After having a day to marinate on this past draft I wanted to get my thoughts and opinions down. If you don’t already know, I am a diehard Skins fan. Been so my whole life and it only gets “worse” with age. Who knows how crazy I will be when I’m 40….even 50. I am especially invested now that I am a season ticket holder who gets a nice yearly bill. Now that I’m paying I want results!
With that being said, I thought there were good and bad picks in this draft. However, my focus here is simply the fact that we had a draft. I am used to very few draft picks as it always seem that the Danny does not believe that solid talent can be attained in the draft. I took a look back at drafts back to 1990. In 2002 we had a similar amount of picks as this year but prior to that you have to go all the way back to 1992 to find a draft with > 9 picks. The 2002 draft yielded some benefits with a 2nd round pick of Ladell Betts and a 7th round selection of Rock Cartwright. All that given a wasted 1st round pick on Patrick Ramsey. The 1992 draft was probably worse. A bunch of no names and a relative 1st round bust in Desmond Howard.
Going through the history is what makes me generally happy about this draft. We had a draft. We made moves. Regardless of whether they were the right picks or whether these picks pay off, I feel like we have finally seen a changing of the guards. A change in philosophy that focuses on youth and the draft. If only a couple of these picks pay off, maybe Danny boy will understand the benefits. One can hope…
I liked the trade in the first round. I like that we got Thomas in the second round and hopefully Fred Davis will help round out the new West Coast offense that is being implemented by Jim Zorn. I know the Skins were big on Malcolm Kelly but I really thought they should have gone Defense here. We did not really fill any holes in the DE or DT area. I haven’t heard anything about this K-State DE. Even my buddy’s family who lives in Kansas has not heard much about him. I expect him to be at training camp but that’s about it. Lastly, I am pretty excited about Kareem Moore. The Skins lack depth at safety and I read that this guy was a big hitter in college. He’s got decent size and speed and hopefully playing at a small school like Nicholls State did not inflate his stats. I am hoping Kareem will secure the other backup safety spot next to Vernon Fox.
Ok enough blabbering about this. Like I said, I am happy that we had a draft. Happy to see an apparent change in philosophy. I may have disagreed with some of the picks/positions. Who am I though? Those guys get paid big bucks and worked long hours day in/day out evaluating this talent. Hopefully a good portion of these picks pay off.
Hail Skins!
