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205 days ago
After his Combine, the journey to which we covered in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, Wake Forest linebacker Aaron Curry got ready for a short American tour, and prepared for some visitors to his home campus. At Wake Forest's Pro Day on March 23, 41 representatives from all 32 NFL teams showed up to watch Curry and his teammates in action. Curry stood on his 4.52-40 time and 25 bench press reps from the Combine, but he impressed in agility drills, cementing his status as the "safest pick in the draft". Curry had pre-draft visits scheduled with the Lions, Chiefs, and Browns. The Seahawks actually canceled their visit with him -- it seems they'd seen enough to know what they were going to do -- and Curry spent the next month talking with most every team with the opportunity to draft him. There was no question that
214 days ago
They each have Super Bowl rings -- all four of them. As assistant coaches, head coaches, general managers. Each of them has risen to the top of his profession, and though each of the four will be analyzing the 2009 draft instead of participating in it, few would be surprised to see any of them in a war room in 2010. They are respected names -- Steve Maruicci, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, and Charley Casserly. There's Mariucci, or "Mooch", who learned under Mike Holmgren in Green Bay before helping to turn the late-90's 49ers around and landing head-first in an epic disaster in Detroit. Gruden, the dynamic young coach who gave the Raiders his toughness and installed the West Coast Offense in Tampa Bay. There's Billick, like Gruden, an offensive mastermind who got his ring primarily through a dominant defense. And there's Casserly, Washington's GM from 1989 through 1999, and
214 days ago
Follow along live as Cindy Boren Twitters from the NFL Draft. (Click here to follow us on Twitter) #twitter_div h2 { background-color: transparent; color: #C00; font: bold 12px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0 0 1px 0; padding: 10px 0 0 0; border-bottom: 1px dotted #CCC; } #twitter_div ul { margin: 0 0 5px 0; padding: 0; list-style: none; } #twitter_div ul li { margin: 0 0 1px 0; padding: 7px 5px; font: 13px/18px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: #EEE; } #twitter_div ul li span { font-weight: bold; } #twitter_div { padding-bottom: 10px; } #twitter_div p { font: bold 11px/14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0; text-align: right; } #twitter_div a:link, #twitter_div a:visited { text-decoration: none; } #twitter_div a:hover, #twitter_div a:active { text-decoration: underline; } Latest Draft Buzz Previous Updates »
215 days ago
For most NFL quarterbacks, sixteen starts make up a season. For USC's Mark Sanchez, sixteen starts add up to a lifetime. That's how many times the 6-2, 227-pound resident of Mission Viejo, California took the ball under center as the main man for what has essentially become the NFL's minor-league team. That's not a lot to go on, especially since Sanchez is coming out a year early, foregoing his senior season to see what the NFL has to offer. There are two sides to the small sample size conundrum -- some believe that Sanchez needs more game film to validate his NFL readiness, while others believe that what he's done in just those 16 starts speak to an upside that is as high as it is for any player in this draft class. The man in question says that you should look at the quality, not the quantity, of the
215 days ago
Just as having your ticket stamped by a big school isn't a lead-pipe lock when it comes to NFL success, a small-college designation needn't doom a player to backup or washout status. This is true even when it comes to quarterback -- the most important position in the game. In the last decade, quarterbacks like Delaware's Joe Flacco, Miami of Ohio's Ben Roethlisberger, Marshall's Chad Pennington and Byron Leftwich (along with Big Ben, the Holy Trinity of MAC quarterbacks), East Carolina's David Garrard, Alabama State's Tarvaris Jackson, Sam Houston State's Josh McCown, and Eastern Illinois' Tony Romo have all found varying degrees of success in the NFL. In Super Bowl XLIII, Roethlisberger faced off against Kurt Warner, an undrafted one-time NFL flop from Northern Iowa, proving that two small-school quarterbacks can compete at the highest levels, and at a Hall of Fame clip. One quarterback in the 2009 draft class
