Texas Football: Flashback to the Longhorns Record-Breaking 1984 Draft Class
The 1984 NFL Draft was unremarkable in a lot of ways.
The league didn't allow players already selected by the USFL or CFL to be drafted in an attempt to stave off a potential bidding war, resulting in the first class not to produce a Hall of Famer since 1943. (Three Hall of Famers - Steve Young, Gary Zimmerman and Reggie White - would be selected in a supplemental draft a month later.)
Just one season after the famed 1983 quarterback draft class, it was the first draft in 10 years in which a quarterback was not selected in the first round.
Most of these distinctions are little more than trivia or footnotes in the history of the league. For the Texas Longhorns, however, 1984 was a record-smashing year for producing NFL talent.
Texas had 17 players drafted from May 1-2 in 1984, breaking the previous NFL record of 16 set by Notre Dame in 1946 - a mark that still stands to this day.
Mossy Cade (San Diego Chargers, pick No. 6), Ed Williams (New England Patriots , pick No. 43), Doug Dawson (St. Louis Cardinals, pick No. 45), Fred Acorn (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, pick No. 57), Rick McIvor (ST. Louis Cardinals, pick No. 80), Craig Curry (Indianapolis Colts, pick No. 93), Eric Holle (Kansas City Cheifs, pick No. 117), Jitter Fields (New Orleans Saints, pick No. 123), Jeff Leiding (St. Louis Cardinals, pick No. 129), John Haines (Minnesota Vikings, pick No. 180), Ray Woodard (San Diego Chargers, pick No. 199), David Jones (Detroit Lions, pick No. 214), John Walker (St. Louis Cardinals, pick No. 241), Adam Schreiber (Seattle Seahawks, pick No. 243), Bobby Micho (Denver Broncos, pick No. 272), Kirk McJunkin (Pittsburgh Steelers, pick No. 276) and Mark Lang (pick No 314, Kansas City Chiefs) were all selected to play for NFL teams.
Looking at the numbers, a mind-boggling 10 of the Longhorns 11 defensive starters were selected to play at the next level. The defense had held six opponents to a touchdown or less during the season.
Seven were taken on the offensive side (eight if you include center Mike Ruether, who was selected in the supplemental draft a month later.
The story isn't all happy for Longhorn fans. The team that fielded that deep collection of talent came up a heartbreaking fourth-quarter touchdown short of winning a national title when Georgia put in a go-ahead score with 3:22 to go in the 1984 Cotton Bowl to hand the team a bitter 10-9 loss - the Longhorns only defeat that season.
It also marked the high-water mark of the Fred Akers years at Texas. Acres was never able to replace the mass exodus of talent from the 1984 draft class. The team went 7-4-1 the following year, 8-4 in 1985 and Akers was fired after a 5-6 campaign in 1986.
The program would have to wait 18 years before Mack Brown would deliver its next 11-win season in 2001.
Still, the number of Longhorns selected on those two days is a record not likely to ever be broken as the NFL would shorten the draft from 12 rounds to seven in 1984.