Here's where he lost me (early in this Harry Smoking Pot fantasy):
Soon, all eyes shift to the New York Jets, who own the No. 1 pick. The Jets don’t particularly need a quarterback (starter Neil O’Donnell led Pittsburgh to the Super Bowl just 14 months prior), but Manning is too good to pass up, right?
There’s a red flag: New coach Bill Parcells never reaches out to Manning’s father, Archie, to inquire about Manning’s interest. Hired after a 1-15 season, Parcells is focused on several areas of need, and the No. 1 pick is more of a trade asset than a cure-all. After Manning’s announcement, the coach is unwilling to publicly commit to the Tennessee quarterback.
1) Neil O'Donnell missed ten games in 1996 AFTER the Super Bowl with a shoulder injury. Why is a game played 14 months earlier great evidence but all the games played after then irrelevant to this narrative?
2) I think the notion Parcells passes on Manning is fanciful, and this whole notion of 'he didn't reach out to Archie' is probably massively overblown.
And then there's the fatal flaw in the whole thing
This forces Saban to re-evaluate his recruiting class, and an assistant coach mentions an undervalued Texas passer who only has two notable offers, including one from Big Ten rival Purdue. Saban gives the film a look and makes a couple calls.
This follows the notion that Gus Ornstein's moving on would have affected Saban in any way.....but the problem is that Ornstein was the THIRD-STRING QB in 1997, not second (by the time of the season he was behind Todd Schultz and Bill Burke).....so why would Saban recruit Drew Brees? And what in God's name would make anyone think Brees - whose only two offers came from Purdue and Kentucky after he pitched himself to them - would have appealed to Saban anyway? (You don't get to historically impose his later NFL career backwards into high school).
I guess it makes the doophus who wrote it feel like he's writing alternative fact history, but it's not even overly entertaining.