Three days of Draft Town are in the books from beautiful Chicago. I was in the Windy City for all the festivities. Here are the rules of thumb from the three days of picks.
Thumbs Up
To the Atlanta Falcons. Embattled GM Tom Dimitroff needed immediate impact at several key positions and he got them. Even better, he landed Vic Beasley, Jalen Collins and Tevin Coleman in the first three rounds without having to engineer any trades.
Beasley is the best pass rusher in the draft. The Clemson product could have gone 3rd overall. He should have gone 5th or 7th. Scoring him at number eight is a testament to the kinetic Dimitroff’s unexpected patience. Beasley will start right away and is my early pick for Defensive Rookie of the Year.
Coleman should immediately take over as the starting running back. Collins brings length and athleticism at the corner spot opposite young stud Marcus Trufant. He’s a bit of a risk with some failed pot tests and poor lateral agility, but worth the potential. Both WR Justin Hardy and DT Grady Jarrett, the fourth and fifth round picks, should make real impacts as rookies as well. Hardy could catch 60 passes in the slot.
To the Cleveland Browns. Nobody needed a great draft weekend more than GM Ray Farmer, and he delivered. I chronicled his successful first three rounds here, and on Saturday he added more useful pieces to a team which is appearing set at every position but quarterback and receiver.
Ibraheim Campbell was a nice value pick in the fourth round, a rangy hitter of a safety from Northwestern who should fill the primary backup role as a rookie. The two tight ends taken, Malcolm Johnson and Randall Telfer, will likely compete for the same roster spot. I like that concept. The final pick was Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, a preseason top 50 prospect who plummeted due to a knee injury and a lack of height. At 5’9” he’s either going to be a slot corner or an extremely small safety, but Ifo is an outstanding, aggressive football player when healthy. He’s worth the late flier.
Other teams who I think did very well for themselves: Washington, which got a lot of physical toughness; Miami for adding a great Ndamukong Suh running mate in Jordan Phillips as well as four fifth-rounders who can all contribute as rookies, notably nickel CB Bobby McCain, as well as a potential starting LG in fourth-rounder Jamil Douglas; San Diego, which only had five picks but all will make the roster, though I’m not a fan of 2nd rounder Denzel Perryman. I also liked what the New Orleans Saints did all weekend.
Thumbs Down
To the St. Louis Rams. After taking injured RB Todd Gurley with the 10th overall pick, an intriguing but questionable choice, GM Les Snead apparently let his hair care products infiltrate his football brain.
Rob Havenstein from Wisconsin is a decent choice at #57, a right tackle who epitomizes function over form. He makes the Rams a better football team. Unfortunately Snead followed his pick with three other offensive lineman who all project to the exact same position. Perhaps one of the four right tackles they selected can slide inside to guard, but I wouldn’t count on any of them being better than last year’s starter Davin Joseph…and Joseph was awful. As my Saturday draft companion Justin Higdon noted,
<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Rams have a monopoly on 7th round OTs</p>— Justin Higdon (@afc2nfc) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/afc2nfc/status/594547688810663936\">May 2, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Alas, they took all those linemen before the seventh round. But that’s not the worst part.
Sean Mannion in the third round. I just…can’t…stop laughing. He was my 299th rated player, and that was generous on my part because he once looked like a capable 3rd QB when throwing to Brandin Cooks in 2013. Mannion has one of the slowest and oddest releases of any QB in recent memory, and his arm strength is down in the “adequate high-schooler” range. I would have begrudgingly accepted a seventh-round gamble on Mannion, but taking him with so many other useful pieces on the board is asinine. In basketball terms, this is taking Hasheem Thabeet with the second overall pick of the NBA Draft. Thabeet is an average starting center in the D-League, though a definite fan favorite for the Grand Rapids Drive. That’s all Mannion will ever be, except there is no D-League in football.
Snead redeemed himself a little with the final two picks, linebacker Bryce Hager and defensive end Martin Ifedi. Both have a chance to be contributors. It doesn’t wash away the dubious disaster of the prior rounds.
To the San Francisco 49ers, who reached badly for both Arik Armstead in the first and Jaquiski Tartt in the second. Both those guys have legit potential to be very good NFL players, but both could have been had much later. I’ll accept the risk/reward argument on Armstead, but they were bidding against nobody else in the top 30 for his services and took him at 17. They drafted a punter who didn’t make my top-3 at the position, selecting Bradley Pinion in the fifth round while having recent All-Pro Andy Lee still on the roster. I like the Blake Bell and Mike Davis picks in the fourth round, but the rest of their draft was filled with players who were not likely to be drafted by anyone else.
Thumbs Twiddling
To the Indianapolis Colts. I’m a fan of the first three picks. Phillip Dorsett nicely fills the Reggie Wayne role in the offense, though after signing Andre Johnson it’s hard to see him getting a lot of reps in 2015. D’Joun Smith is very quick and smart in coverage, and he knows how to lay some wood as a tackler. Henry Anderson is an analytics darling, a highly effective DT/DE who led the nation in QB pressures last year despite spending an inordinate amount of plays on the ground. I’m not sold his game translates all that well to the NFL, but he’s worth the cost where GM Ryan Grigson drafted him at #93 overall.
Then Saturday rolled around, and once again the questionable Grigson reared his head. He’s made some ponderous decisions in recent years. While I think Stanford NT David Parry and Mississippi State RB Josh Robinson have NFL potential, he took both a round too early. The other third day picks, and that includes fourth-rounder Clayton Geathers, were all reaches where they were taken.
To the Green Bay Packers. The first two picks are both intriguing. Damarious Randall and Quinten Rollins are both hybrid cornerback/safety prospects who are loaded with upside but probably not ready to do much as rookies. Rollins in particular could be very good down the road, but this team needs immediate impact at corner while the Super Bowl window is still very much open.
The rest of GM Ted Thompson’s draft is sure to make Packer Backers openly question his scouting eye again. Ty Montgomery is a return specialist in the third round, but Micah Hyde is already a darn good return man. Montgomery is either the fourth RB or the sixth WR in a good offense. Michigan LB Jake Ryan was stiff even before a torn ACL wiped out his 2013. He’s hard-nosed and doesn’t miss what he can hit, but his range and reaction speed will make Green Bay long for the glory days of Brad Jones. I’ll buy the concept of Brett Hundley as a developmental QB though I’m not a fan; it’s a smart pick that could pay off down the road. One round after Packers fans mercilessly ripped New England for drafting a long snapper, Green Bay did just that in the 6th. Fifth-rounder Adam Ripkowski and seventh round pick Kennard Backman will likely compete for the same practice squad spot and neither is as good as some of their undrafted free agents.
Thumb Sucking
To the Seattle Seahawks. The reigning NFC champs had a pretty solid draft haul for a team lacking a first-round pick. Third-rounder Tyler Lockett was a personal favorite who immediately takes over the Golden Tate role in both the offense and return game the Seahawks sorely lacked last year. I like fifth-round corner Tye Hill, a speedy gamer from Towson, as well as brutish guard Mark Glowinski, one of the better people movers in the draft. Sixth-rounder Kristjan Sokoli is one of the most interesting players in the draft, a freak athlete who just needs to find a position and I like how the Seahawks have a history of doing just that.
Yet Seattle earns the thumb sucking for its first selection. With the 63rd overall pick, Seattle chose a twice-convicted criminal with major off-field issues. As a freshman at Michigan, defensive end Frank Clark was arrested in 2012 for felony home invasion. He eventually plead guilty to a lesser charge and wormed his way back onto the Wolverines roster. Clark played quite well in 2014, showing better quickness and hand usage as a pass rusher and behaving well too.
Then came the November incident at an indoor waterpark in Sandusky, Ohio, the city of my birth. Clark retaliated against his girlfriend as part of a drunken row, injuring her in several places while beating her in front of several children. He was decidedly unapologetic about the incident when asked at the Combine in Indy, where he essentially blamed the victim. While the police report validates Clark’s assertion that he did not initiate the fight, in this era of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson a man can simply not say anything of that sort in cases of domestic violence. When you beat up a woman in front of kids, threatening to kill her and intimidating the hotel clerk who initially responded, you unequivocally apologize and show tremendous contrition. Clark did nothing of the sort.
I can accept one dumb incident. Stealing a laptop is a serious and stupid crime, but he was young and deserved a second chance. He threw that second chance away, unapologetically and emphatically. That Seattle rewards his criminal malfeasance with a second-round pick ought to disgust Seahawks fans as much as it did Michigan fans, who openly cheered the program for dismissing Clark. It certainly disgusts me.