Prime position
Tackling problem.
With a paucity of franchise-changing quarterbacks available, teams decided to concentrate on protecting the ones they had. There were eight offensive tackles selected, including Jake Long by Miami with the opening selection and Ryan Clady by the Broncos at No. 12. If you didn’t pick a tackle in the first round, you simply weren’t trying.
Biggest reach
Work in progress.
The Detroit Lions have many needs, one of which is on the offensive line. However, there were far more automatic picks to be had than Gosder Cherilus. While the 6-foot-6, 314-pounder has enormous potential, it will be another wasted draft pick by one of the NFL’s most inept franchises if he doesn’t pan out.
Most puzzling choice
Taking a pass.
By this point, it’s clear the Tennessee Titans have an aversion to passing the football, so perhaps they feel the best way to help out QB Vince Young is to just let him hand the ball off. How else do you explain passing up all kinds of available wide receivers to take East Carolina running back Chris Johnson?
Opening act
NFL goes 6-for-6 with invitations.
The NFL got one thing right Saturday: the top six picks in this year’s draft were the six players the league invited to New York for the event.
No one had to be like Aaron Rodgers or Brady Quinn, sitting in the green room while team after team passed on them.
Whether the teams got it right is another story, because for all the platitudes about the great players they got, nobody will REALLY know what they got for a year — or two or three.
And there are plenty of questions for teams doing the picking — as many or more as there were trades in the first round (eight).
