Today the grand experiment ended.
Drafted in the third round of the 2004 draft, BJ Sanders selection by Mike Sherman caused a few snorts and chortles around the war rooms of the NFL on draft day and at every watercooler from Green Bay down to Milwaukee. The thought was the Packers were just a few players away from getting back to the Big Dance, and one of those players was a punter. Draft a good one and you’re that much closer. But kickers in football are like pitchers in baseball; they are about 3 steps closer to the white jackets with the long, long sleeves than the rest of us. Put something bad in their heads and it’ll fester there. Sometimes forever. That seemed to be true of Sanders, who was never able to recapture his college successes as a Ray Guy award recipient as the nation’s top collegiate punter.
As Bill Parcells once said: “You never take a kicker in the draft. You’d have to be a moron to select a kicker in the top three rounds. Total moron.”*
And so it goes, BJ Sanders is now looking to kick some pork in another NFL city and Mike Sherman’s experiment, one that he continued to put money on even after he could have seen it was a bad bet, has come to a close.
Jon Ryan has not yet wowed the coaches (Sanders was still punting in Saturday’s win against the Falcons), so look for the Packers to bring in another punter to compete with Ryan for the job.
Technorati Tags: BJ Sanders, Punters, Green Bay Packers, Ray Guy award, Mike Sherman
*Not Parcell’s actual comments.