 |
| |
|
 |
 |
Clouds of uncertainty Teams drafting high are still playing guessing gamePosted: Thursday April 11, 2002 4:14 PM
Nine days till D-Day -- Draft Day 2002 -- and at a time when draftniks nationwide are reading every tidbit looking for clues about how the best players will come off the board a week from Saturday, remember one thing: The 32 NFL teams don't know what they're doing yet. I'm serious. To illustrate, look at one team -- I'll call this club Team X -- and see how much work it has left to do before draft day. On Tuesday, Team X's scouts, coaches and management finished a week of rating all the defensive players in the draft and had 11 players pegged as first-round picks. On Wednesday, Team X's officials started rating the offense. Team X will work until next Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, putting its final grades on the offense. Then Team X will massage its board for a day, rating every player one after the other in a master list of draft choices. And so, while Team X has a good idea right now which player or players it likes for its spot in the first round, it doesn't know with finality which players it would take. And if you ask the scouts and coaches for this team, they'll tell you everything could change by next Wednesday.
My point? Everyone out there wants to know right now what the top teams will do on draft day. As do the the clubs. And while it's logical to think that North Carolina defensive end Julius Peppers goes to Carolina at No. 2, Texas corner Quentin Jammer to Detroit at 3 and Texas tackle Mike Williams to Buffalo at four, that's all that exercise is -- logic. Because none of those teams has finished stacking its board for the draft. Quarterback confusionThe two biggest mysteries heading into draft day both involve quarterbacks -- one veteran, one rookie. New England's Drew Bledsoe is still probably 60-40 to be traded by April 20, and I maintain that what I wrote Monday is still correct: There's a team out there interested in Bledsoe that hasn't surfaced. I'm going to guess here, because it's all I can do, but my money would be on Oakland or Chicago as the club talking privately with the Patriots about dealing a 2002 second-rounder and a conditional choice next year for Bledsoe. I hear Washington's not involved and Buffalo's interest has cooled. The other mystery man is Oregon's Joey Harrington. I can't believe so many teams picking high in the draft are finding reasons not to select Harrington, who is a poor man's Peyton Manning and will have a big impact for some team beginning in 2003. He visited Buffalo (lukewarm), Washington (very interested), Kansas City (extremely interested; his father played college football with Chiefs QB coach Terry Shea), Carolina (interested) and Detroit (smokescreenish). Harrington won't get past Cincinnati at No. 10, and he could be a draft-day deal with some team in the teens moving up, Washington, probably (the Redskins pick 18th). Ups and downsHere are some risers and fallers: Florida State receiver Javon Walker -- who runs a 4.4-second 40 at 6-foot-2 1/2 and 210 pounds -- is shooting up several teams' boards as they review 2001 game tape from a forgettable Seminoles season. Other than Hawaii's Ashley Lelie, Walker has the best combination of size and speed among wideouts in the draft. ... Speaking of Lelie, he has his future in his hands Friday at a workout in South Carolina, his last before the draft. Hamstring troubles have plagued him. ... Jammer is the hot guy. Oakland would love to deal up for him, all the way from back in the 20s. Could Al Davis get Matt Millen to bite for two 1s and two 2s, or something like that? ... Michigan State running back T.J. Duckett has passed Boston College's William Green on many boards with his 4.37 speed and Jerome Bettis-sized body. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
