Larry Brown Sports

Though our NFL analysis is generally pretty spot-on here at LBS, we haven’t spent the past three months watching game film of 400 different prospects. Many of these folks have. If you’re into mock drafts and want to check out a few, you can go through them below. We included a few fun bonus links at the bottom. We recommend starting with Evan Silva’s mock draft; he’s second to none when it comes to understanding team tendencies, team needs, and analyzing players.

Evan Silva’s two-round mock draft [Rotoworld]

Mike Mayock mocks the first round [NFL Network]

Peter Schrager’s full 7 round mock draft [FOX Sports]

Josh Norris’ full 7 round mock draft [NFL.com/Rotoworld]

Peter King’s mock draft [Sports Illustrated]

Don Banks’ mock draft [Sports Illustrated]

Mike Florio’s first round mock [Pro Football Talk]

Lance Zierlein’s final mock draft [The Sideline View]
(also see Lance’s offensive and defensive player rankings)

Damond Talbot’s first round (with analysis) [NFL Draft Zone]

Compare four analysts at NFL.com to four analysts at CBS Sports

Bonus links:

Ex-Raiders DL/LB explains what it’s like to drop in draft [Ryan Riddle]

20 movie QBs who would get the call on draft day [SI Extra Mustard]

The first round of the NFL Draft starts at 8:00 p.m. ET and can be seen on ESPN and NFL Network. We’ll be watching the coverage on both networks. The networks also made a pact and agreed not to spoil draft picks on Twitter, so that should make the draft more dramatic and fun to watch. Should be an awesome day.

There were plenty of April Fools’ Day pranks run in the sports world on Monday, so we decided to recap them. Some were as simple as a tweet or two, while others were slightly more elaborate.

Let’s take a look at some of the April Fools’ Day pranks from the sports world.

LeBron James had one of the most bitter splits with a professional sports team in recent memory, but the anger between Cleveland fans and James seems to have dissipated lately. Some fans are even dying to have him back. The Cleveland Plain Dealer appealed to those fans with a headline on their sports section Monday, though they really weren’t trying to hard to fool readers (did you notice the sub-headline?).

Cleveland newspaper runs LeBron James headline [The Basketball Jones]

Read The Rest of the Story…

The BBVA Rising Stars Challenge in Houston on Friday was the usual low-effort, high-scoring affair we have come to expect from an all-star game. However, things got extremely interesting late in the game when Kyrie Irving and Brandon Knight decided to turn things into a personal game of one-on-one.

The two went after each other a few possessions in a row with about six minutes left in the game. Though Knight did his best to hang in there, he got absolutely embarrassed by Irving, who broke out some filthy moves that left Knight tripping over himself. To his credit, Knight came back down the floor and got Irving back with a crossover, but Kyrie won that battle overall.

Crazy handles and the ability to finish with both hands like that helped make Irving Rookie of the Year last season.

As good as the Washington Redskins have been on offense this season, they have been equally bad defensively. Robert Griffin III and Alfred Morris have provided a major spark, but the Redskins are allowing over 28 points and 400 yards of total offense per game — statistics that put them in the bottom five in the NFL.

When discussing Washington’s 27-12 loss to the Steelers on 106.7 The Fan’s postgame show Sunday, former Redskins cornerback Fred Smoot ripped defensive coordinator Jim Haslett.

“Jim is, I think, an average coordinator right now,” Smoot said according to D.C. Sports Bog. “He might not have the players he wants. But I also think he’s so pig-headed right now, he’s gonna continue to run his style of defense, even though it’s killing the team.

If you were expecting a “no disrespect” after that, Smoot didn’t offer it.

“I’m embarrassed for them,” Smoot said. “Because I used to wear those colors. I wore that on my helmet. I represent that to this day. And I know the one thing we always prided ourselves on was going out there and playing defense the best we could. We might not have been the greatest defense, but we played with our heart on our sleeve, and we went out there and laid it on the line.”

Smoot also called out the Redskins receiving corps for dropping balls and wasn’t buying the excuse that weather was a factor. His criticism may seem harsh, but Fred was a defensive back in the NFL so he certainly knows of what he speaks. Haslett has blamed players in the past for not fitting in with Washington’s defensive scheme, but there is obviously a bigger issue this season. The Redskins are making plays on offense, but they aren’t stopping anyone. That won’t win you many games in the NFL.

The Boston media are never going to be kind to those who don’t deserve kindness. In fact, they are even pretty hard on those who do. Whether Josh Beckett was mistreated by writers and reporters or not during his tenure with the Red Sox depends on your viewpoint. Either way, Beckett seems to think it was the media that ran him out of town.

“Once they want you out of there, they want you out of there,” Beckett said Tuesday according to WEEI.com. “By them, I don’t necessarily mean the fans. There are certain people in the media who painted me out to be a monster with horns, and that’s just not the case. I said that in my press conference, people out here hear from certain media members that [portrayal].

“They don’t write what people say because that’s not how they want perception to be. They’ve done it to a lot of people. I got a text message from one of the head security guys over there. He’s like, ‘You’re not the first person I’ve seen this happen to.’ Once those people want you out of there, they want you out of there. They’re going to keep on, keeping on, keeping on until they get what they want.”

Adrian Gonzalez already expressed a similar opinion when asked about his experience. Beckett, who was an enormous part of the Red Sox World Series run in 2007, compared himself to former closer Keith Foulke. Foulke led Boston through the playoffs in 2004 and was eventually forced out in 2006 after he started struggling.

“You just try and be yourself, and if that’s not enough, what are you supposed to do?” Beckett asked. “Act like somebody else?”

While I’m not going to say the Boston media has treated Beckett fairly over the past few seasons, you would be generalizing far too much if you blamed the media for his departure. Ultimately, it was Beckett’s poor performance on the mound. He was 5-11 with a 5.23 ERA before joining the Dodgers. Whether its was an attitude problem, a physical problem or both, the Red Sox decided to pay Beckett like an ace when they signed him to a four-year, $68 million extension and he did not pitch like one. Had he pitched well, none of this would have happened.

It’s good to be in first place. The Cincinnati Reds are sitting atop the NL Central and seem to be enjoying it, as pitchers Bronson Arroyo and Aroldis Chapman showed us when they recreated some old school Adam Sandler magic (before Adam Sandler sucked). Arroyo made decent work of “The Red Headed Sweatshirt Song“, but Chapman deserves an Oscar for his effort. Shamalama ding-dong, indeed, Aroldis.

But again, it’s nice to do this kind of lighthearted stuff when you’re in first place. Maybe the Cubs, who are already 20 games under and in last place, can do a cover of Sandler’s “The Turkey Song”.

A professional MMA fighter from Scotland died last week after being crushed by a cow carcass in a slaughterhouse. That’s probably not what you want your obituary to read, but then again, if you’re dead, does it really matter what your obit says?

23-year-old Alexander McCrae had been working at the slaughterhouse for about a month and was an MMA fighter on the side. He had just began a professional career and aimed to go full-time, according to the Daily Record.

But on Thursday, he was crushed by a cow carcass that fell on him. His death is being investigated, but they believe he “suffered a heart attack when a carcass fell from a hook on a conveyor system and hit him on the head.”

McRae’s friends say they thought it was a joke because that’s the type of guy he was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Death by falling cow carcass. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

via Off the Bench