animated nick mangold.jpg

Jets center Nick Mangold gets the Nickelodeon animation treatment for a special edition of a cartoon involving NFL players as superheroes.

(SI Kids)

The NFL draft found a frontier it hasn't yet conquered: animated children's cartoons. And even that's about to change. Because, as every obedient earthling knows, the draft is soon going to be all our new football overlords will permit us to talk about.

At least until minicamps and OTAs.

Wednesday night, on the eve of the draft, Nicktoons is airing something called NFL Rushzone: Guardians Unleashed. And, no, it's not footage of a fire drill at the league's Park Avenue headquarters (though the NFL is probably already planning to put even that out there as a subscription-only live stream—and one that, naturally, can't be embedded).

The gist of NFL Rushzone: Guardians Unleashed is that Jets center Nick Mangold, Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, Hall of Fame receiver Michael Irvin, and former receiver and current broadcaster Cris Collinsworth—what sort of GM drafted this team, by the way?—get to do battle on behalf of all that is good.

Or, as SI Kids put it, to "team up to save the Rusherz from the evil forces of Sudden Death." Which, come to think of it, sounds a little like a typical Jets home game against the Patriots.

Anyway, here's a video preview: