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1. Arizona: Kyler Murray, QB, Oklahoma
We live in a society (I sound like Costanza) that screams “Fake News!” when something seems just too obvious. We need to face reality, folks. When Cards GM Steve Keim walks into a meeting with club president Michael Bidwill today in Tempe to discuss the fate of the first overall pick, they could do a couple of things. They could decide to take Murray, the choice of head coach Kliff Kinsgbury. They could decide to take the best edge-rusher (Nick Bosa)—who I hear is the choice of many in the building—or the best player (Quinnen Williams) in the draft. I’ll be surprised, as will America, if the choice is anyone but Murray, particularly because the Raiders, at four, are not likely to want to trade up for what it would cost. I do want to give you one cautionary tale on Kyler Murray, assuming he is picked here. Over the last seven years of football—three years of varsity high school football, a short one-year stint at Texans A&M, sitting a year at Oklahoma after transferring, mostly sitting in 2017 behind Baker Mayfield, and starting last year at Oklahoma—Murray has started 60 games. He is 57-3. Who knows if he starts right away in the NFL? But in the NFL, he could lose more starts in a month than he lost in the previous seven years. It’ll be interesting to see how Murray adjusts to adversity. Not sure he’s ever had much of it, at least in football.
2. San Francisco: Nick Bosa, edge rusher, Ohio State
Niners have loved him since the Cotton Bowl in 2017, when Bosa’s 1.5 sacks led the marauding Ohio State defense in a 24-7 pummeling of USC’s Sam Darnold in the last game of the star QB’s college career. I hear the Cardinals think of Bosa as a “generational player,” which just speaks to their love of Murray if they’re willing to pass on Bosa and leave him to the Niners. Edge-rusher is the element San Francisco hasn’t gotten right. To fortify the defensive front, the 49ers chose Arik Armstead 17th in 2015, DeForest Buckner seventh in 2016, and Solomon Thomas third in 2017 … and still their biggest team need is pressuring the quarterback. Four picks in the top 20 in the span of five drafts along the defensive line—if Bosa doesn’t put the defensive front over the top, this is some bad drafting.
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So I believe the Cardinals, should they—as I suspect—choose Kyler Murray number one overall, will be inclined to make the best deal they can for the quarterback they picked last year 10th overall, Josh Rosen. It’s easy to say Rosen’s a big boy and he’s going to have to get over the biggest snub job in recent NFL history. But he heard Kliff Kingsbury take the job and say on several occasions, Josh is our quarterback, or words to that effect. Now you draft a guy number one overall and asked Rosen to be a good soldier and carry the clipboard and help Kyler Murray win games for the team that misled him about being the quarterback under the new coach? Awkward.
I don’t know how the draft is going to fall, but if Miami or Washington or the Giants do not draft a quarterback high in the draft, what seems fair to me is offering a third-rounder (78th overall by Miami, 95th overall by the Giants, 96th overall by Washington) to Arizona for Rosen. And Arizona, I’m assuming, would strongly consider doing the best deal it could at that point.
I’d be really interested if I were Miami. Imagine trading the 78th pick and having a year to see if Rosen has a chance to be the long-term guy. If the Dolphins are unconvinced at the end of 2019, they could use a first-round pick (plus other draft capital if need be) to draft the quarterback of the long-term future in a year when the quarterback crop is better than this year.
There’s also this matter: In the last four-and-a-half years, Rosen has been coached by six offensive architects. At UCLA beginning in the fall of 2015, Rosen had Noel Mazzone, Kennedy Polamalu and Jedd Fisch, followed in Arizona by Mike McCoy and Byron Leftwich last year and Kingsbury this year. Imagine Rosen having the same system and coach for two or three years in a row. It hasn’t happened to him since high school. Seems worth a shot to me.
This is going to be a very interesting week in the history of the Arizona Cardinals, but also in the personal history of Josh Rosen.
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As a kid, my whole dream was to win Super Bowls and play QB in the NFL. For me it was always football. But at the same time it wasn’t.”
—Kyler Murray, to Robert Klemko of The MMQB and Sports Illustrated in a magazine story this week.
Enlightening story. Murray’s been beyond quiet leading to the draft. Reminds me a little of Courtney Brown heading into the 2000 draft—he didn’t want to talk to anyone in the media, to the point almost of it being an issue with NFL teams.
His quote here is meaningful, because it says his father, who is his sporting adviser, has always urged him to have a fallback plan. And baseball, according to Klemko, remains that.
———————
Lots of Steve Keim criticism. From Ravven L.: “I find it interesting that you say the Cards personnel people are at ‘the upper end among personnel people in belief in their ability to pick players’ but then you detail the incredible lack of talent on that team. How are these two statements compatible?”
My statement was about how confident GM Steve Keim and VP of player personnel Terry McDonough are about their personnel acumen—not about their recent performance in the draft and free agency, which has obviously been lacking. I have had issues with some of the Cardinals’ recent personnel decisions, such as giving Sam Bradford so much guaranteed money last year. And GM Steve Keim, obviously, doesn’t have a lot of job security after a three-win season and the hiring of a coach last year that lasted only one season.
But let’s be fair. Arizona won 50 games in Keim’s first five years as GM, got Carson Palmer very cheap in trade with Oakland, and hired Bruce Arians as one of his first decisions as GM (along with club president Michael Bidwill). In his drafts, Keim drafted Tyrann Mathieu with the 69th pick, John Brown with the 91st, and David Johnson with the 86th. He traded the 61st pick plus guard Jonathan Cooper to New England for Chandler Jones; Jones has recorded 41 sacks in his three Cardinals seasons. It’s okay to say Keim is in a personnel slump, but overall, his six years have been better than average.
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/04/22/nfl-mock-draft-fmia-peter-king/?cid=fmiatw
We live in a society (I sound like Costanza) that screams “Fake News!” when something seems just too obvious. We need to face reality, folks. When Cards GM Steve Keim walks into a meeting with club president Michael Bidwill today in Tempe to discuss the fate of the first overall pick, they could do a couple of things. They could decide to take Murray, the choice of head coach Kliff Kinsgbury. They could decide to take the best edge-rusher (Nick Bosa)—who I hear is the choice of many in the building—or the best player (Quinnen Williams) in the draft. I’ll be surprised, as will America, if the choice is anyone but Murray, particularly because the Raiders, at four, are not likely to want to trade up for what it would cost. I do want to give you one cautionary tale on Kyler Murray, assuming he is picked here. Over the last seven years of football—three years of varsity high school football, a short one-year stint at Texans A&M, sitting a year at Oklahoma after transferring, mostly sitting in 2017 behind Baker Mayfield, and starting last year at Oklahoma—Murray has started 60 games. He is 57-3. Who knows if he starts right away in the NFL? But in the NFL, he could lose more starts in a month than he lost in the previous seven years. It’ll be interesting to see how Murray adjusts to adversity. Not sure he’s ever had much of it, at least in football.
2. San Francisco: Nick Bosa, edge rusher, Ohio State
Niners have loved him since the Cotton Bowl in 2017, when Bosa’s 1.5 sacks led the marauding Ohio State defense in a 24-7 pummeling of USC’s Sam Darnold in the last game of the star QB’s college career. I hear the Cardinals think of Bosa as a “generational player,” which just speaks to their love of Murray if they’re willing to pass on Bosa and leave him to the Niners. Edge-rusher is the element San Francisco hasn’t gotten right. To fortify the defensive front, the 49ers chose Arik Armstead 17th in 2015, DeForest Buckner seventh in 2016, and Solomon Thomas third in 2017 … and still their biggest team need is pressuring the quarterback. Four picks in the top 20 in the span of five drafts along the defensive line—if Bosa doesn’t put the defensive front over the top, this is some bad drafting.
—————————
So I believe the Cardinals, should they—as I suspect—choose Kyler Murray number one overall, will be inclined to make the best deal they can for the quarterback they picked last year 10th overall, Josh Rosen. It’s easy to say Rosen’s a big boy and he’s going to have to get over the biggest snub job in recent NFL history. But he heard Kliff Kingsbury take the job and say on several occasions, Josh is our quarterback, or words to that effect. Now you draft a guy number one overall and asked Rosen to be a good soldier and carry the clipboard and help Kyler Murray win games for the team that misled him about being the quarterback under the new coach? Awkward.
I don’t know how the draft is going to fall, but if Miami or Washington or the Giants do not draft a quarterback high in the draft, what seems fair to me is offering a third-rounder (78th overall by Miami, 95th overall by the Giants, 96th overall by Washington) to Arizona for Rosen. And Arizona, I’m assuming, would strongly consider doing the best deal it could at that point.
I’d be really interested if I were Miami. Imagine trading the 78th pick and having a year to see if Rosen has a chance to be the long-term guy. If the Dolphins are unconvinced at the end of 2019, they could use a first-round pick (plus other draft capital if need be) to draft the quarterback of the long-term future in a year when the quarterback crop is better than this year.
There’s also this matter: In the last four-and-a-half years, Rosen has been coached by six offensive architects. At UCLA beginning in the fall of 2015, Rosen had Noel Mazzone, Kennedy Polamalu and Jedd Fisch, followed in Arizona by Mike McCoy and Byron Leftwich last year and Kingsbury this year. Imagine Rosen having the same system and coach for two or three years in a row. It hasn’t happened to him since high school. Seems worth a shot to me.
This is going to be a very interesting week in the history of the Arizona Cardinals, but also in the personal history of Josh Rosen.
———————-
As a kid, my whole dream was to win Super Bowls and play QB in the NFL. For me it was always football. But at the same time it wasn’t.”
—Kyler Murray, to Robert Klemko of The MMQB and Sports Illustrated in a magazine story this week.
Enlightening story. Murray’s been beyond quiet leading to the draft. Reminds me a little of Courtney Brown heading into the 2000 draft—he didn’t want to talk to anyone in the media, to the point almost of it being an issue with NFL teams.
His quote here is meaningful, because it says his father, who is his sporting adviser, has always urged him to have a fallback plan. And baseball, according to Klemko, remains that.
———————
Lots of Steve Keim criticism. From Ravven L.: “I find it interesting that you say the Cards personnel people are at ‘the upper end among personnel people in belief in their ability to pick players’ but then you detail the incredible lack of talent on that team. How are these two statements compatible?”
My statement was about how confident GM Steve Keim and VP of player personnel Terry McDonough are about their personnel acumen—not about their recent performance in the draft and free agency, which has obviously been lacking. I have had issues with some of the Cardinals’ recent personnel decisions, such as giving Sam Bradford so much guaranteed money last year. And GM Steve Keim, obviously, doesn’t have a lot of job security after a three-win season and the hiring of a coach last year that lasted only one season.
But let’s be fair. Arizona won 50 games in Keim’s first five years as GM, got Carson Palmer very cheap in trade with Oakland, and hired Bruce Arians as one of his first decisions as GM (along with club president Michael Bidwill). In his drafts, Keim drafted Tyrann Mathieu with the 69th pick, John Brown with the 91st, and David Johnson with the 86th. He traded the 61st pick plus guard Jonathan Cooper to New England for Chandler Jones; Jones has recorded 41 sacks in his three Cardinals seasons. It’s okay to say Keim is in a personnel slump, but overall, his six years have been better than average.
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/04/22/nfl-mock-draft-fmia-peter-king/?cid=fmiatw
