Personally, if we were to draft a running back I'm for clarret. I hate his off field issues, I hate his 'soft' look people are mentioning...but that dude played VERY VERY well when he did in college. I was salivating watching him play, and if we can get him in the 3rd round, possibly even 4th...i'd take him. I'd take him in the 3rd and consider him a better prospect then any of the ones rated ahead of him. People seem to forget that when he did play eons ago, that he was arguibly the best in the nation as a freshman.
A gamble, yes....but in the 3rd or 4th round (3rd most likely) he's the kind of medium risk.....VERY VERY high reward player any GM should dream of. It's like McGahee in the 3rd w/o the theisman type injury.
Personally if the off-field issues don't derail his career, nothing on the field will IMO. He has game speed like boldin, and after watching that slow poke wr by last year GM's and draftniks performed, I don't think we 'as enlightened fans' should say clarrett is necessarily a slow back.
Is he garrison hearst coming out, no, but I tend to believe going on memory when he has the rock in his hands, he gets downfield as fast as almost anyone. (just like de, you don't run 40 yd dashes as a running back, you run a sideways angle 3 yds, followed by a juke and five yards more downfield until you straighten it out...and that's going up the middle.....unless there is just one hell of a whole and no safety making you juke)
I think he's a stud, even though his head may be a dud. 3rd round is high for a gamble pick, but its a gamble worth taking.
As for rb's. Well shipp we invested 8 mill, 2 million a season I believe. That's a little expensive for a backup, and cheap as hell for a starter. He could be the guy or might not be. I think 2 million a season is right about what he's worth. (especially considering he'll be making 2 million in 2006 when teams will be paying the David Barret CB's fa of 2006 at least 1 million more per season than Barret himself got THIS year)
If he's our backup, I'd say we'd have one hell of a tandem. And at that price, it's NOT a bad problem to have, in my opinion its the PERFECT situation to be in. (that is if it plays out like this)
As for E.Smith, his contract is gone after next season, so in light of the cap space we had last year, and this year albeit smaller, he really didn't do anything to hurt us personnel wise via cap constraints. I doubt he will this year, and obviously next year he won't. The only thing that was hurt was bidwill's pockets, and possibly shipp's development.
Bryant Johnson had GREAT numbers for a rookie wr. We keep comparing him to boldin's record setting numbers and the fact he was drafted behind him and say 'b.j. sucks....or varying degrees of that'.
Well if we look overall, he was in the top 10% of rookie wr's in the history of the game (or thereabouts).
If we draft fitzgerald, I think he could put up numbers like boldin, but I'd say he'll put up numbers most likely like B.J. + possibly 10-20% more in rec and yds. Could he bust out yes, especially in greens downfield attack, but I sure hope that if we take fitzgerald and he ends up with 55-60 catches for 920 yds and 5 tds, we don't start saying 'waste of a pick', or 'good player, but not worth the #3'. Because the best of bryant johnson is yet to come.
I don't think drafting another wr is showing we made a mistake. Fitzgerald is too big of a stud to pass up...maybe eli....but I think fitz is just too good to pass up. Just because we need to take a person in another position ala Sam Bowie, doesn't mean we should pass on Jordan.
I'm going to use a D-back analogy. If we draft Fitzgerald, it means we have a wr corps like the d-backs had starting pitching staff.
We have Randy Johnson starter 1A in Boldin
We have Curt Schilling starter 1B in Fitzgerald
We would have Brandon Webb starter 3 (or really 2 anywhere else) in B. Johnson.
Personally I'd think we'd have a better wr ********* than ron jeremy in his prime. This once again is a GREAT problem to have.
Pace????????? Who knows, I still think we need to give at least this year, and maybe next before we say he is a complete bust...but it's looking more certain that he'll be a rotational guy the majority of his career. Does he have talent to make an impact on this team this year or down the road, hell yea. Will he be plagued by his draft position....well he already has, and will always, unless he leaves for somewhere else.
If he can get to being a consistently solid player for us for the next 6-7 years I won't consider him a bust, but definitely a reach. But in the end it isn't 'a reach' we should worry about, but how well our dl plays in years to come.
I think he has the potential to be productive for us, and to worry about being reached for will lead us to never appreciate what he brings, and at this point I don't know what that is. But the reach is in the past, and lets give him another year or two.
