Feeling the Draft '09: Welcome Back, Kids

You smell that? (No--not that. That's just the Miller High Life Lite talkin'.) Smells like...combine.

I've waited to put together the first of what promises to be an exhaustive, repetitive and totally uninformed-by-any-actual-reportage series of posts on the 2009 NFL Draft until now, when the GMs and coaches and agents and potential Kansas City first round busts have all gathered in Indianapolis. It's kind of like waiting until Christmas Morning to open your presents; doing it early cheapens the experience.

Follow past the jump for more...


I haven't really decided how I'm gonna approach these, but I do know that my live bloggin' of the actual event will be condensed into one easy-to-follow post, so we can enjoy your hundreds of pertinent and not-dumb comments in one place. Last year's shotgun approach wore my typing fingers out, and then I got drunk too early. I'm sure there's a connection somewhere.

Anyway. Let's pop onto teh internets for a few items concerning the two teams that we care about here. That's right: the Saints and Vikings.

It's official, kinda. The Broncos are openly admitting that they plan to move to a 3-4 defense. At least some of the time. Other times, who knows? Maybe they'll use a 2-5. Or a 9-11. 10-4, good buddy.

We'll look at players who'd fit in later; my problem with the 3-4 is, and has always been, that it's hard to staff. You have to find a nose tackle who crushes Winchell's donuts, linebackers that are actually light defensive ends who can drop in pass coverage and actual ends that are more like 4-3 tackles, except taller. Preferably.

Jeff Legwold did a piece a while back--I'm too lazy to find the exact link at the moment--comparing the sizes of Denver's D-linemen with those of the two most successful 3-4 squads out there, the Patriots and Steelers. It wasn't pretty. There are basically no players on Denver's team who fit the ideal size profile of *any* front seven position in a 3-4, with the exception of Jarvis Moss as a potential outside 'backer. We simply don't have those 6'5, 300+ dudes you need to hold the edge as ends, nor anyone resembling a true nose tackle.

And with more teams going to a 3-4, those players are going to be harder to find.

Teams like, say, the Kansas City Chiefs?

Also from today's Rocky:
"It makes the Broncos one of several teams making the change - the Green Bay Packers recently made the switch to a 3-4 with Dom Capers as their new defensive coordinator, and the Kansas City Chiefs are expected to change once they choose their defensive coordinator - and puts them on hunt to fill some new roles in the scheme."

Ohh realllly? This is news to me. KC has invested a lot of high draft picks along the defensive line in recent years, and they were pretty much all 4-3 guys. Glenn Dorsey is a 4-3 guy. Tamba Hali is a 4-3 guy. Maybe Tank is a 3-4 nose...maybe. But it seems to me that the team that won't even tell its new coaching staff what their jobs are has more to lose in this switch than we do, since we've basically invested nothing up front over the last decade. And yes, it shows.

Our new head coach has evidently been studying up on the Patriot Guide to Dealing With the News Media. At least he's smiling.

Along with pretty much everyone else, I think the Chefs need to draft a quarterback. I know everyone loves The Tyler Thigpen Story, and it's cute, but of such are the 2-14 seasons made.

Question is, who? This isn't a great draft for quarterbacks-one of the worst in a long time, actually--and there are widely divergent opinions of the early favorites, Matt Stafford and Mark Sanchez. Profootballtalk.com quoted a source--who may not exist, you never know with them--as saying that Stafford "pees his pants" under pressure. Ouch. And there isn't exactly a long list of one-year college starters who have gone on to NFL fame and fortune, as Sanchez attempts to do. So are either of them worth the #3 pick overall?

Or will they end up with someone like this kid, who played down the road a spell? Or this one, who shares an alma mater with Jim Everett and Bob Griese?

Or this one, whose selection would cause Whitlock to immediately engage in a furious session of onanism in the middle of the middle of the Star's newsroom? That's what I'm rooting for. Because if there's one thing our Administrator can't get enough of, it's Big Sexy talkin' up his peeps from Ball State.