This year's National Football League draft is being held in New York. Like the NFL drafts before it, it will be exciting to see the results. The NFL picks of this year should be interesting to say the least. There are risks and rewards to each and every pick in the draft this year as there were in every one before it. NFL picks are sorts of like gambling for the teams and owners involved in the draft, especially after the first round picks. Most of the first few picks in the first round are known before the draft even begins, although sometimes a team may surprise both fans and players alike by selecting a different player than was predicted.



Before the National Football League started the draft, the top six picks in this year's draft were six players who were all invited by the league to New York for the annual event. Aaron Rodgers and Brady Quinn were two players invited to this event that were simply sitting in the green room while they were passed up by team after team. It is hard to know what they must have been feeling like as they were expecting to be taken right off the get go and were not. There have already been eight trades in the first round and there are plenty of questions for the teams that are doing the picking.

Yes, the NFL picks this year seem to be quite controversial. The Jets took Purdue's Dustin Keller, who is a tight end, a position that the jets did not really need filled. The Baltimore Ravens took the hot quarterback from the combine, who was Delaware's Joe Flacco. Most look at this young pick as needing a year or two more of development so the pick should pay off later down the line for them. Then the Raiders who are supposedly overstocked with running backs took Darren McFadden as the overall fourth pick. Really, McFadden can be looked upon as being the best player in the draft, but with all those running backs that they already have some wonder why this particular NFL pick was made.

One of the strangest picks from the draft came from left field when the Carolina Panthers traded away their next year's first round pick to Philadelphia to choose the offensive tackle Jeff Otah. Cleveland, on the other hand, made a great decision to give up their first round pick for the quarterback Brady Quinn. A quarterback is quite simply the most valuable commodity that a team can have. Last year, San Francisco gave away its first round pick for the tackle Joe Staley, but this was also not a bad move seeing that Staley was showing a lot of promise. However, the Carolina Panthers have made a bad decision in the eyes of most by giving up their first round pick for Jeff Otah.

The Patriots ended up getting Tennessee's Jerod Mayo in the first round picks. Jerod Mayo is the second highest rated linebacker, so this was an excellent pick. It is hard to say what will happen with the rest of the draft, but we will have the results soon enough.