Clark column: FSU's early entries get painful reality check
Florida State had six juniors declare for the 2018 NFL Draft.
Late in the seventh round, with literally just seven selections left, four of them were still undrafted.
You'd be hard-pressed to look back in the history of the sport and find another collection of such misinformed, mind-boggling decisions from a single university.
Tarvarus McFadden and Jalen Wilkerson never heard their names called.
Ryan Izzo (seventh round) and Auden Tate (seventh round) had to wait until they were almost runner-ups to Mr. Irrelevant.
Josh Sweat left early to be a fourth-round pick. Normally that might be considered a head-shaking mistake, but for this FSU group, it qualifies as a no-brainer career decision.
Derwin James even went lower than he was expecting to go, but it was still the 17th overall pick, and he is now guaranteed to be multi-millionaire. So you can't argue with his decision.
The other five, though?
They're just the latest examples of players who either get terrible advice or decide not to listen to the good advice they do get.
McFadden was so confident he'd get drafted -- probably pretty high -- that he mockingly tweeted at the FSU Football account on Thursday when they posted a pic of Derwin James for the start of the NFL Draft.
His tweet, which has since been deleted (or I'm so bad with technology I can't find it), essentially said that James wouldn't be the only FSU defensive back getting drafted.
His tweet was wrong.
And now he's an undrafted free agent who has the odds stacked against him of even making a team, much less making gobs of money.
Wilkerson, to no one's surprise, suffered the same fate. His was one of the more bizarre decisions in FSU history. Maybe the most bizarre considering the lack of production. There were legit FSU football fans that I know -- guys who actually follow the team pretty closely -- who had never heard of Jalen Wilkerson.
So, you know, they were like most NFL scouts.
And look, this isn't a column to make fun of these former Seminoles. I'm not trying to mock them.
But when you're a Ryan Izzo or an Auden Tate, if there is a chance you might slip to pick No. 250, then what in the world are you doing in the draft?
A seventh-round pick is barely -- and I mean barely -- above an undrafted free agent on the rookie pecking order. If you don't play well early in camp, if they don't like you, they'll cut you as soon as possible. They have no money invested in you, so they won't think twice about asking for your playbook.
It's not anywhere close to a sure thing that Izzo and Tate are even on a roster this September.
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I think both guys are talented enough to play in the league. I think there's a chance they could stick.
But there's also a chance they'll be searching for real work in a few months. Instead of playing football at Florida State, for an actual fun coach, eating for free, living rent-free, being treated like celebrities everywhere they go and getting to play in front of 80,000 people.
It's not a bad life. Especially when juxtaposed with potentially having to go get a real job.
Izzo was the No. 250 overall pick. Tate was No. 253.
There are typically 32 selections in a round, but since the NFL has all these weird compensatory picks -- especially later in the draft -- there were 256 draft picks this season.
That's about eight rounds worth of selections. And even then, Izzo and Tate barely got drafted.
Let's hope they make it. Let's hope they both wind up in situations where they can not only make the roster but actually make a difference.
As seventh-round picks, the odds are stacked against them, but that doesn't mean they can't achieve their dreams of being an NFL player.
Still.
Florida State had six underclassmen declare for the NFL Draft. None went as high as they expected. Only one was picked in the first two days of the event. And four weren't deemed, by the people that matter, to be in the top 249 players available.
How did this happen?
Why did this happen?
It's not necessarily a Florida State specific problem, of course.
Of the record 106 early entrants into the 2018 NFL Draft, 37 went undrafted. Thirty. Seven.
That means (checking the calculator on my iPhone) 35 percent of the underclassmen weren't drafted at all.
Clemson, Washington State and Auburn all had two early entries who didn't get picked - and LSU led the way with three!
I want to write that these bad decisions by FSU players -- and make no mistake, if you're picked in the seventh round or not at all, it qualifies as a bad decision -- had something to do with Jimbo Fisher. That he created an NFL-first culture here. That he sold getting to the league so much in the recruiting process that it was the only thing these players focused on once they got to campus. It was their primary (only?) focus.
They were in such a rush to go get paid, even at the expense of being able to bolster their stock by staying around another year, that they ran out of the door as soon as humanly possible. Plus, they just saw their head coach bolt to the Cow Capital of the World for $75 million. So why would they stick around to play in a new system for a guy they didn't know?
So, sure, Jimbo can be blamed if we want to.
But then that's not completely fair. Because how do you explain the other 35 underclassmen who weren't drafted?
It's certainly not just a Florida State problem.
But it is, in fact, a problem.
Too many players are getting way too much bad advice. By people who are usually looking out for their own best interests.
The NFL Draft Advisory Board is essentially pointless. Sure, it can tell Derwin James he'll be a first-round pick. My 93-year-old aunt could do that. But for guys like Izzo and Tate and McFadden? It apparently does next to nothing.
And since the NFL doesn't allow these guys to go back to school if they don't like where they're drafted -- or in McFadden's case, not drafted -- then these stories are just going to become more and more commonplace.
Tate might have been on the cusp of not getting drafted because teams were scared of his shoulder -- he played injured for much of 2017. So if he gets healthy, maybe he makes the squad and maybe he makes an impact.
If he had come back to school and had a healthy season, maybe he could have been a third-round pick? Or fourth? Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered at all.
I tend to think he would have had a monster year in Willie Taggart's offense and would have raised his stock considerably -- certainly to the point where he wouldn't have been worried whether he was going to get drafted.
But he made his own decision and raced out the door.
Just like McFadden, Wilkerson, Izzo and Sweat.
Now they have go live with those decisions. Because now they have to go try to make a living.
Contact senior writer Corey Clark at corey@warchant.com and follow @Corey_Clark on Twitter.
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