Posts from the Nfl Draft Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

We alluded to the Vikings Jared Allen gamble looking good on draft day, but Mike Florio has added another reason why the Allen trade is not nearly as crazy as some people believed it was.

To fill the team's biggest need, the Vikings traded a first-round pick and two third-rounders for Allen, while the Jaguars traded a first-round pick, two third-round picks and a fourth-round for rookie defensive end Derrick Harvey.
Now the first-rounder the Jags traded was the 26th pick, while the Vikings was pick No. 17, but overall the two trades were pretty comparable as far as what was given up.

Now there is a chance that Harvey will make a Jevon Kearse/Dwight Freeney-like impact as a rookie (although it's unlikely), and there's a chance that Allen will go on a four-day bender that leads to a long suspension, but it's much more likely that Allen will continue to be one of the NFL's best defensive ends, while Harvey will be the typical NFL rookie who shows flashes of greatness and flashes of being lost.

And given the choice, you'd rather have the vet.

When the Detroit Lions drafted wide receiver Mike Williams with the 10th pick in the 2005 NFL draft, most people thought it was stupid because the Lions had used Top 10 picks on wide receivers in the last two drafts.

As it turned out, it was stupid because Williams wasn't any good. He caught 37 passes in two seasons in Detroit, had some crucial drops in key moments, got morbidly obese and horribly out of shape, and was shipped to Oakland last year.

Now Oakland has let him go, and he's in Tennessee, where he says he's in good shape and down 30 pounds to 242, or only about 10 heavier than he was at USC. New offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger says he's excited about what Williams can bring to the offense.

I just don't buy it, though. The last time Williams looked like a good football player was at the 2004 Rose Bowl. I think Williams' football talent has atrophied.

Apparently, a few people in Tampa think Chris Simms has been properly compensated by the Buccaneers for giving his spleen for the cause, and it's time for them to cut him loose.

That had to be Jon Gruden's message to the team after he drafted University of San Diego QB Josh Johnson with the Bucs' fifth-round pick. Johnson was reportedly impressing his teammates in a minicamp last weekend. He seems like a natural fit for the Bucs, given that he played in a West Coast offense at San Diego and threw 43 touchdown passes and one interception last season -- impressive numbers at any level.

Still, Johnson is a project, and the Bucs are loaded up with quarterbacks. Jeff Garcia is old but clearly still capable, and Brian Griese and Luke McCown are serviceable backups.

Which brings us back to Simms. Nobody really knows his current form. His throwing motion was reportedly ruined after his spleen was removed. Has it recovered? Could he return to his 2005 form, when he led the Bucs to the playoffs? Or is he done as an NFL quarterback, and if so, are the Glazers just keeping him on the payroll out of guilt, or out of fear that he'll become a starter for another team?

The only thing for sure here is that Gruden really wants to move on without Simms. Perhaps the Bucs should as well.

One of the reasons why I started blogging is that I couldn't find enough in depth information about my favorite team, the Houston Texans. Since they are such a new team, if information wasn't on their website or in the Houston Chronicle, it likely didn't exist.

Well, with minor apologies to Buzz Bissinger, thank goodness for sports blogs. I want to point out in particular the fabu work that Solis has done at the BattleRedBlog about the 2008 Texans draft class. Check out these posts in particular:

"Super Steve Slaton" - Explains why this running back may be the perfect one cut and go back for the Texans zone blocking scheme.

"Steve Slaton: An Insider's Perspective" - A must read interview for Texans fans from with West Virginia's Director of New Media, John Antonik.

So, yeah, Redskins rookie tight end Fred Davis likes to sleep. Unfortunately, his raging case of narcolepsy struck during last weekend's minicamp. This is generally frowned upon, particularly when starting a new job.

The Washington Post's Jason Reid writes that "some draft evaluators reported that USC tight end Fred Davis exhibited poor work habits and made questionable decisions at times." The Redskins considered him too much of a talent to pass up, and three days into his NFL career, Davis missed practice. The team reported that Davis had overslept, and his brother, Kedran, confirmed as much ... before adding: that he overslept after a late night on Saturday.

Front-office bigwig Vinny Cerrato, the man responsible for drafting Davis*, isn't worried:

"The biggest thing is, as long as they learn from their mistakes, that's the biggest thing," Cerrato said. "The kid felt awful. Jim got a chance to talk to him and Jim's handling it internally. I've talked to his agents and the kid feels horrible, which he should.

"Anytime you miss anything, to me it's important. Especially when you're here to ... he's making his first impression. Do what's right. He made a mistake. Now, he's got to fight back from the mistake."

In the scheme of things, this is nothing. Of course, that's what people said when Brandon Lloyd first starting acting out. If there's a lesson in all of this, it's this: make Davis start a blog. It builds character.

* possibly not entirely true

When we learned that Buffalo Bills draft pick Demetrius Bell was the son of NBA legend Karl Malone, and that Malone played no part in Bell's upbringing, it was a story that made a lot of people sad. And then when the Buffalo News reported that Bell's mother was 12 or 13 when Malone got her pregnant, it was a story that made a lot of people angry.

But it's a story that the mainstream media has almost completely ignored. As far as I can tell, only two newspapers, the Buffalo News and Los Angeles Times, have made any mention of the report that Gloria Bell was 13 years old when she gave birth to Demetrius. A couple of other news sources, including BET.com, have mentioned the story, but I have been unable to find it mentioned in Sports Illustrated or on ESPN or ABC or TNT or Fox or any of the other media outlets that cover the NFL or the NBA.

Malone was 20 when Demetrius Bell was conceived. It is a very serious crime for a 20-year-old man to have sex with a 12- or 13-year-old girl. I can't say whether Malone committed that crime -- I don't have a DNA test or a birth certificate -- but no one has disputed the original Buffalo News report.

An all-time NBA great committing a sex crime that resulted in the birth of a boy who is now in the NFL would seem like the kind of thing the media would be all over. Why is this story being thoroughly ignored?

A number of talking heads believe that the Texans picked Virginia Tech left tackle Duane Brown too early. They believe the Texans could have traded down again and still got their target. Those people would be wrong.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that the Chargers wanted Brown with the 27th pick:

"Funny that the Chargers finally got a tackle with their final pick. They had been stymied from starting off the draft with one when an unprecedented eight tackles were selected before they picked at No. 27.

'We came up one pick short,' said [Norv] Turner, who along with the rest of the Chargers brass watched Houston trade into the 26th spot and take tackle Duane Brown of Virginia Tech."

At the Texans draft party, someone told me shortly after the trade down from 18 that Brown was going to be the pick. I didn't believe it until I heard the pick later. If Brown was the target, then trying to trade down again was going to get too cute.

If the Texans only have offensive line guru Alex Gibbs for a short period of time, you should probably get him the tackle he wants pronto.

For all intents and purposes, the Rams were going to use their second overall pick on Glenn Dorsey last weekend. All of the pre-draft hype indicated an interest and, though all of the zany behavior every April has me doubting everything everyone says, it was apparently genuine. All of the teams' scouts and coaches wanted Dorsey.

But team president John Shaw wanted Chris Long. So when he arrived at headquarters the Thursday before the draft, he decreed it so -- Long would be the pick. Even if Shaw was stepping down from his ivory tower to get involved in football matters that are better left to, you know, football people, I agree with him.

The best teams find a way to merge the two divergent draft philosophies -- need vs. best player available. Even if Dorsey was the Rams' top-rated player, they already have a good, young pair of tackles in Adam Carriker and Clifton Ryan. On the outside? The ancient, brittle Leonard Little and the ancient, um, average (to be kind) James Hall. I know a push up the middle helps your ends, but the only thing that would help these ends at this point is the Career Kevorkian.

So it makes sense to draft Long. If the team wants to win now (ie, if Scott Linehan wants to provide his family hot food every night), they need to spread talent across as many positions as possible. What good is clogging the middle if teams can just attack the outside? Right?

This video of Wheaton College defensive end Andy Studebaker is one of several you can find of him on YouTube.

Of course, you can find videos of just about every football player on YouTube. But in Studebaker's case, he may owe his NFL career to online videos.

After drafting Studebaker in the sixth round on Sunday, Eagles general manager Tom Heckert said this:

"Nobody ever heard of this kid, but then his workout started popping up on YouTube and next thing you know, he got super hot and everybody (in the NFL) is looking at him. If it wasn't for YouTube, he probably wouldn't have been drafted."

I'm not completely sure I buy that -- NFL teams do have rather sophisticated video departments, but YouTube sure seems to have helped.

I'm not much fond of immediate draft grades. Assessments of players the day after the draft are often comical (and/or painful check out 5:10 and 8:55) in retrospect. The biggest problem is there is no one that can know more than just a brief snap shot of each player and how each player fits into 32 teams. And at the time they are doing their draft grades, they are probably a little tired and writing to deadline.

I'm not going to pretend I can grade out players before they take a snap in the NFL. But what I do know is that so many of the so called draft 'experts' are wildly off base in assessing the draft from what you know right now. So I am going to grade their Houston Texans draft grades, though I am sure you would find inaccuracies and superficiality in just about every team's grades:

The Draft Expert Losers:

Jason Cole, Yahoo Sports: "[Frank] Okam, a former defensive tackle, is likely to shift to guard, a clever move by teams that realize that non-athletic DTs can make for cheap, athletic G's."

Huh? Okam was drafted as a defensive tackle, to be a space eating guy next to Okoye that the Texans did not have. Nobody from the Texans is talking about him as a guard and are happy to get a DT who is large but can still move well.

I give Cole a grade of D. He is spared an F because he gave the same grade to the Texans that I did.