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Draft King Mailbag

June 10, 2005
Lou Pickney, DraftKing.com

Reader feedback is always welcomed here at DraftKing.com. Send your thoughts to me at LouPickney@gmail.com. Note that I have a new e-mail address from last year for this.

This is the first mailbag of the new "draft season", looking ahead to the 2006 NFL Draft.


From: patrick@executiveparkfitness.com
To: LouPickney@hotmail.com
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2005 3:11 PM
Subject: ?

In your opinion, would Roy Williams, Derrick Johnson and Cedric Benson all have been drafted in the top 10 had they come out after their Junior seasons.

Thank you for your time.
You do a great job, please keep up the work.

Lou: This is an interesting question. I'll go through the players one by one to give my assessment.

-Roy Williams: Yes, presuming you mean the WR and not the safety with the same name. He was the #7 pick overall in 2004. In 2003, you had Charles Rogers go #2 overall to Detroit and Andre Johnson #3 to Houston, and then there was a drop until #17, when Arizona took Penn State WR Bryant Johnson. The Jets were all about taking DT Dewayne Robertson at #4 (Robertson's stock had shot through the roof, and the Jets traded up specifically to get him), while at #5 CB Terence Newman filled a need for the Cowboys. Some of the later picks were very strong need fillers who have turned out great so far: QB Byron Leftwich at #7 to Jacksonville, DT Kevin Williams at #9 to Minnesota, and Baltimore with OLB/DE Terrell Suggs at #10. Now there is the whole thing about how the Vikings tried to trade their pick to Baltimore so the Ravens could draft Leftwich but then ran out of time, but it's immaterial to the end result of this debate. But despite that level of talent, a guy like Roy Williams would've gone top ten, I firmly believe.

-Derrick Johnson: No. He didn't even go top ten in 2005, and while he's a great LB and a player who I expect to do great things for the Kansas City Chiefs, if he couldn't crack the top ten after the career he had despite going back for his senior year, he would've had little chance in 2004, where the first OLB off the board was D.J. Williams at #17. The whole knock on Johnson "running around blocks" annoyed me almost as much as the ESPN stock ticker gimmick during this year's draft, and I think he'll be a solid pro.

-Cedric Benson: Doubtful. Consider Steven Jackson in 2004, who was considered by many to be a Top 10 prospect. In looking at the teams involved, I realized that there was a strong likelihood of there not being a RB taken until after the top 20 (which is how I mocked it on here), which lead to all sorts of angry e-mails. Consider this one, from March 16, 2004: "Do you really think that Steven Jackson is going to be around at #22? Most other mock drafts have him going in the top 10." Jackson, as you will recall, ended up going at #24. Now it is possibe that a team might've been so overwhelmed by Benson that they would've taken him higher, but the big selling point on him was his consistent play over a four-year period at Texas.

Benson was my lowest-ranked RB of the "big three" in this year's draft, and I think Chicago made a big mistake in taking him because of already having spent money to keep Thomas Jones on board. This has "Chris Perry in 2004, Larry Johnson in 2003" written all over it to me, but we'll see. Thomas Jones gets hurt, and suddenly you have a Fred Taylor 1998 situation all over again. Taylor was in the Tom Coughlin doghouse coming out of training camp, and he watched the first two games as Fred Taylor rushed for 100 yards in both games. But then in week three, Taylor tore his ACL on the third play of the game, and Taylor went in, rushed for 120+ yards, and took over the starting RB position, a spot he still holds today.

Anyway, there's the long answer to your question...


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