The first overall pick: not Suh fast?

Since about week 14 of the regular season, it's been a near-certainty in Rams Nation that the man to select with the #1 pick of the 2010 draft would be Nebraska DT Ndamukong Suh. This notion has been challenged by almost no one in the football media, where Suh's mentioned by some in the same breath as Reggie White.

There are a lot of parallels between this year's draft and the 1996 draft. The Rams picking first. The consensus top pick being a dominant lineman who won the Outland and Lombardi awards. And now, just like Orlando Pace did back then by signing with the Poston brothers, Ndamukong Suh has chosen an agent with a history of holdouts, Maximum Sports Management, starring Eugene Parker.

You'll remember Eugene Parker from such great summer hits as The Steven Jackson Holdout of 2008. Jackson held out all of training camp, dishonoring the final year of his old contract as leverage for his new one. Parker followed that up this past season with The Michael Crabtree Holdout, as the tenth pick overall held out into the regular season while demanding to be paid more than the WR drafted ahead of him. And, Ndamukong, you were getting $40 million guaranteed almost no matter what you did; why sign on with this lightning rod of an agent? Not to get screwed over for $43 million when you could have gotten $44 million?

(Disturbing point of reference: Matthew Stafford's contract: 6 years, $72 million (potentially $78 million with incentives), $41.7 million guaranteed. (only $17 million if his option is not picked up in 2014))

That's the bad news; the good news is that the Rams can start negotiating with their #1 pick in advance of the draft, and unlike 1996, it's now standard for the team drafting first to have that player already signed. I don't think it'll work if Eugene Parker tries to hold out on the Rams. Billy Devaney and Kevin Demoff should be able to take a quick temperature of the situation, and if it reads "holdout", they will be just as well off taking a QB #1 as they would drafting Parker's client only to have him waste his first season. Or they can pick Gerald McCoy; by all indications, he is his agent's first NFL client. He could be easier to sign, yet equally as good, the Walter Jones to Suh's Pace. (That's a borrowed analogy, but with apologies, I have forgotten whom to credit.)

The biggest risk the Rams could take would be to draft Ndamukong Suh without a contract. That would leave the possibility of a long holdout open. With this agent, Rams Nation will no doubt have an aggravating history of holdouts to look forward to (though who knows how the next labor agreement will affect things?). To be worth the trip down the multiple-holdout road that Suh appears willing to take with Parker, the road that Pace and the Postons took, Ndamukong Suh better damn sure be as good as Orlando Pace. And the Rams better not draft him unless they believe he is.