Though he lives far closer to the Meadowlands than Raymond James Stadium, New Jersey's Dorian Munn calls himself a huge Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. Truth is, Munn seems to have a pretty good feel for the entire NFC South.
One of a record 1,926 entrants into this year's Twenty Questions Draft Contest on Buccaneers.com, Munn impressively predicted the first-round pick for each of Tampa Bay's division foes, matching Utah DT Star Lotulelei with Carolina, Texas S Kenny Vaccaro with New Orleans and Washington CB Desmond Trufant with Atlanta. Those were three of the 10 questions to which Munn provided an accurate prediction, helping him emerge as this year's contest winner.
Munn was the only entrant to land a score of 10, thus reaping the Grand Prize. Four others notched a score of nine, and their answers to the tiebreaker question (how many total minutes would elapse during the draft's first round) determined the other two winners. Taking home the First Runner-Up Prize was Chris Farasopoulos, who sent in his entry all the way from Greece, and grabbing the Second Runner-up Prize was Raul Sanchez from nearby Safety Harbor. Here are their much-coveted winnings:
- As the Grand Prize Winner, Munn will receive four Club Seat tickets to the 2013 Buccaneers regular-season home game of his choice
- As the First Runner-up Prize Winner, Farasopoulos will receive two Club Seat tickets to the 2013 Buccaneers regular-season home game of his choice
- As the Second Runner-up Prize Winner, Sanchez will receive an official Buccaneers shirt and hat
It was fortunate for Munn that he was on the money with the rest of the NFC South action, because the Buccaneers trade of their first-round pick for CB Darrelle Revis four days before the draft threw a serious curveball into the contest. As you will see below, the trade made the first question in the contest quite a bit more difficult and likely also affected the results for the three questions that followed, as well. Neither Munn nor Farasopoulos got any of those three right, though Sanchez impressively still predicted that the Buccaneers would start their draft with Mississippi State CB Johnthan Banks.
Munn put a little more distance between him and his closest competitors by correctly predicting the first receiver taken in the second round and the position that Mr. Irrelevant would play. On the other hand, Farasopoulos was the only one of the three to correctly predict where the second QB in the draft would land and also foresaw Lotulelei shedding the first tears. Sanchez's best prediction was his first one, but he also got two of the three NFC South first-round picks right.
Congratulations are in order, then, for our own version of Kiper, McShay and Mayock. This year, we applaud Dorian Munn, Chris Farasopoulos and Raul Sanchez for their domination of the Twenty Questions Draft Contest. Next year, it could be you.
A thank you, as well, to everyone who participated in this year's contest. Read on if you'd like to find out the correct answers to each of the 20 questions in the contest and a rundown of how well our entrants predicted them as a whole.
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1. Who will the Buccaneers draft with their first overall pick?
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Answer: Banks, Johnthan
Correct Entries: 98
As the contest rules make clear every year, this question is not necessarily asking who the Buccaneers will draft in the first round. With the ever-present possibility of trades (especially when your G.M. is Mark Dominik), there's no assurance going into the draft where the Bucs will actually pick. Usually, moves up and down keep the Bucs somewhere in the first round, but this time around that selection was traded away completely.
That pushed the answer to this question down to the Bucs' second-round pick, and it goes without saying that predicting the 43rd overall selection is quite a bit tougher than predicting the 13th. Given that, it's actually fairly impressive that about 5% of the contestants got this one right; in contrast, absolutely none of last year's entrants correctly predicting the selection of Mark Barron after the Bucs traded down a measly two spots.
It likely helped that the trade for Revis was finalized two days before the contest was capped. Astute fans had 48 hours to submit a contest entry that took into account the new situation. Still, as mentioned above, only Sanchez of the three contest-winners got this one right.
2. From what position group will the Buccaneers pick with their second selection of the draft?
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Answer: Quarterback
Correct Entries: 43
This one, too, was almost surely affected by the Revis trade. Contestants who entered before the deal likely thought they were predicting the team's second-round pick, and indeed it would have been a surprise to see the Buccaneers turn to quarterback at that spot in the draft. Instead, this was a third-rounder, and that's where Tampa Bay elected to grab North Carolina State's Mike Glennon.
None of the three contest-winners got this one right, which was unsurprising. This proved to be the third-hardest question in the entire contest.
3. From what position group will the Buccaneers pick with their third selection of the draft?
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Answer: Defensive Tackle
Correct Entries: 303
As the Revis trade domino effect continued, this turned out to be a prediction about Tampa Bay's fourth-round pick, which was used on Illinois DT Akeem Spence after a small trade upward to start the third day of the draft. The overall results were quite a bit better on this one, however, probably because defensive tackle was largely viewed as a position the Bucs needed to address.
In this case, the Revis trade might have actually helped some of the contest entrants. Since the DT position was considered quite deep in this year's talent pool, it was reasonable to believe a number of talented options would be available to the team in the third round. Even had the Bucs held on to their first-round pick, they very well may have used their third-rounder on Glennon, and thought would have made all these 303 entrants incorrect.
The question didn't end up meaning much to the final results, however, as none of the three prize-winners got it right.
4. Which player will be drafted immediately before the Bucs' first overall pick?
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Answer: Watson, Menelik
Correct Entries: 25
This is yet another question affected by the Revis trade. Essentially, it forced people to predict the 42nd pick in the draft instead of the 12th. On the other hand, a different trade on the first night of the draft probably would have produced a lot of wrong answers anyway.
The Miami Dolphins were originally slated to pick at #12, right ahead of where the Bucs' first-round pick was before it went to the Jets. However, the Dolphins made the first big deal of the night, trading up to #3 to get DE Dion Jordan. Oakland was the team that moved pick, and then it's eventual selection of Houston CB D.J. Hayden came as one of the night's biggest surprises. It's doubtful many contest entrants saw that coming.
As it turned out, very few predicted that the Raiders (again!) would also pick Florida State T Menelik Watson right before Tampa Bay selected Banks. That made this question the second-hardest one in the entire contest. Once again, none of our contest winners got it right.
5. Who will the Carolina Panthers draft with their first overall pick?
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Answer: Lotulelei, Star
Correct Entries: 169
If this contest had actually been unfolding chronologically with the answers from Question #1 down to #20 (it wasn't, of course), then Dorian Munn probably would have stopped watching by now. He had missed the first four questions in the contest, but it was here that he started to take off, getting six of the next seven right.
He had some company in correctly predicting that the Panthers would try to bulk up in the middle with the Utah defensive tackle, but not an overwhelming large amount of company. This was still only predicted by 8.8% of the entrants. Farasopoulos also got it right, but Sanchez missed it, and it this point all of the entrants had a meager score of one.
6. Who will the New Orleans Saints draft with their first overall pick?
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Answer: Vaccaro, Kenny
Correct Entries: 182
It's a little surprising that almost the same number of people got this one right as the one before, as many mock drafters had suggested that the Saints would land on Texas S Kenny Vaccaro. Munn and Sanchez figured it out but Farasopoulos dropped one off the pace here.
7. Who will the Atlanta Falcons draft with their first overall pick?
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Answer: Trufant, Desmond
Correct Entries: 344
Conversely, it's a little surprising that so many entrants got this one right, given that it was hard to find a consensus on what order and where the cornerbacks would go after Alabama's Dee Milliner. Trufant's stock had appeared to be on the rise in the weeks heading into the draft, and in fact the Falcons had to trade up to assure themselves of landing him at pick #22. Still, only five other questions proved easier than this one in the 2013 contest.
All three of our contest-winners got this one right. This was one of just five questions on which Munn, Farasopoulos and Sanchez all agreed.
8. How many cornerbacks will be drafted in the first round?
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Answer: 4
Correct entries: 764
Perhaps there wasn't as much mystery about how the cornerbacks would be drafted as we previously believed, because the assembled contest entrants did quite well on this one. After Milliner, Hayden and Trufant were picked, Minnesota finished off the first-round cornerback run with Florida State's Xavier Rhodes at #25. Two more CBs went in the first 11 picks of the second round (including Banks to the Bucs) but the position proved deeper rather than top-heavy in the eyes of NFL general managers.
All three of our contest winners got this one right, too, and for Munn that ended a four-question scoring stretch.
9. Who will be the first wide receiver drafted in the SECOND round?
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Answer: New York Jets
Correct entries: 190
Farasopoulos finished his own four-question scoring stretch by getting this one right, but Munn and Sanchez missed it. It may be that nobody with the last name of Sanchez wanted to contemplate the Jets adding a quarterback in the early going (zing!).
There was some speculation, however, that the Jets would do exactly that, so this one did not come as a complete surprise to our assembled entrants. Most likely, many of those who got this one wrong were counting on the quarterbacks going very early again, as they had in recent years, and that by the time the Jets got on the clock they would be looking at the third or fourth man on the list. That didn't happen, as it wasn't until pick #16 that Buffalo broke the ice with Florida State's E.J. Manuel. Geno Smith was the second QB selected, but not until the Jets' third pick, in the second round.
10. In what pick range will the first running back be drafted?
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Answer: 31-40
Correct entries: 522
This was a new question this year, and it was based on an unusually slim running back class that threatened to make this draft the first in 50 years in which no back went in the first round. And, indeed, that's exactly what happened, apparently not to the surprise of many of our contest entrants.
North Carolina's Giovani Bernard was the first running back to come off the board, at #37 to the Cincinnati Bengals. All three of our contest winners got that one right, as well as more than a quarter of the field. This proved to be the fourth easiest question on the board.
11. Who will be the first wide receiver drafted in the SECOND round?
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Answer: Hunter, Justin
Correct Entries: 262
The idea with a question like this is to get the contest entrants to dig a little deeper and take several factors into consideration. It wasn't hard to predict who the first receiver off the board would be, as West Virginia's Tavon Austin was the shooting star of the whole pre-draft process. However, after Austin went eighth overall there wasn't another wideout grabbed until #27, where the Houston Texans landed on Clemson's DeAndre Hopkins.
Tennessee's Cordarrelle Patterson finished out the first-round receivers at #29, to Minnesota, and then his teammate, Hunter, went five picks later That was enough to turn the draft over into the second round, making Hunter the answer to this one. Among our contest winners, only Munn got this one right.
12. Which team will draft Notre Dame LB Manti Te'o?
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Answer: San Diego
Correct Entries: 12
We usually like to include one question like this every year; last year, the subject was Oklahoma State QB Brandon Weeden. This year's player proved much harder to predict, as 524 people correctly matched Weeden and the Cleveland Browns last year.
This time around, this proved to be the hardest question in the entire contest, with only 0.6% of the entrants getting it right. Even if every entrant randomly guessed, you would expect a higher success rate than that, as there were only 32 possible choices and that works out to an average of about 60 guesses per team.
Anyway, Te'o's slide to the second round wasn't terribly surprising given his difficult winter and spring, but apparently his landing in San Diego was. None of our contest entrants got this one.
13. This year's top small-school prospect may be Arkansas-Pine Bluff T Terron Armstead, who has helped his stock dramatically at the Senior Bowl and the Combine. How high will he go?
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Answer: Round 3, Picks 1-16
Correct Entries: 262
Coincidentally, the exact same number of people who got the Justin Hunter prediction right were good on this one, too.
This is another common question for our contest, in which we try to identify a prospect whose stock is on the rise and then predict how high he will go. Armstead was occasionally seen in first rounds of mock drafts but was more commonly found in the second or third. The contest question split the possible answers up into half-rounds and the final answer proved to be the top half of Round Three.
Munn and Sanchez got this one right, but Farasopoulos missed it.
14. Which team will make the trade that moves it up the most spots in the first round?
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Answer: San Francisco
Correct Entries: 388
Surprisingly, none of the three winners got this one right. We call that a surprise, albeit a mild one, because this one might have turned more on logic, as opposed to pure guesswork, than most of the other questions.
San Francisco famously had an enormous amount of picks heading into this draft, and given that they already possess a deep and talented roster, it seemed to make sense that they would package some of those selections to move up when necessary. And, well, that's exactly what happened. The trade that satisfied the contest question had to be between two spots in the first round, and the 49ers' leap from #31 to #18 to get LSU S Eric Reid satisfied that criteria. That proved to be the biggest trade up, beating out the nine-spot Miami move to #3 and the eight-spot St. Louis swap from 16 to 8.
15. Which side of the trenches will be the first one to have five players drafted: Offensive Line or Defensive Line?
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Answer: Offensive Line
Correct Entries: 1,020
And here we have the first of two late-contest softballs we lobbed to our beleaguered contestants. It wasn't so much that the answer was obvious, it's that the everybody had a 50-50 chance to get it right. In the end, 53.0% of the entrants were right.
In the final hours before the draft, it started to become clear that there was likely to be a run on offensive linemen in the early going. In fact, three of the first four players were tackles, which gave the OL an early lead. It was tied, 3-3, after six picks, however. The fact that two guards then went in the top 10, which is quite rare, allowed the OL to get to five first. The fifth defensive lineman was Lotulelei at #14.
Munn, Farasopoulos and Sanchez all guessed right.
16. In what order will the following four players be drafted: Utah DT Star Lotulelei, Texas S Kenny Vaccaro, Alabama G Chance Warmack and Florida State DE Bjoern Werner?
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Answer: Warmack, Lotulelei, Vaccaro, Werner
Correct Entries: 293
There were 24 possible combinations, but the right one began with Warmack at #10. That means the answer to this question started at the exact same spot that the answer to the previous question ended.
The toughest part of getting this question right was figuring out where Lotulelei would go. Many considered Warmack a likely top-10 pick, or somewhere close, and Werner's stock had seen the biggest apparent decline in the weeks before the draft. Lotulelei was a tougher call, and eventually the entire DT class slipped farther than expected.
Munn and Sanchez got this one right.
17. How many of the 32 players drafted in the first round will be underclassmen?
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Answer: 14
Correct Entries: 167
We can't blame the assembled entrants for mostly whiffing on this one, as that answer was lower than it has been in years. The key here was that three underclassmen went in the first five picks of the second round; had Justin Hunter, Zach Ertz and/or Giovani Bernard snuck into the first round, this number would have been closer to what many expected. Other underclassmen who occasionally showed up in the first round of the mock drafts but who did not go that high included Menelik Watson, Kevin Minter, Robert Woods, Johnathan Hankins and Eddie Lacy.
Farasopoulos got back into the game by getting this one right while Munn and Sanchez missed it. Only four questions proved harder than this one overall.
18. Will the Buccaneers draft more offensive players, more defensive players, or will it be an even split (kickers/punters excluded)?
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Answer: More defensive players
Correct Entries: 1,627
All we can say on this one is, "You're welcome." This particular question has been included in the Twenty Questions contest for the last two years, and in each case it has been the easiest one for the entrants. Expect this one to be retired in 2014.
Here we have a question with only three possible answers, and one in particular that most fans probably thought was obvious after last year's defensive struggles and a few departures in free agency. Indeed, the widespread belief that the Bucs would go for more defense in this draft proved true, with four of the six picks on that side of the ball. Amazingly, Dorian Munn, our overall contest winner, was one of only 15.6% of entrants who got this one wrong.
19. What position will "Mr. Irrelevant" play?
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Answer: Tight End
Correct Entries: 189
The final player selected in the draft, at #254 overall, was South Carolina TE Justice Cunningham, by the Colts. As such, Cunningham will bear the well-intentioned title of "Mr. Irrelevant" and get to participate in some fun activities in Newport Beach, California.
After the surprise miss on the last question, Munn rallied to get this one right for his 10th and winning point. Neither of his two closest competitors got it right, and in fact only 189 of the 1,926 entrants correctly predicted the answer.
20. Let the waterworks begin: Which draftee will be the first one shown crying on the ESPN broadcast of the first round of the draft (choose none if you believe no players will be shown crying)?
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Answer: Lotulelei, Star
Correct Entries: 70
The steel will of this year's group of players at Radio City Music Hall almost took the fun out of this one. Player after player stood up from his table, hugged his mother, hugged the commissioner and somehow never even came close to crying. It was impressive. Even Lotulelei, who wasn't even in New York, held it together for the most part when the ESPN cameras cut to his location after he went to the Panthers at #14. Still, he could be seen dabbing at the corners of his eyes, and that was enough to make him the answer to this question. Just a few picks later, Florida State QB E.J. Manuel cried quite a bit after he was drafted by the Bills, but it was too late. Plus, the tears were broadcast on NFL Network, but by the time he got in front of an ESPN camera he had pulled it together.
Farasopoulos was the only one of the three winners who got this one right, and it's a good thing he did or he would have been relegated to the very crowded ranks of entrants who were correct on eight predictions.
But he got nine, as did Sanchez, and Munn topped them both with 10. All three performed impressively in this year's challenge, and all three are walking away with some very coveted prizes.
