Did you expect the Bucs to draft LSU WR Michael Clayton? Chris Brown did.
If Mel Kiper ever quits his current job to go into, say, real estate, we've got the perfect draft-day replacement for ESPN.
His name is Chris Brown, he's a Buccaneers.com reader and, if Kiper's ready to step aside, he's going to need an industrial-size drum of hair spray.
Brown already has the draft acumen. He proved that with his Grand Prize-winning performance in Pick10, the NFL Draft contest run by Buccaneers.com in its special Draft Central section.
Brown, for instance, correctly prognosticated the selection of North Carolina State quarterback Philip Rivers in the number-four slot, a draft-day development that caught some experts by surprise. Brown also believed Tampa Bay would come away with LSU wide receiver Michael Clayton, an event that rather happily came true for the Buccaneers.
In all, Brown nailed eight of the 11 required predictions. Entrants into the Pick10 contest were asked to guess which players would be taken with picks one through 10 of the first round of the 2004 NFL Draft, regardless of which teams actually chose in those slots. They were also asked to predict Tampa Bay's pick, and that particular selection was also the contest's tiebreaker.
So, yes, the Buccaneers.com Pick10 contest actually required 11 picks. Blame our Big Ten roots.
Anyway, out of nearly 1,000 entrants, Brown was one of only three who scored a total of eight correct predictions. Of those three, only two got the tiebreaker pick – Clayton to the Bucs – right, and were thus the top two winners. A random selection from there named Brown the winner and gave the second-place slot to another Kiperesque performer, David Stein. As a result of his shrewd thinking, Stein will receive a signed Buccaneers Super Bowl book.
The other entrant to get eight right – Frantz Medard – was strong in the top 10 picks but guessed incorrectly on the Bucs' selection. Medard thus finished third, and will be sent a Buccaneers polo shirt.
Below are the three winning entries, as compared to the actual results on Saturday:
| **Pk** | **Actual** | **Brown** | **Stein** | **Medard** |
| 1. | Manning | Manning | Manning | Manning |
| 2. | Gallery | Gallery | Gallery | Gallery |
| 3. | Fitzgerald | Fitzgerald | Fitzgerald | Fitzgerald |
| 4. | Rivers | Rivers | Rivers | Roethlisberger |
| 5. | Taylor | Taylor | Taylor | Taylor |
| 6. | Winslow | Winslow | Roy Williams | Winslow |
| 7. | Roy Williams | Roy Williams | Winslow | Roy Williams |
| 8. | Hall | Harris | Hall | Hall |
| 9. | Reg. Williams | Jackson | Udeze | Udeze |
| 10. | Robinson | Hall | Robinson | Robinson |
| Bucs | Clayton | Clayton | Clayton | Jackson |
As you can see, all three winners were on the money for the first three picks, most notably Robert Gallery to Oakland. Many experts had expected the Raiders to take the top-rated receiver on their board, or perhaps a quarterback.
All three entrants also got the Sean Taylor-to-Washington pick right, a move that apparently surprised Kellen Winslow, but not our top predictors. Stein got the Winslow and Roy Williams slots backward, losing two points to the rest of the field, but picked the slack back up with DeAngelo Hall at eight, Dunta Robinson at 10 and Clayton to the Bucs.
The only pick that caught all three of our prize-winners by surprise was that of Reggie Williams, the Washington receiver who went to Jacksonville at number nine.
Williams, in fact, was a riser on many draft boards and an extremely difficult prediction to make. That didn't stop our four winners from nearly calling the top 10 in order. The Pick10 draft contest proved to be a huge success, and that goes double for Chris Brown, David Stein and Frantz Medard.
Thank you to all who participated. Join us again next spring for another challenging draft contest.
