Not going to grade every team (I'll leave that to the draft-niks who don't have a life), but here's a quick mention of a couple of teams I thought did great. Also, hard to grade who were the losers until 3 years down the line, unless you're Mel Kiper who likes to criticizes the teams who made his mock drafts look foolish. So here a several teams I thought did very well:

#1 Minnesota Vikings - Not bad when you get potentially the best offensive player (Adrian Peterson), and WR with 1st-Round talent in the 2nd (Sidney Rice). I also think they got a steal in the 3rd with CB Marcus McCauley from Fresno State. If you flip his junior and senior seasons, he could have been a top-10 pick. Before the year, alot of people had him rated as the top corner in the draft. WR Andrae Allison in the 5th round could also be a steal. Could be this year's Demetrious Williams.

#2 Carolina Panthers - able to trade down and still fill their #1 priority by drafting their best LB available, Jon Beason. With Dan Morgan and Chris Draft questionable, this was a position the needed to address. Also, Beason paired with Thomas Davis and Nail Diggs gives the Panthers a couple of fast, heat-seeking missiles who pack a whallop. Plus they held on to Kris Jenkins. Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don't make.

They also got great late round talent. Ryan Kalil will be their starting center for the next decade. Charles Johnson is a tremendously talented pass-rusher who could eventually replace Mike Rucker.

This leads to my favorite draft moment, involving Keyshawn Johnson. After tooting fellow USC WR Dwayne Jarrett's horn merclissly, so much that Steve Young had to intervene to prevent Keyshawn and Mel Kiper Jr. from having a BIll O'Reiley/Jeraldo Rivera type moment (If you haven't seen it, heres the link, pretty funny: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tLPuGuaZTx8) I can already picture Keyshawn pointing his finger in Mel's face and saying "Speed doesn't matter! IT DOESN"T MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!"

Anyway, after repeatedly saying Dwayne Jarrett is a huge talent who is the next Keyshawn Johnson, how funny/awkward was it when the Panthers picked him in an obvious move to eventually be Keyshawn's ultimate replacement? I love the draft and I kept waiting for Mel Kiper to get some digs in about the Panthers' looking to get younger at the WR position.

I love the draft.

#3 Indianapolis Colts - while Anthony Gonzales might have been a reach, he's the perfect slot receiver and replacement for Brandon Stokely. Tony Ugoh in the 2nd is great value at a position the Colts must be solid at. Daymeion Hughes is another corner who was one of the top players at his postion entering this year and is a proven playmaker. He'll make the loss of Jason David absolete.

*While many fans and experts alike will argue the Browns are the big winners, acquiring tackle Joe Thomas along with Brady Quinn and a potential steal in CB Eric Wright, I don't like what they did quite as much as other teams. I like the Brady Quinn pick for Clevelend, he's better than anything they could sign or draft next year, whether they have a top-5 pick or not.

If Eric Wright can stay clean off the field, the I agree he'll be a good pick. However, with the way the NFL and Roger Goodell has handled things, I think that's a big risk.

While Joe Thomas will solidify their OL for the next 10 years, I didn't like this pick for them. Just last year they gave Kevin Schaeffer $40 million to play LT. That's an awful lot of money to pay a RT. Combine that with the money thrown at Eric Steinbach and the injury plagued LeCharles Bentley, I think the money they've invested in their offensive line (plus the $18 million or so guarenteed to Joe Thomas) is a big risk to take given Thomas's durability questions as well.

Tuesday marked the official announcement. Not that it left anyone suprised. Toronto Raports Coach Sam Mitchell, won in what basically a two-horse race his first Coach of the Year Award. Utah's Jerry Sloan finished second. Again.

This year Sloan led Utah to a 51-31 record, and it's first division title since 2000. The 51 wins was a ten win improvement from 2005-06, which was a 15 win improvement from 2004-05. Sam Mitchell led Toronto to 47 wins and the 4th best record seed in a very week Eastern Conference.

So no one picked Toronto to do much of anything. Why? Because they haven't in Sam Mitchell's previous two season, where he won 37% of his games, alienated Vince Carter (who claimed Mitchel tried to fight him in the locker room), and was believed to be in danger of losing his job had Brian Colangelo had a suitbable replacement available. So since the expectations were so low, having a winning basketball team suddenly looks alot better, so much so that 47 wins in the morebound Eastern Conference outdoes 51 wins in a conference with 6 of the leagues 7 best teams.

In his 19 years coaching the Jazz and 22 years coaching in the NBA, Sloan has never once won coach of the year. Although many other curius names have. Doc Rivers won one for leading his Magic to a 41-41 record and a first-round exit in the playoffs. Sloan won 55 games that year. Mike Dunleavy, Del Harris, Larry Bird are among the other winners during Sloan's tenure. Are they better coaches than Sloan. All Sloan has done with the Jazz is win 940 games, lead them to the playoffs in 16 of his 19 seasons and take them to the Finals twice. Mike Dunleavy has coached three different teams in that span, fired from two of them.

What makes Jerry Sloan so great has also kept him from winning the award. He epitomizes old-school. Basketball is simple to him. He doesn't believe he does anything special. He draws up plays (he remarkably calls every set play, even when John Stockton was his PG), expects his players to run them and then fight and compete as hard as they can to keep the other team from scoring. Simple right? But definitely not flashy, nor tremendously popular in small-market Salt Lake City.

Which has helped the new-millenium Jazz  find a new annual national media-tradition. Ever since losing to Portland in the Conference Finals in 1992, the Jazz were constantly counted out as a Western Conference contender, yet surpassed expectations by the end of the decade Jazz fans stopped listending to the "experts and Peter Vescey" because they knew they would be in the playoffs.

Now the media has found a new game to play, called the "Let's Make It Sound Like Sloan has been done an injustice, then continue to do an injustice to him." At first it was funny, now it's becoming repetitive. Every announcer or national media member who covers a Jazz game always says "how has Jerry Sloan never won coach of the year?," yet five minutes later will say "I think (Insert Name of any NBA Coach who's last name is not Sloan Here) deserves to win it." Guys like Marc Stein, Greg Anthony, John Hollinger, Mike Tirico and Mike Breen will use the "How has he never won it" ploy to give them material to talk/write about, but when it comes down to it, they are largely the reason that Sloan has never won it.

It's getting to the point that I hope Sloan never wins it. It would be much better to retire having been snubbed for 20+ years than to win it in your last year and have everyone forget about the previous 19 yrs of snubbage.

For a guy who is all work and no hype, it would be a fitting way to be remembered.