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Caption This Photo
- By Florida_Ram
- RAMS / NFL TALK
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"I know you're the boss of the Defense Wade, but I have some good tips for these 2 new guys."
Peter King - 4/30/18
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 14 Replies
These are excerpts only. To read the whole article click the link below.
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https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/30/baker-mayfield-cleveland-browns-draft-mmqb-peter-king
2018 Draft: Magnets, Mayfield and the Browns’ Big Secret
Inside Cleveland’s headquarters in Berea and how GM John Dorsey kept the NFL guessing on the top pick. Plus items on Ozzie Newsome’s final call, Green Bay’s picks, the Patriots’ QB plans and more
By Peter King
Dorsey and a contingent of scouts and coaches spent the week of March 19 visiting four quarterbacks—in order, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen. They dined with Rosen on Monday, worked him out Tuesday, dined with Darnold on Tuesday, etc. Dorsey never told a soul which quarterback he preferred, though he had a very good idea on March 22 after leaving Oklahoma that he wanted Mayfield.
Back in Ohio, at the top of the quarterback list on the Browns’ magnetic draft board, Dorsey turned the magnetic rectangular quarterback nametags upright. And at the top of the QB list, while every other name on the massive board was horizontally magnetized, four vertical QB nametags were at the top.
Rosen one, Darnold two, Mayfield three, Allen four. From left to right.
“Right in the order we visited them, and I kept them in that position until the day of the draft,” Dorsey told me.
Dorsey is still getting to know a lot of the people in the Browns’ front office, and they are still getting to know him. Throughout his first five months running the football side of the franchise, Dorsey said, “I have harped on trust and honesty.
What’s said in this room stays in this room.” Now, he just wanted a little privacy insurance. If he kept the quarterbacks in this vertical bunch, Dorsey would be the only one who would know what the 1-through-4 order was.
Late Thursday morning, about nine hours before the draft, he gathered the senior staff to tell them the order of the quarterbacks, and what he was likely to do with the top pick—take Mayfield. He kept the board covered until early evening, and shortly before the draft began, the room knew the QB order. And, of course, who the top pick would be.
How’d I find out on the Sunday night before the draft that the pick definitely would not be Josh Allen, and how’d Adam Schefter find out Tuesday morning that Mayfield was definitely in play? Credit to Schefter, in particular, for smoking out the Mayfield stuff. And credit to Dorsey for having an airtight circle on his call for five weeks—or at least five weeks minus a couple of days.
• Sodium pentathol, and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, came up in the wake of the Denzel Ward pick. Truth serum. My question to Dorsey on Friday morning: “If we gave Gregg Williams sodium pentathol right now, who would he have said he wanted with the fourth pick—Denzel Ward or Bradley Chubb?” Dorsey pulled out his cell phone and rang Williams. I asked him the question. Williams: “Ward.
The reason is our need for a press cover cornerback. Denzel probably plays that position as well as anyone I’ve seen in college football in some time. We probably play the most press of any team in the league. There’s another reason. I’ve got a video of 28 snaps of Myles Garrett pass-rushes last year where he gets within two steps or less of the quarterback when the ball comes out.
Basically, we aren’t covering long enough to let him get to the quarterback. Myles and others—especially [defensive end] Emmanuel Ogbah—will get more chances because of Denzel.” Ogbah, Williams said, was a major reason why the Browns went Ward over Chubb. “Ogbah’s a rising star in this league,” Williams said. “He’s got a chance to be Chubb.” High praise.
• The track record at quarterback: abysmal. Cleveland has drafted seven quarterbacks in the top three rounds since 2005. None is a current starter in the league, unless you consider The Spring League one. (Manziel is there right now as he tries to make his way back to the NFL.) The magnificent seven: Charlie Frye, Brady Quinn, Colt McCoy, Branden Weeden, Manziel, Cody Kessler, DeShone Kizer. Mayfield can only go up from here.
I told Mayfield I met fans Thursday night who thought of him as Manziel 2.0. “It’s understandable, obviously. First-round picks by the Browns, close to the same size, playmakers … But we’re two completely different people. I care about winning. I care about doing things the right way. I just want to be judged for who I am.”
• Good nugget from Peter Schrager about the Patriots and Mayfield. On the NFL Network telecast, Schrager said the Patriots spent time Monday with Mayfield, which raised some eyebrows. Mike Reiss, in his Sunday column on ESPN, added the fact that it was offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels who visited Mayfield in his hometown of Austin on Monday.
That would lend credence to the theory in some corners that if Mayfield dropped down to, say, six or seven in round one, New England might have been able to offer enough to move up from the 23rd pick in the round to tempt a team in trade.
• Hue Jackson insists he’s on board. “I’m ecstatic,” Jackson told me Sunday afternoon. “Ecstatic to have such a real football guy as John on board, and ecstatic about this quarterback.” Dorsey and assistant GM Eliot Wolf said Jackson was fully supportive of the Mayfield pick, despite reports that Jackson wasn’t involved in the analysis or the selection. “That’s not the way it works here,” Jackson said.
“We went through this together. John Dorsey came here to help me, help us move the organization forward. When you’ve got a GM picking players for the coach without consulting the coach, then the GM should go coach the team. We had good interaction on this pick when we went through it all.” On Mayfield: “Baker definitely has NFL arm talent. He has the passion, the ability to complete balls at all levels of the field, and he has the air about him. He exudes confidence. People will be amazed at how strong his arm is.”
• Mayfield won’t be a happy backup. Jackson: “My plan is for Tyrod Taylor to be the starter, and to play the season. But I am not going to stop Baker from competing. If he gets it fast enough, great. John has established a good quarterback room, with Tyrod and Drew Stanton and now Baker. They’ll make each other better.” Mayfield: “That’s not going to change my mindset.
Whatever the coaches say, that’s their decision and I’ll respect it. They have obviously said Tyrod is the starter and again, I respect that. We’ll see. I know I will be able to learn a lot from Tyrod and Drew. All I can do is work hard, put everything out there on the field, and let the coaches make the decisions they’re going to make.”
• A preview of my story this week. In my SIstory, I talk about one of the bricks in the wall of Cleveland’s decision.
Something happened that only a very observant person might notice about the kind of respect his Oklahoma teammates had for Mayfield. When he walked into the Oklahoma indoor practice facility for his workout in front of the Browns, seven teammates were there to catch balls for him, and they were stretching on the other end of the field. Mayfield cupped his hands and called out a two-syllable signal to them: “HEE HEE!”
“HEE HEE!” they called back. They came jogging over to Mayfield.
“Damndest thing I’ve seen,” Jackson said. “Exactly like Baker was the Pied Piper.”
• How do you turn around a losing team? There’s no formula. For 19 years the Browns have been trying with all kinds of quarterbacks, with all kinds of formulas, with all kinds of coaches. Now they’ll try it with a 6-foot 5/8-inch passer who was fourth on the respected Mike Mayock’s quarterback draft board. I had an interesting discussion with Browns vice president of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith about the quarterback position.
He told me he had the good fortune as a player in the NFL scouting business to always be around good to excellent quarterbacks, going back to his senior year in high school in Florida, when Mike Shula was his quarterback. He played with Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde at the University of Miami, and then, in his NFL stops, with Warren Moon, Troy Aikman, Testaverde, Joe Montana (in his last training camp in the NFL, in Kansas City) … and then, as a scout in Green Bay, with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.
Said Highsmith: “I’ve never been concerned with the big arm or the size, necessarily. Those things help, obviously. But I was always looking for traits. Favre and Montana and Kosar and Rodgers and Troy—they had the kind of presence, like when you were a young kid and your big brother was around, and you always felt a lot more confident when your brother was there with you.
One night in training camp my last summer, with Kansas City, we had the night off. Montana was going out with the guys and he saw me laying on my bed and he says, ‘Let’s go, Highsmith. Everybody’s going. Let’s go.’ They all had that smirk, that stare, that attitude. You never saw the deer in the headlights. When I met Baker, I saw that in him. And I told him, ‘You could have played with me at Miami. You could have been one of us.’”
• About those jerseys. In the picture atop the column, you see six Browns jerseys flanking Mayfield. The backstory: Walking around the Browns tailgate party on draft night in a downtown Cleveland parking lot, my eyes kept going to the endless parade of Browns jerseys.
THOMAS (Joe Thomas, 73) led the pack, but he had good competition from BROWN (Jim Brown, 32) and GARRETT (Myles Garrett, 95). So I spent 20 minutes doing a lap around the parking lot and snapping 26 different jerseys and one T-shirt. A fan from New Albany, Ohio, wore this: I Still Hate John Elway. In Cleveland, some things never change.
• So did the Browns do the right thing? Big answer: I don’t know. I don’t how you can know anything 72 hours after any player is drafted. The biggest problem I have with instant analysis on draft picks is instant analysis on draft picks. In 2014, Bleacher Report gave the Browns an A-plus for the Manziel pick. NFL.com gave the Browns an A-minus for the entire haul, including the eighth pick in the draft, cornerback Justin Gilbert, a gigantic bust.
Overall, I trust the Pro Football Focus grades, and PFF, with an NFL eye on college prospects, had Mayfield as the top-rated quarterback in college football in 2016 and 2017. And if you hire three men with long experience at a franchise that’s picked great quarterbacks—Favre and Rodgers—and they unanimously believe Mayfield was the best of the five-quarterback first round, well, I think you've got to let them do their jobs and give them a shot to be right.
ABOUT OZZIE NEWSOME
This was the 16th and final draft for the Hall of Fame tight end and all-star GM of the Ravens, and it was emotional. (In all, Newsome has been the decider-in-chief for the Ravens since their first draft in 1996, but he’s had the GM title since November 2002.)
It was close to 6 p.m. Saturday, in the middle of the seventh round, when he picked up the phone and called Ferris (Mich.) State defensive end Zach Sieler to give him the good news: The Ravens were about to draft him.
“You know I’ve been doing this for 22 years,” Newsome said, via an emotional video the Ravens website. “You’re my last pick.”
Pause.
“You’re gonna make me proud? That’s what I want to hear,” Newsome said.
It’s not often that a man is best known for what he did in his first year. But after working for the Browns in the front office, Newsome moved with the late Art Modell to Baltimore in 1996 and took control of the personnel department without the GM title. Modell was involved in the draft room in those days, and he was more interested in a big name that year, running back Lawrence Phillips from Nebraska, instead of an anonymous left tackle, Jonathan Ogden of UCLA.
Phillips had a slew of off-field issues, including domestic violence, at Nebraska. Modell still wanted him, though, with the fourth pick in the first round. Newsome, still feeling his way in the job, told Modell: “Ogden’s the better player, and he’s the better guy.” On the day of the draft, Modell tried to convince Newsome about Phillips again, but he was having none of it. The Ravens’ first pick in history was Ogden.
Second pick: Ray Lewis, with the 26th overall selection that year. They were the bedrock players for Baltimore’s Super Bowl championship team four years later, and both made the Hall of Fame. Phillips ended up in prison after domestic assault and another assault charge, was accused of murdering his cellmate, and was found dead in his California prison of a suspected suicide in 2016.
Newsome will stay in Baltimore through season’s end, then cede his duties to longtime assistant GM Eric DeCosta, who called Newsome “probably my best friend” in an moving press conference Saturday night.
For a guy who made the Hall of Fame as a tight end, Newsome had pretty close to as starry a career in the Ravens’ front office. “An emotional day,” he said. “Been a lot of picks. Lot of wins, lot of losses.” And two Super Bowls, with Newsome the architect.
ABOUT THE BEST TRADE OF THE DRAFT
On Friday, I sat in the Browns’ draft room with GM John Dorsey and we talked about a few of the moves in the first round. I was incredulous about the Cardinals’ move from 15 to 10 in the first round. Arizona gave third- and fifth-round picks to move from 15 to 10. To move from 12 to seven for Josh Allen, Buffalo gave up two second-round picks.
Interesting disparity, to say the least. To me, Arizona GM Steve Keim made the trade of the draft. To give up the 79th and 152nd overall pick to move up for your quarterback—UCLA’s Josh Rosen—was stunning to me. Last year Kansas City moved up 17 spots in round one, and Houston moved up 13, both for quarterbacks, and the price tag in each case was a first-round pick in 2018. To move up five spots in the first half of the first round and not pay a first or second-round pick is a great deal.
But like all trades, there’s much we don’t know. And there’s a possible significant upside for Oakland. The Raiders, likely, didn’t have a sure thing they wanted at 10 after the Niners plucked tackle Mike McGlinchey one pick ahead of them. So they took the consensus second tackle in the class, Kolton Miller, at 15.
They traded the third-round pick to Pittsburgh for a talented man-child of a receiver, Martavis Bryant, who likely will be the Raiders’ second or third receiver—and, being in the last year of his contract, Oakland is likely to get his best as he angles for a second NFL deal. Then Oakland used the fifth-rounder as part of a package to take another tackle, Brandon Parker.
“Last year,” said Dorsey, “when I had to pay a one and a three to move up [for Mahomes], you just pay it. It’s a quarterback. It’s worth it.”
We won’t know who wins this, of course, until we know if Rosen can be a long-term quarterback answer for Arizona, and we see if Miller’s good enough to be the heir to aging Donald Penn at left tackle, and we see if the Raiders can get more than one good year out of Bryant. But on the surface, I like the Arizona side of it a lot.
ABOUT THE GREEN BAY CORNERBACK FETISH
Green Bay’s borderline myopic focus on the cornerback position continued in this draft, and it points out some of the holes the latter-day Ted Thompson regime left when the Packers replaced him with Brian Gutekunst. Of the eight picks in the top two rounds of four drafts between 2015 and this weekend, five have been corners, including Jaire Alexander and Josh Jackson in rounds one and two this year.
Those picks were necessary because Damarious Randall (round one, 2015) didn’t work out and was sent to Cleveland in trade this year; Quinten Rollins (round two, 2015) is on the edge of a roster spot this year, in part because of a torn Achilles; and the jury is out on a promising 2017 second-rounder, Kevin King.
The Packers wouldn’t have been in the position to desperately pick two more corners this year had they kept Casey Hayward (second round, 2012) instead of letting him walk to the Chargers in 2016. Hayward has turned into one of the league’s best corners, and signed a three-year, $34 million deal with the Chargers in March.
Give credit to Gutekunst for wheedling a 2019 first-round pick out of the Saints to move from 14 to 27 in the first round Thursday night. He used third- and sixth-rounders to move back to pick 18 and took Alexander, and new defensive coordinator Mike Pettine is likely to install Alexander as the slot corner. Then, on Friday, with a first-round prospect still on the board midway through the second round, Gutekunst took Iowa corner Josh Jackson at 45.
“It wasn’t the plan,” Gutekunst said. “We got lucky.” Jackson’s stock dropped at the combine, when he ran a 4.56-second time in the 40. But he’s the kind of playmaker (he led the nation with eight interceptions in 2017) at 6-foot who reminds some scouts of Richard Sherman. Like Sherman, Jackson is a converted wideout.
In a vacuum, not considering the sins of the cornerback past, this was a good draft for Green Bay. But the Packers have needs they’ve put on back burners because of their recent obsession with corners. It’s amazing, and an indictment of their recent drafting, that they had to sign vets Tramon Williams and Davon House this off-season to supplement their corner depth chart.
It’s unfair to saddle rookie GM Gutekunst with the sins of his father, but he’s under pressure already to show he got the corner position right, as Green Bay plays the last few years of the Aaron Rodgers era.
ABOUT THE GAROPPOLO TRADE
The Patriots traded quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo last October to San Francisco for what turned out to be the 43rd player in the 2018 draft. Obviously, this could turn out to be the worst trade by Bill Belichick in his Patriots tenure. And in my opinion, what Belichick did over the weekend was a tributary from that Garoppolo trade.
First, what happened to that 43rd overall pick: Six Patriot trades in 17 hours, between 7:50 p.m. ET Friday and 12:50 p.m. Saturday, turned the 43rd pick into this:
• Chicago’s second-round pick in 2019.
• Detroit’s third-round pick in 2019.
• Part of the draft capital used to move up to take second-round cornerback Duke Dawson.
• The 178th pick this year, Arizona State outside linebacker Christian Sam.
My theory: The Patriots didn’t take a quarterback in this draft until picking long-shot Danny Etling from LSU in the seventh round because they didn’t view any of the guys after the top five as likely heirs to Tom Brady. Regarding Etling, I was watching ESPN at the time, and their analysts seemed in shock that he was even drafted. I wouldn’t think of him as anything but an interesting prospect who might develop into a backup. It’s altogether likely the Patriots enter 2019 looking for their next starter.
So now the Patriots have some ammo to move up next year in what appears to be a thin quarterback class, if there’s a quarterback they like. As of today, the Patriots would likely have six picks in the first three rounds—a one, two twos, and three threes, including possible compensatory picks for pricey free agents Nate Solder and Malcolm Butler while not signing any high-salaried unrestricted free agents.
Too early to know for sure, but Drew Lock of Missouri could be the only top-10 caliber quarterback next year after four went in the top 10 this year. The Patriots are in better position today to move up for Lock or one of his brethren than they were before the weekend.
ABOUT THAT GIANT RUGBY PLAYER
“You got my Australian! Good get!” John Dorsey shouted into the phone late Saturday night to Eagles GM Howie Roseman. That’s right: Mountainous Jordan Mailata, who has never played a snap of football in his life, had interest from eight teams after trying out recently and sending his rugby tape to teams. The Eagles actually traded next year’s seventh-round pick to New England to move up 17 spots in the seventh round Saturday to take Mailata, who will play on the offensive line.
Three questions with Roseman on the deal:
MMQB: Why, Howie?
Roseman: “He a fascinating prospect. He’s 6'8", 345 pounds, he can run, he can bend. Our line coach, Jeff Stoutland, went to his workout and came back raving about his work ethic and his athletic ability. We saw this guy had rare athleticism and was physical and violent. Traits of that body type and that athleticism are hard to find. We understand it’ll be a process. He’s 21.”
MMQB: Strange to draft a guy who never played football?
Roseman: “Maybe even stranger to trade two picks for him. I thought [owner] Jeffrey Lurie said something interesting about him: ‘With a lot of these guys, you can see what they’re going to be. With this guy, we don’t know his floor, and we don’t know his ceiling.’ With this guy, we’re molding a piece of clay.”
MMQB: Why use two picks on him, though? Why not try to get him as a free agent?
Roseman: “Then the question is, after the draft, does he pick us? We had no idea. We’d be kicking ourselves if we lost out on him because of a seven. He’s with us now, and if he fails, we can sleep at night. We had 11 picks for next year, so we felt it was something we could afford to do.”
“He’s got hands like feet.”
—NFL Network’s Mike Mayock, on 6'8", 345-pound rugby player Jordan Mailata, after the seventh-round Eagle draftee left the network set Saturday.
THINGS I THINK I THINK
1. I think if you’re going to have a parrot announce a draft choice, Tampa Bay, the parrot actually ought to announce the pick. How hard is it to teach a Carolina Macaw to say these eight syllables: Jor-dan White-head safe-ty Pitts-burgh.
2. I think the faux Twitter outrage over the stage fright suffered by Zsa Zsa the Carolina Macaw was better than if she’d actually made the pick. Case in point:
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/ArifHasanNFL/status/990273221831282689?tfw_creator=SI_PeterKing&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.si.com%2Fnfl%2F2018%2F04%2F30%2Fbaker-mayfield-cleveland-browns-draft-mmqb-peter-king
3. I think the best one of those picks was Arizona taking cornerback Chris Campbell of Penn State in round six, and announcing the pick on a street corner in northern Arizona. Now, courtesy of enterprising PR man Mark Dalton of the Cardinals, this is the significance of that:
• Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, which was such a fine sight to see, the Cardinals drafted a corner.
• Campbell, the Cards pointed out on Twitter, “won’t Take It Easy on wide receivers.”
• “Take It Easy,” co-written by Glenn Frey of the Eagles, has some significance in Arizona beyond standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Frey played the Cards’ general manager in the movie, “Jerry Maguire.” The late Frey did not look much like a GM in that movie.
4. I think I understand why the Bills did what they did in drafting Josh Allen, even after his racially insensitive tweets were revealed Thursday morning. I don’t know the motivation behind release of the tweets, and I don’t know who did the releasing or the finding. But I do know once they were released, Allen had to be vetted over it. You don’t think that could be an issue in a locker room with black and white athletes?
The Bills handled it well, GM Brandon Beane telling me coach Sean McDermott convened his players council of veterans to discuss how they were handling it, and the Bills getting Allen on the phone for 30 minutes during the afternoon to hear his side. “You could hear the tears on the other line,” Beane said. “We told him, ‘Collect yourself.’ And he owned up to it. He explained every one. He was very embarrassed. We let him know what is acceptable and what is not.
He understands this is part of him now, and he has to earn the respect of his teammates going forward. And we called a lot of people. We didn’t find one person—and I am not saying there is not one person out there—but we didn’t find one person who said this is Josh Allen. We found people who defended Josh. So we decided to move forward.” Buffalo picked Allen seventh overall, and we’ll see how he handles this going forward. If I were the Bills, I’d have him talk to the team at the first full-squad minicamp.
5. I think the Shad Khan explanation for why he wants to buy Wembley Stadium as it relates to the Jaguars leaves me with a lot more questions, and leaves me thinking the Jags are still the biggest contender to eventually move to London.
Said Khan: “If my ownership interests were to include Wembley Stadium, it would protect the Jaguars’ position in London at a time when other NFL teams are understandably becoming more interested in this great city. And the stronger the Jaguars are in London, the more stable and promising the Jaguars’ future will be in Jacksonville.” Uh, how?
6. I think the best feel-good story at the draft in years was one-handed Shaquem Griffin getting picked by his twin brother’s team. Normally when you’re talking to people during the draft, touchy-feely stories like that don’t matter much. But this one … Football people in draft rooms stopped to watch that, I can guarantee you. So many people were touched by it the same way we all were.
7. I think I couldn’t do the story justice the way Jenny Vrentas of The MMQB did. Her description of his moment: “Soon his walk-up music began playing—Drake’s ‘Do Not Disturb’—and it was time for Shaquem Griffin, draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks, to take his much awaited walk across the stage in front of a roaring crowd. He took a deep breath, patted his heart and looked over at his brother, who was standing right next to him.”
8. I think kudos should go to you, Chris Borland, for your tribute to Ann McKee on the Time 100 list—the 100 Most Influential People. And to you, Ann McKee, for your diligence in studying brains affected by football.
9. I think if this is it, Jason Witten, you’ve taught a new generation of tight ends how to play the position, and you’ve taught football players how to play, win, lose and compete with class and sportsmanship at the highest level of the game. Good luck, whatever you do.
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https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/30/baker-mayfield-cleveland-browns-draft-mmqb-peter-king
2018 Draft: Magnets, Mayfield and the Browns’ Big Secret
Inside Cleveland’s headquarters in Berea and how GM John Dorsey kept the NFL guessing on the top pick. Plus items on Ozzie Newsome’s final call, Green Bay’s picks, the Patriots’ QB plans and more
By Peter King
Dorsey and a contingent of scouts and coaches spent the week of March 19 visiting four quarterbacks—in order, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen. They dined with Rosen on Monday, worked him out Tuesday, dined with Darnold on Tuesday, etc. Dorsey never told a soul which quarterback he preferred, though he had a very good idea on March 22 after leaving Oklahoma that he wanted Mayfield.
Back in Ohio, at the top of the quarterback list on the Browns’ magnetic draft board, Dorsey turned the magnetic rectangular quarterback nametags upright. And at the top of the QB list, while every other name on the massive board was horizontally magnetized, four vertical QB nametags were at the top.
Rosen one, Darnold two, Mayfield three, Allen four. From left to right.
“Right in the order we visited them, and I kept them in that position until the day of the draft,” Dorsey told me.
Dorsey is still getting to know a lot of the people in the Browns’ front office, and they are still getting to know him. Throughout his first five months running the football side of the franchise, Dorsey said, “I have harped on trust and honesty.
What’s said in this room stays in this room.” Now, he just wanted a little privacy insurance. If he kept the quarterbacks in this vertical bunch, Dorsey would be the only one who would know what the 1-through-4 order was.
Late Thursday morning, about nine hours before the draft, he gathered the senior staff to tell them the order of the quarterbacks, and what he was likely to do with the top pick—take Mayfield. He kept the board covered until early evening, and shortly before the draft began, the room knew the QB order. And, of course, who the top pick would be.
How’d I find out on the Sunday night before the draft that the pick definitely would not be Josh Allen, and how’d Adam Schefter find out Tuesday morning that Mayfield was definitely in play? Credit to Schefter, in particular, for smoking out the Mayfield stuff. And credit to Dorsey for having an airtight circle on his call for five weeks—or at least five weeks minus a couple of days.
• Sodium pentathol, and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, came up in the wake of the Denzel Ward pick. Truth serum. My question to Dorsey on Friday morning: “If we gave Gregg Williams sodium pentathol right now, who would he have said he wanted with the fourth pick—Denzel Ward or Bradley Chubb?” Dorsey pulled out his cell phone and rang Williams. I asked him the question. Williams: “Ward.
The reason is our need for a press cover cornerback. Denzel probably plays that position as well as anyone I’ve seen in college football in some time. We probably play the most press of any team in the league. There’s another reason. I’ve got a video of 28 snaps of Myles Garrett pass-rushes last year where he gets within two steps or less of the quarterback when the ball comes out.
Basically, we aren’t covering long enough to let him get to the quarterback. Myles and others—especially [defensive end] Emmanuel Ogbah—will get more chances because of Denzel.” Ogbah, Williams said, was a major reason why the Browns went Ward over Chubb. “Ogbah’s a rising star in this league,” Williams said. “He’s got a chance to be Chubb.” High praise.
• The track record at quarterback: abysmal. Cleveland has drafted seven quarterbacks in the top three rounds since 2005. None is a current starter in the league, unless you consider The Spring League one. (Manziel is there right now as he tries to make his way back to the NFL.) The magnificent seven: Charlie Frye, Brady Quinn, Colt McCoy, Branden Weeden, Manziel, Cody Kessler, DeShone Kizer. Mayfield can only go up from here.
I told Mayfield I met fans Thursday night who thought of him as Manziel 2.0. “It’s understandable, obviously. First-round picks by the Browns, close to the same size, playmakers … But we’re two completely different people. I care about winning. I care about doing things the right way. I just want to be judged for who I am.”
• Good nugget from Peter Schrager about the Patriots and Mayfield. On the NFL Network telecast, Schrager said the Patriots spent time Monday with Mayfield, which raised some eyebrows. Mike Reiss, in his Sunday column on ESPN, added the fact that it was offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels who visited Mayfield in his hometown of Austin on Monday.
That would lend credence to the theory in some corners that if Mayfield dropped down to, say, six or seven in round one, New England might have been able to offer enough to move up from the 23rd pick in the round to tempt a team in trade.
• Hue Jackson insists he’s on board. “I’m ecstatic,” Jackson told me Sunday afternoon. “Ecstatic to have such a real football guy as John on board, and ecstatic about this quarterback.” Dorsey and assistant GM Eliot Wolf said Jackson was fully supportive of the Mayfield pick, despite reports that Jackson wasn’t involved in the analysis or the selection. “That’s not the way it works here,” Jackson said.
“We went through this together. John Dorsey came here to help me, help us move the organization forward. When you’ve got a GM picking players for the coach without consulting the coach, then the GM should go coach the team. We had good interaction on this pick when we went through it all.” On Mayfield: “Baker definitely has NFL arm talent. He has the passion, the ability to complete balls at all levels of the field, and he has the air about him. He exudes confidence. People will be amazed at how strong his arm is.”
• Mayfield won’t be a happy backup. Jackson: “My plan is for Tyrod Taylor to be the starter, and to play the season. But I am not going to stop Baker from competing. If he gets it fast enough, great. John has established a good quarterback room, with Tyrod and Drew Stanton and now Baker. They’ll make each other better.” Mayfield: “That’s not going to change my mindset.
Whatever the coaches say, that’s their decision and I’ll respect it. They have obviously said Tyrod is the starter and again, I respect that. We’ll see. I know I will be able to learn a lot from Tyrod and Drew. All I can do is work hard, put everything out there on the field, and let the coaches make the decisions they’re going to make.”
• A preview of my story this week. In my SIstory, I talk about one of the bricks in the wall of Cleveland’s decision.
Something happened that only a very observant person might notice about the kind of respect his Oklahoma teammates had for Mayfield. When he walked into the Oklahoma indoor practice facility for his workout in front of the Browns, seven teammates were there to catch balls for him, and they were stretching on the other end of the field. Mayfield cupped his hands and called out a two-syllable signal to them: “HEE HEE!”
“HEE HEE!” they called back. They came jogging over to Mayfield.
“Damndest thing I’ve seen,” Jackson said. “Exactly like Baker was the Pied Piper.”
• How do you turn around a losing team? There’s no formula. For 19 years the Browns have been trying with all kinds of quarterbacks, with all kinds of formulas, with all kinds of coaches. Now they’ll try it with a 6-foot 5/8-inch passer who was fourth on the respected Mike Mayock’s quarterback draft board. I had an interesting discussion with Browns vice president of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith about the quarterback position.
He told me he had the good fortune as a player in the NFL scouting business to always be around good to excellent quarterbacks, going back to his senior year in high school in Florida, when Mike Shula was his quarterback. He played with Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde at the University of Miami, and then, in his NFL stops, with Warren Moon, Troy Aikman, Testaverde, Joe Montana (in his last training camp in the NFL, in Kansas City) … and then, as a scout in Green Bay, with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.
Said Highsmith: “I’ve never been concerned with the big arm or the size, necessarily. Those things help, obviously. But I was always looking for traits. Favre and Montana and Kosar and Rodgers and Troy—they had the kind of presence, like when you were a young kid and your big brother was around, and you always felt a lot more confident when your brother was there with you.
One night in training camp my last summer, with Kansas City, we had the night off. Montana was going out with the guys and he saw me laying on my bed and he says, ‘Let’s go, Highsmith. Everybody’s going. Let’s go.’ They all had that smirk, that stare, that attitude. You never saw the deer in the headlights. When I met Baker, I saw that in him. And I told him, ‘You could have played with me at Miami. You could have been one of us.’”
• About those jerseys. In the picture atop the column, you see six Browns jerseys flanking Mayfield. The backstory: Walking around the Browns tailgate party on draft night in a downtown Cleveland parking lot, my eyes kept going to the endless parade of Browns jerseys.
THOMAS (Joe Thomas, 73) led the pack, but he had good competition from BROWN (Jim Brown, 32) and GARRETT (Myles Garrett, 95). So I spent 20 minutes doing a lap around the parking lot and snapping 26 different jerseys and one T-shirt. A fan from New Albany, Ohio, wore this: I Still Hate John Elway. In Cleveland, some things never change.
• So did the Browns do the right thing? Big answer: I don’t know. I don’t how you can know anything 72 hours after any player is drafted. The biggest problem I have with instant analysis on draft picks is instant analysis on draft picks. In 2014, Bleacher Report gave the Browns an A-plus for the Manziel pick. NFL.com gave the Browns an A-minus for the entire haul, including the eighth pick in the draft, cornerback Justin Gilbert, a gigantic bust.
Overall, I trust the Pro Football Focus grades, and PFF, with an NFL eye on college prospects, had Mayfield as the top-rated quarterback in college football in 2016 and 2017. And if you hire three men with long experience at a franchise that’s picked great quarterbacks—Favre and Rodgers—and they unanimously believe Mayfield was the best of the five-quarterback first round, well, I think you've got to let them do their jobs and give them a shot to be right.
ABOUT OZZIE NEWSOME
This was the 16th and final draft for the Hall of Fame tight end and all-star GM of the Ravens, and it was emotional. (In all, Newsome has been the decider-in-chief for the Ravens since their first draft in 1996, but he’s had the GM title since November 2002.)
It was close to 6 p.m. Saturday, in the middle of the seventh round, when he picked up the phone and called Ferris (Mich.) State defensive end Zach Sieler to give him the good news: The Ravens were about to draft him.
“You know I’ve been doing this for 22 years,” Newsome said, via an emotional video the Ravens website. “You’re my last pick.”
Pause.
“You’re gonna make me proud? That’s what I want to hear,” Newsome said.
It’s not often that a man is best known for what he did in his first year. But after working for the Browns in the front office, Newsome moved with the late Art Modell to Baltimore in 1996 and took control of the personnel department without the GM title. Modell was involved in the draft room in those days, and he was more interested in a big name that year, running back Lawrence Phillips from Nebraska, instead of an anonymous left tackle, Jonathan Ogden of UCLA.
Phillips had a slew of off-field issues, including domestic violence, at Nebraska. Modell still wanted him, though, with the fourth pick in the first round. Newsome, still feeling his way in the job, told Modell: “Ogden’s the better player, and he’s the better guy.” On the day of the draft, Modell tried to convince Newsome about Phillips again, but he was having none of it. The Ravens’ first pick in history was Ogden.
Second pick: Ray Lewis, with the 26th overall selection that year. They were the bedrock players for Baltimore’s Super Bowl championship team four years later, and both made the Hall of Fame. Phillips ended up in prison after domestic assault and another assault charge, was accused of murdering his cellmate, and was found dead in his California prison of a suspected suicide in 2016.
Newsome will stay in Baltimore through season’s end, then cede his duties to longtime assistant GM Eric DeCosta, who called Newsome “probably my best friend” in an moving press conference Saturday night.
For a guy who made the Hall of Fame as a tight end, Newsome had pretty close to as starry a career in the Ravens’ front office. “An emotional day,” he said. “Been a lot of picks. Lot of wins, lot of losses.” And two Super Bowls, with Newsome the architect.
ABOUT THE BEST TRADE OF THE DRAFT
On Friday, I sat in the Browns’ draft room with GM John Dorsey and we talked about a few of the moves in the first round. I was incredulous about the Cardinals’ move from 15 to 10 in the first round. Arizona gave third- and fifth-round picks to move from 15 to 10. To move from 12 to seven for Josh Allen, Buffalo gave up two second-round picks.
Interesting disparity, to say the least. To me, Arizona GM Steve Keim made the trade of the draft. To give up the 79th and 152nd overall pick to move up for your quarterback—UCLA’s Josh Rosen—was stunning to me. Last year Kansas City moved up 17 spots in round one, and Houston moved up 13, both for quarterbacks, and the price tag in each case was a first-round pick in 2018. To move up five spots in the first half of the first round and not pay a first or second-round pick is a great deal.
But like all trades, there’s much we don’t know. And there’s a possible significant upside for Oakland. The Raiders, likely, didn’t have a sure thing they wanted at 10 after the Niners plucked tackle Mike McGlinchey one pick ahead of them. So they took the consensus second tackle in the class, Kolton Miller, at 15.
They traded the third-round pick to Pittsburgh for a talented man-child of a receiver, Martavis Bryant, who likely will be the Raiders’ second or third receiver—and, being in the last year of his contract, Oakland is likely to get his best as he angles for a second NFL deal. Then Oakland used the fifth-rounder as part of a package to take another tackle, Brandon Parker.
“Last year,” said Dorsey, “when I had to pay a one and a three to move up [for Mahomes], you just pay it. It’s a quarterback. It’s worth it.”
We won’t know who wins this, of course, until we know if Rosen can be a long-term quarterback answer for Arizona, and we see if Miller’s good enough to be the heir to aging Donald Penn at left tackle, and we see if the Raiders can get more than one good year out of Bryant. But on the surface, I like the Arizona side of it a lot.
ABOUT THE GREEN BAY CORNERBACK FETISH
Green Bay’s borderline myopic focus on the cornerback position continued in this draft, and it points out some of the holes the latter-day Ted Thompson regime left when the Packers replaced him with Brian Gutekunst. Of the eight picks in the top two rounds of four drafts between 2015 and this weekend, five have been corners, including Jaire Alexander and Josh Jackson in rounds one and two this year.
Those picks were necessary because Damarious Randall (round one, 2015) didn’t work out and was sent to Cleveland in trade this year; Quinten Rollins (round two, 2015) is on the edge of a roster spot this year, in part because of a torn Achilles; and the jury is out on a promising 2017 second-rounder, Kevin King.
The Packers wouldn’t have been in the position to desperately pick two more corners this year had they kept Casey Hayward (second round, 2012) instead of letting him walk to the Chargers in 2016. Hayward has turned into one of the league’s best corners, and signed a three-year, $34 million deal with the Chargers in March.
Give credit to Gutekunst for wheedling a 2019 first-round pick out of the Saints to move from 14 to 27 in the first round Thursday night. He used third- and sixth-rounders to move back to pick 18 and took Alexander, and new defensive coordinator Mike Pettine is likely to install Alexander as the slot corner. Then, on Friday, with a first-round prospect still on the board midway through the second round, Gutekunst took Iowa corner Josh Jackson at 45.
“It wasn’t the plan,” Gutekunst said. “We got lucky.” Jackson’s stock dropped at the combine, when he ran a 4.56-second time in the 40. But he’s the kind of playmaker (he led the nation with eight interceptions in 2017) at 6-foot who reminds some scouts of Richard Sherman. Like Sherman, Jackson is a converted wideout.
In a vacuum, not considering the sins of the cornerback past, this was a good draft for Green Bay. But the Packers have needs they’ve put on back burners because of their recent obsession with corners. It’s amazing, and an indictment of their recent drafting, that they had to sign vets Tramon Williams and Davon House this off-season to supplement their corner depth chart.
It’s unfair to saddle rookie GM Gutekunst with the sins of his father, but he’s under pressure already to show he got the corner position right, as Green Bay plays the last few years of the Aaron Rodgers era.
ABOUT THE GAROPPOLO TRADE
The Patriots traded quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo last October to San Francisco for what turned out to be the 43rd player in the 2018 draft. Obviously, this could turn out to be the worst trade by Bill Belichick in his Patriots tenure. And in my opinion, what Belichick did over the weekend was a tributary from that Garoppolo trade.
First, what happened to that 43rd overall pick: Six Patriot trades in 17 hours, between 7:50 p.m. ET Friday and 12:50 p.m. Saturday, turned the 43rd pick into this:
• Chicago’s second-round pick in 2019.
• Detroit’s third-round pick in 2019.
• Part of the draft capital used to move up to take second-round cornerback Duke Dawson.
• The 178th pick this year, Arizona State outside linebacker Christian Sam.
My theory: The Patriots didn’t take a quarterback in this draft until picking long-shot Danny Etling from LSU in the seventh round because they didn’t view any of the guys after the top five as likely heirs to Tom Brady. Regarding Etling, I was watching ESPN at the time, and their analysts seemed in shock that he was even drafted. I wouldn’t think of him as anything but an interesting prospect who might develop into a backup. It’s altogether likely the Patriots enter 2019 looking for their next starter.
So now the Patriots have some ammo to move up next year in what appears to be a thin quarterback class, if there’s a quarterback they like. As of today, the Patriots would likely have six picks in the first three rounds—a one, two twos, and three threes, including possible compensatory picks for pricey free agents Nate Solder and Malcolm Butler while not signing any high-salaried unrestricted free agents.
Too early to know for sure, but Drew Lock of Missouri could be the only top-10 caliber quarterback next year after four went in the top 10 this year. The Patriots are in better position today to move up for Lock or one of his brethren than they were before the weekend.
ABOUT THAT GIANT RUGBY PLAYER
“You got my Australian! Good get!” John Dorsey shouted into the phone late Saturday night to Eagles GM Howie Roseman. That’s right: Mountainous Jordan Mailata, who has never played a snap of football in his life, had interest from eight teams after trying out recently and sending his rugby tape to teams. The Eagles actually traded next year’s seventh-round pick to New England to move up 17 spots in the seventh round Saturday to take Mailata, who will play on the offensive line.
Three questions with Roseman on the deal:
MMQB: Why, Howie?
Roseman: “He a fascinating prospect. He’s 6'8", 345 pounds, he can run, he can bend. Our line coach, Jeff Stoutland, went to his workout and came back raving about his work ethic and his athletic ability. We saw this guy had rare athleticism and was physical and violent. Traits of that body type and that athleticism are hard to find. We understand it’ll be a process. He’s 21.”
MMQB: Strange to draft a guy who never played football?
Roseman: “Maybe even stranger to trade two picks for him. I thought [owner] Jeffrey Lurie said something interesting about him: ‘With a lot of these guys, you can see what they’re going to be. With this guy, we don’t know his floor, and we don’t know his ceiling.’ With this guy, we’re molding a piece of clay.”
MMQB: Why use two picks on him, though? Why not try to get him as a free agent?
Roseman: “Then the question is, after the draft, does he pick us? We had no idea. We’d be kicking ourselves if we lost out on him because of a seven. He’s with us now, and if he fails, we can sleep at night. We had 11 picks for next year, so we felt it was something we could afford to do.”
“He’s got hands like feet.”
—NFL Network’s Mike Mayock, on 6'8", 345-pound rugby player Jordan Mailata, after the seventh-round Eagle draftee left the network set Saturday.
THINGS I THINK I THINK
1. I think if you’re going to have a parrot announce a draft choice, Tampa Bay, the parrot actually ought to announce the pick. How hard is it to teach a Carolina Macaw to say these eight syllables: Jor-dan White-head safe-ty Pitts-burgh.
2. I think the faux Twitter outrage over the stage fright suffered by Zsa Zsa the Carolina Macaw was better than if she’d actually made the pick. Case in point:
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3. I think the best one of those picks was Arizona taking cornerback Chris Campbell of Penn State in round six, and announcing the pick on a street corner in northern Arizona. Now, courtesy of enterprising PR man Mark Dalton of the Cardinals, this is the significance of that:
• Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, which was such a fine sight to see, the Cardinals drafted a corner.
• Campbell, the Cards pointed out on Twitter, “won’t Take It Easy on wide receivers.”
• “Take It Easy,” co-written by Glenn Frey of the Eagles, has some significance in Arizona beyond standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Frey played the Cards’ general manager in the movie, “Jerry Maguire.” The late Frey did not look much like a GM in that movie.
4. I think I understand why the Bills did what they did in drafting Josh Allen, even after his racially insensitive tweets were revealed Thursday morning. I don’t know the motivation behind release of the tweets, and I don’t know who did the releasing or the finding. But I do know once they were released, Allen had to be vetted over it. You don’t think that could be an issue in a locker room with black and white athletes?
The Bills handled it well, GM Brandon Beane telling me coach Sean McDermott convened his players council of veterans to discuss how they were handling it, and the Bills getting Allen on the phone for 30 minutes during the afternoon to hear his side. “You could hear the tears on the other line,” Beane said. “We told him, ‘Collect yourself.’ And he owned up to it. He explained every one. He was very embarrassed. We let him know what is acceptable and what is not.
He understands this is part of him now, and he has to earn the respect of his teammates going forward. And we called a lot of people. We didn’t find one person—and I am not saying there is not one person out there—but we didn’t find one person who said this is Josh Allen. We found people who defended Josh. So we decided to move forward.” Buffalo picked Allen seventh overall, and we’ll see how he handles this going forward. If I were the Bills, I’d have him talk to the team at the first full-squad minicamp.
5. I think the Shad Khan explanation for why he wants to buy Wembley Stadium as it relates to the Jaguars leaves me with a lot more questions, and leaves me thinking the Jags are still the biggest contender to eventually move to London.
Said Khan: “If my ownership interests were to include Wembley Stadium, it would protect the Jaguars’ position in London at a time when other NFL teams are understandably becoming more interested in this great city. And the stronger the Jaguars are in London, the more stable and promising the Jaguars’ future will be in Jacksonville.” Uh, how?
6. I think the best feel-good story at the draft in years was one-handed Shaquem Griffin getting picked by his twin brother’s team. Normally when you’re talking to people during the draft, touchy-feely stories like that don’t matter much. But this one … Football people in draft rooms stopped to watch that, I can guarantee you. So many people were touched by it the same way we all were.
7. I think I couldn’t do the story justice the way Jenny Vrentas of The MMQB did. Her description of his moment: “Soon his walk-up music began playing—Drake’s ‘Do Not Disturb’—and it was time for Shaquem Griffin, draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks, to take his much awaited walk across the stage in front of a roaring crowd. He took a deep breath, patted his heart and looked over at his brother, who was standing right next to him.”
8. I think kudos should go to you, Chris Borland, for your tribute to Ann McKee on the Time 100 list—the 100 Most Influential People. And to you, Ann McKee, for your diligence in studying brains affected by football.
9. I think if this is it, Jason Witten, you’ve taught a new generation of tight ends how to play the position, and you’ve taught football players how to play, win, lose and compete with class and sportsmanship at the highest level of the game. Good luck, whatever you do.
So what was you favorite non-Rams draft?
- By Merlin
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 21 Replies
Mine: Titans. They got two players I loved in this draft (Rashaan Evans & Luke Falk), and two other good roster fills for their new regime (Edge future in Landry & run stuffing safety Cruikshank). Talk about making low number of picks count holy crap.
It's too bad I expect Vrabel to struggle a bit runnin the whole show.
It's too bad I expect Vrabel to struggle a bit runnin the whole show.
Brian Allen might be the centerpiece of Rams’ draft
- By tomas
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 45 Replies
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Whicker: Brian Allen might be the centerpiece of Rams’ draft
Los Angels Rams fans cheer during the NFL football draft in Arlington, Texas, Saturday, April 28, 2018. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
By Mark Whicker | mwhicker@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: April 28, 2018 at 8:18 pm | UPDATED: April 29, 2018 at 11:43 am
THOUSAND OAKS — “The basement” has become a metaphor for cyber-driven dysfunction, a teenage wasteland below ground.
The Allen basement, in Hinsdale, Ill., is an exception.
It is the headwater for a long stream of large people in Michigan State uniforms.
On Saturday, it contributed its second son to the NFL.
Brian Allen, Spartan center for four years and the king of the high school mat in his time, was the first of the Rams’ fourth-round picks on Saturday.
His older brother Jack was undrafted after his Michigan State career but made the New Orleans roster in 2016 anyway.
His younger brother Matt is a redshirt freshman in East Lansing and was the top recruit among centers in the Midwest.
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio was asked to compare Jack to Brian.
“I don’t really like to do that,” he said, “especially in this case, because one of them will get mad at me.”
Dantonio has been to the basement.
“There’s a wrestling mat down there,” he said. “There’s a three-year gap between all the brothers, so they get after it. For us, we’ve had an Allen in the program since 2011 and we’ll have one until 2020. So that’s pretty good.
“When we go to the house, they already know what we’re all about and what our direction is.”
Offensive line coach Mark Staten has gone down those steps, too.
“There’s holes in the wall, they’ve had to get people to come down and work on the sheetrock,” Staten said. ‘It’s about what you’d expect with three brothers like that.”
All three Hinsdale Central wrestlers won Illinois state championships. Brian was the first to get medals all four years. He went 49-0 as a junior, 45-2 as a senior.
John, the father, wrestled at Purdue. Jim Zajicek, John’s stepbrother, was an assistant wrestling coach at Hinsdale Central.
Brian also won the state shot put title and, in football, played on both sides. He was a starting guard alongside Jack as a freshman at East Lansing, moved to center when Jack left, and started his final 28 games for the Spartans, including a blowout win over Washington State in the Holiday Bowl.
Pro Football Focus, in its draft guide, praised Allen’s low stance and noted that he was “never overmatched” in any MSU game.
It also knocked his athleticism and said he was undersized, even though he lists at 6-foot-2, 302.
Staten, who played with Rams offensive line coach Aaron Kromer at Miami of Ohio, says the mat has a way of equalizing all that. Wrestling is the extracurricular activity that football coaches want to see on the worksheet. It identifies want-to, and exposes fear.
“There’s no excuse when you wrestle,” Staten said. “You’re either winning or you’re losing. It’s that one-on-one thing that you have to have when you’re lined up. And you also pick up a lot off things about the physical angles and the leverage.
“Brian learned from his brother. He was our team captain. He knew when to put a boot up somebody’s (backside) and when to put his arm around somebody. He played with a hip problem and some other things, but it was hard to tell because he’d never admit it.”
An NFL scout tabbed Allen “the bully of the Big 10,” but then nobody picked him in the first two days of this draft. It brought up brief nightmares from Jack’s undrafted year. Brian had said beforehand that he would hold no draft party.
“I’ll probably just hang out with the family and sit on the couch like a loser,” he said. “Expect the worst, hope for the best.”
He even pointed out to Staten that he had an extra year of eligibility he could use on wrestling. Academics weren’t a problem, since Allen was a 3.3 economics student.
Roger Chandler, the wrestling coach, had suggested that very thing for years..
“I told Brian to forget it, you’re going to be playing football,” Staten said.
Allen got clarification, in his mind, when he came to Thousand Oaks. “I was telling my agent today that I thought the Rams would take me,” he said.
The current center, John Sullivan, signed a two-year extension, but turns 33 during training camp. The Rams dare not pretend they can get through another 16-game season without a sidelining injury to a starting lineman.
They drafted 10 of their 11 players on Saturday alone. Even a tape freak like Rams general manager Les Snead risked eyestrain.
“But if you’ve been watching football players all fall and December, February and April and you’re kind of dozing off,” Snead said, “you put the Michigan State center on film.”
Soon the basement will be appearing on the Coliseum floor.
Whicker: Brian Allen might be the centerpiece of Rams’ draft
Los Angels Rams fans cheer during the NFL football draft in Arlington, Texas, Saturday, April 28, 2018. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
By Mark Whicker | mwhicker@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: April 28, 2018 at 8:18 pm | UPDATED: April 29, 2018 at 11:43 am
THOUSAND OAKS — “The basement” has become a metaphor for cyber-driven dysfunction, a teenage wasteland below ground.
The Allen basement, in Hinsdale, Ill., is an exception.
It is the headwater for a long stream of large people in Michigan State uniforms.
On Saturday, it contributed its second son to the NFL.
Brian Allen, Spartan center for four years and the king of the high school mat in his time, was the first of the Rams’ fourth-round picks on Saturday.
His older brother Jack was undrafted after his Michigan State career but made the New Orleans roster in 2016 anyway.
His younger brother Matt is a redshirt freshman in East Lansing and was the top recruit among centers in the Midwest.
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio was asked to compare Jack to Brian.
“I don’t really like to do that,” he said, “especially in this case, because one of them will get mad at me.”
Dantonio has been to the basement.
“There’s a wrestling mat down there,” he said. “There’s a three-year gap between all the brothers, so they get after it. For us, we’ve had an Allen in the program since 2011 and we’ll have one until 2020. So that’s pretty good.
“When we go to the house, they already know what we’re all about and what our direction is.”
Offensive line coach Mark Staten has gone down those steps, too.
“There’s holes in the wall, they’ve had to get people to come down and work on the sheetrock,” Staten said. ‘It’s about what you’d expect with three brothers like that.”
All three Hinsdale Central wrestlers won Illinois state championships. Brian was the first to get medals all four years. He went 49-0 as a junior, 45-2 as a senior.
John, the father, wrestled at Purdue. Jim Zajicek, John’s stepbrother, was an assistant wrestling coach at Hinsdale Central.
Brian also won the state shot put title and, in football, played on both sides. He was a starting guard alongside Jack as a freshman at East Lansing, moved to center when Jack left, and started his final 28 games for the Spartans, including a blowout win over Washington State in the Holiday Bowl.
Pro Football Focus, in its draft guide, praised Allen’s low stance and noted that he was “never overmatched” in any MSU game.
It also knocked his athleticism and said he was undersized, even though he lists at 6-foot-2, 302.
Staten, who played with Rams offensive line coach Aaron Kromer at Miami of Ohio, says the mat has a way of equalizing all that. Wrestling is the extracurricular activity that football coaches want to see on the worksheet. It identifies want-to, and exposes fear.
“There’s no excuse when you wrestle,” Staten said. “You’re either winning or you’re losing. It’s that one-on-one thing that you have to have when you’re lined up. And you also pick up a lot off things about the physical angles and the leverage.
“Brian learned from his brother. He was our team captain. He knew when to put a boot up somebody’s (backside) and when to put his arm around somebody. He played with a hip problem and some other things, but it was hard to tell because he’d never admit it.”
An NFL scout tabbed Allen “the bully of the Big 10,” but then nobody picked him in the first two days of this draft. It brought up brief nightmares from Jack’s undrafted year. Brian had said beforehand that he would hold no draft party.
“I’ll probably just hang out with the family and sit on the couch like a loser,” he said. “Expect the worst, hope for the best.”
He even pointed out to Staten that he had an extra year of eligibility he could use on wrestling. Academics weren’t a problem, since Allen was a 3.3 economics student.
Roger Chandler, the wrestling coach, had suggested that very thing for years..
“I told Brian to forget it, you’re going to be playing football,” Staten said.
Allen got clarification, in his mind, when he came to Thousand Oaks. “I was telling my agent today that I thought the Rams would take me,” he said.
The current center, John Sullivan, signed a two-year extension, but turns 33 during training camp. The Rams dare not pretend they can get through another 16-game season without a sidelining injury to a starting lineman.
They drafted 10 of their 11 players on Saturday alone. Even a tape freak like Rams general manager Les Snead risked eyestrain.
“But if you’ve been watching football players all fall and December, February and April and you’re kind of dozing off,” Snead said, “you put the Michigan State center on film.”
Soon the basement will be appearing on the Coliseum floor.
