The new "Mr. Irrelevant" is from the U. of Maine....(Insert smart ass comment here about Maine...irrelevant...ha ha ha).

Yes folks, the 2006 NFL Draft is now officially closed and in the books. For those of you who watched more than an hour combined of the proceedings on ESPN and ESPN2 over the weekend, well, good luck moving out of your mom's basement sometime in the next two or three decades (I can make this joke because it was only a few short years ago that I made such a move, and Mom, I really miss you.). Seriously, as a Patriots fan, I now know that the draft is just one piece in the puzzle of adding quality to a team's roster. It is not the be all and end all that the good folks at ESPN would have you believe, though I do like to look at Mel Kiper's hair every year and wonder: "What does he ask his barber to do when he goes in for a cut? Make me look like an extra from "Rebel Without a Cause?", with the snarl coming as a bonus. Bill Belichick has utilized free agency (as well as a few trades) just as much as drafting to add players who fit the so called Patriots "system", and I think that it has kinda worked out well for him, what with the three rings in five years and all.

But still, with ESPN, SI.com, et all beating all sports fans over the head with mock draft after mock draft after mock draft, it was all a bit much over the last month. There were actually a bunch of sites that tried to predict ALL SEVEN ROUNDS (no link because this being Monday, May 1st those sites seem to have deleted their mock drafts, hoping no one will know how wrong they were). This idea was definately hatched in somebody's mother's basement. Either that or at the end of a serious night of drinking: "Hey, what can we do to completely waste our time for the next two or three days, besides continue drinking? Or maybe they DID continue with the beer bongs and did up the seven round mockup whilst inebrieted. Either way, what was the point?

And the final player picked in this year's draft, a man who will forever be known as Mr. Irrelevant 2006 is a wide reciever from the U. of Maine named Kevin McMahan. No, he did not grow up here in our fair state (that would have been too much to ask), but seems to be a good prospect with decent speed though he has problems sep..oh hell, I don't know what I'm talking about: I thought Joey Harrington was going to be the next great Lions quarterback when he was picked third in 2003 after a terrific career at Oregon (Is that what they called wishful thinking: next great Lions QB? I mean, since Bobby Layne there aren't too many good choices). Anyway, congrats to Mr. McMahan and his family for "winning" this tremendous honor. Not that he has a snowball's chance in hell of doing much in the league (Jeremy Bloom, who is a 170 pound professional skier who hasn't touched a football for over two years was picked two rounds BEFORE McMahan).

The last Mr. Irrelevant to make news, well at least a little bit of news, was the Patriots own Marty Moore, a linebacker drafted out of the U. of Kentucky in 1994 who played for the team in Super Bowl XXXI. He saw action on special teams, and was actually someone I remember doing a pretty good job of it. Spent 9 years in the league. Where he is now only Google knows....