Sometimes Ernest Hemingway stops by the BuzzFeed offices and demands that we let him weigh in on something, and we acquiesce because we don't want to get punched. This is one of those times.
There is a draft coming. A draft for war and not the war that is fought with guns and viscera and the steel of bayonets but the war that is fought with helmets and pigskins. You can smell the scent of the pig on the battlefield that is this war which is football.
I drank wine and ate the flesh of large African beasts last night with Roger Goodell and we talked of the cracked plains of Mel Kiper’s hair but also the players that will enter this draft. Roger Goodell is a strong and firm man and he uses fine soap every morning when he bathes and I once saw him sharpen a knife the size of a slice of pie and he sharpened it on the railing of a staircase outside a public school.
We talked of the players that will be in this draft.
I know that when I go to war in the morning I need to be surrounded by strong firm men who can hold their scotch and will make me breathe easy, though there is only so easy you can take in air when you are riding into the maw of what might be death or maybe just breakfast in Barcelona.
These are men I would take to war with me and in this order of preference.
1. Robert Griffin III: Robert has the speed and tense majesty that I desire when looking for companions to go to Abercrombie and Fitch with me and buy rifles and leather hunting apparel and then stalk the wildebeest and water buffalo of sub-Saharan Africa. Robert is honest and brave and I would select him first overall if I were the Indianapolis Colts but I am not.
2. Andrew Luck: He is a boy. Andrew is a boy. He is like a boy I once saw in Manchester as I walked the street to purchase a cup of rough coffee and then as I sat on the terrace of my apartment and drank the coffee and read Ford Madox Ford I knew that boy was not ready for the world yet, no matter his true honest age. He looked too young. Indianapolis will pick him unwisely and they will wash their faces every night and the mirror will speak to them about Robert Griffin III in the way that men hear the sounds of lost women at night.
3. Justin Blackmon: The Vikings’ wide receivers could stand in a line and you could look upon them and say these are not men in the truest sense. They are not men in the way that men dominate and shave and cut swaths of the world up for their own pure conquest. Who is Devin Aromashodu. Justin Blackmon will ride into the wilds of Minnesota on the back of a great steaming chestnut horse and the horse will toss its mane and Justin Blackmon will catch a great many touchdowns thrown by Christian Ponder.
4. Matt Kalil is a beast and is larger than an elephant that once charged me as I stood alone without my rifle and only a knife in the Serengeti. I would take Matt Kalil, if I were the Browns, though I thank God that I am not.
5. Trent Richardson: Trent Richardson has a neck to swallow scotch with.
6. Dontari Poe: Poe was a great man and I think he would have made a fine football player had he not died at such a young age from the succoring darkness of his poetry.
7. Ryan Tannehill: Men grow greedy for what other men have and they extend their fingers upward toward the mountains and when they draw them in all they have is Ryan Tannehill and then they are less for their troubles.
8. Morris Claiborne: He is not the Honey Badger but then no one man is except the Honey Badger himself and also the honey badger the animal which is a formidable and seething creature.
9. David DeCastro: A greater beast than is in many a stable.
10. Michael Floyd: He will shed his monk’s robes and leave his book behind and play football like they do no longer at Notre Dame.
11. Everyone else: If you are not picked in the first ten then you are not quite a man.