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Oh yeah, the Supplemental Draft happened

By ArtieFufkin

Once again, mid-July rolls around, and we here at ReadAndReact are settling nicely into our summer, blissfully unaware that the NFL’s annual Supplemental Draft is taking place.  Which it did, yesterday.

For those who don’t remember (or care), the Supplemental Draft is intended for players who failed to declare for April’s draft, or had other issues affecting their eligibility.  This year, there were a grand total of 4 players eligible for the draft, and the Chicago Bears played it crafty, waiting until the 7th and final round to select RB Harvey Unga from BYU.  They were quickly followed by the Dallas Cowboys, who pounced on Illinois DT Josh Price-Brent later in the round.

BYU Running Back Harvey Unga is now a Chicago Bear (Photo: Christopher Hanewinckel/US Presswire via ESPN.com)

As we’ve discussed here before, the Supplemental Draft is something of an enigma, in that it holds very little significance, even for draftniks like ourselves.  Hell, it doesn’t even seem to be a real event — more likely a conference call or online draft, a la fantasy football.  But do you think that they make some poor sucker sit through hours of calling out team names and waiting for their time on the clock to run out? I mean, there were only four players entered in this thing, and the first one was taken with the 12th pick in the 7th round!!  Even if there’s only 2 minutes on the clock per pick, that works out to over SEVEN HOURS before the first pick was made!!!  I guess that’s why this isn’t a televised event.  Goodell certainly isn’t hanging around and watching it unfold.

Of course, every time I think about the supplemental draft, I always wonder how many players taken here have really made an impact in the NFL. Fortunately for us, Len Pasquarelli gives a nice breakdown on ESPN.com:

Cris Carter: the best of the supplementals (Photo: ESPN.com)

Only five of the previous 38 players chosen had careers that spanned 100 or more regular-season appearances, and wide receiver Cris Carter, probably the lone choice in the supplemental draft with Hall of Fame credentials, is the only player to appear in 200 games. In fact, the average span is 42.1 appearances, the equivalent of a little more than 2½ seasons.

The supplemental draft has produced only six Pro Bowl players, and Carter, a Hall of Fame finalist in each of the past two years, accounted for exactly half of their 16 all-star appearances. Only two other supplemental picks, wide receiver Rob Moore and nose tackle Jamal Williams, notched more than one Pro Bowl invitation.

There hasn’t been a Pro Bowl participant chosen in the supplemental draft since Williams (San Diego, second round) and offensive lineman Mike Wahle (Green Bay, second round) in 1998.

So there you go.  The odds are not exactly in John Price-Brent’s favor (even if Len did leave out Bernie Kosar on his list of supplemental success stories).

Unga is BYU’s all-time leading rusher with 3,455 yards, including three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.  He left school and declared for the supplemental draft after being kicked off the team at BYU for violating the school’s Mormon honor code.  And now, Unga will get to compete for a #3 RB job with the Bears, who already have Matt Forte and Chester Taylor on the roster.