The Daily Traub is pivoting. Since my current employment does not allow for much time, nor hockey blogging, I’ll be confined to a Michigan football season preview post, a Lions season preview post and then some NFL Draft reviews. Everything else is going to get canned…at least for now.
We’re also doing double-time because I’m behind schedule…so here comes you’re quick Michigan Football Season preview.
I decided that rather than continue to tweet about this and possible roster combinations, that I would throw it all into a blog post.
I would have done anything to be following George McPhee for the past week and the upcoming week. What the Vegas Golden Knights are going through is unprecedented. Normally when the NHL has expanded, there have been two teams, so you’ve been picking against another team. And when they have expanded, nothing but trash has been available. This time around, there are quite a few good players available for Vegas to take. To make it even more interesting, They are allowed to make trades with teams to not take a certain player that has been left available. For instance, it is believed that the Anaheim Ducks have made an offer to Vegas to keep them from selecting Sami Vatanen or Josh Manson. Columbus has a deal in place to keep Vegas from taking Jack Johnson, or Joonas Korpisalo and apparently has offered Ryan Murray or Matt Calvert, a 1st round pick, a prospect and David Clarkson’s contract.
This blog post has been pushed back multiple times. Normally I do a Signing Day Recap and a Spring Football post but clearly those two have fallen by the wayside with real life happening. So this post is now going to be a Spring Football Review/Signing Day Recap/Fall Camp Preview/etc.
Naturally, as I do fewer and fewer blog posts and have less time to pay attention to recruiting, Michigan keeps signing more and more recruits. A 30-person class is absolutely massive and at the time, it put them at 87 scholarships. But over the last 2-3 months, things have transpired that has allowed them to get down to 85. Drake Johnson did not get a 6th year, Wyatt Shallman left, Dave Dawson left, Asiasi transferred to be closer to home, etc. At any rate, rather than talk about every single prospect in-depth, let’s focus more on the Spring Game, Fall position competitions and which freshmen will play right away. It’ll probably be June by the time I publish this anyway.
In a year with as much depth as this, there are far more “winners” than there are “losers.” I put that in quotes because obviously it’s going to be 2-3 years before we actually know which teams ended up with a good draft or not. At any rate, in a draft this loaded, I’m going to try to keep the number of teams here limited, because it’s tough to pick out any truly bad ones.
As always, I have to throw out the disclaimer that some of these drafts could end up panning out, but the rapid reaction for these teams is no bueno. Fortunately for NFL teams, this was a very deep draft so there were a lot of teams that did a really good job. And the ones that did not do a good job, still did a good enough job to not be considered a flop.
Chicago Bears
Man, do I feel for Chicago Bears fans right now. I’m not even remotely sold on Mitch Trubisky as a stud NFL quarterback and the fact they were negotiating with themselves to pay a King’s ransom to move up one spot is highly questionable. You would think that maybe they would draft some big time players with their other picks…but they went with Adam Shaheen, Eddie Jackson, Tarik Cohen and Jordan Morgan. It’s almost like they did not have the budge to scout any big name schools other than Alabama. Shaheen is an intriguing tight end but he’s not a good blocker despite his frame. He could start this year, but there were better options to fill holes in that slot. Eddie Jackson has potential to start but it will not be right away. Then they drafted Tarik Cohen to be a change of pace back for Jeremy Langford…but that was a bit early for my taste. The bottom line is they traded up for a guy that will not start Day One with Mike Glennon there and then they did not get any starters with their remaining five picks. A very frustrating day for Bears fans. Continue reading
Going into the 2017 NFL Draft it was known that this is one of the deepest drafts in recent history, if not ever. Fortunately for the Lions, the weakest positions were quarterback and offensive line and both of those starting units/positions are all set. There had been quite a bit of draft buzz leading up to Thursday that the Lions would be looking at tight end early and that David Njoku was the apple of their eye. For me, he was a no-go since I did not see a need to draft a second Eric Ebron. Thankfully, it appears that Bob Quinn and I are on the same page. I had hoped that they would also trade back in one of the rounds and add at least one more pick and they did exactly that. All in all, I was pretty pleased with the Lions draft. I’m at the point where Bob Quinn has my full trust and he should have yours too.
Let’s take a look at their picks, shall we?
Looking back at last year’s draft it’s pretty easy to see that Detroit Lions GM Bob Quinn did an exceptional job in his first NFL Draft. With the exception of Jimmy Landes, the long-snapper who went on IR, and Jake Rudock, every Draft pick that the Lions made in 2016 played for the Lions. If the Lions can have a draft with similar impact this year, the roster can be improved dramatically in Quinn’s first two years at the helm.
