2015 College FB and NFL House Calls

They had the player that won the Heisman Trophy, and they took home the trophy after winning the 4-team playoff that supposedly determines the national champion; so I guess it's only right that the Alabama Crimson Tide would also take the 2015 crown for the team with the most touchdowns scored by players with dreads.

I have to apologize again for doing so very little on the 2015 College Football season. I never did get around to doing my all-America teams, but I feel obligated to at least do the house calls. After all, the main reason for this blog being named House of Dread is to recognize and celebrate the touchdowns by players with dreads. Thanks mostly to the 28 TD scored by College Football's best player (with or without dreads) (the last of the 28 in photo above, a 1-yard dive that upped Alabama's lead over Clemson to 45-33 with 1:07 remaining in the championship game) - Heisman winner Derrick Henry - Alabama, for the 2nd time in the 5 years I've done a feature on house calls, was the Division 1 team that had more TD scored by players with dreads than any other.

2015 was an up and down kind of season for TD by players with dreads - up, as in the NFL; and down, as in College Football. The 190 regular season touchdowns by the NFL's players with dreads were an increase of 11 over the previous season and just 3 short of the record high 193 scored in 2013. As for the colleges (I keep track of only Division 1), Alabama's nation-leading total of 29 marks the first time a team has taken the crown with less than 30 TD.

DG160 - Part 1

If you watched the first two nights of the 2016 NFL Draft and ended up disappointed because there were so few players with dreads selected, don't blame me. In my draft preview I warned you not to waste your time on the first two nights, as I forecast there would be only 7 players with dreads picked in the first 3 rounds. As it turned out, 7 - as small a number as it was - was still too optimistic. By the end of the 3rd round on Mar. 29 only 5 players with dreads had heard their names called - three in round 1, two in round 2, and none in round 3. It was a far cry from the draft one year earlier, when a record high 20 were picked in the first 3 rounds, including 9 alone in round 1.

Things picked up on Day 3 of the draft - as expected - with the end result being that a total of 26 players with dreads were drafted. Actually at first I thought that 24 were selected. But after being informed that Michigan State DE Shilique Calhoun (a 3rd round pick) no longer had dreads (he cut them off sometime between MSU's pro day on Mar. 16 and the start of the Raiders' rookie minicamp on May 5), I discovered a couple of wide receivers that I didn't know had just gotten their dreads started had been drafted - Demarcus Robinson, from Florida, in round 4 and Demarcus Ayers, from Houston, in round 7; and I discovered that another player with beginner dreads had been drafted - OT Brandon Shell, from South Carolina.

Robinson, of course, was not the first former Gator with short dreads to be picked in this draft. The very first player with dreads selected - with the 11th pick in the 1st round - was former Florida CB Vernon Hargreaves, who started growing his dreads around this time a year ago. A Tampa product, Hargreaves (top photo in collage at upper right) no doubt will be playing in front of a lot of family and friends at all of his home games after being picked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

DG160 - Part 2

It's not even close. It's the NFC in a landslide. At the start of training camp 44 members of the Class of 2016 rookies with dreads were with NFC teams, while only 28 were with AFC teams. But the AFC does have one thing they can hang their hat on, that being they have the team that picked the most players with dreads in this year's draft. The Baltimore Ravens selected players with dreads with 4 of their 11 picks - one more than the three taken by NFC leader Arizona. In Part 2 of DG160 we'll take a look at those four along with all the other rookies with dreads on AFC teams as well as those on teams in the NFC North.

Of the Ravens' four draft picks with dreads, fans attending training camp unfortunately will only be able to see the dreads of two of them. That's because .....

1. ..... The other two, a couple of guys who played for colleges in Michigan, have dreads too short to be seen with their helmets on - former Michigan Wolverines DT Willie Henry and DE Matthew Judon, who played for Division 2 school Grand Valley State - seen together here during the 2nd day of the Ravens' rookie minicamp on May 7.