Packers First Round Pick Ha Ha Clinton-Dix Gets The Last Laugh
By picking Alabama’s Ha Ha Clinton-Dix as the 21st over all draft pick as their number one pick, the Green Bay Packers have their die-hard “Cheeseheads” chuckling nationwide.
At 6? 1? and 208 lbs., Ha Ha was a standout safety in his three years with Alabama’s Crimson Tide, winning two National Championships with the team. As a junior in 2013, Clinton-Dix was a first-team All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection. Ha Ha decided to forgo his senior year and enter the 2014 NFL Draft after the 2013 season.
Born HaSean Clinton-Dix, Ha Ha said he got the nickname from his grandmother when he was a little boy, “She got tired of pronouncing my name, which is Ha-SEEN, but it’s spelled Ha-SHAWN. So about age 3 or 4, she started calling me Ha Ha, and it just went from there.”
Ironically, the Packers have opted to assign their number one pick, the 21st overall in this year’s draft — you guessed it — the number 21. The last Packer to wear number 21 was future Hall-of-Fame safety Charles Woodson, who picked off passes for the Pack from 2006-20012, in between stints with the Oakland Raiders.
Said Clinton-Dix of his assigned jersey number, “It’s a good number…I’m going to wear it with pride”
The Packers take “Ha-Ha Clinton-Dix” which sounds like a Jay Leno joke circa 1997.
— Faux John Madden (@FauxJohnMadden) May 9, 2014
“Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha” – Colin Kaepernick as he’s running away from Clinton-Dix. — Play 60 Kid (@NatePlay60) May 9, 2014
Ha Ha Clinton-Dix is a cool name. hear he has a brother named LOL
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) May 9, 2014
Perhaps even more ironically, weeks before the draft, Ha Ha posted a picture of himself in a Packers shirt on Instagram. The new Packer says that he was inspired to wear that particular shirt that day after speaking with ex-Alabama teammate Eddie Lacy, adding that, “it looked pretty good on me.”
New Pack teammate, Eddie Lacy, later posted on Twitter, “Welcome to the pack… good to have ya out here,”
The Packers are getting high praise with their first round pick. Website rantsports.com gave the pick “a solid A.”
Said ESPN resident analyst and NFL draft expert Mel Kiper, Jr. of the selection, “Clinton-Dix fills a huge need for this team, and I consider him a great value at this slot. I don’t even know what else to say about it, except for the fact that I thought Dallas could go with Clinton-Dix, and he also could have been in play for the Jets. So to have your No. 1 need filled by what I consider the safety they had rated as the best guy to fill that need makes for a pretty good night.”
If Twitter is any indication, the Packer nation seemed pretty excited about the pick, with one Cheesehead tweeting, “Why do people always laugh before saying Clinton-Dix?”
With a lucrative contract on the horizon, it appears that Ha Ha will be laughing all the way to a bank…somewhere in the Greater Green Bay Area.
