You probably haven’t heard of Bert Bell. He was commissioner of the National Football League from 1946 until his death in 1959, at which point he was replaced by Pete Rozelle, who helped make the NFL the most successful professional sports league in the history of the galaxy, at least this portion of it.
But before that Bell owned some NFL teams, first the Eagles, then the Steelers. Bell became co-owner of the Eagles in 1933, the heart of the Great Depression, in a sports universe dominated by major league baseball, boxing and horse racing. Bell convinced his fellow owners that the struggling league needed to do something to further competitive parity and that something was a draft, worse teams pick first, best teams pick last and so forth.
That seems pretty obvious. But only because the first one, held in 1936, was so successful. Every pro league has one, at least every one that matters. The WNBA held their draft earlier this month. The NBA and NHL are coming up in late June, the MLB draft in July.
But nobody does drafts like the NFL. Three days, crowds in the hundreds of thousands, media coverage unmatched by any other draft. There are even magazines devoted to the draft. Magazines, for crying out loud.
Which brings us to Duke football. The NFL draft and Duke football have not always been a good match. In fact Duke went from Drew Strojny in 2004 until Sean Renfree in 2013 without having a single player drafted. Not having next-level talent is how you become the worst program in the country. Duke went a whopping 27 years between first-round picks, Mike Junkin in 1987 till Laken Tomlinson in 2015.
It wasn’t always like that of course. Mike McGee was the 14th pick in 1960. Mike Curtis was the 14th pick in 1965. Bob Matheson was the 18th pick two years later. If we go back to the Wallace Wade era and the earliest years of the draft we find George McAfee as the second pick in 1940, Steve Lach the fourth pick in 1942. Ace Parker went 13th in 1937, Sonny Jurgensen 43rd in 1957, which is pretty good for a quarterback who threw for 1,119 yards in three college seasons.
As Duke football started moving away from the glory days of Wallace Wade and Bill Murray, the draft picks began to drop off. But not disappear completely. Ernie Jackson, Steve Jones, Ed Newman, Billy Bryan, Cedric Jones, Chris Port, Dave Brown. Maybe a gap of a year or two. But not almost a decade.
Then the wheels came off.
Until David Cutcliffe put them back on again. Nine of Cutcliffe’s Duke players were NFL draft picks. Three members of that historic 2013 team, Jamison Crowder, Laken Tomlinson and Lucas Patrick are still playing in the NFL.
Then it starts to get weird. The 2021 draft had Chris Rumph, Michael Carter, Noah Gray and Vic Dimukeje drafted, the first and so far only draft to include four Duke players. Deon Jackson, Josh Blackwell and Jake Bobo also were major contributors on that team and all played last season in the NFL.
That doesn’t include Graham Barton, DeWayne Carter and Jacob Monk, all true freshmen in 2020, all of whom saw the field.
That team went 2-9. Yes, it was the COVID year, with empty stadiums and all that. But two wins?
That explains why Duke was looking for a new football coach following the 2021 season.
Which brings us to 2024. Barton went to Tampa Bay in the first round, Carter to Buffalo in the third round, Monk to Green Bay in the fifth round.
I think Carter and Monk will be depth pieces, at least at the beginning.
Carter is moving to a periennial contender. He hit all the right notes in his introductory press conference.
“I can’t wait to get here, learn the landscape, learn Buffalo and actually figure out where I can make the biggest impact, where it will be taking my community outside of this facility and the team. I got to get my boots on the ground, figure it out.”
If you’ve followed Carter throughout his Duke career, you’re probably not surprised to hear him reference the Buffalo community off the bat. He was an All-ACC player but he also earned numerous accolades for his off-field activities. He’s the only three-time captain in Duke football history. He was a National Football Foundation National Scholar-Athlete, a member of the American Football Coaches Good Works Team and won the 2023 Jim Tatum Award, given to the ACC’s top senior football student-athlete.
Anybody can meet with the media after a win. Carter was the guy Duke brought out after a tough loss.
And he answered tough questions.
Jacob Monk started for Duke at tackle, center and guard. Green Bay moved up five spots to select Monk, which suggests they value that versatility and see Monk as part of their future.
But Barton was the first-day guy, one of only three Blue Devils picked in the first round this millennium, following Tomlinson and Daniel Jones. Tampa Bay needs help on the interior and Barton should be an immediate starter on the way to a 12 or so year career as one of the NFL’s best centers.
That’s the way I see it.
Tampa Bay GM Todd Licht called Barton “the epitome of what we want to not only lead our draft class but lead our team.”
Head coach Todd Bowles called Barton “big, fast and strong. He’s a guy we sought highly coming into the draft.”
Center, you say? Yes, Barton mostly played left tackle at Duke. But his arms are a bit too short to hold off NFL edge rushers, hence the move inside. But Barton is just as Bowles describes him, he’s smart as a whip and he plays with an edge that’s going to serve him well. He doesn’t want to interpose himself between a defender and the guy with the ball. He wants to knock them into the next area code.
If Barton is as successful as I think he’ll be, he’ll be the next in a fairly distinguished line of former Duke players to have long careers as NFL linemen. Newman played 12 seasons in the league. Bryan played 12. Brian Baldinger played 11. Lennie Friedman played eight, Robert Jackson 11. Tomlinson and Patrick are still going.
Three draft picks is tall cotton for Duke. But we also have Jake Hornibrook (Indianapolis minicamp), Jalon Calhoun (Detroit), Ja’Mion Franklin (Baltimore), Al Blades (Jets), Myles Jones (Jets), Porter Wilson (Green Bay rookie minicamp) and Jeremiah Lewis (Giants minicamp) all signing with NFL teams.
More may come.
Some of these players will spend the season on practice squads, some won’t even make it that far. But Undrafted Free Agents can and do make the NFL and stick around for awhile. Patrick just finished his seventh season as a UFA. He’s currently a free agent. Linebacker Vinnie Rey lasted nine seasons as a UFA. Jackson wasn’t drafted.
There are plenty of other examples but I trust I’ve made my point. These UFAs aren’t just doing this because they’re bored. They have a chance.
Does any of this help Manny Diaz? After all, he didn’t coach any of these guys, didn’t recruit any of them.
But for years teams recruited against Duke by telling prepsters that you can go to Duke or you can eventually play in the NFL. But you can’t do both. Every time Tampa Bay plays on Monday Night Football and we see Graham Barton tell the world he played football at Duke University, it reinforces Diaz’s message that you can have both Duke and the NFL.
Can he leverage that message? Back in the early 1960s, around the time I first became serious about watching college sports, it was said that Darrell Royal and Texas football didn’t rebuild, they reloaded. Having guys drafted, having guys make an NFL roster is great.
If you can reload.