More of The U for the D?

[J. Spanky]

Okay, burgundies and golds, here’s a hopeful, yet reasonably plausible, theory of how we will and/or should address the d-line through the draft:

*drum roll

Since last off-season, we’ve seen and heard how the FO is placing greater importance on signing players with whom our staff is familiar. This, of course, has been applied to free agency thus far. However, we are in the somewhat unique position to be able to apply this philosophy to the draft.

Our new d-line coach, John Palermo, was the d-line coach for the Miami Hurricanes in 2006. This just so happened to be the best year of projected mid-to-late first round DE Calais Campbell’s college career. We should bolster our pass rush and add some more youthful talent to our line by selecting Campbell in the 1st round.

We should use the first of our 7th round picks (if not our 6th rounder) to target Campbell’s line-mate, DT Teraz McCray. He is a late 2nd or 3rd round worthy player who will likely drop considerably due to an extensive injury history. It is no stretch to think we could get him in the 7th round. He could be a great addition to the DT rotation.

Campbell had a poor showing at the combine and seemed to regress last year. Both these things have hurt his draft stock, making it very likely that he will be available to us at 21 overall. Despite this, with his combination of size, talent and the potential he deomonstrated in ’06, he has tremendous upside. And who better than the same coach that already brought his best out of him 2 years ago to take another crack at it?

Agreed?