Lining Up

Only one game left in the season. The anticipation is tremendous...to start some draft talk! The 2010 draft season is now in full swing. With the January 15 early entry deadline passed, the field is set and prospects are now jockeying for position. The Senior Bowl will kick things off this week, followed by the scouting combine in February, and pro-day workouts in March. As usual, all of the madness will culminate the last weekend in April with draft day. This year the NFL has decided to change things up for the big event with round 1 moving to prime time on Thursday, rounds 2 and 3 taking place on Friday and rounds 4 through 7 on Saturday.

If your team needs defensive help, prepare to get excited. The defensive talent available this year is overwhelming. More specifically, I can’t remember a class with more defensive line depth. In recent years, college football has produced very few NFL-ready defensive linemen. There have been plenty of smallish hybrid types best suited as OLB’s in a 3-4 defense, but 280 lb defensive ends that can move well enough to justify a first round pick have been hard to come by. This year there are at least four. As if that weren’t enough, the defensive tackle crop might be even stronger than the DE’s.

The DT’s:

The defensive tackle position is the early favorite to be 2010’s top position group with the headliner of the crop of course being Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh. Suh was recognized by analysts and college football enthusiasts all year long as a top-notched prospect, but his performance in the Big 12 championship game against Texas blew people away. He is now a household name and the favorite to go number one overall as experts are touting Suh as the best defensive tackle prospect they have ever seen.

Suh might be the cream of the crop, but most scouts feel there isn’t much of a drop off to the number two DT, Gerald McCoy (Oklahoma). McCoy boasts an impressive array of pass rush moves not commonly found in college players. With a knack for getting up field to make big plays along with the size and strength that scouts covet in DT prospects, McCoy looks to be a sure-fire top five draft pick.

The second tier of DT’s consists of UCLA’s Brian Price and Tennessee’s Dan Williams. Price has proven to be stout against the run but needs to demonstrate better pass rush potential and ease endurance concerns to elevate into the top half of the first round. Williams, on the other hand, has flashed plenty of big-play potential. His weakness has been consistency, but a team with a hard-nosed coaching staff capable of motivating him could end up with a steal in the second half of the first round.

To top it all off, behind the top four DT’s the cupboard isn’t exactly bare. Jared Ordick showed in his work at Penn St. that he could get the dirty work done in the middle of a defense and he has a chance to sneak into the first round. Arthur Jones (Syracuse) has flashed a little more big play potential but a torn pectoral muscle and a torn meniscus within the last year leave him with some proving to do in selling teams on spending an early pick to take him. The shear size of the space-eater from Alabama, Terrence Cody, is bound to generate value, but as it stands right now he will have to work his way into the second round.

The DE’s:

The list of first round DE prospects starts with Georgia Tech’s Derrick Morgan. While Morgan isn’t quite as solidly in front of his peers as Suh, it would be hard to imagine him slipping out of the top ten and he doesn’t have much work to do to force his way into the top five. He isn’t a finished product but he has size and speed and has flashed the ability to use it.

Going into the 2009 season, Carlos Dunlap (Florida) was heralded as the second coming of Mario Williams: a 290 lb defensive end with the athletic ability of a 260 pounder. The late-season DUI has curtailed the enthusiasm surrounding the young DE, but even despite character issues I’m not sure he is what he’s cracked up to be. The few Florida games I saw, I thought he disappeared at times and looked too slim. I will be curious to see where he weighs in at the combine next month. Despite concerns, he has enough potential to keep him in the top half of the first round even if he doesn’t manage to boost his stock the next few months.

Two more DE’s with size looking for their names to be called in the first round are USC’s Everson Griffen and Michigan’s Brandon Graham. Griffen is a little raw, but he has flashed enough ability to get to the quarterback to keep him in the top 25. However, Graham , the lone senior of the bunch, has more experience. He is on the fringe of the first round right now, but when all is said and done the number of impact plays he made without a whole lot of help from the rest of the Michigan defense will propel Graham into the 20 to 30 range.

All in total that makes four possible first round defensive ends. Throw in the smaller Jason Pierre-Paul (South Florida), figure five first round DT’s and you end up with ten first round defensive linemen. In the last five years there were seven first round defensive lineman in 2009, six in 2008, seven in 2007, six in 2006, and five in 2005. With a greater quantity of players available at a better than usual quality one thing is for sure, come draft day GM’s will be foaming at the mouth preparing to snatch up prospects that will help teams get stronger in the defensive trenches.