.5 and Sam Darnold’s are 8.489, then Rosen should be picked number one; but if each estimate has a plus/minus of 2, the we shouldn’t be surprised if Darnold has a better career.

Projecting future quality is as iffy as forecasting the stock market or Madonna’s love life.  As Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.”  Robert Griffin III looked like a Hall of Famer—for a season.  Drew Brees’ early career in San Diego looked spotty, but then he was traded to New Orleans and is now a certain HoFer.  You just never know.

There is also the question of fit.  What quarterback will fit with the pieces around him?  Drafting the guy with the strongest arm won’t do your team much good if all your receivers have the dropsies.  Drafting a pocket passer over a mobile QB might be a mistake if you have a porous front line.  It is more important to have an idea of what kind of offense you want and select the best pieces to achieve that idea (which may mean not drafting a quarterback if other pieces are available). 

There is also the problem that a quarterback might be great, but if he’s picked by the Cleveland Browns he won’t be going to a Super Bowl the next season, or in the next five seasons (or ever if the Brown’s management doesn’t get massively smarter).  This is the point of drafting based on the prior season’s outcomes—the best players go to the weakest teams.  But if a team got the number one pick not through tanking but by sheer incompetence, then expecting one player to make a difference is probably asking too much.

Unfortunately, whoever the Cleveland Browns select with their first choice (assuming they don’t trade it or opt to draft a defensive lineman, because they’re the Browns) will have the daunted “number one pick” label attached to him for the rest of his career and after.  Even if the Cleveland Browns win twice as many games next season as last, twice zero is, let me see, zero.  They had the number one pick last year and it didn’t exactly improve them.

My point is, whoever is picked number one, Darnold or Allen or Mayfield or Rosen, the expectations shouldn’t be higher on that player.  They have all proven to be competent NCAA quarterbacks, and their NFL potential is roughly the same.  Don’t get sucked into believing that the one picked number one should be expected to be better than the others.  At this point it is all a crapshoot.

How much will having the number one pick help the Cleveland Browns?  Probably about as much as having last year’s number one picked helped; they selected Miles Garrett of Texas A&M with the first pick in the 2017 draft, and in the 2017-18 season they went 0-16. 

Nothing can help the Cleveland Browns.

Legends of Tomorrow gets renewd

The announcement has been made (to what I hope was no one’s great surprise) that The CW has renewed DC’s Legends of Tomorrow for another season.  If you had asked me around the end of the show’s first season how long it would last, I would have replied, “Is it on next week?”  Season one was a dull plod, with silly hawk-people and a main character who sought to kill the main bad guy because he killed the main character’s wife and child.  Yeah, he also enslaved all mankind and ruled as an iron-fisted despot, but the wife-and-child killing was just over the top. 

But then something miraculous happened: the show got better.  It dropped the gloomy tale of trying to stop immortal despot Vandal Savage (okay, the character was dull, but the name was awesome) and decided to embrace its inner geek.  The show got more imaginative and more daring, eventually featuring Vikings worshipping a Tickle-Me-Elmo knock off, George Lucas changing the fate of humanity by dropping out of film school, Napoleon Bonaparte partaking in Spring Break, and most recently going back in time to 1999 to have guest star John Noble utter some words so the Legends can impersonate a demon whose voice is provided by. . .  John Noble.

The renewal announcement follows a prior announcement that, if the show were to be renewed, it would add actor Matt Ryan as John Constantine as a regular.  This has been generally accepted as a good thing by the comments I’ve seen on the Internet.  Ryan has been on a few episodes as a guest star and has served as an effective comic foil, a new character in the mix, and (thanks to a quick shag in the 1960’s) a reminder that Sarah Lance is in fact bi-sexual and not a lesbian (after flirtations or more with a number of female characters ranging from Queen Guinevere in Camelot to Supergirl’s adopted sister Alex Danvers in the Crisis on Earth X mini-series, I was starting to wonder why she was always described as bi). 

I remain skeptical.  For one thing, I watched the first two episodes of Constantine when it debuted on NBC, and found it less than compelling.  The reason for that is my point two, mainly that I dislike the mixing of science fiction with fantasy.  Or at least what I call “soft fantasy” as opposed to “hard fantasy.”  The latter is demonstrated by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which dealt with mystic arts and things that defied the realm of science, but did so in an alternative that still had rules that had to be followed.  Vampires can’t enter a home without an invitation; why?  Who cares as long as the rule is applied consistently, I can accept it. 

But on shows like Constantine the rules seem more fluid.  There’s always a way out, a way to stop an all-powerful demon by making a Latin incantation, a way to avert the end of the world by burning incense and making some runes on the floor.  The last two seasons of Buffy occasionally fell into this trap, where a witch could transmute something by a wave of the hand, sort of like Samantha on Bewitched twitching her nose. 

While I have enjoyed Legends this season, I have wearied of the seemingly endless quest to assemble a collection of totems to defeat a demon called Mallus.  Of course this makes no less sense than season two’s quest to assemble a Spear of Destiny, but for some reason that seemed infinitely more reasonable.  Of course when the bad guys assembled the Spear and were able to re-write the universe however they wanted, they chose to make the universe seem an awfully lot like the original.

I am glad there will be another season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but I hope adding John Constantine into the mix doesn’t ruin the chemistry of the ensemble.  Of course other characters have been inserted and left without lessening the show’s quality (in some cases improving it), so maybe they know what they are doing.  But the fact is that most shows have an expiration date, a point by which time all plots have been done and all character backstories have been examined.  Maybe four seasons is the time limit for Legends; maybe not. 

When a show has proven so nimble, so adept at evolving into something better, you have to give it the benefit of the doubt.  This show has done something I would have thought was impossible, namely make me actually LIKE Brandon Routh (after that stupid Superman film and the disastrous guest role on Chuck, not even Scott Pilgrim vs. the World could get him out of my doghouse).  So sign me up for another year; heck, I even forced myself to watch seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy.

Talk about a show sticking around past its expiration date.