I was not originally going to have time to do an NFL Draft post this year but life comes at you fast.
I honestly do not know what to expect with this year’s NFL Draft. It’s the first time that Bob Quinn is going to be at the helm for the Lions and as a GM, and I cannot tell which direction he is going to go. I want to be optimistic, but with the Lions…well it’s best to never get your hopes up.
For my money, the Western Conference is far more clear cut than the east. Almost every playoff series in the east could be decided by a coin toss. The West is far more top heavy.
I decided to try and mix in a quick preview of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs while also preparing for our own playoffs, so we’ll see how this turns out…naturally this is the shortest one I’ve ever done. For most of the year I’ve thought that there were only four teams capable of winning the Stanley Cup and as I look at statistics for the regular season, I feel the same way. The real question is who will be the team that comes out of the Atlantic Division to play in the Eastern Conference Finals. It’s purely a toss up in my mind.
I tried and failed to write this post many different times over the past couple days. It’s tough to write these types of posts for me because I want them to be perfect and I keep thinking of different memories or moments that were awesome as I go along. Thinking of different moments that will never be repeated, duplicated, replicated, you get the idea. It’s a shame that Calvin Johnson is done at such a young age, but his body is not what it once was and you could see in 2014 that he was dealing with more and it was taking longer for him to come back from getting banged up.
As I say every year, winning and losing a Combine will not make or break someone’s career…it can just greatly influence their Draft stock and where they end up playing on Sundays. Some of the losers will be able to reverse any negative effects at their Pro Day, but it’ll be put up or shut up time and the pressure will be on.
Joe Dahl, OG, Washington State: Dahl had the type of day that sends people back to the film room. These are the best types of days that you can have when you’re not a marquee prospect. In the testing Dahl had a 5.18 40 (1.80 10-yard), 31″ vertical, 9’1″ broad jump, and 28 reps on the bench. Then during the on-field drills he did a very good job showing off his movement skills.
Last, but certainly not least, we have the defensive backs group. This was an EXTREMELY disappointing day in terms of NFL Network coverage and was the least I remember seeing of the defensive backs group. They did not even show one of the traditional pass-catching game drills that NFL Network had finished their broadcast with every year. I guess I’m not sure why I expect the NFL Network to cover as much as possible when the Combine has grown into this huge thing that people love watching. They know now that they can show more commercials than ever and sucker people in and make more money without showing actual content. They show every 40-yard dash, but not every drill. Totally backwards, but whatever.
The Defensive Line and Linebackers group is one of the most talented groups that the Combine has seen in a while, especially the DL. The defensive tackle position is probably the deepest group in the entire Draft and I would bet that at least 8 defensive tackles go in the first 40 picks. It’s an unprecedented year for them and it’s a good year to need a DT.
Defensive Line Measurables:
The second day of the NFL Scouting Combine featured what is one of the most interesting quarterback classes in a while. And I do not mean that in a good way. I mean that in the way that everyone seems to have a differing opinion on who the top guy is and I personally would not take any of these guys in the Top 10 of the Draft. This is a very strange draft year that is very talented on the defensive side of the ball and the offensive side of the ball has some talent and depth…but it has way more questions than anything.
Well this year the Combine got off to a rocky start for me. Apparently Time Warner Cable has an automatic power shut off after 4 hours and so only the first half of Day 1 got recorded to my laptop. Really inhibits the ability to make YouTube videos of players going through drills, but I still watched what I missed on the DVR. Unfortunately, that means no running back cut ups of players I thought did well for this portion of the recap (other than what NFL.com provided). Always good to have a backup plan but does not make this any less annoying. Time Warner Cable having a power save mode that arbitrarily comes on after 4 hours is absolutely ridiculous. Could you imagine leaving your cable box on accidentally and then it shuts off while recording your show? Absolutely a bush league invention…especially to force it on people without their knowledge. It’s also bush league that the NFL is so restrictive with their content and makes it impossible to embed clips. Forcing you to go to their website and deal with their advertisers…guess making billions of dollars is not enough.
Hooooo boy a lot has happened since the last time I posted on here…November 18th seems like a lifetime ago. You would think that with all the time that I spend on a bus that I would have more time to read and write but alas, you would be wrong. Also, not surprisingly, when you work all day and are on a computer for most of it, you’re not in a gigantic hurry to get back home and start writing or staring at a computer screen. This is actually the first time I’ve turned on my laptop in a week. I’m going to try to be better about posting and to keep the same 10-12 things that I post about year-round in the future and will start the rotation soon with the Lions pre-draft plan and the Combine posts. The Senior Bowl posts will be on the chopping block and I’ll go back to doing a Signing Day post for Michigan in the future, simply too much has been happening to just do a Signing Day post, especially two weeks after the fact. (JK, I did the Signing Day post, it’s at the bottom)
The Daily Traub 