Every year at this time (actually, we can’t recall ever doing it before), we hand out our grades for the NFL draft.

Coincidentally, every team gets the same grade:  Incomplete.

Though we’re as intrigued as anyone by the pinnacle of the NFL’s offseason effort to sell hope to the fans of 32 franchises, there’s simply no way of knowing whether any team has done a good job or a bad job until the players get onto the field and practice and play against grown men who represent the best of the best from the past decade of 120-plus college programs pumping players into the NFL.

There’s no way of knowing for sure who will or won’t succeed at the next level until they enter the arena at the next level and show what they can do.  If anyone knew for sure, the future Hall of Famers would always be the first few guys taken.  Next would come the players who’ll make it to four or five Pro Bowls.  Then the consistent starters.  And so on down the line until the final few picks are used on guys who’ll get a Rudy-style cameo at some point, if they’re lucky.

And even if a guy has Hall of Fame talent, the X factor is whether any of those guys with Hall of Fame potential will change once the pursuit of money is no longer a factor in their lives.

What we should be doing the Monday after every draft is peering a few years into the rear-view mirror and handing out grades for past draft classes.  But such an exercise would conflict with the selling of hope.  And so in lieu of exposing the fat old man behind the curtain, we’ll instead marvel at this class of picks like they’re a fang-mouthed disembodied head flanked by KISS-style flash pots.