Kiper's final top 40 the day before the draft-Johnson (#21) and Pace (#38)

[Lomax to Green 84]

Not that Mel Kiper is a guru or anything, but he does seem to have a decent pulse on what teams are thinking and he had Pace moving up and Johnson slotted in at the 20-25 range of the first round. I am not advocating Mel Kiper as a great judge of talent, but all the talk about Johnson and Pace not even being on most evaluaters radar screen for the first round is false. Both guys were being considered, maybe they would have been there had we stayed put and had the 37th pick, but maybe they would not have been there.

Also, I found somewhere that Kenny King holds most lifting records at Alabama and is a very good student in the classroom. He is sounding more and more like a Darwin Walker type. Walker was always a guy people talked about all the way back to his freshman and sophomore seasons but he just never seemed to make the jump to elite status as an upperclassman. King is very similar. King, Moorehead, and Jarrett Johnson were a very heralded group coming into Alabama and all had very solid careers but not outstanding careers. Alabama seems to always have an abundance of good players at one position and often times these guys end up better pros then college players. When Shaun Alexander was a back at Alabama he played in a 3 man rotation up until his senior season when he finally became the guy. Kenny King was forced to play nose tackle out of necessity even though he was a 275 pounder who was a better fit at defensive end.

 

[Captain Matt]

I was talking to a cynical, burned-out, on again-off again NFL fan the other day and he asked me why I even cared about the NFL draft. His notion was that most of the highly touted players end up falling on their faces. We Cardinal fans know all about that!

But, going along with what Holian said.......Success at the college level may be influenced by talent, but is also a function of the system, the other players, and a player's maturity. There are a lot of players out there who have a load of physical talents that were not students of the game until they were upperclassmen (or in the case of some... until they were drafted), and there are a lot of them who were forced to play positions or in systems where their talents weren't fully exploited.

To me, the key is to draft, and/or acquire players to fill positions in systems where you can capitalize on their talents. And because trial-by-fire is pretty much the only way to that goal you're often a head of the game by drafting the best athletes (vice the most successful ones from the college ranks). Even "successful" pros have fallen on their faces when they jump ship for the almighty dollar sign.

 

[Skkorpion]

Welcome Lieutenant. Do we know you under another name already, or are you new to this board?