As always, NFL Draft was full of hot air

The 2016 NFL Daft — er, Draft — is safely out of our way.

I blame the fogginess from a head cold for having it on television as much as I did last weekend. You know the old saying. Feed a cold with foolishness, starve a fever.

When the rubble of the draft had cleared, we were left with a lot of curiosities. Many didn't even include a video of a player using a bong while wearing a gas mask.

Iowa, coming off a 12-0 regular-season, had just one player drafted. And he, center Austin Blythe, was the 248th selection of the 253.

Was all the Hawkeyes' 2015 talent spread among non-seniors? Of course not. Not with Blythe, guard Jordan Walsh, tight end Henry Krieger Coble, safety Jordan Lomax, kicker Marshall Koehn, receiver Tevaun Smith, fullbacks Adam Cox and Macon Plewa, and defensive end Drew Ott among the seniors.

But only Blythe was drafted from a team that didn't lose a game until December? Quirky.

Keep in mind Iowa has had players taken in every NFL draft since 1977, and only two of Kirk Ferentz's previous 16 teams had just one player drafted.

Keep in mind the 2002 Hawkeyes that went unbeaten in the Big Ten had a first-rounder and two second-rounders in the '03 draft.

Keep in mind the 2009 Hawkeyes that won the Orange Bowl had a first-rounder, a second, two thirds and a fourth in the '10 draft.

Keep in mind the 2010 Hawkeyes had six seniors drafted, and the 2011 Hawkeyes had six more.

So that deal is odd, but nothing more. There's plenty of oddness spread across the draft and the draft's history. Such as ...

For the 21st-straight year, no Big Ten quarterback was picked in the first round. That's a mind-boggler.

Fifty-three quarterbacks have been first-rounders since Penn State's Kerry Collins in 1995. They've come from North Dakota State and Delaware. Central Florida, Marshall and Tulane have had two apiece. California, which hasn't appeared in a January bowl since 1992, has had three.

Iowa hasn't played against a first-round quarterback since it got the best of Missouri's Blaine Gabbert in the 2010 Insight Bowl. That's 65 games, and there isn't a projected 2017 first-round QB on the Hawkeyes' 2016 schedule.

But since January 2000, former Big Ten quarterbacks have piloted six NFL champions in this millennium. Tom Brady (6th-round) has four Super Bowl rings, Drew Brees (2nd-round) and Russell Wilson (3rd-round) one.

In that time, SEC-bred quarterbacks (Eli and Peyton Manning) have four Super Bowl wins, the ACC and Pac-12 have just one each, and the Big 12 has none.

Yet, millions upon millions of people hover over the draft, project it to pieces, make instant judgments about it, and are usually flat-out wrong. Brees and Wilson were too short to play in the NFL, by the way.

You would have gotten a lot of betting offers and great odds a year ago if you'd suggested transferring Iowa quarterback Jake Rudock would be picked ahead of anyone from the Hawkeyes in the '16 draft. But there went Michigan's Rudock in the sixth round to Detroit.

Christian Hackenberg of Penn State was a second-rounder this year, becoming the first Big Ten QB to go in the first two rounds since Michigan's Chad Henne in 2008.

What is it about Big Ten quarterbacks that make 32 NFL teams so easily dismiss them? Here are some of the first-rounder QBs since Collins: J.P. Losman, Christian Ponder, Brandon Weeden, JeMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn.

Tim Tebow. Johnny Manziel.

Hey, maybe Michigan State's Connor Cook (the 100th pick this year) will be an eventual Pro Bowler. Maybe Hackenberg will be the New York Jets' eventual savior. Maybe Rudock will be the second Michigan quarterback to go from Round 6 to NFL immortality.

Scoff if you must. But if you can believe no Big Ten quarterbacks have been first-round draftees in the last 21 years, you ought to be able to accept any possibility.