Forgotten picks to gas mask bongs: the strangest NFL draft moments
Teams spend years developing their draft strategy. But once the clock starts ticking, things don’t always go as planned.
The gas mask bong
It’s the ultimate “where were you” concept moment. Laremy Tunsil was projected to be a top-five pick in the 2016 Draft. Lots of mocking resulted in him going with the top overall pick to Tennessee before the Titans traded it away. But shortly before the draft started, Tunsil’s social media accounts were hacked. They posted videos of Tunsil smoking through a gas mask hookah and lobbying his college coaches for payments.
Fresh material was dropped as each strand rolled by. Teams rushed to find information. Baltimore, needing a tackle, passed on Tunsil with the sixth pick in favor of Ronnie Stanley. Stanley’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, began frantically calling teams to explain away the video. The slide lasted until the 14th pick, with the Dolphins selecting the top tackle in the class.
“The optics were far from perfect, but we kept it in the context of a good kid who loves football and is a good person,” Dolphins general manager Mike Tannenbaum said. “We just thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Tunsil proved to deliver on his pre-draft promise, becoming one of the best blindside protectors in the league, though he says the video deprived him of any recognition. His descent on draft day also cost him money, but he would recoup most of his losses when he signed a three-year, $75 million extension with the Texans in 2023 after being undrafted out of Miami.
The Vikings ‘pass on’ their choice
No franchise dealt with more draft-day dysfunction than the early 2000s Vikings.
The draft has a fairly simplistic structure: the league creates an order based on the teams’ records from the previous season; each team is given a certain amount of time to make their selection; the decision makers decide who to select; the team completes a card and hands it to the league office; the rest of the teams are notified and the draw moves on to the next choice.
Almost. Imagine spending months mining the tape, measuring ankles and wingspans, talking to everyone within arm’s reach of each prospect, and then when you’re on the clock, you miss your pick. That’s what happened to the Vikings in 2003. And it wasn’t just a choice, it was the seventh overall selection.
Minnesota spent the early stages of the draft trying to pull off a trade on the board. As their turn approached, they made a deal with the Ravens. But the team failed to officially sign off the trade before their time on the clock expired. Because they didn’t make a selection, the trade was void and their pick went to the next team on the clock: the Jaguars.
“They passed!” Chris Berman screamed during ESPN’s broadcast. “What are they doing? All I can think of is they know who they’re taking and want to pay them like the 11th pick in the draft instead of the seventh. My God.”
The draft rules state that if a team submits their pick, they can make their pick whenever they want. But Jacksonville rushed to make their picks and selected quarterback Byron Leftwich, the player Baltimore was eyeing in a trade. Carolina was the next to race to the podium before Minnesota could figure out what was going on, selecting Jordan Gross, the best player on Minnesota’s draft board.
“I’m angry,” Vikings coach Mike Tice said in the aftermath. “I can’t say it any other way.”
The result: the Vikings fell from the seventh pick to the ninth pick without getting anything in return. But in the rush to make a roster, Minnesota grabbed defensive lineman Kevin Williams, a player who would become one of the best interior linemen of his generation.
Minnesota’s draft pick was one of the most stunning moments in draft annals. And they actually did it twice. And they did so in consecutive years.
The Vikings try to stay ahead
A year before the aborted trade with the Ravens, Minnesota made a similar move. Sitting at the seventh pick in 2002, Minnesota targeted defensive tackle Ryan Sims. The Cowboys were on the clock with the sixth pick and were talking to the Chiefs about a trade back. Like Minnesota, Kansas City targeted Sims and wanted to skip the Vikings in the order. As the Cowboys pick clock wound down with no trade completed, Minnesota tried to seize an opportunity: They turned in a card for Sims with their pick for they were officially on the clock.
The Cowboys and Chiefs were able to agree to trade terms and KC selected Sims, leaving the Vikings in the lurch. Minnesota had to withdraw their draft card and submit a different name. They selected left tackle prospect Bryant McKinnie from Miami, but the two sides became embroiled in a contract dispute that was not resolved until well into McKinnie’s rookie season.
The Saints are trading an entire class for Ricky Williams
Oh, for the days when running backs were considered so valuable that teams would select them in the first round. Better yet, teams would trade in the draft to grab a potential franchise rusher. The Saints took that logic to the extreme by divvying up their entire draft class to select Ricky Williams fifth overall in 1999.
Most teams hoard draft picks like an oligarch hiding art in Switzerland. Not Mike Ditka.
Ditka – the walking embodiment of a rah-rah football coach – was so committed to a tough style that he traded away seven picks to move up seven spots to take Williams. Ditka believed that the solution to every world problem was to run the ball some more – and to do that he needed an edge. Williams was the most explosive in college football, and so the coach and GM somehow deceived Saints ownership into giving away their future to one player.
The Saints dealt the twelfth pick in the ’99 draft, their third, fourth, sixth and seventh round picks in the same draft, and their first and third round picks in the next draft. They didn’t have a second in 1999, so they couldn’t bundle that pick into the deal.
The wedding was a disaster. The Saints reeked of pre-Williams, and without any supporting talent — because Ditka had traded away all the team’s picks — they hit rock bottom in 2000, finishing with a 3-13 record. Ditka was fired and Williams would play only two more seasons for the franchise before being traded to Miami, where he would lead the league in 2002.
It was a low moment for a (then) modest franchise. Still: We’ll always have those images of Ditka in a Williams wig.
The Buccaneers pick the wrong player
We all got some names mixed up. However, most of us are not highly paid professional football players who spend 12 months microanalyzing college football players.
In the 1980s, the Bucs were the league’s tragicomedy franchise. And nothing was more Tampa than drafting the wrong player in the first round. The Bucs selected Penn State guard Sean Farrell with the 17th pick in 1982. The only problem: They wrote down the wrong name. The Bucs planned to select Booker Reese for the defense, but due to a miscommunication between the GM in the team’s war room and the staff on the ground at the draft, they wrote the wrong name on the card.
“We were on the phone, but it was hard to hear,” Ken Herock, the team’s director of player personnel, told Sports Illustrated. “I hear Pat [the representative on the ground] say, ‘quiet, quiet, quiet, I can’t hear what he’s saying.’
Herock called for Reese’s name to be submitted, but Herock wrote down Farrell’s. The team lobbied the league to retroactively change the pick, but commissioner Pete Rozelle would have none of it. Tampa was ultimately able to move up to the top of the second round to draft Reese.
However, the miscue worked out. Farrell became a mainstay for the Bucs, making 59 starts for the team and carving out an 11-year career in the league. Reese would start just seven games in his Bucs career before being traded to the Rams, where he saw limited time and was out of the league in 1985.
Honorable mentions: Aaron Rodgers’ awkward night slide in 2005; Eli Manning and Philip Rivers’ jersey swap in 2004; Aaron Rodgers Sees Jordan Love Being Selected in 2020; Washington drafts the same player twice; the CFL drafting a dead player…twice; the Raiders drafted a Mormon who couldn’t play on Sunday; Cedric Benson cries after being selected by the Bears in 2005; the Browns incorrectly named “Jordan Cameron” in 2011; Browns owner Jimmy Haslam asked a fan on the street for advice before choosing Johnny Manziel in 2014; Bill Belichick’s dog.