DG170 - Part 1

We interrupt our regularly scheduled dread gallery to bring you a different regularly scheduled dread gallery. In other words .....

I'm still planning to do two more college basketball dread galleries, but they're on hold for now because it's time for our annual DG featuring another class of NFL rookies with dreads. I try to finish this DG before the preseason gets too far underway because some of these guys aren't going to be around for long, and I want you to be able to say hello to them before it's time to say goodbye. Most of these rookies, however, will make it at least through the entire preseason, and the rookies that are 2017 draft choices most likely will make their teams' opening day rosters. Right now this year's class includes 30 players that were drafted; but I'm undecided on whether a couple of draftees have dreads or not, so that total could increase to 32.

2017 marks the 14th straight year at least one player with dreads has been picked in the 1st round of the draft - a streak that started when Larry Fitzgerald was picked #3 overall in 2004. And not just the 1st round; in all 14 years at least one player with dreads was taken in the first half of the 1st round, including at least one in the top 8 in 11 of the 14 years. Six times during those 14 years a player from a team in the SEC was the first player with dreads picked, with Vernon Hargreaves (Florida) being the most recent (2016).

DG170 - Part 2

Part 2 of dread gallery #170 features the rest of the NFL's 2017 class of rookies with dreads, specifically all of those trying to earn jobs with teams in the NFC.

The NFC West is the division with the most players with dreads drafted this year with 6; and the NFC West's San Francisco 49ers take honors for the team that drafted the most players with dreads ..... which is kind of a huge surprise, because since I started this blog the 49ers have been a team that every year consistently has very few players with dreads. And if you look at their draft history, it's easy to see why. Prior to 2017 the 49ers in their entire history had drafted only 6 players that had dreads when they drafted them. Maybe this is the year, under new management, they stop treating players with dreads like they had leprosy.

1. Three of the 49ers' 10 draft picks this year have dreads; and as he meets the media on Apr. 28 - the day after he was drafted - former Alabama LB Reuben Foster explains how he feels about being the first player with dreads the 49ers drafted in the 1st round since they picked Vernon Davis 11 years ago. No, actually he's talking about how relieved he is that he didn't fall to the 2nd round of the draft. Talent-wise Foster should have been the first player with dreads picked. But thanks to offseason surgery on his shoulder and other off-the-field issues he wasn't picked until #31 overall, the second last pick of round 1.

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