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These are excerpts from the article. To read the entire article click the link below.
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http://mmqb.si.com/2015/04/27/philip-rivers-trade-titans-chargers-nfl-draft/
Sports Illustrated (Mariota: Brad Mangin; Rivers: Simon Bruty)
Rivers Trade Dead? Draft Intrigue Begins at No. 2
With the draft three days away, the Titans still are willing to deal the second pick—Browns? Jets? Eagles?—but acquiring Philip Rivers from San Diego is growing less likely. Plus, why this draft is unpredictable, how it’ll look in Chicago and more
By Peter King
Three days before the 2015 draft, one thing is clear: The drama starts with the second pick. With Tampa Bay very likely to take quarterback Jameis Winston number one, Tennessee is in command with quarterback Marcus Mariota the likely target if anyone wants to come up.
Lots can happen, including Philip Rivers being in play, and Chip Kelly getting an itchy trigger finger, the Jets moving up for their quarterback of the long-term, and the Browns using their two first-round picks to jump into the fray. Nothing is clear this morning, but this is what I’m hearing, and what I believe three days from round one:
• I don’t think the Chargers will trade Philip Rivers. Just a gut feeling after lots of time calling around over the weekend. Now, I do think the Titans and Chargers will talk this week, but I don’t see a smart match; moreover, as I’ve written all along, San Diego definitely does not want to trade Rivers, and I believe the Chargers have never been told Rivers won’t sign a contract in San Diego beyond this year—though he does not want to currently. I believe Tennessee would want more than the 33-year-old quarterback for the second pick in the draft, and if I’m San Diego GM Tom Telesco, I’m not willing to offer any more. Rivers is a sure thing, for three to five years anyway. Marcus Mariota is 12 years younger, but is not a sure thing.
• If the Titans don’t get a good offer, I think they pick Mariota. Tennessee wants an offer; the Titans aren’t married to picking anyone at number two. I do not believe Tennessee has gotten a golden offer yet. As one GM in the top 10 told me Saturday: “Tuesday or Wednesday is when those calls are made, the serious calls.” Maybe—but the Falcons did the work on the huge Julio Jones draft deal with Cleveland three weeks before the 2011 draft. I’ve got to think that the Titans would know if they were going to get a really good offer by now. And I hadn’t heard of even a strong rumor of one by late Sunday afternoon. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The Titans, though they feel good about Zach Mettenberger, would feel better about Mariota.
• The Titans were all over Mariota all through the college season, and beyond. One Oregon source told me the Tennessee scouts were the most fervent of all teams during and after the season investigating Mariota. The one thing the Titans feel very good about: Though Mariota has a reputation of being a running quarterback who would have a tough time adjusting to life as an NFL pocket passer, they saw that the majority of his throws this year came from the pocket, without a lot of movement before the throw. In fact, 23 of Mariota’s 36 passes in the semifinal win over Florida State last winter were from the pocket, without significant movement by him.
• I can’t see Chip Kelly going all wacky for Mariota. But that’s just me. Jumping from 20, where Philadelphia is due to pick, to the top five would just be too debilitating for a team with some needs. One of the best general managers in football said to me over the weekend: “I think we’re all waiting for Chip to make a move, and none of us really knows if he will.” I don’t either. But I doubt it.
My gut feeling three days out? (Dangerous in a year like this, because nothing looks certain but the top pick.) The Titans don’t get that pot of gold for the pick, and they take Mariota.
Kiss of death. Now the pick surely will be dealt.
One last thing about the run-up to the draft that happens every year. I spend time the weekend before the draft each year talking to people about my final mock draft, which will run Tuesday here at The MMQB. In talks with team officials, I usually say something like, “Tell me if you’ve heard anything you trust about” Team X. With Jacksonville picking third, I asked 12 people I talk to fairly often to tell me if they heard anything they trust about the Jaguars at three. Eight answered the question with a name. Amari Cooper, Dante Fowler and Leonard Williams all got mentioned as names they heard reliably.
This is why, in draft week, you’ve got to qualify almost everything you say.
* * *
Why no one can predict this draft.
Very little consensus about the order of the top players this year. Have you noticed? It’s been that way consistently since the end of the college season. There’s not an Andrew Luck, or even a Jadeveon Clowney, this year—a player who would be rated the best on the board of most teams or most analysts. When I asked six analysts in the past week for their top 10 players in this draft (regardless of position), four different players were number one: three nods to USC’s Leonard Williams, and one apiece to Amari Cooper, Jameis Winston and Dante Fowler.
The book on this draft, essentially, is that there is no book. The big calls from each analyst:
• Brandt: Todd Gurley number six … Breshad Perriman the number three receiver in the class.
• Cosell: Todd Gurley as the second-best player in the class … Andrus Peat as the best tackle … Marcus Mariota over Jameis Winston.
• Jeremiah: Kevin White over Amari Cooper … Shane Ray the number two pass-rusher … Danny Shelton cracking the top 10.
• Kiper: Brandon Scherff over every wideout except Amari Cooper … No Trae Waynes in the top 10.
• McShay: Arik Armstead cracks the top 10 … Two wideouts ahead of Dante Fowler … Another Todd Gurley fan.
• PFF: Stanford’s Henry Anderson, stunningly, a top-10 player … Shelton, who may be a two-down player, number two … Nelson Agholor over Kevin White.
The moral of the draft this year is that it’s a beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder draft. It should be fun Thursday night, just because most of what happens will have a surprise element to it.
* * *
A mixed bag about the Chicago locale for the draft.
I’m a fan of the draft moving around. I hope one day it’s Green Bay. I hope it goes to a bunch of different places, starting with Los Angeles next year. I’d love to see the draft at L.A. Live, the downtown venue that encompasses the Staples Center, or somewhere else fitting for a red carpet.
Having said that, I’ve heard from several agents that their clients want the draft in New York. It’s perhaps a coincidence that the potential top three picks Thursday night—Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota and Amari Cooper—all chose to skip the trip to Chicago. Perhaps it’s the start of a trend. Players should be free to make their own decisions about attending or not attending, but it’s been a long time since three of the top picks in the draft skipped it. So that bears watching.
The last draft held outside of New York City was in Chicago 51 years ago. Actually, it was held 10 days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, in late 1963, as the league drafted players for the 1964 season. So there’s a bit of history to this one.
There will be two distinct venues in Chicago, separated by Michigan Avenue in the South Loop. On one side: The Auditorium Theatre, seating about 3,000, a venue much like Radio City Music Hall. Commissioner Roger Goodell will open the draft inside the theater, and the 26 players who did RSVP to attend the draft will be introduced. They’ll stand above the stage, on a balcony, for the National Anthem, and then go back inside a room upstairs to await their name being called. Goodell, meanwhile will then walk across the street, the length of about a full football field, to “Selection Square” in Grant Park, where all 32 teams will be located and where the picks and trades will be called. In Selection Square, Goodell will put the Bucs on the clock shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern Time (7 p.m. in Chicago), and then walk back inside the theater to announce the picks for the evening.
While the draft is going on, Grant Park will host “Draft Town,” where an NFL Experience-type venue will be set up, with a tavern for the adults and games and football tests for all.
Thursday’s and Friday’s picks (rounds one through three) will be made inside the Auditorium Theatre. All Saturday picks (rounds four through seven) will be made outside, in Selection Square. Day three picks will have some interesting venues:
• The Jaguars, trying to pump up their London partnership, will be making their sixth- and seventh-round selections late Saturday night (England time) from London.
• Seattle will make all day three picks from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in western Washington. Oakland will make those day three picks from Travis Air Force Base in nearby Sonoma County. The Titans will make final-day picks from the Tennessee National Guard Headquarters.
• Other local markets will have different places where picks will be made as well. The Vikings will announce day three selections from the construction site of their new stadium in Minneapolis … the Falcons from a fan event at the new College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta … the Cardinals from the Big Red Rib & Music Festival at their stadium, where local flag football players will announce the picks.
“That’s adding some energy to day three that we’ve never had,” said NFL senior vice president of events Peter O’Reilly, who is overseeing the offsite draft.
There’s been a slight change in the timing of the picks. Round one will still be a maximum of 10 minutes per pick, and round two seven minutes per pick, and rounds three through six five minutes per pick. But the per-pick limit for round seven, and all compensatory picks, will be four minutes starting this year.
Some 79,000 fans applied in a lottery for free tickets to the draft, and 6,000 were awarded a pair of tickets each. How well the league and the fans and the players adapt to the new setting will determine whether the league continues to go on the road—though from what I hear, Chicago would have to be a significant failure for the league to revert reflexively to New York next year. “We love the move so far,” O’Reilly said Friday. “It’s allowed us to re-imagine what the draft can be.”
* * *
A TV draft special from that draftnik, Cris Collinsworth?
Collinsworth, the Emmy-winning NBC color man on “Sunday Night Football,” usually disappears from the football consciousness in the offseason. Not this year. Collinsworth in 2014 bought a majority interest in the football analytics website Pro Football Focus,and PFF will have a draft special today, “Pro Football Focus: Grading the 2015 Draft,” at 5:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
(Truth in column-writing: I work with Collinsworth at NBC, and have been employed by NBC to work on the network pregame show since its prime-time inception in 2006.)
PFF’s stated purpose is to grade the performance of every NFL player on every snap he plays, and nearly half the teams in the NFL have hired the site to do special-project work for them. Last year the site began to do the same work for major-college teams. NBC says PFF analysts graded all plays for each draft-eligible player in the 2014 season and graded the players the way they’d grade NFL players. On this show the PFF analysts will compare the pass-releases of Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston to established NFL stars like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
Also, pass-rush will be measured differently for the college players than just by sacks and pressures; a new PFF metric will show how—in the site’s view—Stanford defensive end Henry Anderson ought to be a clear first-round pick because of how consistently he gets pressure on the passer. Much of the analysis on the show will be done by the men who have brought PFF to life, including founder Neil Hornsby, a native of England who fell in love with football watching it on Sunday nights in Britain in the Dan Marino years.
Two interesting Collinsworth observations after some draft study. One: “When I started watching tape on the quarterbacks, I was 100 percent convinced Winston was the better player. As every day goes by, in my mind, Mariota gets a little closer.” Two: “The best player in the draft, to me, is Dante Fowler. He can rush the passer from anywhere. I’ve seen him hurdle linemen like [Olympic hurdler] Skeets Nehemiah. And he covers pretty well too.”
“The main one is Randy Gregory. And trust me, I’ve had a bunch of teams in the bottom half of the first round going, ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got to be all over this guy from our owner, because you might have to bring him into this conversation, from our owner down to our coaching staff.’ And what I think it really becomes, it’s an organizational call. You’ve got top-10 talent in Gregory. And if you’re going to pull the string with him at 16 or 32 or 48, I don’t care where, because of the well-known off-the-field issues, you’ve got to get ownership to buy in and you’ve got to have a coaching staff that understands what they’re going to have to do to provide an infrastructure to help this kid succeed.”
—NFL Network’s Mike Mayock on one big hurdle facing Nebraska pass-rusher Randy Gregory, who admitted testing positive for marijuana at the NFL scouting combine—and whose off-field life at Nebraska has been the subject of much investigating by NFL teams in advance of Thursday’s first round.
I think, as we sit three days before the first round, the most polarizing figure among great talents is Randy Gregory. I’ll have him sliding in my mock draft tomorrow. Too many people with teams too worried about maturity level.
“We tried to move up last year with a team, and they wanted my first three grandchildren. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ ”
—Denver GM John Elway, on trading up in the draft.
I think there are those inside Jaguardom who want Amari Cooper with the third overall pick, and those who want Dante Fowler with the third overall pick. Leaning toward Cooper winning for my mock draft on Tuesday, but I still have a day to mess that one up. So give me time.
3. I think it wouldn’t shock me if the Saints used the Jimmy Graham pick from the Seahawks, the 31st pick of the first round, on Dorial Green-Beckham. But I can’t see him going much earlier than 31. With the great group of wideouts in this draft, what sense would it make to take a great prospect with the most checkered history of any player in this draft in the first round?
I think I was glad to see Mike Mayock admit his mistake before the draft last year in being convinced Johnny Manziel was growing up. I bought it too. And that’s one of the reasons why you should be skeptical of every guy in this draft with some pockmarks in his past, such as Jameis Winston and Marcus Peters and Randy Gregory. Said Mayock: “I have to put my hand up and say I missed that last year on Manziel, and I’m upset with myself for that. He’s an immature kid …
When kids have significant red flags, how often do they change, and I would say my perception in my experience is that plus or minus 90 percent of the time, the kid ultimately turns into who he’s always been. When you get a repeated pattern of bad decisions, you might be on your best behavior leading up to the draft—you’ve got all kinds of people around you telling you what to say and how to act—but once you get comfortable, whether it’s one year in, two years in, three years in, once you get comfortable again in the NFL and you get paid, typically that kid goes back to being who he always was.” Good lesson to remember this week.
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http://mmqb.si.com/2015/04/27/philip-rivers-trade-titans-chargers-nfl-draft/
Sports Illustrated (Mariota: Brad Mangin; Rivers: Simon Bruty)
Rivers Trade Dead? Draft Intrigue Begins at No. 2
With the draft three days away, the Titans still are willing to deal the second pick—Browns? Jets? Eagles?—but acquiring Philip Rivers from San Diego is growing less likely. Plus, why this draft is unpredictable, how it’ll look in Chicago and more
By Peter King
Three days before the 2015 draft, one thing is clear: The drama starts with the second pick. With Tampa Bay very likely to take quarterback Jameis Winston number one, Tennessee is in command with quarterback Marcus Mariota the likely target if anyone wants to come up.
Lots can happen, including Philip Rivers being in play, and Chip Kelly getting an itchy trigger finger, the Jets moving up for their quarterback of the long-term, and the Browns using their two first-round picks to jump into the fray. Nothing is clear this morning, but this is what I’m hearing, and what I believe three days from round one:
• I don’t think the Chargers will trade Philip Rivers. Just a gut feeling after lots of time calling around over the weekend. Now, I do think the Titans and Chargers will talk this week, but I don’t see a smart match; moreover, as I’ve written all along, San Diego definitely does not want to trade Rivers, and I believe the Chargers have never been told Rivers won’t sign a contract in San Diego beyond this year—though he does not want to currently. I believe Tennessee would want more than the 33-year-old quarterback for the second pick in the draft, and if I’m San Diego GM Tom Telesco, I’m not willing to offer any more. Rivers is a sure thing, for three to five years anyway. Marcus Mariota is 12 years younger, but is not a sure thing.
• If the Titans don’t get a good offer, I think they pick Mariota. Tennessee wants an offer; the Titans aren’t married to picking anyone at number two. I do not believe Tennessee has gotten a golden offer yet. As one GM in the top 10 told me Saturday: “Tuesday or Wednesday is when those calls are made, the serious calls.” Maybe—but the Falcons did the work on the huge Julio Jones draft deal with Cleveland three weeks before the 2011 draft. I’ve got to think that the Titans would know if they were going to get a really good offer by now. And I hadn’t heard of even a strong rumor of one by late Sunday afternoon. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The Titans, though they feel good about Zach Mettenberger, would feel better about Mariota.
• The Titans were all over Mariota all through the college season, and beyond. One Oregon source told me the Tennessee scouts were the most fervent of all teams during and after the season investigating Mariota. The one thing the Titans feel very good about: Though Mariota has a reputation of being a running quarterback who would have a tough time adjusting to life as an NFL pocket passer, they saw that the majority of his throws this year came from the pocket, without a lot of movement before the throw. In fact, 23 of Mariota’s 36 passes in the semifinal win over Florida State last winter were from the pocket, without significant movement by him.
• I can’t see Chip Kelly going all wacky for Mariota. But that’s just me. Jumping from 20, where Philadelphia is due to pick, to the top five would just be too debilitating for a team with some needs. One of the best general managers in football said to me over the weekend: “I think we’re all waiting for Chip to make a move, and none of us really knows if he will.” I don’t either. But I doubt it.
My gut feeling three days out? (Dangerous in a year like this, because nothing looks certain but the top pick.) The Titans don’t get that pot of gold for the pick, and they take Mariota.
Kiss of death. Now the pick surely will be dealt.
One last thing about the run-up to the draft that happens every year. I spend time the weekend before the draft each year talking to people about my final mock draft, which will run Tuesday here at The MMQB. In talks with team officials, I usually say something like, “Tell me if you’ve heard anything you trust about” Team X. With Jacksonville picking third, I asked 12 people I talk to fairly often to tell me if they heard anything they trust about the Jaguars at three. Eight answered the question with a name. Amari Cooper, Dante Fowler and Leonard Williams all got mentioned as names they heard reliably.
This is why, in draft week, you’ve got to qualify almost everything you say.
* * *
Why no one can predict this draft.
Very little consensus about the order of the top players this year. Have you noticed? It’s been that way consistently since the end of the college season. There’s not an Andrew Luck, or even a Jadeveon Clowney, this year—a player who would be rated the best on the board of most teams or most analysts. When I asked six analysts in the past week for their top 10 players in this draft (regardless of position), four different players were number one: three nods to USC’s Leonard Williams, and one apiece to Amari Cooper, Jameis Winston and Dante Fowler.
The book on this draft, essentially, is that there is no book. The big calls from each analyst:
• Brandt: Todd Gurley number six … Breshad Perriman the number three receiver in the class.
• Cosell: Todd Gurley as the second-best player in the class … Andrus Peat as the best tackle … Marcus Mariota over Jameis Winston.
• Jeremiah: Kevin White over Amari Cooper … Shane Ray the number two pass-rusher … Danny Shelton cracking the top 10.
• Kiper: Brandon Scherff over every wideout except Amari Cooper … No Trae Waynes in the top 10.
• McShay: Arik Armstead cracks the top 10 … Two wideouts ahead of Dante Fowler … Another Todd Gurley fan.
• PFF: Stanford’s Henry Anderson, stunningly, a top-10 player … Shelton, who may be a two-down player, number two … Nelson Agholor over Kevin White.
The moral of the draft this year is that it’s a beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder draft. It should be fun Thursday night, just because most of what happens will have a surprise element to it.
* * *
A mixed bag about the Chicago locale for the draft.
I’m a fan of the draft moving around. I hope one day it’s Green Bay. I hope it goes to a bunch of different places, starting with Los Angeles next year. I’d love to see the draft at L.A. Live, the downtown venue that encompasses the Staples Center, or somewhere else fitting for a red carpet.
Having said that, I’ve heard from several agents that their clients want the draft in New York. It’s perhaps a coincidence that the potential top three picks Thursday night—Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota and Amari Cooper—all chose to skip the trip to Chicago. Perhaps it’s the start of a trend. Players should be free to make their own decisions about attending or not attending, but it’s been a long time since three of the top picks in the draft skipped it. So that bears watching.
The last draft held outside of New York City was in Chicago 51 years ago. Actually, it was held 10 days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, in late 1963, as the league drafted players for the 1964 season. So there’s a bit of history to this one.
There will be two distinct venues in Chicago, separated by Michigan Avenue in the South Loop. On one side: The Auditorium Theatre, seating about 3,000, a venue much like Radio City Music Hall. Commissioner Roger Goodell will open the draft inside the theater, and the 26 players who did RSVP to attend the draft will be introduced. They’ll stand above the stage, on a balcony, for the National Anthem, and then go back inside a room upstairs to await their name being called. Goodell, meanwhile will then walk across the street, the length of about a full football field, to “Selection Square” in Grant Park, where all 32 teams will be located and where the picks and trades will be called. In Selection Square, Goodell will put the Bucs on the clock shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern Time (7 p.m. in Chicago), and then walk back inside the theater to announce the picks for the evening.
While the draft is going on, Grant Park will host “Draft Town,” where an NFL Experience-type venue will be set up, with a tavern for the adults and games and football tests for all.
Thursday’s and Friday’s picks (rounds one through three) will be made inside the Auditorium Theatre. All Saturday picks (rounds four through seven) will be made outside, in Selection Square. Day three picks will have some interesting venues:
• The Jaguars, trying to pump up their London partnership, will be making their sixth- and seventh-round selections late Saturday night (England time) from London.
• Seattle will make all day three picks from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in western Washington. Oakland will make those day three picks from Travis Air Force Base in nearby Sonoma County. The Titans will make final-day picks from the Tennessee National Guard Headquarters.
• Other local markets will have different places where picks will be made as well. The Vikings will announce day three selections from the construction site of their new stadium in Minneapolis … the Falcons from a fan event at the new College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta … the Cardinals from the Big Red Rib & Music Festival at their stadium, where local flag football players will announce the picks.
“That’s adding some energy to day three that we’ve never had,” said NFL senior vice president of events Peter O’Reilly, who is overseeing the offsite draft.
There’s been a slight change in the timing of the picks. Round one will still be a maximum of 10 minutes per pick, and round two seven minutes per pick, and rounds three through six five minutes per pick. But the per-pick limit for round seven, and all compensatory picks, will be four minutes starting this year.
Some 79,000 fans applied in a lottery for free tickets to the draft, and 6,000 were awarded a pair of tickets each. How well the league and the fans and the players adapt to the new setting will determine whether the league continues to go on the road—though from what I hear, Chicago would have to be a significant failure for the league to revert reflexively to New York next year. “We love the move so far,” O’Reilly said Friday. “It’s allowed us to re-imagine what the draft can be.”
* * *
A TV draft special from that draftnik, Cris Collinsworth?
Collinsworth, the Emmy-winning NBC color man on “Sunday Night Football,” usually disappears from the football consciousness in the offseason. Not this year. Collinsworth in 2014 bought a majority interest in the football analytics website Pro Football Focus,and PFF will have a draft special today, “Pro Football Focus: Grading the 2015 Draft,” at 5:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
(Truth in column-writing: I work with Collinsworth at NBC, and have been employed by NBC to work on the network pregame show since its prime-time inception in 2006.)
PFF’s stated purpose is to grade the performance of every NFL player on every snap he plays, and nearly half the teams in the NFL have hired the site to do special-project work for them. Last year the site began to do the same work for major-college teams. NBC says PFF analysts graded all plays for each draft-eligible player in the 2014 season and graded the players the way they’d grade NFL players. On this show the PFF analysts will compare the pass-releases of Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston to established NFL stars like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
Also, pass-rush will be measured differently for the college players than just by sacks and pressures; a new PFF metric will show how—in the site’s view—Stanford defensive end Henry Anderson ought to be a clear first-round pick because of how consistently he gets pressure on the passer. Much of the analysis on the show will be done by the men who have brought PFF to life, including founder Neil Hornsby, a native of England who fell in love with football watching it on Sunday nights in Britain in the Dan Marino years.
Two interesting Collinsworth observations after some draft study. One: “When I started watching tape on the quarterbacks, I was 100 percent convinced Winston was the better player. As every day goes by, in my mind, Mariota gets a little closer.” Two: “The best player in the draft, to me, is Dante Fowler. He can rush the passer from anywhere. I’ve seen him hurdle linemen like [Olympic hurdler] Skeets Nehemiah. And he covers pretty well too.”
“The main one is Randy Gregory. And trust me, I’ve had a bunch of teams in the bottom half of the first round going, ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got to be all over this guy from our owner, because you might have to bring him into this conversation, from our owner down to our coaching staff.’ And what I think it really becomes, it’s an organizational call. You’ve got top-10 talent in Gregory. And if you’re going to pull the string with him at 16 or 32 or 48, I don’t care where, because of the well-known off-the-field issues, you’ve got to get ownership to buy in and you’ve got to have a coaching staff that understands what they’re going to have to do to provide an infrastructure to help this kid succeed.”
—NFL Network’s Mike Mayock on one big hurdle facing Nebraska pass-rusher Randy Gregory, who admitted testing positive for marijuana at the NFL scouting combine—and whose off-field life at Nebraska has been the subject of much investigating by NFL teams in advance of Thursday’s first round.
I think, as we sit three days before the first round, the most polarizing figure among great talents is Randy Gregory. I’ll have him sliding in my mock draft tomorrow. Too many people with teams too worried about maturity level.
“We tried to move up last year with a team, and they wanted my first three grandchildren. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ ”
—Denver GM John Elway, on trading up in the draft.
I think there are those inside Jaguardom who want Amari Cooper with the third overall pick, and those who want Dante Fowler with the third overall pick. Leaning toward Cooper winning for my mock draft on Tuesday, but I still have a day to mess that one up. So give me time.
3. I think it wouldn’t shock me if the Saints used the Jimmy Graham pick from the Seahawks, the 31st pick of the first round, on Dorial Green-Beckham. But I can’t see him going much earlier than 31. With the great group of wideouts in this draft, what sense would it make to take a great prospect with the most checkered history of any player in this draft in the first round?
I think I was glad to see Mike Mayock admit his mistake before the draft last year in being convinced Johnny Manziel was growing up. I bought it too. And that’s one of the reasons why you should be skeptical of every guy in this draft with some pockmarks in his past, such as Jameis Winston and Marcus Peters and Randy Gregory. Said Mayock: “I have to put my hand up and say I missed that last year on Manziel, and I’m upset with myself for that. He’s an immature kid …
When kids have significant red flags, how often do they change, and I would say my perception in my experience is that plus or minus 90 percent of the time, the kid ultimately turns into who he’s always been. When you get a repeated pattern of bad decisions, you might be on your best behavior leading up to the draft—you’ve got all kinds of people around you telling you what to say and how to act—but once you get comfortable, whether it’s one year in, two years in, three years in, once you get comfortable again in the NFL and you get paid, typically that kid goes back to being who he always was.” Good lesson to remember this week.
