Third-round 2006 reflections

RamView liked the start the Rams got off to in the 2006 draft. In the first round, the Rams traded down, didn't take a QB, and still got the player they wanted in Tye Hill, the best pure corner in the draft who didn't have any injury flags. (Sadly, Hill has turned out to be injured half the time as a pro, while Antonio Cromartie, hitting that draft with a blown ACL, has turned out to be an all-pro.) And given their needs at the TE position, Joe Klopfenstein looked like a smart pick in the second round.

Had RamView been running that draft, the first two picks likely would have been Brodrick Bunkley and Klopfenstein. So maybe you don't want RamView in your war room.

Actually, though, there are other times you'd want RamView, or anybody else on earth, for that matter, in your war room, considering the hash the Rams made of the third round. They got nothing but arrests and suspensions out of the THREE (!) picks they had that round.

#68 was acquired from the Broncos in the trade in the first round where the Rams moved down and let Denver take Jay Cutler. The Rams used the pick on one Claude Wroten, who had been arrested earlier in 2006 with so much marijuana in his car that the authorities considered prosecuting him as a drug dealer. Wroten wasn't allowed to participate in the NFL Combine that year. There was every reason to believe he was a highly risky pick. But the Rams, perhaps because the pick was free, sort of, pulled the trigger.

And shot themselves in the foot. Wroten has more failed drug tests in his career than sacks, and goes down in the record books as another miserable failure of a knucklehead draft pick.

Meanwhile, RamView had been pining away all day, starting in the second round, for Alabama DE Mark Anderson, who tore it up at the Combine and met a huge need on a defensive line that already wasn't pressuring QBs very well. Anderson went on to score 12 sacks that season, leading all rookies and finishing right behind Leonard Little, who had 13. And though Bears Nation seems to have considered Anderson's 2007 season a disappointment, he still had five sacks, which is more than 3 times Wroten's career total, and would have made him third on the Rams in sacks last year, with just a half-sack less than all the 2007 Rams DEs COMBINED.

Now at pick #77, their "own" pick for the third round, the Rams took Stanford LB Jon Alston, a LB/safety tweener-type RamView couldn't really figure out a use for while I scratched my head trying to figure out why the Rams weren't doing more to bolster their pass rush. Apparently, the idea was to turn Alston into the Haslett defense's "buck end". We saw how that worked out. Alston rarely got onto the field and was cut in training camp last year, after just one season, for repeatedly blowing assignments.

Meanwhile, RamView wouldn't shut up about this Jerious Norwood kid. The Rams needed depth at RB, and still available here was a guy who blistered a sub-4.4 40 at the Combine, and as an explosive runner spelling Steven Jackson, would give opposing defenses nightmares. And as I've said a million times, it's hard to go wrong with SEC running backs. True, Norwood has turned into Michael Turner's luggage-carrier in Atlanta, but you don't have to watch him for long - last year's Rams-Falcons game, for instance - to see the guy is fast, explosive and a big play waiting to happen. He's dangerous as a runner and a receiver. He'd certainly be a far cry better than Antonio Pittman or Travis Minor.

Late in that third round, the Rams surprised everybody by trading up into pick #93 to take USC TE Dominique Byrd. This was a hard pick for RamView to argue against, in part because I was gassed from a long day of draft-watching and got caught off guard, but also because the Rams still needed players at TE, and Byrd had shown good on-field production. What I will say is that a team that also still needed DTs after taking Wroten passed on prospects such as Domata Peko, Barry Cofield and Kyle Williams to pick another guy who ended up with more career arrests than impact plays. I know I was a Kyle Williams (oddly, from LSU like Wroten) fan, at least. And you can accuse me of hindsight for listing Peko, but hey, it's not like the Bengals have ever been a draft juggernaut. A pure pass rusher like Elvis Dumervil, who had 12.5 sacks last year, and 21 in two seasons for Denver, was also available, though like many, I was worried Elvis was too small to hold up.

In any event, which draft is better?
Tye Hill, Joe Klopfenstein, Claude Wroten, Jon Alston, Dominique Byrd?
or
Brodrick Bunkley (had similar numbers to Adam Carriker last year), Klopfenstein, Mark Anderson, Jerious Norwood, Kyle Williams?

Maybe I'll go ahead and put in for the next Rams war room opening anyway. (Though I might wait and see what kind of pro player Limas Sweed turns out to be first.)