I believe that Haasan Reddick was the top remaining player on their board, so they went with BPA. They had 10 minutes to recover from learning that their top choice QB Deshaun Watson had just been snagged by the Texans---so they reverted back to their board. I imagine too that they were hoping to field calls to trade down, but no one called. Keim always says they need to trust in their board and with a mere 10 minutes to make a decision, that's what they did.
I think I might be able to back up your argument, Mitch. I have last year’s draft on video, and so I checked. The networks have a graphic showing some facts and rankings, and this graphic is on all the time, during the broadcast, during commercials, during various features. On it is a box with a clock counting down and eventually the message “the pick is in” when whatever team is on the clock has made their pick. The teams send in their picks to the NFL office for registration, and immediately after that the next team is on the clock. The selection process doesn’t follow the network coverage but the graphic changes no matter what happens in the coverage. Because of this I tend to believe the timespan shown on the network’s graphic is the actual timespan between the picks.
Following this measurement system, from the Texans had picked Deshaun Watson it took nearly 7.45 minutes before the Cardinals selected Haason Reddick. I also have the draft coverage from the previous years on video, and for comparison with the time between the two picks I can tell that in 2016 it took only 4.30 minutes from the Niners had picked offensive guard Joshua Garnett until the Cardinals picked Robert Nkemdiche. The year before that it took only 3.10 minutes from the Denver Broncos had selected edge rusher Shane Ray before the Cardinals selected D. J. Humphries. When they selected Deone Buccanon in 2014 it took 7 minutes after the Eagles picked linebacker Marcus Smith.
Both in 2015 and 2016 a team traded right in front of the Cardinals, yet it seems that they weren’t affected by it since they quickly selected another player. It could be that they simply moved on to the next player on the board, but it could also mean that they were completely set on their guy, and thus didn’t need to spend much time making the selection. It also indicates that this was not the case with the Bucannon- and Reddick-pick where they used significantly more time, maybe because they had to figure out what to do after a trade down in 2014 and the Texans trading in front of them in 2017.
Now, this obviously comes with some caveats. First of all, I don’t know if the networks are showing the real time from pick to pick. Second, I don’t know if the Cardinals made the pick and called the player before they called the NFL office. Third, the Cardinals might have learned from those previous draft processes and thus taking their time in 2017 to select the right player. I do think it is interesting, though, if they did use nearly double the time on selecting Bucannon and Reddick.
By the way, I thought of looking up the time it took to select Markus Golden since we know they were disappointed that the Detroit Lions selected runningback Ameer Abdullah in front of them. I didn’t do that both because it was in the second round where there is less time to make the pick which would obviously change the process, and also because the Lions did not select Abdullah with the pick right in front of the Cardinals.
